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With Tuesday’s important Wisconsin primary rapidly approaching, the world of polling is heating up. A new survey from Public Policy Polling (PPP) has Ted Cruz one point ahead of Donald Trump, leading 38 percent to 37 percent, with John Kasich at 17 percent. (However, PPP is known to tilt left a little, so do with that what you will.)
If Senator Ted Cruz is to defeat Donald Trump for the Republican nomination, he must defeat him in Wisconsin on April 5th: There is no other way to read the primary calendar. For those who have followed this state’s role in American politics over the past few years, this is an end deeply ironic and yet completely fitting.
The latest poll shows a one-point race. Trump will not win any near-majority in Wisconsin (he averages in the low 30s), but he has a base. It is notable that Governor Scott Walker was among the few who took Trump seriously early on. Perhaps that insight came from his own experience with the forces propelling Trump’s rise: Walker understood the vast influence of certain voices in the conservative media, the salience of the immigration issue, the desire for a fight, and the power over the conservative imagination of the Left’s most hated enemy. In Wisconsin, Trump’s core appeal is to voters in the northern part of the state, away from the influence of the Milwaukee media market. These are largely moderates with little party loyalty, a kind of voter Walker held three times but has struggled with in polls this past year.
As Craig Gilbert explains, though, nothing is assured this year and — with Kasich dividing the opposition — Trump’s support fits the traditional profile of the losing candidate in a Wisconsin Republican primary. The outstate is overmatched by the deep-red high-turnout counties around Milwaukee and Waukesha in the southeast; i.e., Scott Walker’s political base, the anchor of one of the most effective conservative movements in the country, which has built a fundamentally different dynamic in Wisconsin politics. As influential talk-show host Charlie Sykes explains,
A set of letters to the editor of the Wall Street Journal got my attention yesterday (Friday). The topic was Ohio’s Governor Kasich and funding for local government. The letters are here and the article to which they were responding was from March 9 and titled, For John Kasich, Fiscal Success Comes at Some Cost : Ohio governor and Republican presidential candidate plugged state’s budget hole, but localities have paid the price.
I’ve said some nasty things about Kasich lately, and almost panicked when Mrs. Reticulator informed me that she was thinking of voting for him instead of Cruz last week. Whew, that was a close one. On second thought, I didn’t ask her how she actually voted.
I don’t think I’ve misjudged Governor Kasich, but now I’m not so sure. I’d like to run this by people who might have more information about the Ohio situation.
What got my attention Friday was the following quote from one of the letters.
Gov. Kasich’s realigning of the tax flows in Ohio caused consternation in both parties but was the exact bitter medicine needed. Previous Ohio administrations, on spending sprees, didn’t prove the capability of government to be a growth engine. If my local township needs additional funding for firefighters, the discussion needs to take place right here where the taxpayers and benefactors reside and attend the township meetings. If my local city government wishes to increase tax on my manufacturing business for local services, I can directly monitor the use of my hard-earned dollars. Returning decision-making power and transparency to the local level where the dollars originate eliminates layers of “influence.”
The guy was speaking my language. I was so pleased that somebody actually understood this principle – somebody from Ohio, even – that it made my day.
What Kasich seems to have done is cut back state funding to local governments by 3-5 percent. I don’t know what portion of local government spending that is, but if local governments are to be strong, the portion of their budgets that comes from the state needs to be somewhere in the vicinity of 0 percent.
Conservatives of past generations understood this instinctively. There used to be a phrase, “You can’t have federal aid without federal control.” But very few people understand it now. For example, ever since Nixon, block grants to states have been tried and have failed repeatedly, which is what ought to be expected by those familiar with the federal aid-control concept. I provided a more complete explanation and some references in a post I wrote last July about Governor Rick Perry and Block Grants.
Conservatives find it easy to pick on local governments on election day (which is sort of the point of having local governments) so it’s easy for local governments to instead accept money from the state and give up their own control of spending priorities, which then weakens the power of the local government to act independently. That is not something that conservatives should want. I’ve sometimes voted to support local school and township taxes even when I’m not too enthusiastic about the proposed programs, if I see that these taxes strengthen the power of our local governments and their ability to act independently of the state and serve as a bulwark against the power of the state. It’s rare that I run into someone who even grasps the concept when it’s explained, though. (It’s also possible that I’m not a good explainer.)
I wish I could say that Governor Kasich understands the concept and is acting to strengthen the role of local governments. He has given some good, feisty answers when challenged on his cutbacks, but I suspect he was mostly cutting local governments adrift to deal with his state level problems. That is not a bad thing – that’s probably the way it has to happen – but it would be good if it was accompanied by state cuts in taxes that would make it possible for townships and municipalities to raise their taxes a little bit to make up some of the losses and restore a balance between the power of state and local governments. It is not clear to me whether that is happening in Ohio. And one reason to be skeptical as to whether Kasich is acting out of some grand principle of subsidiarity is that when it comes to national-state relations, he has done just the opposite. He has accepted an expansion of Medicaid, which makes his state more subservient to the federal government and gives us one of our main reasons to vote against him.
Still, I find it an intriguing development that should be watched closely.
[The photo is of one of several rural township halls in western Ohio that were bicycle destinations last October. In that part of Ohio they’re often called Township Houses rather than Township Halls, though.]
Absent Donald Trump quitting the Republican race, there is no conceivable way John Kasich or Marco Rubio becomes the Republican nominee. At this point, both of their campaign strategies must contain the line “And then, a miracle happens.” (The same line occurs in Obama’s economic plan.) At this point, they are spoiling the race for Ted Cruz, who could actually win.
Pundits have put forth theories as to why these two are continuing in the race. They suggest that by denying an outright majority to Trump, they can create a brokered convention and end up on the ticket, even of they are not the nominee. Alternately, it may be pure ego, or delusion. But I think their continued presence is to position themselves for 2020.
Once again, I have sat through a Republican debate, the 11th according to my internet research (I personally lost count about six debates ago). We started with 17 candidates, so many that we needed two debates to fit them all in. Now, we have come down to the final four: Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Ted Cruz, Governor John Kasich, and Donald Trump. This election has turned into a hard and bitter struggle for the soul of the Republican Party, and I don’t think it can be saved. Many people seem to relish this thought, and that knowledge depresses me. The party that has fought for freedom and liberty since its inception, that won the Civil War and the Cold War, the party of William F. Buckley, is likely to hand its presidential nomination to a man who — when questioned about his own ignorance — openly cites his polls as proof of how right he is. How can anything involving this man be called a debate? I frankly don’t think anything Cruz and Rubio did tonight will really matter. Whether it’s by huge majority or slim plurality, Trump is impervious to reality so long as he’s ahead. He is powered by pure ego. Is this even a serious process?
I would go candidate-by-candidate, but I don’t really see the point when there are so few. The main story of the night is the remarkable job Rubio and Cruz did working together to take Trump down. For the most part, Rubio would set him up and Cruz would spike him down. They hit him on his use of illegal workers, Trump U, and his love of Putin. Trump dubbed them “Lying Ted” and “Little Marco” … I think we all know what will carry the day. This was probably Cruz’s best night in a debate, but does any of it matter? It doesn’t seem to have done much until now. Both Rubio and Cruz managed to give good answers on all their questions, but that is irrelevant.
Snapchat? Isn’t that the app 13-year-olds are using to text each other and college kids are using for sexting pictures? No, not even close.
In 2015, brands on Snapchat discovered the power of stories and the world of Snapchat changed forever. Not buying it? Let me give you some numbers to show you how on fire Snapchat is.
From May 2015 to January 2016, Snapchat’s daily videos grew 350 percent, from 2 billion (with a B) to 7 billion per day. Meanwhile, a total of 8 billion videos were viewed on Facebook. Snapchat is closing quick with an estimated 60 percent of voters under age 34 on the new platform.
For those who are worried that there is no hope of avoiding a Trump victory, I offer the following graph of opinion polls leading up to the South Carolina Republican primary. This is hardly ideal data, but it is the best we have, and it does seem to reflect what happened in the final vote.
The magenta line is Rubio; the dark blue line near the bottom is Kasich; the black line is Cruz; and, most importantly, the blue line at the top is Trump. I’ve put a vertical line on February 11, because it was clearly an inflection point with sudden shifts in many of the candidates’ slopes. And, beautifully, you can see that the Trump blue line near the top starts sloping down.
One of the most bewildering questions coming out of the South Carolina primary is, “Why in the wide world of sports does John Kasich believe he has a chance to win the nomination, and what squirrel-powered contraption inside his brain is telling him to stay in the race?”
Okay, that was two questions, but the second flows immediately from the first. Seriously, is John Kasich just an ego-driven fool with delusions of completely implausible grandeur, or does he have some other ulterior motive driving him to continue gumming up the works of the GOP nomination process?
Those two possibilities aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, and indeed I suspect that Kasich is operating both from a sad overestimation of his personal appeal to voters as well as from a not entirely crazy plan to leverage for himself some continued relevance and influence within the GOP.
… Ohio Governor John Kasich, and by a long shot.
I expect that Kasich will do better here in New Hampshire than he did in Iowa; current polls show him in a three-way tie for second with Sen. Rubio and Sen. Cruz, but I doubt he will finish that well. Nevertheless, he remains a popular governor of a must-win state for the Republican nominee. Furthermore, he understands the voters of the wider region — Kentucky, Michigan, Western Pennsylvania, and Western New York –giving our side a valuable asset in that important area.
Florida is the other must-win purple state for the GOP candidate in the general election. We’ve two candidates from there, but Jeb Bush is unlikely to improve much on his Iowa performance. Moreover, Bush and Mike Murphy’s apparent personal vendetta against Rubio has generated contempt for the Bush campaign among New Hampshire Republicans (yes, big-mouth operators like Murphy are known by our primary electorate). That leaves Rubio, who’s the other strong contender for veep, assuming he’s not actually heading the ticket.
I have not been blogging much recently — in part as a consequences of exhaustion (I have been and still am ushering books into print), and in part because I know only one thing about this presidential race: my expectations have repeatedly been proven wrong.
I did write a post on Jeb, expressing my admiration for his accomplishments as Governor of Florida, and indicating wariness, and I did describe the Democratic Party as The Party of the Living Dead. I think that I was right on both counts.
But I will have to confess to you that I did not anticipate the debut of The Donald and, when he appeared on the scene, I figured that he was flash-in-the-pan: this year’s Herman Cain. I read about Ted Cruz’s plan to turn out evangelical voters as never before, and I thought, “That won’t work.” I took note of Hillary’s age and the fact that she seems frequently out of it, and I told myself, “This is a great opportunity for Martin O’Malley. He is the only Democrat in the race with a pulse.”
When political headwinds bite, entrenched interests wield their power, and intractable problems require more than tough words, who is best equipped to stand strong? During primary season, promises abound. But when boldness goes out of fashion — and when those easily-spoken promises prove hard to fulfill — which candidate has the conviction, courage, and capability to follow through?
At last, Lindsey Graham did the right thing. After months of increasingly irrelevant undercard debates and poll numbers in the naughts, South Carolina’s littlest senator suspended his campaign. He joins far more promising ex-candidates Rick Perry, Scott Walker, and Bobby Jindal who were unable to capitalize on today’s frustrated electorate.
Reviewing the polling this weekend, it’s past time for several others to follow their lead. Trump is still leading most surveys, Cruz has surged into prominence, and then there’s the amorphous lump of everybody else. Said amorphous lump represents a powerful constituency, as it holds a third of GOP primary voters. But divided among several candidates, these voters will lose out unless several of their current choices step aside.
Let’s face facts, George Pataki: You are not going to be the GOP candidate. The same goes for Rand Paul, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum. You cast your lines, but the fish ain’t biting. It’s time for you to “spend more time with your family,” just in time for Christmas.
This is a preview from Wednesday morning’s The Daily Shot newsletter. Subscribe here.
Last night, CNN hosted the fifth Republican primary debate, held at Las Vegas’s lovely Venetian hotel and casino. There were, of course, two debates. But the one that people were interested in was the prime-time debate. Unfortunately for everyone involved (especially anyone who had to write about it after), the undercard debate didn’t finish until 8:12 pm ET and the primetime debate, scheduled for 8:30, didn’t start until later. The first candidate didn’t speak until 8:42. (Not that we were tapping our foot with annoyance or anything.)
Ever since The Donald descended from that Trump Tower escalator, Republicans have insisted that someone has to take him out. We’ve heard this cry from movement conservatives, political consultants, the squishy “GOP establishment,” conservatarian ideologues, and the vast majority of activists who don’t support the curiously coiffed billionaire.
Worry no longer, Republicans, for your savior has arrived. John Kasich’s SuperPAC, New Day for America, has released a 45-second collection of Trump quotes that’s sure to scuttle his quixotic campaign before voters in Dubuque and Dixville Notch get the chance to weigh in. So lie back in your La-Z-Boy, sip on your skinny half-caf grande chestnut praline latte, and enjoy the demise of Donald Trump’s political career:
I was, until recently, positively disposed towards Governor John Kasich. Sure, he made some compromises about Obamacare that cast doubt on his conservative credentials. Sure, he mentions his faith too many times in order to justify some executive decisions. Sure, he got lucky — as Donald Trump says — when he struck oil in Ohio (though he also deserves some credit for getting on the right side of the shale revolution unlike, say, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo). But overall, I liked his experience and track record.
But then, Kasich disappointed me on Tuesday night with what may be one of the worst lines ever spoken in a debate: “Philosophy doesn’t work when you run something.”
Jeb Bush isn’t the only pouting diva in the GOP race. John Kasich threw an interesting hissy-fit the other day:
“We got one person saying we ought to have a 10 percent flat tax that will drive up the deficit in this country by trillions of dollars” and there’s another challenger in the field who “says we ought to take 10 or 11 [million] people and … pick them up and scream at them to get out of our country. That’s crazy. That is just crazy.”
The president of the United States is not going to [defund Planned Parenthood, and all we’re going do is shut the government down … The American people are gonna shake their heads and say, “What’s the story with these Republicans?” … There are ways to do it without having to shut the government down, but I’m sympathetic to the fact that we don’t want this organization to get funding, and the money ought to be reprogrammed for family planning in other organizations that don’t support this tactic. But I would not be for shutting the government down …because I don’t think it’s going to work out.
That’s what John Kasich said during last week’s Republican debate and Karl Rove said something similar this morning in The Wall Street Journal. Honest people can disagree on whether a “shutdown” strategy is a good idea or not, but we need to be truthful and accurate about how this works: Republicans can’t shut down the government; Congress can’t shut down the government; Only the president can shut down the government.
This won’t be another debate recap post. An army of pundits (Please note: Worst. Army. Ever.) has already dissected last night’s proceedings and the emerging consensus seems about right to me: Carly Fiorina dominated, Marco Rubio and Chris Christie both had some pretty good moments, and Donald Trump’s pilot light kept shutting off. Everyone else was basically treading water. In the undercard debate, Bobby Jindal and Lindsey Graham both looked serviceable, but c’mon — it’s not that big of a deal to win the NIT.
So let’s play the story forward: after last night, what dynamics play out over the six weeks until the next GOP debate takes place in Boulder, Colorado? (Seriously, RNC? Boulder? Was George Soros’ penthouse booked that night?) Here are some of the trends I’ll be watching for:
Carly in the Crosshairs
