I’ve always been a bit annoyed at David French for backing that horrible RINO Mitt Romney in 2012. It made me think that he was very liberal, because Mitt Romney is moderate. But lately, I’ve been reading David French columns, and I’m not so sure that he is moderate.
Look at this one from National Review. You would expect him to back a moderate conservative like Rubio or a moderate liberal like Kasich, if he was moderate, right?
Well, he doesn’t:
[…][B]ecause normal political rules didn’t apply to Trump, other candidates falsely believed they were immune as well. But it turns out that when you don’t attack the front-runner, he tends to remain the front-runner. It turns out that when you start an epic losing streak, it’s virtually impossible to come back. It turns out that when you make crass personal attacks, it diminishes you more than the target. It turns out that math is still math, and building strategies around winning your first big state halfway through the primaries looks not just foolish, but vain.
Can we wake up yet? Can we do math? Can we do politics? Here’s what our actual political experience tells us: Donald Trump is not going to beat himself, he will win a four or even a three-man race, and he is entirely capable of winning the GOP nomination with roughly 35 percent of the vote — indeed, he’s doing it now.
Here’s what the math says: John Kasich and Marco Rubio, you have no hope of becoming the GOP nominee. Even if you win your home states, the only thing that will do is maintain the four-person dynamic under which Trump thrives. Even if you are fortunate enough to work cooperatively to deny Trump an absolute majority of delegates, do either of you — in your right mind — believe that a convention dominated by Trump and Cruz delegates is going to unite behind you? They’d sooner riot (and I’m only partially joking).
We’ve given the multi-candidate “blind ambition tour” exactly 23 states and one territory to work, and here’s the score: Trump 15, Cruz 7, Rubio 2, and Kasich . . . zero. I think that’s a sufficient sample size. Let’s try something else. Let’s try uniting around the person who’s beaten Trump more than anyone else — a person who happens to be a constitutional conservative, who would replace Justice Scalia with a judicial superstar, who is unquestionably pro-life, who is unyielding in his defense of religious liberty, and who actually understands the dynamics of the global economy, trade policy, and national security.
[…]After 24 contests, the pattern is emerging. Cruz battles Trump for first, while Rubio and Kasich tend to battle each other for last. This is true in the South, the West, the Northeast, and the Midwest. Can conservatives finally get serious? Can we finally unify, now, before Trump starts sweeping winner-take-all states with 35 percent of the vote? If not, then a foolish GOP will richly deserve its fate.
This seems to make sense to me. And it’s likely that Rubio and Kasich voters would break for Cruz more than they would for Trump.
With all the discussion about hands in this election, Monmouth decided to test how Rubio and Cruz would do mano a mano against Trump. Although Rubio is struggling to make the delegate threshold in a four-way race, he would virtually tie Trump in a hypothetical two-person contest – 46% for Rubio and 45% for Trump. Cruz, though, does better, beating Trump 48% to 41% head to head. In the Rubio-Trump contest, both Cruz and Kasich voters would split at more than 2-to-1 for Rubio. However, in the Cruz-Trump matchup, Rubio voters would go 3-to-1 for Cruz, while Kasich voters would split at half for Cruz and less than 1-in-5 for Trump with another 1-in-4 saying they would not vote at all.
Seems to me that if Kasich, and especially Rubio, dropped out, then we could get a real conservative to run against Hillary. And Cruz does much better against Hillary than Trump does.
Trump performs poorly against Clinton in the general election
If we were really serious about beating Hillary in November, seems to me that we should be putting pressure on Rubio and Kasich to get out. This isn’t the time for big egos. We need to beat Hillary.
Ted Cruz explains public policy to little girl who wants to be President
The Weekly Standard, which I think favors Rubio slightly over Ted Cruz, posted this:
What Cruz did at the debate was make three parallel cases:
Trump is a fraud who can’t be trusted to keep his word.
Trump is not either conservative or Republican in any meaningful way.
Trump actually is the corruption that he decries.
He advanced these arguments not one at a time, but by interweaving them with specific attacks:
* He positively crushed Trump on the use of foreign labor at Mar-a-Lago. He didn’t just bring up the fact that hundreds of applicants applied for these jobs but that Trump prefers to hire foreigners instead, but included Trump’s line from the last post-debate interview where he claimed that these were jobs American workers couldn’t and wouldn’t do.
* He thoroughly prosecuted Trump on the question of Trump’s off-the-record New York Times interview, which Trump steadfastly refuses to release.
* At the end of the segment on Trump University—where Trump’s best defense was telling voters that they should “wait a few years” to see whether or not he committed fraud, Cruz flashed in with a rapier: “Megyn, let me ask the voters at home, is this the debate you want playing out in the general election?” It was brutal.
* When Trump went to his poll numbers—as he always does—Cruz was ready. Trump touted a terrible CNN poll showing him at 49 percent support. Cruz waited for Trump to double down and defend the integrity of the poll. And then he noted that this same poll also showed Trump losing to Clinton and Cruz beating her.
* When the Second Amendment came up, Trump made a gauzy statement of general support. Cruz then dropped the hammer:
It is easy for political candidates to have rhetoric and say, “I support the Second Amendment.” But you cannot say that and at the same time say what Donald just said, which is that on the question of Supreme Court nominees he wants to compromise and reach a middle ground with Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer. That’s what he said in the last debate. . . . And I would point out, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer are both Democrats that Mr. Trump has written checks to repeatedly. Any justice that those two sign off on is going to be a left-wing judicial activist who will undermine religious liberty, and we are one vote away from the Heller decision being overturned, which would effectively erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights. Amendment rights, but when you say you’d compromise with Harry Reid, you put that in jeopardy.
* Cruz’s most devastating line was probably this summation:
I understand the folks who are supporting Donald right now. You’re angry. You’re angry at Washington, and he uses angry rhetoric. But for 40 years, Donald has been part of the corruption in Washington that you’re angry about. And you’re not going to stop the corruption in Washington by supporting someone who has supported liberal Democrats for four decades, from Jimmy Carter to John Kerry to Hillary Clinton. You’re not going to stop the corruption and the cronyism by supporting someone who has used government power for private gain.
The question is what Cruz’s performance gets him. Maybe nothing. The terrain ahead could simply be too tough. But maybe not.
Watch this:
Someone has been teaching Cruz how to speak more concisely. Ted and Marco didn’t attack each other much last night, just like in the last debate. And it worked!
Red State, which is a grassroots conservative web site whose contributors back all different candidates, said:
WINNERS
Senator Ted Cruz: Tonight’s big winner was clearly and indisputably Ted Cruz. Cruz showed the most substance and had the strongest answers. His line about charging Snowden with treason, like his answers on ethanol before the Iowa caucus, showed he’s able to give tough, definitive answers to questions that are controversial even within the party. His touting of his Supreme Court credentials was not only a great case but a timely one.
And when Megyn Kelly eviscerated Trump over his disastrous Trump University failure, it seemed the smoking corpse couldn’t possibly suffer more abuse. But Ted Cruz stepped in and in a few sentences buried that corpse, salted the earth, and wiped the name and location from this history books. Utterly. Destroyed.
But best of all was that Cruz masterfully avoided being in the line of fire, and above the fray in Trump and Rubio’s heated exchanges. Sometimes that doesn’t play well. Sometimes it makes you the winner. This is one of the latter times.
Senator Marco Rubio: Rubio was also a winner tonight. He has proved beyond the shadow of doubt how weak Donald Trump is before attacks on his tremendous, yuge vanity. He crumples. He falls apart. He talks about his ding dong. The extent to which Marco can easily send Trump into a panic by mentioning his hands or tan is just a shadow of how easily the Democrats will handle him. They won’t have to mention policy. Just his hair. Or his stump fingers. He’ll fall apart.
Marco also crushed Trump’s lack of substance on foreign policy, asking him if he would ever offer any policy details in answer to a foreign policy question. Predictably, Trump responded by taking a petty swipe at Rubio. Yet another point for Marco and against Donald.
LOSERS
Donald Trump: Trump is the obvious, clear loser tonight. It wasn’t even close. He was clownish, he changed his mind over the course of the debate, he had his butt handed to him over and over by both Marco and Ted. He was found to be making false statements, his economic policy was proved not only to be a disaster, but it was shown that he himself couldn’t even articulate it, much less a defense of it. He couldn’t even muster a strong response to the Romney question. On the scale of fail he hit a solid ten: total dumpster fire.
Except for one thing. Donald promised to support the nominee of the party no matter who it is. That was a good line for him, even if he doesn’t mean it, and will play well for him.
And Erick Erickson, another grassroots conservative, says at The Resurgent that Cruz was the clear winner of the debate:
Wow. That was one heck of a debate performance by Ted Cruz. That was just amazing. He ran circles around Trump. Trump looked like he was worn out. He was low energy. He was a loser.
In the last debate, Rubio was assisted by Cruz. In this debate, Cruz was assisted by Rubio. It shows what a unity ticket between the two could do.
It was a remarkable performance that had Cruz and Rubio shaking hands during commercial break.
Tonight was Ted Cruz’s night and it was a nearly flawless debate on his part.
PJ Media listed out 5 of Cruz’s best moments in the debate.
Here’s one of them:
5. Detroit…Has Been Utterly Decimated By Failed Left-Wing Policies Although most of Cruz’s standout moments came in opposition to Trump, one of his finest successes centered around discussing the city of Detroit. “Detroit is a great city, with a magnificent legacy, that has been utterly decimated by 60 years of failed left-wing policies,” Cruz declared. He praised Detroit for “funding the arsenals of democracy” in World War II, and added that “in the 1960s, Detroit was the Silicon Valley of America — it had the highest per capita income in the country.” Then the kicker: “And then for 50 years, left-wing Democrats have pursued destructive tax policies, weak crime policies, and have driven the citizens out.” Cruz then detailed how he would bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. and Detroit specifically. This strong answer bolstered Cruz in the eyes of Luntz’s focus group, scoring a 96 percent.
Trump tried to get Marco and Ted off his chest by citing GOP primary poll numbers, but Cruz had an answer for that, too. Trump cited a poll from CNN showing him in the lead. Cruz responded by pointing out that the CNN poll also shows Trump losing to Hillary Clinton by 8 POINTS. The same poll shows Cruz beating Hillary Clinton head-to-head. I have never met a Trump supporter who was aware of these head-to-head polls that show Trump losing to Clinton. But the liberal media is well aware of them, and that’s why they are so supportive of Trump – they want the weakest candidate to be the Republican nominee.
One of the differences between Trump and Cruz is that Trump talks about himself and makes promises without providing details. He oversimplifies problems, and has more confidence than experience. Cruz talks about specific policies and the results of those policies in different times and places. He actually knows what works and what doesn’t work, and has a record of solving actual problems.
I have some great news. I found out why Cruz unexpectedly lost South Carolina. It turns out that in states that have “open” primaries, that anyone can vote – including Democrats! Cruz is losing some states because Democrats are declining to vote in their own primary, and instead voting in the Republican primary. They are voting for the Republican who is the easiest to beat in head-to-head polls: Donald Trump.
Nearly 20,000 Bay State Democrats have fled the party this winter, with thousands doing so to join the Republican ranks, according to the state’s top elections official.
Secretary of State William Galvin said more than 16,300 Democrats have shed their party affiliation and become independent voters since Jan. 1, while nearly 3,500 more shifted to the MassGOP ahead of tomorrow’s “Super Tuesday” presidential primary.
So that explains why Cruz is not winning everything. Cruz wins primaries that are closed, so that only people who register as Republicans can vote – not registered Democrats.
But some states allow Democrats to vote in Republican primaries without any change in registration.
Following the South Carolina primary, an interesting article by Michael Harrington went around Facebook that speculated that Donald Trump’s victory in the South Carolina primary was attributable to Democrats voting in the Republican (open) primary. One of the good things about Harrington’s article is that he put out a testable hypothesis — that turnout in the Democratic primary a few days later would be less than 390,000. In fact, it was 367,000. Harrington concludes that had South Carolina had a closed primary, Ted Cruz would have won the primary there. I don’t know him and the author seems to be anti-Trump based on other things he has written — but the fact that his prediction was borne out adds some independent verification to his thesis. So that got me to thinking.
[…][S]o far the primary calendar has been heavily tilted toward open primaries. But there have been four closed elections: the Iowa caucus, the Nevada caucus, and Super Tuesday’s Oklahoma primary and Alaska caucus. Ted Cruz won three of those four closed elections.
[…][T]here are four Republican primaries/caucuses: Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Maine. All are closed.
Then, once the winner-takes-all states begin, a large number of those are closed primaries and caucuses as well (including Florida, for what it’s worth).
[…]First, the fact that South Carolina and most of the SEC primaries were open primaries may very well explain why those states did not turn out to be Ted Cruz’s firewall or launch states as he had predicted. Oklahoma did perform as expected, being a fairly comfortable win for Cruz.
This is something that the Republican National Committee really needs to fix, along with requiring photo identification and proof of residency in order to vote. We can’t allow a bunch of Democrats to come in and pick a raving con man as our candidate, in order to make it easier on their candidate in November. No wonder we haven’t been winning elections!
Anyway, there is more good news. Shane Vander Hart has it up on his Caffeinated Thoughts blog.
He writes:
The next few contests on March 5 are ones where Cruz could do well Kansas and Kentucky which are both caucus states that rely upon organization. Cruz could also do well in Louisiana which is a closed primary. On March 8th you have Idaho Primary which is a closed primary that doesn’t favor Trump. Mississippi has an open primary, but I suspect Cruz will be competitive. Michigan on March 8th is an open primary which favors Trump.
So not only are there more upcoming closed primaries, but some of the states are caucus states, where having a good ground game makes a difference. We should be optimistic about Cruz’s chances in the next week.
WINTERY KNIGHT 