Year: 2015

Roger Ailes has called it quits, thereby clearing Trump's path to the nomination. I have to say, I'm shocked. I guess I'm one of those old timers who continues to expect common sense and rationality to eventually prevail. When it comes to the GOP nomination this year, that type of thinking is clearly useless.

Jonathan Chait has a perceptive summation the Trump threat to the GOP's 2016 prospects:

"...The significance of his performance lies in his deadly serious threat to run a third-party campaign, siphoning off the immigrant-haters and amorphously angry blue-collar whites the actual nominee will need for himself. The intense barrage of pointed questions displayed how seriously Roger Ailes takes Trump's threat to hijack the GOP for his own end. It failed to reckon with the other threat: that the Republican plan to drive Trump from their party might instead work all too well."

A new NBC News/Survey Monkey poll taken after the first GOP presidential debate finds Donald Trump still leading the field with 23%, followed by Ted Cruz at 13%, Ben Carson at 11%, Carly Fiorina at 8%, Marco Rubio at 8%, Jeb Bush at 7%, and Scott Walker at 7%. Chuck Todd explained on Meet the Press that it was a “scientific” online survey. I am not sure what that means, since online surveys are by their very nature not random, and thus the poll can't really be scientific, so take this poll for what it is worth. But for those of us who are poll starved and curious to see what affect the debate had on the polls, this is our first clue.

Matt Taibbi notes “there are plenty of Tea Party-type voters out there who hate the Republican Party establishment almost as much as they hate the Democrats. There are also plenty of right-wing voters who think George Will and Charles Krauthammer are smug media weasels only slightly less disgusting than the Rachel Maddows and Keith Olbermanns of the world. A know-it-all is a know-it-all.”

“Trump’s followers are a gang of pissed-off nativists who are tired of being laughed at, belittled, dismissed, and told who to vote for. So it seems incredible that the Republican establishment thinks it’s going to get rid of Trump by laughing at, belittling and dismissing him, and telling his voters who they should be picking.” “These hysterical critics are making one of the world’s most irredeemable bullies look persecuted and like a victim, a difficult feat. The desperation to get rid of him may just feed more and more into the right wing base’s crazy victim complex, and in turn get Trump even more support.”

And yet.... Washington Post: “Republican leaders who have watched Donald Trump’s summer surge with alarm now believe that his presidential candidacy has been contained and may begin to collapse because of his repeated attacks on a Fox News Channel star and his refusal to pledge his loyalty to the eventual GOP nominee.” Politico: “Fallout from a crude attack on Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and the departure of a top political adviser roiled Donald Trump’s campaign Saturday, leading Republicans to question whether the laws of political gravity have finally caught up with the real estate mogul.” This is why I am not predicting anything. Last time we predicted Trump was over, when he attacked the honor of all POWs and John McCain, his numbers increased 10%, from 14% to 24%. Remember, nativists and racists are also sexists and misogynists.

New York Times: “Republican Party leaders, whose presidential nominees have not won a majority of female voters since 1988, are setting their sights on making electoral gains among women in the 2016 presidential race and trying to close the gender gap in swing states like Florida and Colorado. But the remarks and tone about women at Thursday’s debate — and the sight of 10 male candidates owning the stage — may have only damaged the party’s standing among female voters in the 2016 general election, according to pollsters and some Republican leaders.” “Democrats were gleeful at the tone of the debate, already imagining future campaign advertisements featuring debate cutaways with Mr. Rubio saying that future Americans will ‘call us barbarians for murdering millions of babies.'” And that's just with policy positions with Rubio and Walker and Huckabee. With Mr. Trump, an open hostile display of the GOP's guttural misogyny is on full display. Donald Trump took his attacks on Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly “to the next level on Friday night, apparently insinuating that the moderator had been menstruating when she questioned him during Thursday’s first Republican debate,” Politico reports.

Said Trump: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her — wherever.” “Unlike undocumented immigrants, John McCain or Rosie O’Donnell, the Fox News anchor enjoys a huge following among the network’s viewers, who happen to make up the core of the Republican primary electorate. So picking a fight with Kelly — as Trump did when he chided her during a tough debate question about insults he’s lobbed at women, dissed her in the spin room, and tweeted his complaints about her — carries risks that Trump’s other feuds do not.”

Now, this would be an opportunity for the GOP to get support from women by defending Kelly and attacking Trump. But they are fearful of the voters who back Trump.