Not much on Clinton-Sanders today. But we have a lot on the very interesting soap opera about what used to be called the Grand Old Party. Nothing grand about it now. Watch the battle for supremacy between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
NY Times:
Bob Dole, the former Kansas senator and 1996 Republican presidential nominee, has never been fond of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. But in an interview Wednesday, Mr. Dole said that the party would suffer “cataclysmic” and “wholesale losses” if Mr. Cruz was the nominee, and that Donald J. Trump would fare better.
“I question his allegiance to the party,” Mr. Dole said of Mr. Cruz. “I don’t know how often you’ve heard him say the word ‘Republican’ — not very often.” Instead, Mr. Cruz uses the word “conservative,” Mr. Dole said, before offering up a different word for Mr. Cruz: “extremist.”
“I don’t know how he’s going to deal with Congress,” he said. “Nobody likes him.”
Ed Kilgore:
The party may actually be deciding that Trump is a man it can do business with…
Republicans really, really loathe Cruz. And not entirely without reason...
Cruz would not be the Establishment’s first or second choice to run atop its ticket, but he’s far from the disaster Trump would pose. He’s substantively a garden-variety right-winger. Cruz is the candidate who can harness cultural alienation, populist distrust of elites, and anti-immigration sentiment into safe channels — safe meaning something that could result in something less than the meltdown that would be a Trump nomination. If Republicans despise Cruz so much that they allow Trump to prevail, they are making a historic mistake and choosing the devil they don’t know over the one they do.
Jon Ward:
[Neutral conservative Steve] Scheffler noted first that most Iowans are not swayed by endorsements of any kind. They get to see the candidates themselves, usually more than once, and they make up their own minds.
But as endorsements go, Scheffler said, Palin’s – while moderately helpful to Trump – was not even the most significant of the last few weeks.
He said that it was the support for Trump from 91-year-old conservative organizer Phyllis Schlafly that is “the one that has kind of turned some heads.”
For older conservative caucus-goers, it was Schlafly’s glowing praise for Trump that signaled to those who have followed her over the last few decades that “maybe it’s safe for them to go ahead and support Trump.”
“It gives them a comfort level,” Scheffler said….
One residual consequence of Palin’s endorsement could come, wrote conservative talk radio host Erick Erickson, if Trump wins Iowa and Cruz is forced to drop out of the primary.
“Palin is not an endorsement to get new people to vote for Trump. She is an endorsement to get Ted Cruz’s voters to go to Trump after Iowa. Cruz, most strategists would agree, gives up his path to victory if he does not win Iowa,” Erickson wrote.
Politico:
With less than two weeks until the Iowa caucuses, a newly formed outside group has launched with the mission of taking down Ted Cruz.
The group, which is called Americans United for Values, is releasing a 60-second radio advertisement in Iowa that harshly criticizes Cruz, who is rivaling Donald Trump as the front-runner in the state but suddenly finds himself under pressure.
Greg Sargent:
The GOP problem, in a nutshell, is this: Among American voters overall, more (52 percent) see Trump as a “terrible” president than say that about any other candidate. (Forty four percent say that about Hillary Clinton.)
It’s possible Trump’s “greatness” numbers mainly reflect all the media attention that is lavished on Trump’s proclamations of his own greatness, and it’s hard to know whether these numbers will matter at all to the voting that is about to begin. But one thing that has been worth watching for is Republicans coming around to the idea of Trump as their nominee. If a solid majority of GOP voters and GOP-leaning independents sees Trump as a good or great president, that process may well be underway.
Meanwhile, what about the “GOP establishment”? Steve Benen has a good overview of much of the reporting and commentary along these lines, concluding that, while you might have thought that at this stage, “the GOP donor class and its allies would be scrambling, in hair-on-fire desperation” to block Trump, instead “there’s nothing to suggest anything close to this is actually happening.” Jonathan Chait also summarizes much of the resignation to Trump right here. As Rich Lowry recently tweeted, his conversations with GOP establishment figures indicate to him that the mood is now moving from “fear” and “loathing” to “resignation” and “rationalization.”
Michael Gerson:
We are already seeing the disturbing normalization of policies and arguments that recently seemed unacceptable, even unsayable. Trump proposes the forced expulsion of 11 million people, or a ban on Muslim immigration, and there are a few days of outrage from responsible Republican leaders. But the proposals still lie on the table, eventually seeming regular and acceptable.
But they are not acceptable. They are not normal. They are extreme, and obscene and immoral. The Republican nominee — for the sake of his party and his conscience — must draw these boundaries clearly.
Ted Cruz is particularly ill-equipped to play this role. He is actually more of a demagogue than an ideologue. So he has changed his views on immigration to compete with Trump — and raised the ante by promising that none of the deported 11 million will ever be allowed back in the country. Instead of demonstrating the humane instincts of his Christian faith — a faith that motivated abolition and the struggle for civil rights — Cruz is presenting the crueler version of a pipe dream.
For Republicans, the only good outcome of Trump vs. Cruz is for both to lose. The future of the party as the carrier of a humane, inclusive conservatism now depends on some viable choice beyond them.
Pew:
Nearly a third (31%) say Donald Trump would be either a good or great president; 11% say he would be great. Roughly half (52%) think Trump would make a poor or terrible president, with 38% saying he would be terrible. Just 12% think Trump would be an average president.
Sahil Kapur:
But Cruz doesn’t need to win in New Hampshire. Just placing ahead of Rubio has the potential to inflict a fatal wound on the campaign of the Floridian, who is stuck in third place in RealClearPolitics' national Republican poll average, behind Trump and Cruz. Rubio allies worry that without a strong finish in New Hampshire, the state where moderate GOP voters traditionally make their stand, he may fade early.
Cruz benefits from the fight for New Hampshire's large bloc of establishment-friendly voters between Rubio, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and John Kasich. Recent polls show that each of them, along with Cruz, has a shot at second place. For Christie, Bush, and Kasich, the challenges amplify greatly afterward, given their limited appeal to more conservative voters in states such as South Carolina and Nevada, along with Southern states that vote on March 1. Ousting Rubio in New Hampshire would mean dispatching a serious threat before the main event.
Nate Cohn:
There is no way to know whether a new poll from the American Research Group is correct in suggesting that such a story is unfolding in New Hampshire. It shows John Kasich surging into a strong second place in the Republican race with 20 percent of the vote.
If true, it would be a big turn in the race.
I can’t say whether Mr. Kasich has really surged in New Hampshire; it is always better to look at all the evidence, and there just aren’t many recent polls in New Hampshire.
For good measure, the poll is not a reputable one. The American Research Group has an unusually lengthy record of high-profile misfires, including for almost all of the 2008 Democratic primaries and in the 2012 general election.