Amy Walters:
Then there's the question of whether his GOP supporters - the folks who turned out by the thousands to hear Trump's over-the-top rants - stick around when/if he starts acting like and talking like a more traditional candidate? These are red meat eaters. It's hard to believe they will be satisfied with a diet of fish and chicken.
More important, if we learned anything from Rick Perry's ill-fated campaign it's that first impressions are all but impossible to shake. Like it or not, Trump is now defined by the caricature of himself he created. Unlike reality TV, where some good editing and a new storyline can redefine a character or a plot line, Trump cannot just walk away from his past. Latino voters aren't going to "forget" his attacks on immigrants (nor will the Spanish language media let them forget) because he's now putting out white papers on Chinese currency manipulation. Sure, he can study up on foreign policy, but Democrats will be happy to remind voters of insulting comments he's made about women.
Ben Carson, meanwhile, has to prove he's worthy of the serious attention and high favorable ratings he's getting. The former pediatric neurosurgeon is everything that Trump is not: soft-spoken, affable and positive. In other ways, he's a lot like Trump. Like Trump, he's built a very successful life outside of politics. And, like Trump, Carson has a thin grasp on policy and even fewer specific answers to the big issues of the day. Like Trump, the campaign say its committed to being more than just a "summer fling." Carson campaign strategist Ed Brookover told me that they have built an "infrastructure second to none." They expect to be on the ballot in every primary contest and have "started to reserve media time past the first four states into March 1, March 5 and March 8 states." He also tells me that the Dr. has "written op-eds on reforming the V.A. and racial relations" and will "have more policy pronouncements coming."
However, at this point, he doesn't look all that committed to bulking up his policy muscles. An interview this week with NPR's Kai Rysdall was emblematic of his lack of a serious understanding of the very serious issues. He seemed unaware of what it meant to raise the "debt ceiling".
NY Times:
In unmistakable ways over the last two weeks, whether he has intended to or not, Donald J. Trump has started to articulate a way out of the presidential race: a verbal parachute that makes clear he has contemplated the factors that would cause him to end his bid.
It is a prospect that many in the political establishment have privately predicted as the actual voting grows closer.
Like an iceberg, it will take a while for him to melt. But he'll potentially do damage along the way.
More policy and politics below the fold.
Brendan Nyhan:
With House Republicans in disarray after John Boehner’s likely successor withdrew from the Speaker’s race Thursday, speculation has grown about potential damage to the party’s chances in the 2016 election. Will voters punish the G.O.P. for the actions of a conservative faction that blocked Kevin McCarthy’s ascension and has been willing to repeatedly risk government shutdowns in confrontations with President Obama?
Recent history suggests that the political costs of turmoil and confrontation for the G.O.P. are likely to be minimal.
Paul Waldman:
Many Republicans are looking at what’s happening in the House of Representatives right now with something between consternation and horror. The party is tearing itself apart, unable to pick a leader for one of its key institutional bases of power and riven by disagreements that seem unbridgeable.
But you want to know who isn’t upset about all this? The ultra-conservative members who are driving it, not to mention the conservative organizations and media figures who are cheering them on. They’re having a blast.
The most important thing to understand about what’s happening now is that this is a permanent rebellion. It has its demands, both substantive and procedural, but those demands aren’t the point, and if they were met, new ones would be forthcoming. For the people behind the chaos, rebellion itself is the point. It’s about the fight, not about the outcome of that fight. They will never stop rebelling.
Rebecca Traister:
Free advice to everyone in presidential politics: If you want young women to vote for you, stop treating them like dumbbells.
It is, in fact, embarrassing how often this very basic piece of wisdom has to be doled out. Today’s example comes from Virginia, where, on Wednesday, 18-year-old University of Richmond sophomore Kayla Solsbak raised her hand high in the air from her back-row seat in an auditorium to ask a question of Republican contender John Kasich.
When the Ohio governor met her eye, he laughed and told her, “I’m sorry, I don’t have any Taylor Swift tickets.” The obvious implication of Kasich’s joke: that hysteria for the “Shake It Off” singer is the only thing that would motivate a female student at a campus political gathering to raise her hand with conviction during a town hall forum with a presidential candidate. John Kasich has a rich sense of humor.
But Solsbak didn’t find it funny, and she wrote a really good column about it for the Collegian, in which she reported that Kasich took questions from admiring older fans in the audience while dismissing a question about Planned Parenthood posed by another young woman, making it obvious that, in Solsbak’s works, the candidate believed he could “gain points by belittling me and my peers.”
Ariel Edwards-Levy:
Forty percent of Americans know someone who was fatally shot or who committed suicide using a gun, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll shows.
In 2013, 11,208 people were the victims of gun homicides, according to the CDC, while another 21,175 used a gun to kill themselves. Those numbers, however, may understate exactly how entrenched gun violence has become in American society -- and how widely its effects are felt.
Twenty-two percent of American adults say they personally know someone who was killed by another person with a gun, with 6 percent saying the victim was someone in their family.
Guardian:
Hillary Clinton met with prominent leaders of the new civil rights movement on Friday, including founders of the influential Campaign Zero, telling them she wanted to end the use of private prisons and hinting at the shape her long-awaited policy platform on criminal justice may take.
Members of the delegation told the Guardian that discussions at the Washington DC meeting were productive and wide-ranging, touching on issues from mass incarceration to the policing of protests.
Every D candidate will have to take their turn with BLM representatives and address the issues. Every candidate will have to earn their votes. Hillary gets no free ride.
Bernie fans won't like this piece but consider giving it a read. It's from a former Burlington Free Press editor. It is, of course, just one man's opinion:
Here's my problem with Bernie Sanders. With few exceptions, I agree with his positions on issues. But I don't like him or his political temperament. He'd be an awful president.
I followed him carefully when I was editor of the Burlington Free Press in Vermont. Sanders was the state's sole congressman, lived in Burlington, and would periodically visit with the newspaper's editors and publisher.
Considering that the Free Press' editorial positions were very liberal, reflecting the nature of a very liberal Vermont community, one might think that meetings with Sanders were cordial, even celebratory.
They weren't.
Michael Tomasky:
Here’s the quick catch-up, if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Back in August Maureen Dowd of the Times wrote this column about how Biden might run for president because it was Beau Biden’s dying wish that his father challenge Hillary Clinton. Dowd, appearing to paraphrase her source, wrote that Beau argued to his father that “the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.” She revealed nothing at the time about her sourcing. Everyone assumed it came from somewhere inside Biden world, but quite possibly without his knowledge, from someone who wanted to see him run.
But from Biden himself? To America’s most prominent Hillary-hating columnist? It has not seemed, to a number of observers of the situation, like a very “authentic” thing to do, for this man who gets so many points from the media for his authenticity.
I raise the episode not to assess Biden on the authenticity scale, but to argue that authenticity is overrated in the first place. I hate authenticity. Authenticity sucks. It’s a substitute for critical thought and actual argument, and the political media harp far too much on it.
Here is my theory about why they do. Political reporters (not columnists) feel the need to be objective, and of course properly so. They’re not supposed to be seen as taking sides. As such, they have to refrain from passing judgments on candidates’ ideological positions. To do that—to decide that Bernie Sanders’s stance on monetary policy is better than Marco Rubio’s—would constitute bias. And that’s the biggest no-no you can commit in the straight-news reporter game.
Yet, reporters are human beings (mostly!), and human beings have a natural need and urge to pass judgments—to make some kind of moral order out of the chaos the swirls around us. And since they can’t do it on the basis of ideology, then have to do it on the basis of something else. And that something else is sincerity. So for the political reporter it doesn’t matter so much what so-and-so believes. What matters is that he believes it, and conveys that he believes it, with sincerity.