Trump is once again not bothering to do much retail campaigning. He’ll probably underperform his polling again:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/02/05/trumps_campaign_tests_nh_traditions.html
Unlike in Iowa, here it is likely that Trump can afford to underperform his polls and still win. However, if he continues to underperform his polls and Rubio continues to outperform his, or even just rise in the polls relative to Trump, then Trump is going to lose his narrative. Everyone will start thinking his poll numbers are bogus and he’ll start losing real support, while Rubio will continue picking up support from the bandwagon effect, and from the effect of the other establishment candidates dropping out or just losing support because they’re seen as less and less viable.
Of course, if Rubio underperforms his polls (especially if he doesn’t even come in second), Trump may be able to maintain his narrative even if he also underperforms.
It’ll be interesting to see if Trump recognizes that he needs to take down Rubio leading into NH, not Cruz, and act accordingly. To a certain degree, the other establishment candidates are going to do that work for him, but they may not have the cachet to pull him down far enough for Trump’s comfort, especially considering Iowa.
Trump is smart enough to draw this conclusion and plan for it, but I’m wondering if he may be too enamored of his Cruz feud to even temporarily let it go, and Rubio has perhaps smartly refrained from engaging directly with Trump.
On the other hand, I’m starting to think that Rubio and the media may have oversold his third-place “victory” in Iowa, and his rise in the polls may be a tad inflated. So maybe he’ll underperform anyway.
They sure as hell have oversold his alleged “moderation”.
http://www.kcci.com/politics/christie-tries-attacking-rubio-from-the-left/37819170
You’re a lying sack of crap. You’re a lying sack of crap. You’re a lying, scheming, stinking, nasty, sack of liquid crap.
There’s no doubt that Rubio is the most conservative of the “establishment” candidates. If Trump is helping Cruz by making Cruz look like a sane, electable candidate by comparison, Cruz is doing a similar favor for Rubio, making Rubio look moderate by comparison with Cruz. In a universe where neither Cruz nor Trump were doing as well as they are, Rubio would look like the extreme candidate. As it is, he’s kinda managed to sneak into the establishment lane by allowing other people to move the goalposts for him.
At the same time, the Republican party has been growing more conservative overall for the past couple of decades, so it’s also part of a larger trend.
Excellent! I’ll up the ante with Trumpbridge.
I’ve turned away from the media firehose for a few days.
Has Trump slowed down campaigning? Has the mainstream media (or Fox) started talking about anything else?
Is anyone perceiving Trump is flagging in either effort or spending?
Or have we just decided to apply a new narrative to the same old facts as we had 2 weeks ago?
That’s a genuine question, not a rhetorical trap.
There’s apparently a snowstorm in New Hampshire. Trump decided to skip campaigning for the day. Jeb! laughed at him since his 90-year-old mother, Barbara, was out campaigning while using her walker.
I was responding to SA’s assertion that Cruz’ “features” make him “brown people.”
Is it true Trump got booed during the debate? Is it all starting to fall apart?
He got booed because he claimed the entire space was full of Republican Party flunkies.
No, he got booed and then claimed the entire space was full of Republican Party flunkies, including pointing out that the audience didn’t love him because every person in the audience there got in on a ticket provided by the RNC, which owned all the other guys but not him. It was amusing later on hearing them applaud him from time to time, as if they were at pains to belie their bias.
Because he’s almost certainly the most intelligent person in the Republican race now in any way that matters-maybe some candidates speak more languages then him or can write a better paper on the Freudian symbolism in 18th Century Chinese literature-but TRUMP has an almost perfect understanding of the mood of the Republican electorate right now. Certainly he does so much more then the neoliberal morons who make up the intelligentsia of the GOP and think that gutting Medicare and Social Security while importing millions of quasi-slaves to drive down wages domestically are in anyway “popular”.
Qin, WHY do you keep Trump’s name in all caps?
Forgive me if this has been answered elsewhere. SA, as a Trump supporter, do you support his plan to kill the families of terrorists? Or is that just like a minor drawback balanced by his wall-building plans?
That’s where Trump is clever, he knows that is effectively US policy already. Who cares if you kill a dozen other people in a drone attack, they’re all implicitly terrorists by association.
Trump is drawing support from some former Obama backers in New Hampshire, which surprises me. Can’t imagine there are that many who’d shift that far in four or eight years: http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/08/politics/obama-trump-new-hampshire/index.html
You mean they shifted from Hope and Change aaaall the way over to Fear and Change?
I’ve also heard that Bernie and Trump are actually fighting for the same pool of Independents in New Hampshire. Weird times we’re in.
I don’t think it’s weird at all. So many people want change, not bullshit change but real change. hey just want different stuff to change.