Noah Rothman of Commentary magazine got some attention yesterday when he somehow managed to blame perceived inadequacies in President Obama’s brief national address to the nation for Donald Trump’s decision to call for a complete blanket ban of Muslim immigration.
Also, my latest on Obama's disjointed speech last night, and the Muslim backlash he invited that Trump now stokes. https://t.co/NXhZdnbQog
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) December 8, 2015
I wasn’t much interested in this mini-controversy but it did spur me to take a look at Rothman’s analysis of the Trump phenomenon. I found it more interesting for the kinds of assumptions he makes than for any kind of predictive value.
To begin, Mr. Rothman is very confident that Donald Trump’s star will soon set. Trump’s commanding lead is deceptive and based on “polls of a nonexistent national primary electorate.” He believes that the prognosticators don’t think Trump has staying power and “In the early states, a clearer picture of a more predictable race is coming into view.” This is a supportable thesis, even if it isn’t exactly a swiss watch. Nate Silver, for example, has been arguing much the same thing, and a new Monmouth poll out of Iowa shows Ted Cruz in the lead.
What concerns Rothman, however, is that Trump may have already done irreversible damage to the Republican brand. He assures us that the Democrats will try to cast every opponent as a “Trump Republican” and drive wedges between candidates and the base whenever they can.
He also believes that the nomination will soon become a two-way race between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who are both cast as typical, standard, expected, mainstream Republican candidates.
This is a theme I first noticed with Charlie Cook, who likewise cast Ted Cruz as almost a safe Romneyesque alternative to the more roguish Trump.
I think some people on the right are suffering from severe epistemic closure on this issue. I think Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has a much more realistic picture of what Cruz represents.
Lindsey Graham tossed out his planned speech before the Republican Jewish Coalition on Thursday to rip into the candidate who preceded him on stage, calling Ted Cruz an unelectable hard-liner who would alienate women and Latinos and cause the Republican Party to lose in 2016…
“If the nominee of the Republican Party will not allow for an exception for rape and incest, they will not win,” Graham said. “Ted Cruz doesn’t have an exception for rape or incest.”
The South Carolina senator went on. “He says the debate’s going to be the Little Sisters of the Poor. He’s gonna take the fight to the Democrats about their wanting to impose social policy on charitable organizations,” he said. “It will be about rape. … It will be about the nominee of the Republican Party telling a woman who’s been raped you’ve got to carry the child of the rapist.”
“Good luck with that,” Graham said.“We will lose if that’s the position of the nominee of the Republican Party,” he added. “We will lose young women in droves.”
Back in October, Sen. Graham went after Marco Rubio on exactly the same issue. In response, Rubio’s spokesman, Alex Conant, referred people to the senator’s August appearance on Meet the Press where he declared, “I personally and deeply believe that all human life is worthy of the protection of our laws. I do. And I believe that irrespective of the conditions by which that life was conceived or anything else.”
The two Cuban-American senators’ position on rape exceptions (there should be none) is hardly the only area where one or both of them is out of the mainstream. What distinguishes them from each other, though, is that Cruz is unapologetically at war with the mainstream of the party while Marco Rubio seeks to be their alternative to a flailing Jeb Bush.
I guess what I’m getting at here is that it’s the wrong way of thinking about things to believe that the GOP’s problems will be solved if Trump just gets out of the way. Cruz and Rubio may look sane and temperate by comparison, but Sen. Graham’s point is solid.
Cruz, in particular, will present many of the same problems by, for example, dividing the party elite which neither likes nor trusts him, and by taking toxic positions on many issues that will put a lot of supposedly safe members of Congress in an uncomfortable position.
In other words, Rothman is correct to be concerned about the lasting damage Trump is doing to the party, but he’s wrong to think Trump is alone in this.
The GOP internal problems will be solved only if the Democrats have a deeply reaching wave election in 2016.
Now do you understand why I continue to be pessimistic about the future of American politics. At least some realists voted down the notion of Texas secession as legitimate.
That moment when you realize that Matt Yglesias has beaten you to the punch on the article you were only thinking about writing last night and took until this morning to actually do.
Country would probably be a lot better if Texas left.
No the country wouldn’t be better if Texas left. There are plenty of progressive minded people down here in Texas trying to make our world a better place. And not just in Austin which progressives often say should be saved even if the rest of Texas seceded.
That leads me to ask why only Austin? After all Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and the valley are all blue as well. Of course they are blue due to being minority majority areas while Austin is blue due to white college educated hipsters so it makes one wonder why Austin is acceptable to save and not the rest of blue Texas.
Not quite half my extended non white family live in El Valle. I’d pay to help them emigrate and since they’re non white, Texas would be glad to see them go right?
I stand by my statement.
So…you’re saying Bush will be the nominee after all, once Cruz and Rubio are exposed as certain losers of the general (whether for extreme anti-woman views or due to toxic personality or irreversible light-weightedless)?
Events that none of us can anticipate — i.e., the future — may well play the decisive role in where we head from here. While the forces of darkness may well prevail in the face of Democratic ineptitude, the GOP’s extremism is in fact costing them with prospective voters — and more importantly, with opinion elites.
I also sense that media commentators would like to believe that we have now reached the peak not just of Trump, but of extremist, xenophobic rhetoric. “Now” being, whenever we are talking. But no reason is given why this should be so. It seems more likely that Trump’s and therefore Cruz’s rhetoric will become more extreme going into the primaries.
RAFAEL is behind all the crazy ass stuff Congress has done since 2010.
SANE?
G-T-F-O-H.
No, really.
PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE.
I think it is been pretty obvious Cruz was a serious threat to win the nomination for a while.
On reason he appears saner is he has the respectability of the Senate Office. More fundamentally, though, do not underestimate the role Cruz’s Harvard Law School degree has among pundits, most of whom attended similar schools.
To channel Yes, Prime Minister, it makes him seem like “one of us”
The parallels to ’64 become stronger with each passing day, but unlike Goldwater Cruz could win. Still, I am amazed the comparison hasn’t been made.
Immigration as a National Security Issue is a powerful combination. God help us if there is another Terrorist attack.
Cruz is demographically fucked. Even more than McCain, Romney, and even Trump.
The GOP’s only hope, if they can’t wean themselves off of the neoconfederate sugar, is to attract white millenials. White millenials is why the GOP is becoming increasingly uncompetitive at the Presidential level in the Midwest and Northeast and will spell major danger for them in the urban South in a couple of election cycles and Rockies in 3-4. Trump may be able to do this. I’d put money against him doing this, but I don’t just laugh raucously at the prospect. I’m not really willing to bet the fate of the country on how much less authoritarian and racist our youth is compared to their elders.
I laugh at Cruz. He has no chance in the general short of an epic implosion. Even without expanding her base beyond the Dukakis to Obama line, HRC would eat him alive and she’d almost certainly capture the House even given the DNC’s utter incompetence.
Tell me, what does Cruz bring to the table, political battle-wise, that Romney or W. Bush for that matter did not? It needs to be massive, because his positions on gay, women, and racial minority rights would completely kill his chances with winning people on the margins of the Obama Coalition.
is way too high. He just exudes sliminess to the point where he makes John Edwards look wholesome.
Please, someone please ask The Donald of he will require Cubans to start using the our formal VISA process and end the wet fee/dry land policy?
You would think some news person would ask him at one of those phoney “debates”, wouldn’t you?
First let’s see what happens when Trump tanks. No one could have imagined some months ago that he’d still be going strong(er) at this point. What if he doesn’t tank? Maybe he will succeed in marching the Republican party over a cliff. Or he could run as an independent.
Once he’s out of the way or at least relegated to the sidelines the rest of the Republican field will become clearer. I said it here once some time ago and still think that Cruz is the only viable Republican candidate. He’s not electable, they say. I’m not so sure about that. He’ll create a smoke and mirrors campaign to outmatch anyone, and HRC will discover that her appointment with fate in the Oval Room is far less certain than predicted up to now. Anyway, she must have her fears and doubts about the whole project and these might be her undoing in the long run: too smart (or dumb) by half.
How does Cruz look sane? Well in comparison to Trump, almost anyone does look at least saner. It’s all relative.
It appears that Cruz has found the ways and means to tone down his rhetoric and make better use of dog whistles and various types of red meat, rather than The Donald’s all shouty-ness and being totally out there, and yet more up front really, with his xenophobic, racist, anti-everyone but those who look like me, bigotry. Note: it’s those who LOOK LIKE the Donald who are OK bc anyone who believes Trump is a real Xian isn’t living in reality.
That said, I’m not good anymore at predicting what the GOP base will or won’t do. It’s gotten too rabidly insane for my feeble brain. Cruz might have some issues due to his surname and provenance, but only time will tell bc of course: IOKIYAR.
If Cruz decides to really open his yap and let the really hateful bigotry – that lurks inside him – flow out, then it’s gonna be hard to predict what happens.
Yipes. What. A. Mess.
Once again Cruz places himself intelligently for short term gain.
Excellent analysis. But what was W’s position on abortion? Wasn’t it the same a Cruz’s and Rubio’s?
The Republican establishment has lowered its standards from “someone who looks likely to win” to “someone we can at least rout for instead of against”. This is the sense in which Cruz and Rubio are respectable. Even if they lose badly, they are not manifestly unqualified for the job, which means they do not force much of the Republican elite to sit out or even back Hillary. If the Republican elite finds itself with a McGovern – a candidate they themselves will oppose – the civil war in the party becomes all-out, and the end of the party looks likely. If it’s Cruz or Rubio, it’s just another lost election, and maybe not – you never know when events, like a terrorist attack, will change the environment.
Can’t see that Cruz is any less “manifestly unqualified” than Trump. Half his party and all the DEMs loathe him and he only started his first term in elective office in 2012.
That’s comparable to Obama unless you consider time in the State Senate preparation for the Presidency, something I think no one in modern times would have even argued before Obama.
Not inappropriate, IMO, to accord a candidate credit for being in state office. Also, we elect governors from crappy states that have zero experience and expertise in federal government. Of course, it’s very telling once elected. Nixon was the last President that was actually qualified for the job.
What matters for my argument is whether the bulk of the Republican elite can support him. They may not like him personally, but there is too much at stake for that to be dispositive. They won’t be afraid of him winning, at least not more so than Hillary, and certainly not more so than Sanders. Trump is so ignorant, egotistical, and impulsive, that things are completely unpredictable with him in. Cruz is too, really, but I think the elite can have him shoved down their throat.
Monmouth IA poll — first it has a 4.8% MOE. That’s too large to give it much weight.
Second – internal validity. Three polls, late Aug, late Oct, and early Dec.
Trump: 23%; 18%; 19%.
Carson: 23%; 32%; 13%
Cruz: 9%; 10%; 24%
Rubio: 4%; 10%; 17%
Bush: 5%; 8%; 6%
The Carson swings seem too large. The Cruz “surge” is also too large for internal validity. Rubio’s gain is less suspect. Consistent enough for Trump and Bush.
External validity — other polls at similar dates. Monmouth has been a bit of an outlier wrt Trump. Consistently at or near his lowest number. Not off from that of Loras, DMR, and Q in late October (in 2014 Lora was high quality polling structure but sucked at getting representative samples), but off by quite a bit in the other latest polls. M has Carson dropping way faster and from a higher number in Oct than the other polls. Too high in Oct and possibly too low in Nov but not more than 3 to 4 points. (The Carson slide will continue through caucus evening, estimated floor 5%) Possible outlier on Rubio, but again not by more than 5 points. Otherwise consistent with the other late Nov polls.
Interpretation, this one is easy, Carson has mostly bled to Cruz. Difficult (impossible?) to fathom is a mind that shifts from a mild-mannered, fundie, and Black nutcase to a strident, Canadian-Cuban racist, fundie, nutcase. This appears to be the fundie-first voters shift. Those still with Carson have some investment in “not being a racist.”
It’s also possible M is the first poll to detect the impact of Trump doubling down on immigration. The Nov polling gains for Trump upon reconsideration between 12/3-6 have created a larger gain for Rubio and a tiny uptick for Bush. OTOH, it just might be M polling bias.
Jeb? and the other soon to be asterisks are running out of time to have any relevancy.
DM Register — Cruz: Carpet bomb ISIS ‘into oblivion’
Doesn’t appear that Cruz understands what the phrase “glow in the dark” refers to. Just incendiary sounding words to him. Enough older people in Iowa that will and it could lose him some support.