We will get tired of all that winning, I mean 發大財ing
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Terry Gou is the only one that could defeat Vegetable English. I’m betting there are countless skeletons ready to come out of the Korea Fish closet. Disappointingly, the KMT is handing the election to the DPP.
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Would Korea fish sell the whole island down the river of Zhongnanhai???
Thank heavens for that.
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FIFY 
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The DPP is fake. They claim to support independence, but they never actually go through with it. If you want independence, have the balls to do it and see what happens.
They are just playing the fools. Korea Fish is too. He’s the fakest KMT candidate ever but the ignorant are still drinking the kool-aid. No matter who wins, Taiwan loses.
Perhaps you skipped over my original post, at the top of this thread, in which I noted that Tsai fended off a leadership challenge from Lai. There was—and is—a struggle in the DPP over its leadership, aims, and priorities. A number of people (including Nathan Batto, also referenced above) have written insightful pieces on this topic. If you’d like to start a thread on it, please feel free to do so.
Cheers,
Guy
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No need for some hack (Batto) to tell me what I already know. 
Batto has helpfully parsed a term—“independence”—that you have casually thrown around in this thread. But I suppose such nuance is unnecessary for you as you evidently already know what you need to know.
Cheers,
Guy
I read his articles on the issue and others. He’s just stating the obvious to any informed voter. Unfortunately that means the majority of Taiwanese wouldn’t qualify. Thus the success of the DPP.
OK, Mr PRH, if that’s the case, how many of us here knew this? Batto’s post on the KMT primary linked above in my original post has this to say about Han:
[Han] has been embraced by the KMT local factions in a way that is nearly unthinkable for a mainlander (who speaks only lousy Taiwanese) from the Taipei area who came up through the military party branch. The obvious answer is that he married well. His wife’s (Lee Chia-fen) family is deeply enmeshed in Yunlin factional politics. Her family has held a seat in the county assembly since 1986. Her father had it for three terms, then her brother held it for three terms, and now she is on her third term. Her father started out as a factional opponent of current Yunlin political godfather Chang Jung-wei. In Chang’s first big stab at power, the 1994 Yunlin speaker election, her father supported the other side. (That was a wild affair. Both sides bribed heavily and then took their purchased assembly-elect members on foreign trips to make sure the other side wouldn’t poach them, returning only on the day of the election. About 2000 police surrounded the county assembly so that gangsters wouldn’t be able to physically intimidate the members. The first ballot was tied, and Chang’s opponent won when one of Chang’s votes was ruled invalid because it was (inadvertently or maybe not so inadvertently) splashed with betelnut juice.) Four years later, Chang won the 1998 speaker election. In that election, Lee’s father switched sides, the Lee family has been allied with Chang ever since. There are at least two important consequences of this history. First, Han has been in close contact with local faction politicians for his entire thirty-year marriage. He has learned how to speak their language and be comfortable with their culture. As a family member, he has been trusted and socialized in ways that very few mainlander politicians can claim. In short, he is not an outsider. Second and more specifically, his ties with Chang Jung-wei go back two decades. He is not just a recent ally of convenience. This is a long-term relationship. Chang is one of the most influential faction leaders. If he vouches for Han, it carries some weight. It has been fascinating to watch the local factions switch their allegiance over the past year. A year ago, Wang Jin-pyng and Wu Den-yi were considered the leaders of this part of the KMT. Wang campaigned hard for Han in the mayoral race, bringing the Kaohsiung factions into the fold. Now however, Wang and Wu seem to have lost their leadership positions. All those local factions seem more responsive to Han than to them.
I’m not entirely convinced by the story I just told about Han becoming part of the factional family. I can’t quite explain why, but it just seems too easy to me. I suspect (without any evidence) that something more substantial is going on behind the scenes. Political scientists have traditionally understood local factions as a network of hierarchical patron-client relationships, with the top-level patron as the KMT. The KMT distributed resources to its clients, which they in turn distributed down their networks. However, many of the old sources of goodies, such as the farmers association credit unions, township budgets, and irrigation associations, have dried up. Why has Han emerged as such a powerful leader? The sinister explanation is that he is the connection to a new top-level patron distributing resources. We know that China is trying to penetrate Taiwanese society in exactly this sort of way. Admittedly, I have no evidence for this suspicion, but it seems to me a more convincing explanation of the factions’ sudden rush to embrace such an unlikely figure.
There is speculative conjecture here that you can certainly argue with. But what makes Batto interesting as a writer is his ability to dig deep down into the history of electoral politics in Taiwan, telling us things that are far from “obvious”—in short, things we might actually not yet know. With the Han phenomenon moving to the next step, I for one appreciate what folks like Batto are doing, helping add extra detail and analysis seldom seen in Taiwan’s mass media.
Cheers,
Guy
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Let’s just say his wife may not be a blessing and leave it at that.
Unfortunately, he is bulletproof. His followers are blind, enraged by what they perceive is the loss of face by losing the 18%. The rest just follow the crowd. The media tells them what to do.
Han Will win, they will discredit DPP further by imprisoning Tsai and anyone else they can get their paws on. That will cause a massive RIP on the already fractured DPP. Hopefully the crumbling of the DPP will help a younger more worker oriented option to rise in the wake of Han’s disaster. And disaster it will be.
First it will be all parties and glorious celebrations with plenty of freebies and greased palms. With the surge of CCP money, it will feel like the good old days of 1980s. But fortunately China likes to yank the chain just to prove they are in command and Han seems like the kind of guy who will say and do the wrong thing at the wrong time. When the reckoning comes, most of his followers will still follow blindly to the precipice. One hopes they will not be most of Taiwan. One prays someone will wake up before it is too late.
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Wow, I thought I was a party pooper. : P
How would the events in HK figure in your assessment? Will voters remember or forget?
Guy
holy crap you are scaring me
so if he wins should we start packing our bags and gtfo?
Forget. The local media does not keep it in its radar. If there is a second Tiananmen, people here will actually blame the protesters and turn in droves to vote for China backed candidate Han. Most people of voting age Lived through Martial Law era and were shaped by it. Do not make waves. Be good. Shut up and follow. Do not think, just work, save yourself.
I mean, they actually have suspicions that Han surge was backed by China paid 5 cent army and the guy is still standing. He was convicted of drunk driving murder. He is still standing. He has not done his job as Kaohsiung mayor and he is still standing. Nothing will stand in his way to Presidential Office now that he has both CCP and KMT machinery behind him.
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No. He needs to boil the water slowly. But I would not buy a house or any long term investment. I am tied with a 5 year investment and I am not sure We have those 5 years.
It’s a done deal for Korea fish!
No need to catastrophize, or be like Chicken Little – The Sky is Falling, Taiwan will go on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO04VXBIS0M
I guess North Korea will also “ keep going “ . It’s how they keep going , surely ?