And I will be the first to say it - Trump/Christie 2016.
Christie endorsing Trump? The GOP has given up on trying to stop him.
Yeah Christie’s endorsement is huge, arguably the biggest of the race so far.
Wow, that’s a big deal. That may turn a trickle into a flood.
Watching the press conference and Christie is just continuing to go after Rubio. Clearly he can’t stand the guy. He really sounds like he’s auditioning for Veep.
It seems to me that the race is over. More names will follow and this will all be over Wedneday morning.
I read the story about Christie selling his mailing list to Rubio and mistakenly turned that into Christie endorsing Rubio. I couldn’t have been more wrong! I’m fairly shocked.
Wow. That IS yuuuuge. That’s not a podunk Congresscritter or two that you’ve never heard of.
And just when it seemed like the Establishment was all lining up behind Rubio, too. It’s schism time!!
Can I say I’m enjoying the hell out of this GOP primary season, regardless of what I think of the three apparent finalists? Because I am. (Wait - didn’t I just say that on the other side of the record? ;)) There’s never been a political season anywhere near like this one in my entire life, and it’s the perfect storm of confusion to my enemies. I love it.
Yeah, I mean I’m a life long Republican and I should be weeping for my party and the country, but I am mostly just caught up in this election season, it really is unprecedented. To me it’s way more significant than the three elections in my memory (I was too young to vote for one of them) where third party candidates got significant votes ('68, '80, '92.)
I think the vote impact of an endorsement in and of itself isn’t yuge, but I think that fact that we’ve had two congressmen come out for Trump and now a Governor of a large (population wise) state with a lot of national standing and who was in the Presidential race just a few weeks ago shows that some elements of the establishment are now taking the tack of “it’s time to get behind our nominee, warts and all” for Donald.
It adds a degree of “acceptability” to voting for Trump among Main Street type Republicans, and it also probably shuts down some money that Cruz/Rubio could tap into. There are going to be some big donors who are going to be more reticent to open their checkbooks if it looks like the party is starting to back Trump–they’ll hold off and wait until the general and likely back Trump at that time, and may see more money toward Cruz or Rubio as a waste.
That is a huge wart…
That’s probably the odds on favorite for pairing. Of course Christie is “establishment” so I wonder if that would hurt Trump’s brand any.
It’s interesting to me how consistently off the media has been. This really is just not an election like any in their professional consciousness. Trump has been called the loser and said to have done terribly last night by every major media outlets, but something like 65% of Republican viewers say they think he won the debate.
I think Trump is really tapping hard into the “angry lower income white man” angst in this country. Being a white man in America is a position of privilege, and in aggregate this group still does disproportionately better than almost anyone else, often regardless of ability. But there is a sizable segment of lower income white men who were born into a world in which they were told if they worked hard (after graduating High School) they’d have a good position at a company, retire happily and be able to live a comfortable life. Instead, the jobs for them have largely disappeared, “unskilled” labor that pays a nice living wage has largely evaporated since the 1970s. Many of these people have done worse than their fathers did, and to them it probably seems manifestly unfair that despite being hard workers they’re relegate to making $10/hr at best, sometimes minimum wage, and cannot raise a family with the lifestyle they had expected.
Not everyone can go to school and become a software engineer or a professional. In an economy where knowledge is more important than work ethic, and where an unskilled laborer who is willing to work had but would probably struggle even in a trade program this economy doesn’t have much for them now. When someone taps into their latent prejudices and blasts immigrants, Muslims, government etc I think it’s shown to be a very powerful force.
That’s true for white collar as well. My father, with substantially less education and opportunity than I have had, has done much better financially. The reasons have little to do with his merit or my lack thereof, but are mostly the broader context in which we are embedded.
(Mind you, I don’t see Trump as a solution, and I certainly don’t think white people deserve privilege at the expense of others, but I get the anger at being screwed by the system.)
QFT, pretty much all of it.
The one thing I’d add is that the media’s been so off for so long now, way before Trump, that I’m amazed they can find their ass with both hands. (Hell, I don’t know they can do that, even. Anyone got video? ;)) And the other thing - OK, *two *things I’d add - is that, hell, who among us has made that much sense of the race since Trump joined it last summer? I’m just slack-jawed with amazement half the time.
Like I’ve said earlier, I’m a hardcore liberal Democrat, but I intend on crossing over to vote for Trump in the CA primary. I would never in a zillion years vote for him in a general election, but I want him to become the GOP nominee.
And Hell, between Trump, Cruz, and Rubio - because sadly Kasich isn’t going anywhere - Trump is the one that I fear the least. So if he somehow wins the general election in some alternate cartoon universe, he at least wouldn’t govern like a sociopath (i.e., like Cruz) or as an inept mindless robot (i.e., like Marcobot). I still say that Trump is really just a Democrat with hugely rightwing immigration views, so he would govern accordingly.
I need to find out when the deadline is, here in MD, for changing one’s party registration. Our primary isn’t until April 26, but if this thing is still in doubt then, I’d like to be able to weigh in similarly.
Aside from being against cutting Social Security and Medicare, and not thinking starting random wars is a great idea, Trump’s stances on the issues are mostly in line with GOP orthodoxy. It’s just that in GOP-world, a little heterodoxy is all it takes to get you into big trouble.
(They may say Dems are the party of PC, but the GOP is the party that won’t even let government scientists in states they control use seemingly innocuous phrases like ‘sea level rise’ let alone dirty words like ‘climate change.’)
Is there any policy issue on which Trump has taken a position that is further to the right than Cruz or Rubio?
The no Muslims allowed into the country thing might qualify. It’s hard to know where to plot some things on a left-right axis.
Good point.
I guess I had mentally put that in the category of inflammatory rhetoric rather than policy, but I think you’re right that it is as much policy as lots of the things the Republicans talk about.
Don’t be so sure of that. Here in the U.K., white young men are the most derided group. When it comes to university entry, white school leavers are outcompeted by women (35% more likely), and white school leavers of both genders by black school leavers (28% to 37% respectively). So young white men get hit by a double whammy.