Fits her Laptop Field Marshal persona lmao. She literally sounded like she was giving a TED talk on the debate stage and despite her hatred of Hillary Clinton, acting like the right’s caricature of her taken up to 11.
Let’s see, where are we?
Trump has been surging in national polls (confounding people like me who figured that while his ~25% support wasn’t going away, it probably wasn’t going to grow much either) and has a substantial lead in New Hampshire and South Carolina polling.
Meanwhile, Ted Cruz seems to be holding a narrow lead over Trump in Iowa, and apparently has become the official candidate of the religious right, as evangelical war horses like James Dobson and Tony Perkins endorse him.
And Marco Rubio seems to be kinda treading water lately, andhis decision not to bother with much retail campaigning in Iowa or New Hampshire, and his reluctance to settle on any primary as a make-or-break state, is gaining him lots of doubters. Not to mention, he’s not exactly breaking away from his ‘Establishment lane’ competition (Bush, Christie, Kasich) in New Hampshire.
There may still be a month and a half to go, but a Cruz/Trump split of Iowa and New Hampshire seems to be looking more rather than less likely as the days go by. It’s gonna be interesting if ‘the party decides’ that Ted Cruz, who they heartily detest, is their last, best hope to avoid having to nominate Trump. (Yeah, maybe ‘the party decides,’ but sometimes nothing good is coming out of the kitchen that they can order.)
FWIW, just because Cruz seems to have become the evangelicals’ main man in this campaign, that doesn’t mean he’s another Huckabee or Santorum. Santorum was pretty much a desperation choice to get behind in 2012; in 2008, Huckabee not only was remarkably bad at raising money, but he made a bad tactical decision to waste time on New Hampshire after winning Iowa. Cruz has money, he has a plan for his campaign, and his backing among Republicans goes well beyond evangelical circles.
He’d be an absolutely disastrous President, but that’s true of pretty much anyone with a remote prospect of winning the GOP nomination. So it might as well be someone who can’t easily be sold to the broader public.
I hear Dobson is penning the foreword to Cruz’s forthcoming autobiography My Struggle to be released in a few weeks by Zondervan. That should be interesting.
I believe this is post-modernist irony, I detect the scent of sarcasm. I do not believe That Ted Cruz’s sense of irony is so weak that be would call his autobiography My Struggle.
Sure, he made the trains run on time. He also made sure they were full.
Predictwise numbers are moving. Cruz (26%) has gained on Rubio (35%) on chance to be the nominee.
Curiously, although Trump (22%) is less likely to be the nominee he is more likely (10%) than Cruz (9%) to become the next POTUS. Does that seem right? I figured Koch, FoxNews, and “typical Republicans” would happily support Cruz but not Trump. That’s why I’ve been much more worried about Cruz than about Trump. Do I have it backwards?
(Other GOP nomination chances are Bush (10%) and Christie(7%).)
Cruz’ base is very narrow. Trump, being ideologically all over the place, plus appealing to disaffected voters, can potentially get votes the GOP doesn’t normally get(really, votes that no one gets).
The problem for Republicans is that if Trump actually became President, it would realign the country in a way that would kind of squeeze out real conservatives. So what Democrats have long predicted would sorta come true: conservatism would be dead, but instead of the liberal party vs. the moderate party they wish for, they’d get a liberal party vs. a populist know nothing party.
That certainly would be a positive development in certain ways although unfortunate in that it would totally make the Democrats an elite party, even more dominated by upper middle class urban/suburban professionals than it is now.
I think the country is better off with the Democrats being the populist party and Republicans being the elite party. We’ve been in kind of a weird time, where the party of the rich is also the know nothing party and the party of the people is also the pro-science, socially liberal party. I don’t think that will hold up for much longer. Those coalitions are too unwieldy to last.
Yes, I realize Trump is much more moderate and populist than Cruz (or even most of the GOP candidates).
I just can’t believe that someone so nasty and lacking in relevant competence and knowledge could get a majority in a general election. Maybe I’ve been overestimating the American voter. :eek:
I know I have. Every time he opens his mouth, I think, “OK, this is it, this is when his supporters say, ‘I can’t stomach this any more,’ and abandon him in droves.” I’m always wrong.
We do not need an elite party. We *should *not need a populist party. Duh.
If both parties were populist, there’d be prayer in schools and the environmental movement would be limited to here and now issues, and we’d run deficits pretty much forever until we couldn’t anymore. We’d also have a flag burning amendment. There’d be a lot less trade with other countries, and a lot less immigration. A little elitism is good to ward off popular ideas that are of questionable legality or morality, and so that a little planning for the future can be done.
The country would be much better off with a realistic conservative-ish party and a realistic liberal-ish party. Right now we have a batshit ultra-conservative party and a realistic moderate-corporatist party. What we should have is a situation such that Sanders is the on the left flank of his party (but not way beyond left field like he is now), Clinton and Obama are on the right flank, and probably someone like Pelosi is in the middle; while guys like Kasich (and maybe Rand Paul, but he’s quite different) are on the right flank of their party, someone like Lincoln Chaffee is on the left flank, and maybe Christie/Bob Dole/Nixon/Jack Kemp are in the middle.
And the nutters can have their own party, such that 10-20% (decreasing every cycle) goes to some racist/conspiracist/nativist third party, and the South is actually competitive.
Well, we do have prayer in schools and deficits do go on pretty much forever, and the environmental movement right now is focused on global warming, which is pretty here-and-now, so I guess we’re 75% populist?
I agree if only because it would ensure the populist party has a semi-permanent grip of power while maintaining a democratic two-party system.
A populist party should be the majority party, but competence matters. Without two disastrous Democratic Presidencies(LBJ and Carter) there’d be no Reagan revolution and the resultant shuffling of the coalitions.
I wouldn’t consider the President who annihilated segregation and impediments to voting rights for white Americans and massively reduced poverty among the elderly by expanding Social Security and instituting Medicare a “disaster”.
Cough. Vietnam, Great Society. The first led to the destruction of the Democratic brand on national security and the second made them the tax and spend party, primarily for objectives that had little to do with the interests of the majority.
How dare people care for others than the people who already have it all?