Vox on the popularity of populism and how it differs from what GOP elites want. See below.
NBC:
With his call over the weekend to "end birthright citizenship," Donald Trump reignited a political debate over whether children born in the United States should be denied citizenship if their parents are undocumented immigrants.
Here's where the 2016 GOP contenders stand on the issue:
Keep in mind it's not just Trump. The GOP has been going nativist since Pat Buchanan, aided and abetted by
Mark Levin and others.
Greg Sargent:
Donald Trump’s call for doing away with birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants has once again focused media attention on the idea and led some of his GOP rivals to signal openness to it. The Huffington Post looked at the positions of the 2016 GOP candidates and concluded that “a good chunk of the GOP field” wants to revisit birthright citizenship.
As conservative writer Ben Domenech notes, many other GOP lawmakers have supported the idea in recent years, as do Republican voters, even though birthright citizenship is “one of the things that is relatively unique to the American experiment,” and requires rebelling against the “Constitutional mandate placed within the Fourteenth Amendment in the wake of the Civil War.”
But there’s another historical irony here that was pointed out by renowned American historian Eric Foner: The 14th amendment and birthright citizenship rank among the great and defining accomplishments of the Republican Party, back when it was the Party of Lincoln.
So the argument isn't that Trump pushed the GOP to go nativist. It's that the GOP was already there.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Monkey Cage:
Donald Trump’s surprising and ongoing role as the de facto frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination has raised considerable concern among Republican leaders.
At this point, they may not yet be worried that Trump will actually become their nominee. After all, the history of presidential nominations is full of one-time frontrunners who failed to make it all the way. But the effect Trump has while he remains in the race is problematic for the Republican Party in two ways. In the short term, Trump’s antics drag attention away from other Republican candidates. In the long term, Trump may damage the Republican Party brand regardless of who ends up becoming the nominee.
How does the Republican Party solve a problem like Donald Trump? Does it have any gatekeepers who can put a stop to this ongoing Trumpmentum?
The short answer is no.
Vox with a really interesting read:
The data on this is pretty clear. Put simply: While most elite-funded and elite-supported Republicans want to increase immigration and decrease Social Security, a significant number of voters (across both parties) want precisely the opposite — to increase Social Security and decrease immigration. So when Trump speaks out both against immigration and against fellow Republicans who want to cut Social Security, he's speaking out for a lot people.
By my count of National Election Studies (NES) data, 24 percent of the US population holds this position (increase Social Security, decrease immigration). If we add in the folks who want to maintain (not cut) Social Security and decrease immigration, we are now at 40 percent of the total electorate, which I'll call "populist." No wonder folks are flocking to Trump — and to Bernie Sanders, who holds similar positions, though with more emphasis on the expanding Social Security part and less aggression on immigration.
Read the whole piece. It explains why Trump won't be going away. But that doesn't mean Trump wins. See this from the
CNN poll that has him in the lead.
Trump's problem is that when there's only one or two rivals left standing, 24% all of a sudden doesn't look so hot. And can he grow that any?
NBC:
For all of the troubles that Hillary Clinton has experienced recently, here's the stark reality: The three men widely considered to be the Republican frontrunners -- Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker -- are having an even rougher time. Just look at the latest national CNN poll conducted after that first GOP debate: Trump 24%, Bush 13%, Carson 9%, Rubio 8%, Walker 8%, Paul 6%, Cruz 5%, Fiorina 5%, Kasich 5%, and Huckabee 4%. (Chris Christie, at 3%, falls out of the Top 10 in this poll.) What's more, Bush finds himself once again playing defense on immigration in the wake of Trump's immigration plan; Walker is playing catch up to Trump in Iowa; and Rubio -- despite getting positive reviews in that GOP debate -- is having trouble gaining traction. The good news for all three Republicans is that the GOP race remains wide open. And if/when Trump falters, they will be in a position to pick up the pieces. But they aren't faring well so far in this Summer of Donald Trump.
Nate Cohn:
Donald Trump is dominating the news media and the Internet. He is leading in the polls. But even as journalists scour those surveys for signs of whether his surge will last, an important story with the potential to decide the race is being overlooked.
The Aug. 6 debate marked the beginning of a new and more volatile phase of the contest: a wave of boomlets. The candidates who can surge — and stay at the top — could define the race. It represents a big test for the candidates who led the polls for much of the first half of the year, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker. Already, it’s one Mr. Walker is struggling to pass.
graphic Who’s Winning the G.O.P. Campaign?AUG. 6, 2015
Donald Trump leaving a campaign event in Birch Run, Mich., this week.The Road to 2016: Donald Trump, Moderate RepublicanAUG. 14, 2015
Carly Fiorina has made the largest leap in national polls, and Marco Rubio, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz appear to have made gains as well. But where the story really matters is in Iowa and New Hampshire, and in the so-called invisible primary for elite support. These three contests nearly amount to separate campaigns, with Iowa and New Hampshire something like two brackets in a tournament, and with the invisible primary bestowing the resources and credibility that help candidates reach the finals.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Walker appear to have lost ground in all of them.
Nate sets up the idea that, while
Bush (especially) and Walker will still be in the lead, and trump will eventually fade, the competition helps Trump because, frankly, they suck at this.
So who picks up Trump voters? Carson? Fiorina? Dowd says
no Senator need apply. They hate DC with a white hot passion.
Norm Ornstein:
The new populism has been enhanced by a phenomenon absent two decades ago: a highly tribal media, including cable news and talk radio, and the social networks that amplify them. On the right, these have boosted a backlash against the Republican establishment. When Fox News, the establishment proxy at this month’s Republican television debate, went after Mr Trump and he responded crudely, his supporters only grew more enthusiastic.
It is Mr Trump who has channelled the anger most effectively; his swagger and contempt for politicians, combined with his claim that he cannot be bought, have built a strong link to about a third of those who identify themselves as Republican voters . But it is not just him. The first big survey after the debate, by NBC, showed the lead candidates were Mr Trump and fellow anti-Washington insurgents Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, all of whom together garnered almost 50 per cent of support. Mr Cruz, the senator from Texas, marked himself out before the debate calling Mitch McConnell, his party leader, a liar in the Senate.
There is a second force behind the ascent of Mr Trump and his fellow Republican insurgents. The new campaign funding system, where unlimited sums can be garnered from billionaires and corporations, has profoundly changed the nomination dynamic.
Added: different
Ornstein, similar topic, non-paywall.
Jonathan Chait on Obamacare replacement plans:
The usual pattern in politics is for politicians to turn complex problems into simple ones. But covering the uninsured is a simple problem they want to make complex. The main reason people lacked insurance before Obamacare is that they did not have enough money to afford it. Some of those uninsured people had unusually high health costs. Some of them had unusually low incomes. Boiled down, Obamacare transferred resources from people who are rich and healthy to people who are poor and sick, so the poor and sick people can afford insurance.
It cuts funds, but not benefits, from Medicare. And it transfers resources to sick people through regulations. The individual insurance market is reorganized so that insurers can’t deny essential health services or jack up prices to people with preexisting conditions. This means people with expensive medical needs pay less, and people with cheap medical needs have to pay more. Repealing Obamacare means eliminating all these forms of redistribution from the rich and healthy to the poor and sick. And replacing them with … what?
Walker and Rubio are fairly clear about their plans for regulating the insurance market. They want to go back to the pre-Obamacare, deregulated system. They’d eliminate the requirements that insurance plans cover essential benefits, and let them charge higher prices to sicker customers. That’s good for people who have very limited medical needs (as long as they never obtain a serious medical condition, or have a family with somebody with a serious medical condition). It’s bad for people who have, or ever will have, higher medical needs.