NATIONAL—REPUBLICAN PRIMARY—PPP: Trump 29, Carson 15, Bush 9, Fiorina 8, Rubio 7, Kasich 6, Cruz 6, Walker 5, Huckabee 5, Christie 2, Santorum 2, Paul 1, Perry 1, Gilmore 1, Graham 0, Jindal 0, Pataki 0.
Walker has collapsed. Perry, Paul and Christie’s campaigns are smoldering ruins.
NATIONAL—REPUBLICAN PRIMARY—Morning Consult:Trump 37, Bush 9, Carson 9, Rubio 6, Huckabee 6, Walker 5, Paul 4, Fiorina 3, Kasich 2, Santorum 2, Jindal 1, Perry 1, Graham 0, Pataki 0
To all the conservative idiots who were claiming yesterday that President Obama had overstepped his authority and an “act of Congress” in making the change of the name of Mt. McKinley back to its original name Mt. Denali, Dana Milbank has some facts for you:
Actually, Obama is perfectly within his authority to make the change. If his opponents are really outraged, they can overrule him in Congress or they can elect a president who will change the name back. The problem with both of these is that Alaska, run by Republicans, want the name to be Denali and have been trying to make the change for decades. The Alaska delegations — Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Rep. Don Young, Republicans all — heralded the move (even as Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who represents McKinley’s hometown, joined the opposition).
There’s also the small matter of conservatives claiming to support local control, and devolution of power; in this case, they’re demanding the federal government to continue to overrule a state’s wishes. A more ideologically consistent solution would be for the Ohioans to rename something of their own – say, Cincinnati or Columbus — after McKinley. McKinley hadn’t even visited his eponymous peak, named for him by a prospector before McKinley was elected the 25th president.
More likely, the mountain will be added to other molehills of Obama overreach: Obamacare, the stimulus, Dodd Frank, the IRS, immigration, executive appointments and on and on. The common objection to all of these is less about what was done than who did it.
Here is more information here, on the legacy of President McKinley and how he really doesn’t deserve a mountain being named after him, and here, on the history of the name change from Denali to McKinley and how Obama can change it back.
Just because Obama dopes something does not mean it has to be opposed or that it has to be illegal.
“You know… he was so gracious — compared to these asses running.” — Former Vice President Walter Mondale, quoted by BuzzFeed, comparing former President Jimmy Carter to the 2016 field.
Eugene Robinson thinks the GOP has dug themselves a big hole on immigration:
“The catalyst for the current eruption of anti-foreigner bombast is, of course, Republican front-runner Donald Trump. His rhetoric blaming undocumented Mexicans for a crime wave and insisting — without a shred of evidence — that the Mexican government is deliberately sending miscreants across the border has struck a nerve. What Trump says about immigration is nonsense and his proposed remedies are infeasible. Yet GOP voters are eating it up.”
“Among Trump’s rivals, only Bush is forcefully pushing back… But as long as other candidates are competing to sound tougher-than-thou, as long as the conversation is about how high to build new walls and blame is ascribed to immigrants for not assimilating quickly enough, the GOP is digging itself a hole that will be hard to escape.”
“For years, Republicans have run for office on promises of cutting taxes and bolstering business to stimulate economic growth, pledging allegiance to a Reaganesque model of conservatism that has largely become the party’s orthodoxy,” the New York Times reports.
“But this election cycle, the Republican presidential candidate who currently leads in most polls is taking a different approach, and it is jangling the nerves of some of the party’s most traditional supporters.”
“There is no war on women – there may be a war on what’s inside of women, but there is no war on women in this country.” — Ben Carson, quoted by The Hill. Well then. 2016, the year Republicans finally got honest. “Yes, we are bigots. Yes, we are racists. And yes, we want to control a woman’s choices.”
Trump’s Willie Horton Ad.
Jeb’s Response.
Thus commences the all out thermonuclear ad war.
The Wall Street Journal on whether Trump can actually win the nomination: “First, look at the share of voters who have said they won’t consider voting for Mr. Trump. That number had been high, suggesting that Mr. Trump had little room to grow his support. But now, more GOP voters see him as an option… The number saying they could not see themselves supporting Mr. Trump dropped from 51% in May to 33% in August.”
“The second consideration: Where might additional voters for Mr. Trump come from?… Mr. Trump’s three highest candidate correlations were with Mr. Carson, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Voters backing those candidates also seem to be aligned with Mr. Trump. The good news for Mr. Trump: Messrs. Carson and Cruz are doing well in the polls, suggesting that Mr. Trump could draw from a large pool of voters if those other candidates abandoned the race.”
So the answer is yes. God help us.
Jonathan Chait disagrees, saying that Trump support does have a ceiling.
So the prospect of a Trump nomination justifiably terrifies Republicans. But unlike the prospect of nominating a Scott Walker — or a more extreme version, like Ted Cruz — the risk does not carry any proportionate reward. Bush, Walker, and Rubio all agree on the same basic domestic goals. If elected, they will try to enact the party’s agenda on taxes, regulation, and social spending.
Trump dissents from the field not just in his political strategy but in his overall orientation. While he shares the Republicans’ disdain for President Obama, he has not committed himself to a Republican program. Jeb Bush has frantically tried to question his commitment to the party by pointing out Trump’s prior support for single-payer health care and a large tax on the wealthy. These positions horrify the Republican Establishment. (A recent Wall Street Journal editorial cites Trump’s ability to defy the opinions of the donor class as a major reason to oppose him.) But few Republican voters find them actually disqualifying. The danger he poses is the prospect of harnessing the social passions of the conservative base and channeling them into (from the party’s point of view) the wrong agenda.
Trump poses a dire threat to the party: If elected, he could not be trusted to work for the Republican agenda. The party elite will oppose Trump with everything it has.
Trump has responded to attacks from fellow Republicans the way he has always conducted his feuds with journalists, celebrities, reality-show victims, or business rivals. The crude put-down (with misogynist overtones if his target is female) is Trump’s signature métier. And so he has insulted influential party actors like George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Megyn Kelly, Karl Rove, Michelle Malkin, Dick Cheney, the last three Republican presidential nominees, and so on. He negotiated a peace with Fox News, the party’s quasi-official propaganda organ, and then blew it up for no reason.
In the short run, this can work. Trump is a polarizer. His grotesque, bombastic arrogance has worked very well as a business strategy. Everybody has an opinion about Trump, positive or negative. From a commercial standpoint, it doesn’t matter much which is which. Trump-haters will tune in to his show just as Trump-lovers will. Even if three-quarters of the public wants nothing to do with him, the quarter that admires Trump forms a massive customer base. That is how he has built a lucrative brand for golf courses, hotels, restaurants, beauty pageants, and so on.
But politics does not work like business. You can get rich being loved by a quarter of the country and hated by the rest, but you can’t get elected president that way. Trump has a brilliant strategy for winning the loyalty of a quarter of the primary electorate, or perhaps a third. He has no strategy for winning a majority, which is what you need to get the nomination. Indeed, the things Trump has done to elevate his profile have pushed that majority further from his reach. If the campaign gets to the point where there is one candidate left standing against Trump, that candidate will enjoy the unified support of the party’s financial, media, and organizational strength. Trump has the power to destroy, but not to conquer.