Wednesday Open Thread [12.16.2015]

IOWA—Quinnipiac: Clinton 51, Sanders 40, O’Malley 6
IOWA—Loras College: Clinton 59, Sanders 27, O’Malley 4
IOWA—PPP: Clinton 52, Sanders 34, O’Malley 7

IOWA—Loras College: Cruz 30, Trump 23, Carson 11, Rubio 11, Bush 6, Fiorona 3, Paul 2, Huckabee 2, Kasich 1, Santorum 1
IOWA—PPP: Trump 28, Cruz 25, Rubio 14, Carson 10, Bush 7, Fiorina 3, Christie 3, Huckabee 3, Kasich 2, Paul 2, Santorum 1

I didn’t watch. Not a second of it. There more important things on TV last night, like a rerun of Star Trek: The Next Generation that I have seen at least 10 times, and then the second episode of three part miniseries, Childhood’s End. But from the reviews, it seems like I made the right choice, since all we learned from the GOP candidates is that they have nothing to offer America, and no plan to defeat ISIS other than talking about what we are already doing in more bellicose and eliminationalist terms.

From Taegen Goddard:

The debate solidified [Trump, Cruz and Rubio] as the three most likely to win the GOP nomination. Cruz and Rubio are easily the best debaters and their exchanges were genuinely interesting. It’s fascinating to watch them as they try to appeal to different bases within their party. But both men argue like U.S. Senators and that’s not very attractive to GOP voters in an anti-establishment year. Chris Christie did a good job pointing this out.

Trump was Trump once again. Jeb Bush and Rand Paul both went after him hard but neither won a single exchange. It’s highly unlikely that Trump will ever win a majority of GOP voters, but he did a masterful job being the only candidate to speak to his base. With the exception of an angry outburst at Bush, it might have been Trump’s best debate yet.

Once again, Trump was the winner. Cruz took some hits on how he would combat the Islamic State, but he was very strong. Rubio fell short in defending himself on immigration in exchanges with Cruz. Trump has shown he can afford to be less precise on his own positions and that didn’t hurt him tonight.

NY Times:

Donald J. Trump came under sustained attack from Jeb Bush and other Republican presidential candidates on Tuesday night as they united againsthis plan to bar Muslims from entering the United States while tussling over who would be toughest in protecting Americans from terrorist threats.

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida also faced his toughest moments of the race during the latest Republican debate as a top rival, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, repeatedly questioned his conservative credentials and his judgment on national security and immigration. Though Mr. Rubio at times seemed to gain the upper hand, he looked and sounded rattled as Mr. Cruz portrayed him as lining up with liberals like Senator Chuck Schumer of New York in favoring “amnesty” for immigrants who are in the country illegally.

Nate Silver: “The Republican debate in Las Vegas on Tuesday night had the feeling of a soccer match that ended in a nil-nil draw. It was a tactical and defensively minded affair, full of technically competent but predictable performances. The only candidates who broke form were those who didn’t have much to lose.”

Ed Kilgore:

In the end, Donald Trump showed why he has not only survived but thrived in this strange nomination process. A lot of the advance hype on this debate assumed it would revolve around statements of outrage with his no-Muslim-entry “proposal.” Jeb Bush gave it the old heave-ho, but as usual, managed to seem both over-calculated and lacking self-confidence. After that, Ted Cruz gave a dry and lawyerly statement of disagreement with Trump, and the issue faded. Trump was largely self-disciplined, except for a jejune shot at Bush for the sad state of his campaign, and most regular people out there probably don’t care that he clearly hasn’t the foggiest notion of the nuclear triad. And then he may have stolen the show by suddenly announcing he was comfortable as a Republican, and had no interest in running as an independent even if he loses the nomination (Trump actually clarified this into a flat pledge in post-debate interviews).

As for the other candidates, perhaps I’m being churlish, but it sure seems like time for some more winnowing of the field. I don’t know what’s more annoying about Carly Fiorina: her endless whining about lack of attention, her inability to utter a sentence without mentioning Hillary Clinton, or her Tiny Town projection of her experience as the failed CEO of HP with the responsibilities of a president. John Kasich seems to have a different rap in every debate, poorly and loudly delivered. Rand Paul seems like he’s trying to regain the confidence of his old man’s supporters, having failed as a viable presidential candidate. And Ben Carson actually did reasonably well tonight, but it would be better if he didn’t treat his campaign as an interruption of his book tour. If Chris Christie didn’t stand out in this debate, I don’t know when he ever will.

For those who believe Trump is doomed to fade and the nomination is going to be a Cruz-Rubio grudge match, this was a pretty important premonition of where the contest is headed. But Trump’s right: For all the talk about the Cruz Surge in Iowa, the Donald’s doing very well nationally, and at some point, when people start voting, excuses to dismiss his act as entertainment will fall flat.

Jeet Heer:

The Republicans might consider themselves as the party of freedom, but their true identity, as Tuesday night’s debate made clear, is the party of fear. All the candidates on stage, with the partial exception of Senator Rand Paul, painted a frightening picture of America as a country that, as frontrunner Donald Trump warned, is on the verge of disintegrating. […]

Reviving 9/11 level fears is now a campaign strategy. Consider the midterm elections of 2014, when alarmist accounts of Ebola patients, “anchor babies,” and ISIS assassins all flooding the United States became a staple of Republican discourse. This fear-mongering paid handsome dividends at the ballot, with the Republicans winning the Senate and strengthening their hold on the House and in state legislatures. Scaring the voters works. There’s no reason for the Republicans to stop.

Suzy Khimm:

It took five tries—and poll numbers plunging to the low single digits—but Jeb Bush finally had what could be described as a good debate on Tuesday night. Out of the gate in Las Vegas, he came out with clear, aggressive attacks against Donald Trump on foreign policy, and for the first time, he actually landed many of his punches. But while he called out Trump on some of his most extreme positions in the fight against ISIS, Bush failed to articulate any alternative strategy beyond being a more “serious” commander-in-chief.

Bush’s failure was emblematic of a much larger problem for the Republican Party: While Trump was the target all night, establishment Republicans offered nothing substantively different from the core values animating Trump’s candidacy: Their calls for greater “strength” and “leadership,” and for a bulked-up military, would effectively go no further than what Hillary Clinton herself has proposed.

A not so stellar moment from last night for Chris Christie:

Christie also said he wants to coordinate with Middle Eastern leaders for a ground fight against ISIS. His plan: “When I stand across from King Hussein of Jordan, I say to him, ‘You have a friend again, sir, who will stand with you to fight this fight,’ he’ll change his mind.” King Hussein is, unfortunately, dead, so this might not work as well as Christie hoped.

King Hussein died in the 1990’s. Boy, the Republicans really do not know anything about foreign affairs, do they?

Dylan Matthews reveals the real winner of the GOP Debate last night: Hillary Clinton.

If you asked Hillary Clinton to rank her preferred general election opponents in order, odds are that Cruz and Trump would top the list. Trump is a candidate almost tailor-made to energize Latino turnout and turn the demographic even more strongly pro-Democratic. And Cruz has most of Trump’s substantive liabilities plus has proposed a massive 16 percent sales tax on everything. Both of them are extremely potent boogeymen to get base Democrats enraged/energized. And none of them have the ability to make inroads with young and Latino voters that Marco Rubio has.

And so when Trump and Cruz win a debate, Clinton implicitly wins the debate as well. She’s getting exactly the Republican primary she wants, and it shows no signs of getting worse for her anytime soon.

Jonathan Chait on the importance of the Paris Climate Deal:

It is hard to find any important accomplishment in history that completely solved a problem. The Emancipation Proclamation only temporarily and partially ended slavery; the 13th Amendment was required to abolish it permanently, and even that left many former slaves in a state of terrorized peonage closely resembling their former bondage. The Lend-Lease Act alone did not ensure Great Britain would survive against Nazi Germany; the Normandy invasion did not ensure the liberation of Europe. Victories are hardly ever immediate or complete. The fight continues and history marches on. The climate agreement in Paris should take its place as one of the great triumphs in history.

Joshua Green digs deeper into the new Iowa Poll and finds that Ted Cruz “is poised to draw away even more of Trump’s supporters—and that Trump may have difficulty luring those who currently favor Cruz.”

“Cruz’s strategy of embracing, rather than attacking, Trump—even after Trump makes controversial or offensive statements—appears to have served him well, at least so far. In the new poll, respondents who say they support Trump have an extremely positive view of Cruz: 73% view him favorably, while 18 percent view him unfavorably. Asked to state their second-choice preference, these Trump supporters overwhelming pick Cruz (49%), with Rubio (16%) a distant second. If Trump falters or alienates his current supporters, they appear quite open to supporting Cruz.”

Ed Kilgore:

Cruz’s new dominance in Iowa will lead some Establishment and academic critics of poll-gazing (or use of any evidence other than elected-official/party-leader endorsements) to point out that the last two right-wing caucus winners, Mike Huckabee (’08) and Rick Santorum (’12), did not come close to the nomination. But Huckabee’s big problem was his constitutional inability (which he seems to have retained) to raise money; even then, had Fred Thompson not made a last-gasp effort in South Carolina and tipped that state from Huck to John McCain, things could have become a lot more interesting. For all his foibles, Rick Santorum did come a few thousand votes in Michigan from creating a crisis of confidence in Team Romney. Cruz is very good at raising money, and has multiple flush super-pacs. And whereas Huckabee and Santorum put everything into Iowa and had zero infrastructure in New Hampshire, Cruz seems to be doing pretty well in the Granite State as well.

Cruz’s big problem right now is that he might be peaking too early in Iowa. But who’s going to beat him there? Trump could, of course, though Cruz’s strategy of shadowing Trump’s issue positions closely gives him the benefit of being the most likely alternative for Trump fans alarmed by this or that Trump statement or concluding he cannot win. […] Establishment types are praying that Marco Rubio’s the one who pulls off the late surge in Iowa and suddenly makes himself the front-runner in a host of states where he’s now a bit of an afterthought despite strong favorability ratings. Rubio’s problem in Iowa (and also in New Hampshire) is that his campaign’s open disdain for the tradition of heavy personal campaigning and a robust field operation is beginning to become a campaign issue in itself.

Jay Bookman at The Atlanta Journal Constitution explains that the GOP seems pretty set — and isolated — in its ways. As he points out, even ExxonMobil has stated climate change is real and needs to be addressed:

But hey, maybe all that data are mere coincidence and the Republicans are right. Maybe the governments of more than 190 countries are wrong, and the Republicans are right. Maybe the overwhelming majority of climate scientists are wrong, and the Republicans are right. Maybe the folks at ExxonMobil and BP and other major oil companies are wrong, and the Republicans are right. Maybe earlier generations of Republicans that proposed to address the threat of manmade climate change were wrong, and the modern GOP with its cult-like insistence on ideological conformity is right.

Maybe. But I don’t want to bet the planet I leave to my children and grandchildren on that unlikely event.

Brian Beutler has a fascinating take on positioning in the GOP primary.

Rubio—once the goldilocks candidate of both the right and the establishment—is quickly becoming another Bush. (That Rubio’s agenda so neatly reprises the George W. Bush agenda reinforces this perception.) Cruz—one of the least uniting figures in Republican officialdom—is meanwhile emerging as the candidate who can best straddle the poles of GOP politics.