“Now Operating Entirely From A Position Of Strength”: Donald Trump Has The Republican Party In The Palm Of His Hand
On Thursday, Donald Trump signed a loyalty pledge to the Republican Party, stipulating that he would support whoever becomes the GOP’s presidential nominee and foreclose the option of mounting an independent or write-in or third-party candidacy. The purpose of the pledge was to bring Trump to heel. By announcing his decision publicly, and holding the signed pledge up to a thousand cameras, Trump gave the Republican party readymade and provocative attack ad material: In the event that he shirks the agreement, and mounts an independent candidacy at some point, Republicans can air footage that proves Trump broke his word.
There may be some solace in that, but the fact that he was willing to sign the pledge at all should alarm Republicans more than it soothes them. Trump wasn’t communicating to the party that its knock against him for threatening an independent run has been effective. To the contrary, it’s that he doesn’t think the threat is necessary anymore—that he’s now genuinely well-positioned to win the primary, rather than an insurgent threat who can be neutralized by party heavyweights.
This isn’t just a matter of polling—though the polling is consistent with it—but of the way Trump speaks about the pledge itself. He clearly doesn’t see it as an inviolable agreement, but rather as a way to keep the Republican Party from organizing to sabotage his candidacy.
“I really got nothing,” Trump said at a Thursday press conference in New York, speaking about his meeting with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. “Absolutely nothing other than the assurance that I would be treated fairly…. I have no intention of changing my mind.”
He got nothing, in other words, aside from an all-purpose and unchallengeable exception, which will force party officials to constantly police one another to make sure they don’t give Trump the excuse he’ll need to launch an independent campaign.
Trump is now operating entirely from a position of strength.
As Slate’s Josh Voorhees noted, over the course of three months, the percentage of likely Iowa caucus goers who told survey takers for Bloomberg and the Des Moines Register that they would “never” support Trump collapsed, from 58 down to 29 percent. A nationwide Monmouth poll of Republican voters conducted a few days later found that Trump has completely reversed his dangerously low net favorables, from 20-55 in June to 59-29 today.
In head-to-head matches with nine other Republican candidates, Trump beats everybody except for Ben Carson. He trounces Jeb Bush 56-37, Marco Rubio, 52-38, and Scott Walker, 53-38, suggesting that as the field winnows, dark horse backers are more likely to migrate to Trump than to any of the establishment-friendly candidates.
This is in some ways no surprise. The right-wing vote has been a majority share of the primary electorate since the campaign began. But building a majority for an anti-establishment candidate seems easier than ever before. It can now be achieved, per Matt Bruenig, by combining the support of just three candidates: Trump, Carson, and Ted Cruz.
A few weeks ago, the best argument that Trump couldn’t win the nomination rested on the premise that his maximum support was too low, and that the party would array against him aggressively as the field narrowed. Trump has spoiled both premises. It is now easy to imagine Trump eclipsing 40 percent of the vote before the primaries begin, and ripping up that pledge if a panicky Republican Party responds by erecting obstacles to his victory. Right now, in the GOP primary campaign, the most pressing question has nothing to do with Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or any of the people who were supposed to win. It’s whether Ben Carson can keep up the fight, or Donald Trump runs away with it.
By: Brian Beutler, Senior Editor, The New Republic, September 4, 2015
“Rand Paul, Falling Flat”: The Candidate Everyone Thought Could Change The Republican Party Is Completely Collapsing
The moment one veteran Republican strategist realized Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) was flailing as a presidential candidate came when he suddenly decided to take on Donald Trump last week at the first presidential debate.
Challenging Trump’s refusal to pledge support for the eventual nominee should have been a moment that earned Paul some credibility among Republicans frustrated with Trump’s rise.
But it ended up falling flat.
“It just missed the mark,” the strategist said. “He didn’t give off a good vibe doing it.”
Last fall, Time magazine declared Paul the “most interesting man in politics” and stamped him on its cover. Paul launched his campaign earlier this year pledging that he was a “different kind of Republican.”
Four months later, though it’s still early in a crowded, fluid race, it’s clear that many Republicans want different — but not him.
His campaign is struggling to keep up with his rivals in fundraising. Two of his political allies running an outside super PAC supporting his candidacy were recently indicted on campaign-finance fraud charges. Significant plunges in polling are starting to correspond.
And Trump has an aggressive counterpunch. In a raging statement responding to Paul, the real-estate tycoon took him to task for running for reelection to the Senate at the same time he’s campaigning for president.
“I feel sorry for the great people of Kentucky who are being used as a back up to Senator Paul’s hopeless attempt to become President of the United States — weak on the military, Israel, the Vets and many other issues. Senator Paul has no chance of wining the nomination and the people of Kentucky should not allow him the privilege of remaining their Senator,” Trump said.
Trump further called Paul’s operation a “total mess” and said the senator should leave the race.
“Rand should save his lobbyist’s and special interest money and just go quietly home,” he declared. “Rand’s campaign is a total mess, and as a matter of fact, I didn’t know he had anybody left in his campaign to make commercials who are not currently under indictment!”
Polls trickling out after the debate have underscored the challenge ahead for Paul and have led to speculation that he could be one of a handful of GOP candidates who drops out before the Iowa caucuses next year.
Paul now sits just ninth in the first-caucus state of Iowa, according to an average of three polls of the state that have been released this week. One of those polls, from Suffolk University, showed his support plunging to just 2% of likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa. That put him behind such candidates as Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), who has been diverting most of his early-state resources to New Hampshire.
Iowa will be especially important for Paul, whose father, Ron, scored with its voters during his previous presidential runs. Matt Kibbe, the director of one super PAC supporting Rand Paul, told Politico in July that the group only had paid staff in Iowa because “it matters so much.”
But Paul hasn’t shown many signs that he will successfully hold onto his father’s voters, let alone significantly expand upon that base. And the indictment of the two allies, which stems from their work on Ron Paul’s campaign in 2012, revolves around an alleged money-for-endorsement scheme involving former Iowa State Sen. Kent Sorenson (R), who already pleaded guilty to concealing campaign expenditures.
A Public Policy Polling survey released this week showed Rand Paul with the worst net-favorability rating among all GOP candidates. His standing in Iowa has plunged from 10% in April to just 3% now.
“The biggest loser in the poll is Rand Paul,” PPP director Tom Jensen wrote. “Paul’s been foundering anyway, and his campaign’s ties to the Kent Sorenson mess are probably making things particularly bad for him in Iowa.”
Things aren’t looking much better in New Hampshire, where Paul was thought to potentially capitalize on its independent-leaning primary electorate, and where his father had two strong showings.
According to a Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald poll released this week, Paul has seen his favorability rating dip from a positive 57-24 margin in March to a negative 44-45 margin in August. His support in the state also plunged from 13% in March to just 6% now. It put him behind better-funded candidates investing significant resources into the Granite State, like Kasich (12%) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (13%).
During the Republican presidential debate last week, Paul used polls as a major selling point for why Republicans should support his candidacy.
“I’m the only one that leads Hillary Clinton in five states that were won by President Obama. I’m a different kind of Republican,” he said in his closing statement.
But the polls he’s referring to are from March and April. Perhaps in a sign of his diminished standing, the same polling outlet that found him leading Clinton narrowly in those states — Quinnipiac University — instead measured Clinton’s strength against Republican candidates Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) in a poll conducted earlier this month.
“His campaign has been in free-fall,” said Greg Valliere, the chief political strategist at the Potomac Research Group, of Paul’s debate performance.
“Paul didn’t help himself much last night.”
By: Brett LoGiurato, Business Insider, August 15, 2015
“Enthusiasm Does Not Equal Organization”: Decentralized Political Organizing Could Be A Problem For Team Sanders
Journalists are just now coming to grips with this, and there’s always a danger on such subjects of buying campaign spin. But there does seem to be a growing recognition that Hillary Clinton’s campaign differs from its 2008 predecessor because of a pervasive emphasis on organization-building in the states.
WaPo’s Matea Gold and Anu Narayanswamy come at the story from a different angle today, noting that HRC’s high “burn rate” for contributions is being driven by systemic investments in campaign infrastructure:
Details in the newly filed reports paint a picture of a campaign harnessing the latest technological tools and constructing the kind of deep ground operation that Clinton lacked in her 2008 bid. That kind of organizing capability has gained importance as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), one of Clinton’s rivals for the Democratic nomination, has drawn large crowds and gained ground in polls….
Clinton’s operation is paying rent in 25 cities across nine states, Federal Election Commission filings show. Along with about 340 staff members on the payroll, the campaign had hired nearly 60 field organizers by the end of June.
“It’s a sign that she’s approaching the campaign differently than the last time,” [David] Axelrod said. “They didn’t have as thoughtful an approach to laying the foundation for that campaign, and it ended up hurting them when it ended up being an organizational fight.”
At the “Politico Caucus” subsite, where there’s a sort of large focus group of early-state “Insiders,” the judgment is even clearer, per Katie Glueck:
Asked to assess what Clinton is doing right, and wrong, in their states, almost every Caucus participant — Democrats and Republicans — answered the question of what she’s doing right by saying Clinton has pulled together a strong staff and is doing all of the little things right when it comes to being organized for the early state contests and beyond.
“Doing right: building and investing in a monster field operation. Scares the hell out of this Republican knowing that many of those staff will easily pivot to organizing for the general election,” an Iowa Republican said.
“HRC is building a campaign rooted in organizing,” added a New Hampshire Democrat. “I’ve been to several house parties & campaign events and there are always new faces present — faces that weren’t involved in the 2012 presidential race. There is absolutely no one taking this primary race for granted whatsoever.”
“The organizing strategy is straight out of the Obama 2007 playbook,” an Iowa Democrat added. “The crew is enthusiastic and well-trained on the basics (pledge cards, pledge cards, pledge cards). Sanders and O’Malley will find it impossible to compete with the sheer size of the organizing.”
In New Hampshire, in particular, Democrats also largely lauded Clinton for visiting more rural parts of the state that are often overlooked. And across the board, her staff was praised for keeping cool amid the rise of Bernie Sanders.
Meanwhile, there’s also some recognition that the impressive enthusiasm that suffuses Bernie Sanders’ campaign is not automatically transmittable into a good organization, helpful as it is. At TNR earlier this week, Suzy Khimm suggested that the Occupy-influenced passion for decentralized political organizing could be a problem for Team Sanders:
Sanders is betting that passion will enable him to surmount the serious obstacles he faces in broadening his base of support. But that also means the campaign needs to find a way to corral popular enthusiasm into more traditional, on-the-ground organizing if Sanders wants a real shot at expanding his base beyond largely white, liberal enclaves. That means convincing more supporters to embrace a more centralized, hierarchical type of organizing, while still preserving the authentic, grassroots populism that Sanders embodies for his fans.
Iowa will be the acid test of this challenge. Caucus rules place an emphasis on local organizers knowing exactly what is expected of them in almost any circumstance, within the rubric of a Caucus Night strategy with some central direction. The epitome of the organization-outbids-enthusiam hypothesis occurred in 2004, when Howard Dean’s armies of orange-hatted volunteers may have done more to alienate than to organize Iowa Democrats, leading to a disastrous third-place finish despite strong poll numbers and an endorsement from Tom Harkin.
It’s all hypothetical at this point, of course. But neither crowd sizes nor expenditure numbers precisely capture the kind of qualities a campaign needs to win in a place like Iowa.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, July 17, 2015
“A Pointless Exercise”: The Iowa Caucuses Are A Big Fat Joke, And Jeb Bush Is The Only One Laughing
Jeb Bush’s heartless betrayal has sent shockwaves through the presidential race. I’m not talking about his advocacy for Common Core educational standards, or his disturbing habit of talking about undocumented immigrants as though they were human beings. No, it’s the news that broke Monday: Bush will not be competing in the upcoming Iowa Straw Poll this August.
The chairman of the Iowa Republican Party was predictably contemptuous of Bush’s excuse that he’ll be going instead to a different gathering of Republicans in Georgia: “We don’t buy this excuse and neither will Iowans,” he said. Et tu, Jeb?
How on earth could Bush ignore the Straw Poll, an event whose winner four years ago was future non-president Michele Bachmann? It may be because Bush is lagging in the Iowa polls and he’s worried he’ll do poorly. Or it may be because the Iowa Straw Poll is a pointless exercise.
In fact, everything about Iowa’s role in the presidential election process is absurd, and I say that as not only someone who reads, thinks, and writes more about politics than any sane person ought to, but also as one who counts actual Iowans among my friends.
Iowans are, as a whole, fine people — as much as any other state’s residents. But do they really deserve the power we give them every four years? Granted, some state has to hold the first presidential contest, but the fact that it’s in a state with a comical election system and where the overwhelming majority of voters can’t be bothered to make it to their state’s contest is particularly maddening.
You’d expect that with a dozen or so presidential candidates practically moving to the state so they could meet each and every voter in all of Iowa’s 99 counties, turnout in the caucuses would be high. No such luck. In 2012, turnout was a measly 6.5 percent, meaning 14 out of 15 Iowans didn’t vote in the caucuses. While it’s true that only one party had competitive primaries that year, even in 2008 when there were tight contests in both parties, it topped out at 16 percent. Not exactly an inspiring show of their commitment to democracy.
Part of the explanation may lie in the fact that caucuses are time-consuming and involve standing around in a high-school gym while people give speeches, then moving about in little gaggles according to your favored candidate. Whatever old-timey nostalgic thrill that might give you, it’s undeniably a hassle compared to just pulling a lever or punching a chad. Nevertheless, don’t you think that if multiple candidates had literally shown up to your house to beg you in person to choose them, you’d manage to make it out on caucus night?
That’s not to mention that the event next February is actually merely the first step in a ridiculously baroque multi-stage process. What Iowans will be selecting on that evening is precinct caucus delegates, who will later go to the county convention (remember how there are 99 counties? Yeah, that means 99 conventions), and from there to the district convention, after which it’s on to the state convention (can you feel the excitement building?) where they’ll actually select the delegates who’ll go to the national convention next summer.
You’d be hard-pressed to offer a persuasive explanation for why they bother with all that, and more importantly, why the rest of us should care. But Iowa is first (and will stay that way, because there’s a state law mandating it has to be), so candidates will continue to troop through the state, testifying to their affection for the “heartland” and their love of ethanol, and heading to the Iowa State Fair to consume food on a stick.
(Permit me a brief digression: Sadly, deep-fried butter on a stick — in which, yes, an entire stick of butter is battered and deep-fried, then stuffed down your food hole — is for some reason no longer on offer at the Iowa State Fair as it was for a brief but glorious period. Last year’s fair did, though, feature no fewer than 69 food-on-a-stick options.)
You can understand why politically involved Iowans are so protective of this process. After all, if you’re a Republican precinct captain in Oklahoma or Rhode Island, you’d no doubt love to have Scott Walker and Marco Rubio sit at your kitchen table and tell you how important you are to their campaign. But the real fault lies with the news media, which looks at the results of this bizarre contest and decides that it’s actually freighted with meaning about the will of the electorate.
Perhaps it’s because after months and months of covering a campaign without any concrete results, they can’t help but go a little nuts over the first actual votes anybody casts. But they play an inane game of expectations — setting them, interpreting them, and spinning them — to try to enhance the uncertainty and drama. At the end of it, some candidates will be said to have failed to meet expectations and thus be consigned to permanent loserdom, their campaigns no longer worthy of attention, while others will be elevated on high (only to be pulled down soon after). Imagine if we reported sports that way: “Analysts are calling the Red Sox the clear winner in last night’s contest after they came within two runs of beating the Yankees, whom most had expected to coast to an easy victory. Hard questions are now being raised within the Yankees organization about what the failure represented by this narrow win means for their chances in the fall.”
The only redeeming factor in this whole exercise is that for all the importance the political press puts on Iowa, winning seems to have little relationship to whether a candidate wins his or her party’s nomination, let alone the presidency (as Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, winners of the last two GOP caucuses, can attest). Just don’t get me started on New Hampshire.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; The Week, May 13, 2013
“Hillary Clinton And The Burden Of Authenticity”: She Came, She Saw, She Talked, And She Listened
One of the funniest conversations I’ve heard took place among a small group of Arkansas women who’d done their best to clue the newlywed Hillary Rodham in on a basic fact of Southern life she’d been reluctant to accept in the 1970s: Cute counts. It’s not necessary to be a beauty queen, but a woman who doesn’t look as attractive as she can is often suspected of being too “authentic” for her own good.
The lady lumberjack look then fashionable on Ivy League campuses confused Arkansas voters, as did Hillary’s decision to keep her maiden name after marriage. (As the husband of a Southern girl often patronized to her face in a New England college town back then, I can testify that cultural incomprehension can run both ways. But that’s another topic.)
The point is that Hillary Rodham Clinton listened. As she later explained, she hadn’t really understood how strongly people in Arkansas felt about the name thing. So she took the name “Clinton” to stop sending a message she’d never intended. About the same time, it became fairly obvious that she’d started taking clothing, makeup, and hair-styling tips from female friends and quit looking like an outsider too.
So does that make her more or less “authentic” by current journalistic standards? Does it make her a big faker, the “manipulative, clawing robot” of a Maureen Dowd column? Or a relatively normal human being adjusting to the expectations of the people around her?
Not long afterward, Hillary also started doing something very much like what she’s recently been doing in Iowa and New Hampshire: holding small-scale town meetings with local school boards, parents, and teachers in support of the newly re-elected Bill Clinton’s Arkansas education reforms.
Clinton’s 1983 education package — its slogan was “No More Excuses” — brought math, science, and arts classes to many rural school districts for the first time. It raised teacher salaries and increased taxes to fund them. Over time, it’s helped close the historic gap between the state’s country and city schools.
And before the campaign was over, Arkansas’s First Lady was on a first-name basis with thousands of, yes, “everyday people” in all 75 Arkansas counties. She came, she saw, she talked, and she listened. As a secondary matter, Hillary’s image problems among Arkansan voters faded away.
How it works is pretty simple: You accept Arkansas, Arkansas accepts you. I’m pretty sure this is broadly true of Iowa and New Hampshire voters too. So is there an element of calculation in Hillary’s latest listening tour? Sure there is.
Is it merely cheap political theater?
Look, she’s a professional politician running for president. Of course her campaign events are stage-managed. How could they not be? Just as she ran for the U.S. Senate from New York back in 1999, a state where she’d never actually lived.
Although New Yorkers tend to be more flattered than offended when famous carpetbaggers descend upon them, she held small forums all across the state — impressing most observers with her industriousness and knowledge of local issues. America’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani, backed out of the race.
She’s a very smart cookie, Hillary Rodham Clinton. And she always does her homework. No, she’s not a mesmerizing speaker like Bill, and not the most outwardly charismatic politician in the race (whoever that may be). GOP focus groups say her biggest weakness is their perception of her “entitlement” and seeming remoteness from ordinary people’s lives.
So off she goes on another listening tour. “A sweet, docile granny in a Scooby van,” Dowd sneers. However, contrary to reporters who marvel at Hillary’s “willingness to put on the hair shirt of humility to regain power,” she actually appears to enjoy the fool things.
Partly, it’s a woman thing. See, Hillary and my wife worked together back when the governor’s wife served on the board of Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Diane always mentioned two things: how hard she worked on children’s health issues, and how she never pulled rank.
But what really endeared her to my wife was Hillary’s empathy during a prolonged medical crisis involving our son. At times, Diane was under terrible emotional strain. Hillary never failed to show concern. Was the new treatment helping? Had we thought about seeking another opinion? She acted like a friend when my wife needed all the friends she could get.
And no, there was nothing in it for her. I wasn’t a political journalist then. It wasn’t about me. It was about two mothers.
In an article unfortunately headlined “Manufacturing Authenticity,” Slate’s John Dickerson gets it right. For all her privilege and celebrity, Hillary “has something going for her that other politicians do not when it comes to these kinds of events… she has thought about family issues her entire life.”
Dickerson marveled that in Iowa, “Clinton actually appeared to be listening.”
And that could turn out to be her secret weapon.
By: Gene Lyons, Featured Post, The National Memo, April 22, 2015
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