Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse March 1, 2016 

By Brian E.Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) March 1st, 2016

Marc Nozell/Wikimedia Commons

This piece builds on earlier analysis in a separate piece, but has been updated for Super Tuesday.

AMMAN — Trump was expected to win big in South Carolina’s Republican Primary, and even when, just days before that contest, he attacked George W. Bush’s presidency, got into a fight with Pope Francis, and said nice things about Obamacare and Planned Parenthood, he still won the state by 10 percentage points and won every delegate at stake, shutting out his opponents. As a result, Trump is without a doubt the clear front-runner and is now near-certain to win the nomination, and Republican elites are in full panic mode, desperate to find someone to topple him from his lead position.

It was clear even before South Carolina that the at least a big chunk of “Establishment” Republicans wanted Rubio to be their man (especially clear when they packed the audience with people very favorable to Rubio and Bush and hostile to Trump and Cruz at the last debate in South Carolina just days before the primary).

Yet the GOP “Establishment” pinning its hopes on Rubio to dislodge Trump is an unwise move in an already losing movement: the idea that a candidate who came in 3rd in Iowa, 5th in New Hampshire, a distant 2nd in South Carolina (barely edging a 3rd-place Ted Cruz), and a distinct 2nd in Nevada is somehow going to now win a bunch of states and delegates is not rational; Rubio may not even win a single state, given that Trump is dominating almost every poll in almost every state.

The “Establishment” may not want to admit it, but Rubio is not a terribly strong candidate; though often polished, upon closer inspection he lacks depth, gravitas, and maturity, and, more often than not, wilts under pressure. And those faults do not even go into how vulnerable Rubio is with Republican primary voters on the hot-button issue of immigration.

There are four other candidates still in the race besides Rubio, and to simply assume that Jeb Bush voters who had have favored the graying, experienced, moderate former governor will mainly flock to a junior freshman senator who possesses none of the experience or gravitas that Bush does and is far less moderate is quite a faulty assumption; if anyone is likely to gain the most from Bush’s departure, it will be Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who may yet outperform Rubio when more moderate states get to have their say.

Rubio has no victories so far (don’t be misled by his speeches behaving as if he has actually won something), and Cruz’s only victory has been Iowa, on the backs of Evangelicals, who now seem to be favoring Trump and clearly did so in South Carolina. Dr. Carson will still keep many die-hard Evangelicals away from Cruz, and Cruz’s best bet for a big win, Texas, is a state that will divide delegates up proportionately in a way that will minimize any delegate lead from that state Cruz will have over Trump, and that is assuming he wins there.  

Other contests that are winner-take-all (Florida, Ohio, Arizona) currently favor Trump over his rivals.  In addition, many of the contests in March that are proportional only award candidates delegates if they hit 15% (3/1: Arkansas, Oklahoma; 3/8: Michigan, Mississippi; 3/12: DC; 3/22: Utah) or 20% (3/1: Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont; 3/5: Louisiana; 3/6: Puerto Rico; 3/8: Idaho) of the vote, meaning Rubio or Cruz could even be shut out of getting any delegates in multiple states if they do not perform well.

What’s more, while all the remaining Trump rivals save Kasich have raised and spent large amounts of money, Trump has spent dramatically less compared with Cruz, Rubio, and Carson (and, including PACs, less than Kasich, too), winning with minimal effort in terms or organization and money. Trump is essentially dominating with one hand tied behind his back.  Obama’s victory was fueled by a lot of passion, but also a lot of money and a top-notch organization; Sanders is also fueled by passion, but is also raising and spending a lot of money; alone in the modern era, Trump is winning almost solely on passion and media exposure. This is remarkable and unprecedented.

Furthermore, Trump has played his rivals so skillfully that most of them until a few days ago have saved their fiercest attacks for each other; those who took him on most strongly earlier have exited the race. Imagine if Rubio seems to truly be gaining steam, and Trump starts to actually spend money and organize heavily, or to focus his attacks on Rubio…

No, Rubio will almost certainly not be taking Trump down. Cruz will almost certainly not be taking Trump down even more so.

Trump’s South Carolina victory made a win in Nevada, where he had been polling very high before that win, nearly certain: Trump destroyed his opposition in Nevada, where he amassed more votes than Rubio and Cruz combined.  Thus, Trump has nearly all the momentum going into Super Tuesday and beyond, contests where he is dominating in most polls in most states by double digit-margins, often more than 20 percentage points; a dominant, delegate-accumulating performance early in March will only further lead to more success as many more states vote later in March.

Barring an unprecedented political miracle, the window for someone else to come out on top has closed.

Rubio being taken down by Christie in the New Hampshire debate, and thus failing to position himself to be able to challenge Trump before it was too late and Cruz losing to Trump with Evangelicals in South Carolina and Trump’s 10-point victory there will remembered as the events that sealed the deal for Trump and doomed the hopes of Rubio, Cruz, and “The Establishment.”

Michael Vadon/Wikimedia Commons

Other Super Tuesday coverage from this author:

It Was Over Before Today: Clinton Will Easily Dominate Sanders on Super Tuesday

Forget Rubio: Kasich Last (Extremely Slim) Hope of Republican “Establishment” to Stop Trump

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

Maring Photography/Contour/Getty Images

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse February 21-22, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) February 21st, 2016 Updated February 22nd to discuss new polls

AMMAN — The contests of February 20th—a caucus for the Democrats in Nevada, a primary for the Republicans in South Carolina—will quite likely be remembered as the contests that set the final field for November, as the victors of each will now almost be impossible to stop given the realities of the here and now and the rapidly approaching nature of key contests.  There will be a lot of noise between now and when each candidate is the indisputable nominee, noise that will likely change very little in the end.

Clinton:

CNN

First, let’s discuss Hillary Clinton. After losing so badly in New Hampshire, Clinton had reason to be nervous: Bernie Sanders had a big wave of momentum he was riding from his big New Hampshire victory, momentum that was generating a lot of good media coverage and millions in new donations, while Team Clinton was beset by negative press coverage and a Sanders campaign that was out-fundraising a Clinton campaign that was finding it harder to bring in new money. Recent polls even showed a much closer race between her and Sanders nationally, and one Fox News poll even had him slightly ahead. To make matters worse, polling data on Nevada, the first contest after New Hampshire, was particularly sparse and known to be unreliable, and the few polls that did come out showed a very tight race between her and Sanders there. It was very possible that Sanders would win Nevada. In that situation, Sanders would then have won two, and barely lost one, out of the first four contests; in such a situation, Clinton could have seen her sizable lead in South Carolina shrink (even if not overcome), raising questions about how loyal key Clinton constituencies would be going into Super Tuesday. A narrative of significantly weakening support would be one of the last things she needed at this point.

As I wrote earlier, Nevada was going to be an opportunity for Sanders to steal some support from Latinos and African-Americans, the latter being such a crucial demographic in next Saturday’s upcoming South Carolina Democratic primary and in the following Super Tuesday contests a few days later; Sanders’ coalition had thus far been narrow, and it would be do-or-diefor him to win voters from more diverse backgrounds than his largely white and liberal base.   A debate shortly before Nevada was a chance for him to gain with these groups, but this he failed to do as Clinton skillfully targeted her message to address the concerns of these groups, compared with his more modest attempts to speak to them using that national stage. When the Nevada caucuses finally happened, Sanders lost by a clear margin and did terribly with black voters, and while the entrance poll showed he won Latinos, 1.) most (about 90%) of those people were surveyed when the poll results showed Sanders beating Clinton in the early wave and only about 10% were surveyed after the initial wave, when far more people went for Clinton, 2.) there are difficulties in accurately polling Latinos in these situations, and 3.) the preponderance of evidence showed that Clinton outperformed Sanders with Latinos, showing that she did very well in the most heavily Latino precincts, so despite a confusing entrance poll, it seems Sanders did not beat Clinton with Latinos.

More importantly for Clinton’s immediate concerns, she demolished Sanders in terms of support for African-Americans one week before the South Carolina Democratic primary on February 27th, when huge numbers of black voters will participate. With Clinton already leading by a spread that ranges 18-38 points in South Carolina, there is almost no way to envision Sanders, after Nevada, breaking into this lead in a significant way with less than a week to go. And just a few days after that, on March 1st’s Super Tuesday, eleven states, including delegate-rich Texas, vote, with a significant portion of the overall delegates for the whole contest being awarded that day and many of the contests taking place in states with diverse population far more inclined to support Clinton.

Nine days from today is not much time for Sanders to stave off crushing defeats in almost all those states as Clinton has huge double-digit leads in nearly every state, many by more than 20 percentage points. There is no sign that Sanders’ narrow message will be able to broad support in time, but even if he altered his message now it is almost certainly too late.  This clear win in Nevada and a likely blowout in South Carolina will do nothing to dramatically shift the overall picture in Sanders’ favor, and with Clinton’s already huge lead in delegates that’s about to get astronomically huge in a matter of days, and with a large number of other states voting just days and weeks after the first Super Tuesday contests throughout March, it is almost impossible to see a path for Sanders’ winning the nomination absent a health crisis for Clinton or an FBI indictment related to its probe of the handling of subsequently classified material in relation to Clinton’s personal e-mail server, both extremely unlikely scenarios despite loud right-wing claims to the contrary regarding the latter.

Sanders did have a viable path to the nomination that still would have been difficult but far from impossible to achieve: a win in Nevada, a show of clear gains with African-Americans and/or Latinos heading into South Carolina and Super Tuesday, and picking up sizable numbers of delegates in the process of all this through early March. Now, that simply won’t happen, not in time for these key contests; the idea that huge masses of voters who already have not will quickly and suddenly buy into his objectively unrealistic program and its near-zero chances of being implemented are tiny and decreasing every day as time runs out. Instead, Clinton will be picking up more money and positive media coverage and more endorsements just when she needs to, and will almost certainly win the nomination.

The Nevada caucus will go down as the moment when Clinton secured her path that led to her nomination.

Andrew Harrer

Trump:

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Now, it’s time to discuss Trump. I’ve been saying since early August that Trump was in a good position to win the nomination. Trump was expected to win big in South Carolina’s February 20th Republican Primary, and even when, just days before the contest, he attacked George W. Bush’s presidency, got into a fight with the pope, and said nice things about Obamacare and Planned Parenthood, he still won the state by 10 percentage points and won every delegate at stake, shutting out his opponents. As a result, Trump is without a doubt the clear front-runner and is now likely to win the nomination, and Republican elites are in full panic mode, desperate to find someone to topple him from his lead position. It was clear even before this contest that the at least a big chunk of Establishment Republicans wanted Rubio to be their man (especially clear when they packed the audience with people very favorable to Rubio and Bush and hostile to Trump and Cruz at the last debate in South Carolina just days before the primary). Yet the Establishment pinning its hopes on Rubio to dislodge Trump is a fool’s move for a fool’s quest: the idea that a candidate who came in 3rd in Iowa, 5th in New Hampshire, and 2nd in South Carolina (barely edging a 3rd-place Ted Cruz there) is somehow going to now win a bunch of states and delegates is truly absurd; I would be impressed if he wins more than a couple of the next few contests, and it is quite possible he will not win of them, given that Trump is dominating almost every poll in almost every state. It is hard to see Rubio getting a significant bounce after just losing to Trump by ten points and barely edging Cruz.

The Establishment may not want to admit it, but, as I pointed out before, Rubio is a weak and shallow candidate who wilts under pressure. And that does not even go into how vulnerable Rubio is on the hot-button issue of immigration in the eyes of Republican primary voters. There are four other candidates still in the race besides Rubio, and to simply assume that Jeb Bush voters who had have favored the graying, experienced, moderate former Governor will mainly flock to a junior freshman Senator who possesses none of the experience or gravitas that Bush does and is far less moderate is quite a faulty assumption; if anyone is likely to gain the most from Bush’s departure, it will be Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who may yet outperform Rubio when more moderate states get to have their say. Rubio has no victories so far (don’t let his speeches behaving as if he has actually won anything fool you), and Cruz’s only victory has been Iowa, on the backs of Evangelicals, who now seem to be favoring Trump and clearly did so in South Carolina. Dr. Carson will still keep many die-hard Evangelicals away from Cruz, and Cruz’s best bet for a big win, Texas, is a state that will divide delegates up proportionately in a way that will minimize any delegate lead from that state Cruz will have over Trump, there while some other states that are winner-take-all could favor Trump over his rivals.

What’s more, while all the remaining Trump rivals save Kasich have raised and spent large amounts of money, Trump has dramatically less compared to Cruz, Rubio, and Carson (and, including PACs, less than Kasich, too), winning with minimal effort in terms or organization and money. Trump is essentially dominating with one hand tied behind his back.

Obama’s victory was fueled by a lot of passion, but also a lot of money and a top-notch organization; Sanders is also fueled by passion, but is also raising and spending a lot of money; alone in the modern era, Trump is winning almost solely on passion and media exposure. This is remarkable and unprecedented. Furthermore, Trump has played his rivals so skillfully that most of them save their fiercest attacks for each other, and the only ones who took him on strongly and consistently have now dropped out, most notably Bush. Imagine if Rubio seems to truly be gaining steam, and Trump starts to actually spend money and organize heavily, or to focus his attacks on Rubio… No, Rubio will almost certainly not be taking Trump down. Cruz will almost certainly not be taking Trump down even more so.

Fresh off his victory, Trump heads into the February 23rd Nevada Republican caucuses, where polls even before his big South Carolina win already had him an overwhelming favorite; a win there seems extremely likely, and that would be three wins in a row going and a lot of momentum going into Super Tuesday and beyond, contests where he is dominating in most polls in most states; a dominant, delegate-accumulating performance early in March will only further lead to more success as many more states vote later in March. The window for someone else to come out on top in such a short period of time is dramatically low, and probably beyond Rubio’s capabilities.

Getty Images

Rubio being taken down by Christie in the New Hampshire debate, Cruz not winning Evangelicals in South Carolina, and Trump’s dominant victories in both states will remembered as the events that sealed the deal for Trump and doomed Rubio and Cruz.

*****

It’s obvious now to those who follow these kinds of things that the tops of the tickets in November will almost certainly be Clinton and Trump; in a few weeks’ time, it will be undeniable to just about everyone.

Update 2/22: Brand-new polls in Massachusetts and Michigan are very telling; a poll conducted 2/19-2/21 in Massachusetts, state that would supposedly have support for more moderate candidate’s, has Trump blowing out his competition 50 to Rubio’s 16, Kasich’s 13, and Cruz’s 10.  Even if this poll is somewhat off, it suggest a certain win for Trump.  Another poll has him doubling the support of his nearest competitor in Michigan (35 to Kasich’s 17 and Rubio, Cruz each with 12).  If a non-Trump can’t win moderate Massachusetts and/or Michigan, and if Trump can win states like those and South Carolina, the rest of the process will just be a formality.

For Clinton, as I’ve noted before, Bernie’s base is mainly white liberals, and the state with the most white liberals is Vermont (Bernie’s home state), the 2nd most New Hampshire (Bernie’s only victory so far), and Iowa and Massachusetts are tied for 3rd; Bernie only came close to a tie in the Iowa caucus and the new poll has her tied with Clinton in Massachusetts; if he can’t win the two states that are tied for being the third most favorable to him, his appeal is truly remarkably narrow, indeed, and he will have virtually zero chance of winning the nomination.  Like most other states, Michigan was polled as having Clinton up significantly, 53-40.

Every day, Trump vs. Clinton in November becomes more and more certain.

Getty Images

See an expansion of this analysis in a follow-up piece here discussing (the first) Super Tuesday

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse February 9, 2016   

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) February 9th, 2016 

Emil Lendof/The Daily Beast

UPDATE: February 10th Rubio fell from 2nd to 5th place when the votes in New Hampshire were finally cast, behind Trump, Kasich, Cruz, and Bush.  Maybe he’ll end up as a VP-nominee, but after his New Hampshire collapse—which he acknowledged had a lot to do with the debate—we can consider this article an obituary on Rubio’s chances to be the nominee, as well as an obituary for the chances of The Republican Establishment to stop Trump from getting the nomination.

AMMAN — The closer and longer America looks at the Republican Party, the more glaringly visible are its appalling faults for all to see.  For months, the more mainstream conservative media has been peddling freshman Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as a substantive alternative to the insanity of Trump, Cruz, and Carson.  Like Lincoln with Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation, The Republican Establishment was looking for any semblance of a victory for the young senator to be able to throw its substantial weight behind his candidacy, staving off what would almost certainly be the disastrous general election candidacies of Trump or Cruz.  America got a great look at Rubio in Saturday night’s debate, and the fact that this man was seen as the last hope for more “substantive” Republicans is a damning testament to the utter lack of substance in today’s Republican Party.  Rubio’s stunningly poor performance was a form of political suicide, and, while only the latest in a series of episodes that is collectively the sad suicide of one of America’s great political parties, this episode may very well go down as the nail in the coffin of the near-term political hopes for the non-crazy-wing of the Republican Party.

Rubio seems pretty bright, but at the same time, every time I have seen him with a chance to really shine, I have felt his performances have been pretty weak and show a serious lack of depth.  From his now-infamous water-bottle hijinks during his 2013 State of the Union response to his shallowness during the Iran hearings to this recent terrible debate performance, I have found that Rubio looks appealing at a first and casual glance but then you can really see him wither under the spotlight and under pressure.  Much of his campaign narrative is based on flat-out distortions and outright lies added on top of his Cuban-American family’s American Dream story.  He performed generally well at a number of debates, but during those crowded debates that were sparse on detail he was not viewed as a threat by his fellow Republicans who shared the stage with him.  That changed in the last few debates before the Iowa caucus, and he started taking hits from other candidates.  With his late-Iowa surge and seeming like The Establishment was ready to back him, Rubio went into New Hampshire with a huge target on his back.  Even before the debate, Chris Christie took up the banner of the anti-Rubio cause, and he rammed it right into Rubio during the debate, possibly skewering Rubio’s chances to be the anti-Trump candidate.

The way Christie’s beat-down went down was quite remarkable, and I am simply stunned at how poorly handled it was by Rubio.  For one thing, Christie and Rubio have been tangling with each other for some time, and attacking Rubio for lacking experience and depth is not anything new for Christie.  Objectively, experience and depth are among Rubio’s greatest weaknesses, and to not have a good response lined up for such lines of attack is, simply put, incredibly stupid and irresponsible as they are such obvious lines of attack. Without a doubt, he and his staff committed a mortal sin in not preparing better for this moment.  In the days before the debate, Christie loudly signaled his intent to go after Rubio on these very terms, so Rubio had absolutely no excuse not to be prepared.  Even one of his supporters, former candidate Rick Santorum, had trouble naming any accomplishments of Rubio’s.  This incident generated a question for Rubio from one of the moderators during Saturday’s debate about whether Rubio had the experience necessary to be president.  Basically, the moderator was giving Rubio the perfect chance to address what is the obvious elephant in the room as far as his presidential ambitions are concerned.  It is an opportunity that the Rubio and his staff should have been awaiting and relishing.

So, how did Rubio respond to the question?  He very vaguely and very briefly mentioned some “accomplishments,” then went into an attack on Joe Biden as an attack on experience, then ended with a rehearsed line about how Obama “knows exactly what he’s doing,” that he is trying “to make America more like the rest of the world.”  He spent very little time explaining his own record, and the pivot to Obama had nothing to do with the question.  The moderator then turned to Christie, who was also referenced in the question, and Christie went right into Rubio.  He talked about how senators are a lot more talk than action, and how he as a governor was more about action and problems solving, and how he is held accountable in ways that senators are not.   Rubio had mentioned three accomplishments, and Christie pointed out that Rubio did not even bother to show up in the Senate to vote on one of those “accomplishments.”  He compared Rubio to Obama, who himself was a first-time senator with little national experience when he won the presidency, making the case to his Republican audience that Rubio was another Obama and that the nation could not afford another Obama.  Christie’s attacks were met with applause.

Rubio responded with a somewhat misleading attack on New Jersey’s credit rating, and then, strangely, repeated the line about Obama wanting to change America, that Obama knew exactly what he was doing.

Then Christie devoured the neophyte Rubio, to raucous applause:

“You see, everybody, I want the people at home to think about this. That’s what Washington, D.C. Does. The drive-by shot at the beginning with incorrect and incomplete information and then the memorized 25-second speech that is exactly what his advisers gave him.  See Marco — Marco, the thing is this. When you’re president of the United States, when you’re a governor of a state, the memorized 30-second speech where you talk about how great America is at the end of it doesn’t solve one problem for one person. They expect you to plow the snow. They expect you to get the schools open. And when the worst natural disaster in your state’s history hits you, they expect you to rebuild their state, which is what I’ve done. None of that stuff happens on the floor of the United States Senate. It’s a fine job, I’m glad you ran for it, but it does not prepare you for president of the United States.” 

Rubio then attacked Christie in a cheap way that earned him boos, and then Rubio shocked and amazed: he repeated then “Obama knows exactly what he is doing” spiel, so that Christie could point out, to laughter and applause: “There it is. There it is. The memorized 25-second speech. There it is, everybody.”  With the crowd clearly against him, even booing him, Rubio then seconds later made the same speech Christie was criticizing him for an additional two times in response!! 

The Establishment Republicans must have been bashing their collective heads against their collective walls.

The two started sniping and talking over each other, but just before then end, Christie lobbed this attack at Rubio, to applause: “It gets very unruly when he gets off his talking points.”

Rubio simply reacted as if he had no way to counter Christie and had not even thought of how to do so, and even kept repeating a line he had just been destroyed for using seconds earlier.  About forty-five minutes later, Rubio was trying to respond to accusations of not fighting for his own immigration bill, and Rubio’s response at that moment, rather than defend his own action, was to again deliver his line about Obama wanting to change America, to boos.  The defining moment of the debate for most, besides possibly a Bush/Trump clash (I would argue that was the #2 moment of the debate), was Rubio playing right into Christie’s hands as just described and looking like a robotic, shallow fool for his efforts.  

Patricia Mazzei

After the debate, as if incapable of adjusting, he has been campaigning in much the same stilted way.

This is not a serious man running a serious campaign when you get past his and his campaign’s surfaces; rather, we see a self-entitled, immature rookie with little depth.  He would get demolished by Hillary Clinton in a national one-on-one debate.  For all the comparisons of Obama and Rubio, there is a vast gulf between the two when they were running in that Obama had actually put a lot of thought into his candidacy and the issues and could respond at length to any question without simply delivering rehearsed lines; his intellectual depth was never in doubt even if his experience was.  Now, Marco Rubio’s entire campaign is in doubt after a gaffe that is generally representative of his faults and weaknesses, and it is a gaffe that is nothing like anything Obama ever did during a debate or on the campaign trail.

Rubio was poised to be a star going into the New Hampshire primary, with the stars aligning to make him come in at least second in the contest, perhaps even giving him a surprise win.  That so many of the more serious and intellectual Republicans were placing their hopes on such a weak candidate says a lot about the state of the Republican Party and its lack of seriousness and depth.  To quote Gov. Christie when he addressed Rubio in an earlier debate, with this latest debate, “You already had your chance Marco, you blew it” (or, to quote The Economist, “Mr. Rubio flunked his chance”).  It is quite unlikely now that Rubio will come in second-place, but it is likely he will do worse than even third as both Govs. John Kasich and Jeb Bush have been surging after their strong debate performances, ground games, and positive messages.  

Trump retains a large lead in polling but a majority of voters likely to take part in the Republican primary and over a third of voters likely to participate in the Democratic primary are still not firmly decided on whom they will vote for today, and then there’s New Hampshire’s apparent famous independents who can vote in either primary.  Trump is likely to win, Kasich or even Jeb! Bush are likely to come in second and/or third, (if Kasich is # 2 or even wins this could especially be problematic for The Establishment because Kasich will likely get almost no traction in the South and will steal thunder from candidates who could) but almost anything is possible with so many candidates and so many undecideds.  Going into South Carolina, it could still look like Trump is the front-runner with a muddled picture of who will be able to rally the opposition to him; the Republican side could be anarchic and chaotic for some time to come, as it has been for the entire campaign season.  And while on the Democratic side, Bernie has been keeping a huge lead in polling over Clinton, she appears to be narrowing the gap.  Those undecideds will make or break New Hampshire for candidates of both parties, then.

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter(you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse February 4, 2016   

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) February 4th, 2016

AP

AMMAN —Wow, Iowa.  Thanks for making everyone’s job harder…

The scenario that would have virtually sealed the Republican nomination for Trump was a clear Trump win, with a big gap between him and Cruz, and a big gap between Cruz and Rubio.  The scenario that would have virtually sealed the nomination for Clinton would have been a clear Clinton win by more than just a few points.

Instead, we got scenarios that provided for about as unclear a nomination process as possible.  When I wrote earlier that America was suffering from political chaos and wild-card candidates, I sure wasn’t wrong about that, even if I incorrectly predicted Iowa to go for Trump (see my explanation at the bottom).  Much of the discussion below relies on these entrance polls (you can also see Democrats’ and Republicans’ info separately).

The Democrats:

On the Democratic side, both surviving candidates have reason to feel good, but also cause for concern, though Clinton is still easily the favorite.

AP/John Locher

Clinton: The Good:

A win is still a win, no matter how close.  Just ask President Al Gore.  As explained earlier, except for Vermont, Bernie’s home state, and New Hampshire, no other state was more suited politically and demographically for a Bernie victory than Iowa, which also shared this position with Massachusetts and is is the only of these states outside of New England, Bernie’s backyard.  Clinton’s well-run campaign competed with a well-run Sanders campaign on territory exceptionally tailor-made for a Bernie win and eked out a win for Clinton.  Her organization was, therefore, slightly better and succeeded in turning out more Clinton supporters by the slimmest of margins than her rival’s campaign.  After New Hampshire, almost every single state will be more favorable to her, so if she was able to do as well as she did last night in Iowa, she has little reason to panic, even if she loses in New Hampshire by a wide margin.  Clinton won more delegates from the Iowa caucus process, both at the state level in the number of delegates Iowa’s caucus process will send to the national convention, so for all the false talk of a “virtual tie,” Clinton is indisputably a winner, if only by the narrowest margin in the history of Iowa caucusing.

Clinton The Bad:

Clinton won, but it would be virtually impossible to have won by less.  A sizable win would likely have been a knockout blow against Sanders in the first round; that Bernie did so well and that the two were are virtually tied is most certainly going to be part of the narrative going into Bernie’s backyard, New Hampshire, where she is trailing Bernie currently by huge margins.  That is a part of the narrative that Team Clinton would have preferred not to have had to grapple with at all.  If Clinton wants to keep Sanders from having a shot at broadening his thus-far-narrow-support to other groups and to keep him from having a chance at chipping into her sizable lead in South Carolina and in other important states after New Hampshire, she will have to at least partially close the massive gap between her and Bernie in New Hampshire.  In particular, Clinton would have to hope that any major negative revelations about her e-mail situation do not occur at a time when she needs to dominate in certain states like South Carolina and others going forward, and though it is unlikely such revelations will unfold, it is not impossible that this would happen.

Sanders: The Good

Sanders has a lot to be proud of: his insurgent campaign in a matter of months came from being extremely far behind Clinton in Iowa to coming painfully close to beating her.  Bernie will be getting a lot of attention and money as a result of his strong performance there, more than enough to keep him in the race for a while and possibly as long as he wants to stay in since it is likely he will win New Hampshire also and will thus have a steady stream of positive coverage and donations coming in for weeks, enabling him to remain a presence for the foreseeable future.  Bernie also clearly dominates among young voters by an overwhelming margin, and his remarkable ability to bring new young voters into the process is also something that all Democrats can celebrate if those voters are willing to be team players in the long-run and are not just “Bernie-or-bust.”  Whatever the result of the nomination process, Bernie has helped the liberal wing of the Democratic Party roar back to life in a way not seen in a generation even if they still remain a minority within the party; because of Bernie, their voice has been heard loud and clear and they can be pleased with their candidate and their movement even for just that.

Sanders: The Bad:

If Bernie’s candidacy was going to have any serious viability, he should have been able to beat Clinton in a state that is basically tied for being the third-most favorable state in the nation to him based on political and demographic identity.  That he did not increases the already substantial doubts about his ability to be a viable candidate and to win over significant numbers of people who are not white liberals.  Bernie’s performance in Iowa does not bode well for the prospects for his campaign after New Hampshire.  If anything, it suggests that Iowa and New Hampshire will be the peak of his performance and will likely be the only time throughout the race he is even close to Hillary in the delegate count.  Bernie also did terribly with older voters, who tend to be more reliable voters than younger ones.  Bernie also promised his supporters that he would win if there was a high turnout, and there was a high turnout, but he lost, even if barely.  Finally, with O’Malley mercifully withdrawing, there will be much more time for public scrutiny of Sanders, especially during debates, a scrutiny to which he has not yet been subjected and with which Clinton is very familiar.

Verdict:

Both Hillary and Bernie did well enough to be able to hold their heads high and not be dogged by a negative narrative going forward.  Bernie performed admirably against a formidable foe in Hillary Clinton, but unless something drastic happens, Hillary’s far stronger support among moderates and minorities means that Sanders has a statistically verysmall chance of winning the nomination.  His best bet would have been a sizable victory in in Iowa followed by the same in New Hampshire; that would have given Bernie a dominant and overwhelmingly positive narrative for at least three weeks in February, and Clinton would have been dogged by a negative, losing narrative.  Since that has not happened, the long-game does not look good for Sanders. Bernie should win in New Hampshire, a state in his own backyard and with similarities to Vermont’s electorate, but if his margin of victory shrinks significantly between where the polls have him now and where the results have him Tuesday, that would be the equivalent of his political obituary as it allows Clinton to credibly sell a narrative of momentum; if Bernie only wins by a slight margin or somehow manages to lose to Clinton (the latter seeming not likely looking at current polls), expect a very clear public narrative that he is done as a candidate.

The Republicans:

On the Republican side, the results of Iowa may not (as usual) be terribly indicative of what is to come.  Apart from the death of some of the bottom-tier campaigns, the race changes little for the rest of the candidates, with the possible exception of Rubio.

AP/Reuters 

Cruz: The Good

Without a doubt, Ted Cruz surprised a lot of people.  He put together a top notch organization and out-campaigned and out-politicked his opponents, and had one of the most efficient ratios for money spent per vote.  Even when a national audience and the national media questioned some of his decisions, they played well with Iowans.  Cruz also managed to win when virtually everyone—his rivals, Republican elites, and the media—were questioning his record and behavior.  He even managed to win with two scandals relating to his personal loans and his eligibility to run for presidentdogging him.  To be able to come out on top with so many negatives weighing him down is, objectively, a remarkable feat.  Cruz also dominated among conservatives.  In addition, unlike recent past Iowa caucus winners, Cruz has a solid organization and is well funded, and this status is only likely to improve as a result of his win; he has already raised $3 million since his victory.  He also won his key demographic—Evangelicals—by 12 percentage-points, getting 34% to Trump’s 22%.  In addition, Cruz was able to bring in a substantial number of new people into the process: 23% of all first-time caucus-goers, second only to Trump.  He also did the best by far with Iowans on the issue of terrorism, and also led on the issue of government spending.

Cruz: The Bad

Make no mistake about it, Cruz’s victory was a dirty one.  He doubled down on insulting “New York values” and it played well with enough voters In Iowa; he mailed out deceitful, lie-filled flyers to scare and shame his supporters into caucusing; his campaign even falsely suggested that Dr. Ben Carson had dropped out of the race while the caucuses were still happening, drawing the rare anger of Dr. Carson directly onto Cruz; and he played and pandered as much as possible to religion in a nation that is supposed to have secular governance.  At the same time, Cruz only got about a third of the Evangelical vote, more than any other candidate, but such a divided Evangelical constituency is something that is a troubling sign for a candidate who is banking his entire campaign on dominating this group.  Cruz also did terribly with moderates.  All of this suggests that Cruz’s ability to broaden his support and to win in states that are not heavily conservative and/or religious is weak, making him a weak candidate and a possible one-state wonder (or just a few at most).  He is also now one of everyone else’s biggest targets after his win in Iowa (and was so was even in the week before), and it is extremely unlikely that Cruz will be able to build momentum that will help him in New Hampshire, as there are very few Evangelicals there and it is not terribly conservative.  It is very possible, maybe even likely, that he will come in third or worse in New Hampshire, something that would weaken him going into the primaries in the South, where he needs a strong showing for his chances of winning to survive.

Trump: The Good

With a candidate who operated in the manner that Trump did, it was inevitable that so many of his rivals and in the media would pummel him for coming in second.  But Trump has more to be pleased about than should worry him.  For one thing, Trump spent less money than any other candidate per vote in Iowa and still came in second.  He also spent significantly less time in Iowa than Cruz, Rubio, Carson, and other rivals, meaning there is easy room for improvement, plus he still did better than all those candidates except for Cruz.  Likewise, he kind of winged it when it came to his on-the-ground campaign organization in Iowa, and still managed to come in second, and he has time to adjust tactics.  And, like Cruz and third-place Rubio, he won thousands more votes than any candidate had ever won in an Iowa caucus before 2016.  That means that even half-assing it, Trump was able to bring in record support and hold his own in a crowded field against everyone else except for Cruz.  Trump also managed to bring in more new caucus-goers than anyone else by far, 31% to Cruz’s 23%.  Furthermore, from the beginning, Iowa was described as territory naturally hostile to Trump: it was rural and super religious and Trump was big-city and hardly known for his religiosity, like Cruz and Carson; yet somehow, Trump was able to only lose the state by less than 4%.  In addition, he did well with Evangelicals, taking 22%, more than anyone else except Cruz.  Moving into much more favorable territory, he can boast that he dominated moderates to New Hampshire, a moderate state where he is leading all other candidates handily.  Trump’s support also remained the most steady of any candidate, with by far the highest portion of supporters who had decided earlier on their candidate rather than later.  Additionally, Trump was the candidate who by far dominated on the issue of immigration and was most thought of as the candidate who could get stuff done.  Also, to people paying attention to the details, Trump has demonstrated growth as a candidate, able to be more restrained when he chooses to be, and also showed he would not tolerate a level of public disrespect from Fox News when he boycotted the last debate, a sign of toughness many Republicans nationally will appreciate regardless of how it played out in Iowa.  Trump has created a national movement largely built on media exposure and has barely begun to bring any of his substantial personal resources to bear in this race, and a second-place finish in Iowa will hardly mean the disappearance of this movement as he campaigns in New Hampshire, where he still has a huge lead.

Trump: The Bad:

A large portion of Trump’s campaign narrative that is fueling his success and dominance in media coverage involves the two pillars that he is 1.) leading in almost every poll and 2.) is, therefore, “winning.”  Well, both those pillars took significant hits with the Iowa loss, but while the idea that these two pillars have crumbled and that the Trump Tower of Babble is going to imminently collapse, is premature, it puts the candidate in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable position.  Being a “loser” in Iowa is still not where Trump wanted to be.  In particular, his campaign came off as not particularly organized or intense on the ground there.  Among voters who made their minds up in the throughout January, Trump significantly underperformed compared to both Cruz and Rubio, suggesting Trump may have problems winning further support among undecideds beyond those who have already declared in favor of him.  He also did terrible in the metric of voters feeling that a candidate shared their values.  Now, the pressure on Trump to do well in New Hampshire is the highest pressure he has yet faced as a candidate.  A stumble in New Hampshire might not be fatal for Trump’s campaign, but there is a good chance it would knock him out of the top spot nationally and threaten his top spots in key winner-take-all states like South Carolina and Florida.

Rubio: The Good

Nobody exceeded polling and expectations in Iowa more than Sen. Marco Rubio.  Before, he seemed to be the distant-third to Ted Cruz and only marginally ahead of Dr. Carson, with multiple other candidates chomping at the bit to break into his lad; with his strong third-place showing only about 1% behind Trump, he is in a position to potentially dominate all the other remaining candidates after Trump and Cruz and to turn the election into a virtual, three-way fight between himself and Trump and Cruz; in such a contest Cruz would almost certainly struggle nationally and Rubio would essentially be in a two-way race with Trump.  At the very least, this positions him to be a favorite for a vice presidential slot and/or to be the heir-apparent to run again for president as a favored candidate four years from now.  Not bad at all for a young, freshman senator from Florida.  In many ways, his rise is not dissimilar to Barack Obama’s: both were ethnic-minority state legislators who won a U.S. Senate seat and then ran for president during their first senate term, though apart from that the two men are very different people.  Rubio has indicators coming from Iowa that he can also boast of: he did respectably well with the key Evangelical demographic (with 21%, almost as well as Trump, who came in only behind Cruz), and was by far seen as the most electable candidate; perhaps most surprisingly, he led among all candidates, even Trump, on the issue of jobs/the economy.  He also did the best with independents, and there are lot of them in New Hampshire. 

Heading into the New Hampshire primary, he is pulling in a lot of cash and garnering a lot of positive media coverage, especially from conservative media.  The wind is definitely in his sails nationally more than anyone else at this particular moment, even allowing for his third-place finish in Iowa.  In particular, he can be happy that his two biggest rivals, Trump and Cruz, are focusing most of their attacks on each other heading into the next Republican Debate and New Hampshire’s vote on Tuesday.  Without a doubt, Iowa made Rubio The Establishment/”moderate” candidate to beat, giving him a boost at the best possible time for his candidacy, which thus far has failed to take off and has not gained traction despite his being a darling of much of the conservative media.  If Rubio takes off in any way going forward, his third-place finish just slightly behind Trump will be seen as the moment when it all began.  As it is, there are already signs that he may be displacing Cruz for the #2 spot in New Hampshire, which is exactly where the Rubio campaign wants to be. 

Rubio: The Bad:

With success comes greater risk: Rubio will be walking into New Hampshire with a huge target on his back and it remains to be seen if he can take the heat.  He remains incredibly vulnerable on immigration, an issue of primary concern for many Republican primary voters, and remains vulnerable in terms of his lack of experience when tangling with Bush, Christie (who is now calling him “the boy in the bubble”), and Kasich, all of whom seem ready to go after him in New Hampshire (especially the first two).  He is also taking serious heat from Trump and Cruz, and New Hampshire may very well elevate someone other than him to either be in the spot to challenge Trump or perhaps only to weaken Rubio’s chances. On average, he will likely be the main target in the next debate, and Rubio has not yet faced anything so fierce in this contest.  His extreme views on abortion are also likely to hurt him in a state like New Hampshire.  Rubio has at least as many signs to worry him in New Hampshire as he has to be happy, which is why he may be campaigning so cautiously there.  New Hampshire will be a real test for Rubio’s viability as a candidate.  If he does not finish second there, it will be difficult to see him having a real shot at challenging Trump, let alone winning the nomination, despite him being a new favorite of The Establishment and the conservative media.

AP 

Rest of the Pack and Verdict:

For the Republicans, Trump is still likely to win handily in New Hampshire.  If this happens, things do not look good for the non-Trumpers as the race heads to South Carolina.  It will be very hard for Cruz to finish in the top two spots in New Hampshire, and he may well finish lower than even third, as what played well in Iowa will not play well with New Hampshire’s different crowd.  His best hope for remaining viable is for his non-Trump rivals to keep splitting support fairly evenly among themselves so that none of them can rise to prominence and displace him.  Rubio could rise to be second behind Trump, but the three governors—Bush, Christie, and Kasich—could do some damage to and I believe they will go a long way to exposing his weaknesses as a candidate and that he will not do as well in New Hampshire as some are hoping he will.  If this happens, who emerges strongest in New Hampshire between Bush, Christie, and Kasich?  Having just lost Huckabee, Santorum (winners of the 2008 and 2012 Iowa caucuses, respectively, a fact testifies remarkable to the increasing volatility of modern politics), and Rand Paul, who will be next to drop out?  Bush still has a ton of money, so it seems there would be more pressure on Kasich and Christie to drop out if they do not perform well in New Hampshire.  Fiorina is irrelevant in New Hampshire and nationally as well, but as a millionaire and the only woman running on the Republican side, she has reasons to stay in the race to at least make a solid audition for being the vice presidential pick.  Carson is irrelevant in New Hampshire but is still a strong fourth nationally and has plenty of money in the bank to continue his campaign.  His continued presence hurts Cruz the most, who depends heavily on Evangelical support, and Carson remains a darling of Evangelicals nationally.  Expect Carson to be just… there, and possibly until the end of the race.

Overall Verdict:

Iowa is not a state that is representative of America as a whole, and, more often than not, Iowa fails to pick the winning candidate on the Republican side.  To be sure, candidates at the top should not expect similar results and/or similar margins in New Hampshire.  Trump and Bernie are clear favorites, but a win is a much bigger deal for Trump than for Sanders.

*****

Epilogue: Why I Got Iowa Wrong for Trump

If you read one of my last articles, you know that I wrote it was a pretty sure thing that Trump would win Iowa.  Without apologizing, I want to explain to my readers where I erred and why I was wrong:

1.) I assumed that billionaire Trump would not skimp on organizing a campaign in Iowa, even if last minute, and that he would dump a lot of money into the state in the final week. I just assumed that the people around him, and that The Donald himself, would not be so cavalier in Iowa.  However, those who dismiss Trump as “stupid” neglect his overall spectacular management career.  I am not saying that I lean towards what I am about to say, but I also would not be surprised if Trump and his people didn’t mind risking a close Iowa loss to seeing all his rivals tear each other apart because of the results.  Right now the focus is all on taking Cruz and Rubio down, and a win in an atypical and small state like Iowa, in the end, is not much of a threat to Trump’s candidacy, especially since Cruz was the victor.  If Rubio was trailing him, and not Cruz, in the final days in Iowa, I suspect that Trump & Co. would have had a different approach.  So perhaps this is a sly, calculated plan to elevate Cruz and thus make Trump look less extreme and see Cruz and his rivals damage each other to Trump’s benefit.  I’m not saying I think this is the case, but that, again, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was.  After all, this almost certainly had to have been part of the calculus in Trump’s skipping the final debate in Iowa. Either way, Trump is an amateur at political campaigning, but he is learning fast and on-the-fly, and don’t assume he will make the same mistakes with his ground game in New Hampshire and other states as he did in Iowa.

2.) I mistakenly (and naively) assumed that Cruz’s dirty tactics and attacks on Trump’s “New York values” would backfire and help to keep him from winning Iowa; while I am right that they are certainly backfiring on him on a national level, they clearly helped him in the closing days in Iowa. I assumedhis dislikability on the national stage would spill over to the local level in Iowa, and did not give the specific nature of Iowans and the state of Iowa enough consideration when I ended up deciding to favor Trump as much as I did and to not favor Cruz as much as I did.  I will admit that I personally find Cruz the most detestable of all candidates, and while I never consciously allowed that to affect how I went about my research, in the future I will check myself a bit more when analyzing him and his campaign to guard against any subconscious factors.

3.) In general, Iowa is difficult to predict; in fact, it is the most difficult state to predict, especially since it holds its contests as wacky caucuses, not simpler, superior, and more democratic primaries. The oft-cited gold-standard Des Moines Register poll, run by polling virtuoso Ann Selzer, was wrong this time on the Republican side; it has only been wrong one other time from 1988 until now.  One of the problems is that this poll and most of the other final polls were not conducted in the final days before Iowa, so they missed a late break of momentum for Rubio and other shifts; there was also a surprisingly high Evangelical turnout and over 1/3 of Iowa caucus-goers made their decisions in the final few days and were thus missed by most pollsters.  All of these reasons contributed to why the polling in Iowa did not reflect the final result, though it probably did reflect the mood when the polls were actually taken.  If the election were held a few days earlier, my prediction, and the picture painted by most pollsters, would likely have held.

Overall, it was a good experience for me.  I had a feeling Hillary would beat Bernie, but hesitated in making an “official” prediction since it was so close.  I am happy to say that I can learn from my mistakes on the Republican side and hope my errors are understood by my faithful readers.  I am confident I can do better in the future (my non-public predictive record in past elections state-by-state has been pretty solid) and hope you will stay tuned as I continue my coverage of America’s 2016 elections, as well as other topics.  Also, bonus points to anyone who gets The Hobbit reference…

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse February 1, 2016   

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) February 1st, 2016

Also by Brian: Why Trump Will Win Iowa: All Major Trends Point to Trump Triumph

Don’t Dismiss The Donald: 4 Reasons Why Trump Could Win GOP Nomination

AP Photo/Paul Sancya

AMMAN — Looking at Iowa—also known as The Hawkeye State—several thematic observations can be made about the state of American presidential political campaigns as the full election season of 2016 officially kicks off.

1.) The Republican Civil War Has Now Devolved Into Anarchy

The last week before the Iowa caucuses will be remembered as the time when any pretense that the Republican Party was not in an anarchic civil war melted away.  There are so many fractures and faultiness being exposed here that this resembles less the American Civil War between North and South than the current Syrian Civil War or the Thirty Years” War.  While there is a clear front-runner, the entire rest of the tier—well over half of surveyed Republicans’ support is divided among the dozen non-Trump candidates—is a mess.

A whole separate article (or series of articles!) could be written about how we got to this point.  For now, we can look at the the most recent schisms in light of recent events, which together demonstrate beyond a doubt the anarchic state of things for the GOP.

a.) Trump’s war with Fox

Ever since the first Republican debate, it has been clear that Trump has not liked Megyn Kelly; Trump went after her and Kelly’s network stuck by her, escalating the feud to include Fox.  Eventually, Fox News head Roger Ailes and Trump spoke, and let it be known they were on good terms.  However, it soon became clear that the personal good terms did not seem to extend how Trump felt about the network or Kelly, and over the past few months, regular pundits on Fox have been critical of Trump and Trump has been critical of Kelly and her network.  He flirted with the idea of skipping the last debate before the Iowa caucuses since Kelly was going to be a moderator, but did not sounds particularly emphatic regarding this possibility.  That changed when Fox News issued an official press release mocking Trump in very a satirical (and unprofessional) tone.  Trump responded angrily by definitively pulling out of the debate. 

I am not sure if people realize how incredibly unprecedented this is: both that the one major news organization that can be seen as a mouthpiece of the Republican Party was publicly attacking its front-runner a few days before the final debate before the nominating process officially began with the Iowa caucuses, and that the front-runner withdrew from a debate he had committed to almost at the last minute.  Either by itself would have been unprecedented enough.  This might have never happened before in American history, and certainly has not happened in the modern era. 

For a party that has so long been characterized (and characterized itself) as the more organized and disciplined of the two major parties, very few occurrences could so dramatically illustrate the rapid decline and internal chaos now afflicting that party.  Thus, a few days before the first contest in which Republican voters would begin choosing their nominee, the nation’s preeminent, most successful, and most dominant conservative news outlet was in open conflict with the the conservative party’s front-runner.  As a result, Trump announced that he would hold his own event to raise money for veterans instead of attending the debate, and the debate had the second-lowest ratings of any of the seven Republican debates held thus far.  And Trump did manage to raise $6 million for veterans, including a donation he made himself for $1 million.  While people can debate about the decorum of how veterans and their causes are used as political football, this is simply how American, and especially Republican, politics operate, and it is hard, objectively, to single Trump out on this measure.  At least in Trump’s case, $6 million was raised that would not have been raised otherwise. And he did this while his opponents squabbled and tore each other apart, hurting each other but not Trump.  Trump even opened by saying he would have liked to have gone to the debate, but framed it as a matter of principle, but mentioned also that Fox had reached out to him repeatedly, “apologized” (Fox did not use that word in its account), and was very nice, but that it was just too late.

Yes, somehow, Trump managed to (relatively) elevate himself above the debate’s political bickering and actually do something that helped people, and the network that was attacking him and decidedly not favoring him enabled this whole contrast to take place in the first place.  Apart from certain conservatives who are decidedly anti-Trump and tried to frame the whole situation as Trump being a coward and wanting to avoid a debate, the consensus from respectable pundits on both the right and the left, from Chuck Scarborough to David Gergen, is that Trump came out on top over Fox.

b.) Trump’s war with the right’s ideological intelligentsia

What passes for the Republicans’ version of an intelligentsia has been very anti-Trump from the start.  Now, one of the preeminent publications of conservative intellectual thought, National Review, has devoted almost an entire issue to attacking Trump in one of the biggest media broadsides directed at Trump to date.  The problem for The National review is that today’s Republican Party is clearly very much not an intellectual party and the party rank-and-file is in revolt against such intellectual elites, especially since the rise of the Tea Party, thus this little issue will have almost no effect on the race; very few Republicans will actually even read it…

c.) Trump vs. Cruz

They played nice for some time, but once the two were close in Iowa, the gloves came off, and their attacks against each other have definitely escalated.  There is something intensely satisfying about seeing such a darling of the Tea Party weighed down by Trump’s birtherism attacks, since the Tea Party has long embraced ludicrous birther conspiracy theoriesabout Obama.  Trump and Cruz have been hitting each other hard in the final days in Iowa, but only Cruz seems to have suffered significantly as a result.

d.) Cruz vs. Rubio

While there were previews of this fight before the latest Trumpless debate, that evening was when the two began their main assaults against each other (Rubio saying then that Cruz is “willing to say or do anything in order to get votes”), and now it is ugly.  With immigration as the central issue, Cruz is trying to portray Rubio as a capitulator and supporting what he terms “amnesty,” while Rubio maintains that Cruz’s entire campaign is “built on” a “lie:” Cruz’s sly, morphing position(s!) on immigration.  The two seem to have landed some good blows against each other, with neither clearly standing above the other, but Rubio is now trending up while Cruz is trending down.  In the final days before the caucuses, Cruz has directed most of his attacks against Rubio, seeing him as the biggest threat since he could emerge as a second second-place Trump-alternative over time, the position Cruz is currently tenuously occupying.  Cruz, then, is not running a campaign to beat Trump so much as he is trying to make himself appear as the only viable alternative to Trump.

e.) Most of the other Republican candidates vs. Cruz

Not only Trump and Rubio, but most of the rest of the candidates seem to be going after Cruz now, especially Rand Paul, because they see Cruz as the biggest obstacle between them and Trump; it seems no one wants to hurt Trump if it will only help Cruz run off with the nomination, something that says a lot about how fellow politicians—the people with whom a President Cruz would need to work—view him.  Maybe they also just don’t like him and see through his blatant posturing…

f.) Cruz vs. the media

Cruz has always portrayed the media as his enemy, and has tried, unsuccessfully, to play negative coverage and questions on his flip-flopping on immigration, his loan scandal, and about his constitutional eligibility to run for president as smears by the media.  His attempts to outright dismiss these issues  when pressed by the press (especially during and after the last Trumpless debate) have fallen flat.

g.) Iowa Republican leaders vs. Cruz 

Iowa’s long-term Republican governor, while not endorsing anyone, has come out strongly and somewhat unprecedentedly against Cruz.  And his Secretary of State has condemned Cruz’s campaign for mailing out false, manipulative flyers (see section 2.)

h.) Cruz vs. The Republican Establishment

While it is not clear who The Establishment will rally behind, this much is clear: it hates Cruz (see below)…

i.) The Republican Establishment vs. itself

Early in Trump’s candidacy, The (vaunted) Republican Establishment was decidedly anti-Trump and some of them had helped Gov. Jeb Bush build up a well-over $100 million war chest.  My, how things have changed: now, on one level, many of Bush’s donors are looking to bail on him and find a new candidate; on another, The Establishment is so anti-Cruz that some of themhave begun supporting Trump against Cruz as the lesser of two evils, though it remains to be seen both if this is a temporary measure or not, i.e., if they will turn on Trump if they can first vanquish Cruz.  For those who aren’t resigned to, or leaning towards, Trump, there are too many other candidates they favor collectively to be able to say any one of them has a clear advantage (“buzz” about Rubio has been constant, especially from Fox, but as of yet this has not materialized into enough support to mean anything significant for Rubio).  Where The Establishment will end is anyone’s guess, although we can certainly rule Cruz out.

j.) Rubio vs. Bush

Bush and Rubio have been going after each other for months, but one of the most intense moments was at the last, Trumpless debate, when Rubio hypocritically called out Bush for changing his position over immigration, citing Bush’s book; Bush had one of his best moments of the debates as he literally laughed off the charge, saying “So did you Marco!”and sold himself well as someone able to get things done, while Rubio just feebly repeated the same charge against Bush, again citing Bush’s book (where was this JEB! before?).  As the race goes forward, this rivalry between a former mentor and his former protégé looks only to get worse.

k.) Rubio vs. Christie

For whatever reasons (most likely because they are now competing for some of the same Establishment support) Gov. Christie and Rubio have been really getting into it recently.  Both in recent debates and on the campaign trail, the two have sharpened their attacks against each other are attacking each other more and more frequently.  At least in the debates, Christie seems to have gotten the best of Rubio usually; like Bush, Christie has skillfully pointed out Rubio’s hypocrisy, even sort of coming to Bush’s defense.  How these two interact, especially coming up in New Hampshire, where they are neck-and-neck, will be worth watching.  

Rubio may very well become the next Cruz, both to his benefit and to his detriment…

l.) Evangelicals vs. themselves

Evangelicals are divided.  But Evangelicals are more divided in Iowa than in they are nationally; Cruz’s higher margin of support with Evangelicals over Trump is weaker in Iowa than it is nationally.  In Iowa, Trump, by various measures, has the support of slightly more than two Evangelicals for every three Evangelicals that support Cruz.  Since Cruz is placing almost his entire candidacy on the support of Evangelicals, this is something of a problem for him.  Jerry Falwell Jr.’s recent endorsement of Trump also suggests problems for Cruz.  Additionally, Dr. Ben Carson is also taking a significant chunk of the Evangelical vote, even though he is far behind both Trump and Cruz.  It Trump wins Iowa and does well among evangelicals there, does this translate into more support for Trump among Evangelicals nationally?  It very well may…

m.) The Republican base vs. The Republican Establishment

No surprise here: this was one of the major stories of 2015 and even before that (just look at John Boehner’s tenure as Speaker of the House and the rise of the Tea Party) and will continue to be a major theme this election year; Donald Trump’s rise is only the main manifestation of this trend…

Reuters/Brian C. Frank

2.) The Last Stands of Ted and Bernie?

First, let me be clear: I am not making an outright comparison between Sens. Cruz and Sanders.  While Cruz is clearly an amazingly calculating liar, I will show in an upcoming piece that Bernie is not as extreme as some would make him out to be.  But the one thing they do have in common, other than being sitting senators, is that they need to win Iowa to give their campaigns any real chance of being competitive going forward.

Cruz’s desperation, in particular, is showing, as his pitches grow weirder, his tactics more extreme, even downright dirty: the Republican Secretary of State for Iowa has even called out Cruz for sending out misleading flyers to voters likely to support him falsely claiming that they would be guilty of voting “violations”  that would be on their “public record” if they did no go to the caucuses, essentially scaring voters who favor him into turning out.  Here, we truly see the level of respect that Cruz has for people in general and his supporters specifically.  Incredibly and tellingly, Cruz essentially defended the move by saying that the end justifies the means: “I will apologize to nobody for using every tool we can to encourage Iowa voters to come out and vote.”  The latest polls in Iowa have shown a steady Trump lead, a Cruz drop, and surge for #3 Rubio, while in New Hampshire, Cruz, far behind Trump, also appears to be losing ground, where others are gaining on Cruz or pulling even with him; if Cruz fails to prevail in Iowa, he could very well fall out of the top few places in New Hampshire, making it ever harder in a crowded field to build support nationally, where Cruz has only held a distant second place to Trump for less than two months, a spot he gained only just after rising to the #2 spot in Iowa, suggesting the two situations are related.  As I wrote a week ago, all the major signs point to a Trump win, whose support is also deeper than Cruz’s.  However, if Cruz does manage to defeat Trump—most likely by poaching other candidates’ supporters—he might be able to go forward successfully as the main anti-Trump candidate, as his success there would make it difficult for Marco Rubio or anyone else to build much momentum going forward.

Andrew Burton—Getty Images

As for Bernie, I don’t think a single sane commentator would suggest otherwise than that his campaign has surprised all and outperformed expectations by a large margin.  That being said, seventeen out of twenty-three polls since January 1st, including the six of the last seven polls (and one of those seven is the gold-standard final poll by polling virtuoso Ann Selzer), have Clinton ahead of Sanders, and her support is also more committed.  It seems the only way Bernie could beat Hillary is if he was able to have an Obamaesque effect on voter turnout, and while he does seem to have generated substantial enthusiasm, the level seems to fall far short of the unique, historic, Obama-level Iowa caucuses support.  Still, it remains close, and since, unlike Cruz, he was not trending down in the final polls, it would seem Bernie has a better chance of prevailing than Cruz.  At the same time, if Bernie cannot win in Iowa, it is extremely difficult to envision a path for him to the nomination save for some disaster for Clinton, like a health problem or an FBI indictment regarding her e-mail situation, both of which seem highly unlikely.  Why is Iowa so crucial for Bernie?  That’s because Bernie’s core support comes from white liberals, and, apart from his home state of Vermont and neighboring New Hampshire, no state has a higher percentage of white liberals than Iowa, and only Massachusetts ties it; these four states are also the only states out of fifty where white liberals make up at least half the Democratic electorate.  So Bernie is quite fortunate in that the first two contests for the nomination are in states that are as favorable as possible to him, two among the four states that are most predisposed to support him; if he is unable to win in Iowa, it would reconfirm the suspicious of those who have reasonable doubts about his ability to have widespread appeal and to win a general election, let alone a nomination.  It will be close, but Clinton has reason to be confident in victory (though hardly overhwhelmingly so), while, at the same time, Bernie really needs this a win here to stay relevant.

3.) “Iowa, You’re Fired!”

One final thought: especially if Trump (but also, to a lesser degree, if Sanders) wins in Iowa, expect (respective) Party elites to seriously begin a discussion about demoting Iowa from its current spot as the lead state in the nomination contest calendar.  This would be quite welcome and healthy, as Iowa in 2016 does not represent America as a whole well and Iowa’s caucuses are inherently undemocratic and involve a lot of social pressure and no privacy in voting.

Read follow up article: Politics From Iowa to New Hampshire: Out Of The Frying-Pan Into The Fire

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter(you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse January 18, 2016   

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) January 18th, 2016

AMMAN — Right away, this latest Republican debate started on a ridiculous note, a note it sustained throughout the entirety of its proceedings.  Moderator Maria Bartiromo asked Ted Cruz—now in second place behind perpetual front-runner Donald Trump—a question about jobs; instead, he began by answering with a monologue about ten U.S. sailors that it was reported were being detained by Iran at the time; stating that:

“Today, many of us picked up our newspapers, and we were horrified to see the sight of 10 American sailors on their knees, with their hands on their heads.  In that State of the Union, President Obama didn’t so much as mention the 10 sailors that had been captured by Iran. President Obama’s preparing to send $100 billion or more to the Ayatollah Khamenei. And I’ll tell you, it was heartbreaking.  But the good news is the next commander-in-chief is standing on this stage.”  (That remains to be seen, Ted)

Cruz then made a meaningless and ludicrous pledge: “And I give you my word, if I am elected president, no service man or service woman will be forced to be on their knees, and any nation that captures our fighting men will feel the full force and fury of the United States of America,” as if any president is capable of preventing any U.S. military personnel from being captured.  He looked like someone who had spent hours and hours and hours standing in front of a mirror practicing his “presidential” face to use when saying these macho but empty crowd-pleasing lines.  More than anything else, Cruz comes off looking like an actor from a for-cable B-quality action movie when he tried to give the audience his “I will kill terrorists face!” and I am not sure what is more pathetic: that this politician knows such theatrics will work so well with the simpletons of his party’s base, or that so many of those in his party find this appealing and have catapulted him to the Republican race’s #2 spot.

But most farcically ridiculous of all is that even as Cruz uttered these words, what had not yet been announced was that the sailors had already been released after unintentionally wading into Iranian waters.  Iran very quickly released the sailors not long after their detention after working out the details with the Obama Administration, and then Iran released five other Americas just hours before the nuclear deal between Iran, the U.S., and five other major world powers (UK, France, Germany, Russia, China) officially began being implemented whom Iran had detained or imprisoned.  What Cruz and his colleagues on the stage would never admit but what is undeniable is that the releases were almost certainly made easier, perhaps even made possible, because of the nuclear deal—which has opened much stronger lines of communication between the U.S. and Iran—that all of the Republicans are so strongly against.  So, here we have a bunch of people on the Republican debate stage who would have prevented this nuclear deal from occurring and most of whom vow to rescind it, which means fifteen Americans would almost certainly still be in Iranian custody; here we have Ted Cruz threatening military action when diplomacy more than sufficed and making an outlandish promise that American servicemen would never be captured under his watch, a promise that is impossible to keep. Then Ohio Gov. John Kasich said some stuff that didn’t make him sound like a crazy person, some of which sounded downright reasonable; nationally, he is polling at roughly 2.3% by Real Clear Politics’ average of the most recent polls, giving him close to a zero-percent chance of winning the nomination.

Yep, this all basically tells you everything you need to know about Republicans, the Republican Party, and Thursday night’s Republican debate.  I could stop here, but there is so much more to discuss.

I will admit that this was the most enjoyable Republican debate since the first one, largely because there were many fights between the candidates.  There were zingers abound.  Multiple people attacked Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio, as was to be expected since those two senators are between all the other candidates and being within striking distance of Trump, still reigning supreme.

It didn’t take too long for the burgeoning issue of whether or not Cruz is constitutionally eligible to run for president—the whole “natural born Citizen” issue arising from Article II Section 1 of the Constitution—since Cruz was born in Canada.  Cruz dismissed the issue with a technique he would use to dismiss any and all attacks or tough questions about him or his record: he accused those of bringing it up as playing politics or playing into the narrative of “the mainstream media,” which played well with the Republican-base debate audience but will get him nowhere in a general election.  Trump was given a chance to opine on this issue after Cruz had tried to swat it away, and to Trump’s credit (that is not a phrase you will see me write often), Trump did not back down, but repeated the very sound points that 1.) there is no consensus and that legal opinion is divided and that 2.) it is better for Republicans to handle and settle this now than allow Democrats to use it as an issue in the general election. 

Cruz supporters booed loudly during this explanation but Trump stayed strong and ended his points with loud applause from others in the crowd.  It is nice to see that Trump’s birther antics can be effective on both sides of the aisle, as not only was Trump able to help fuel a cloud of (inane nonsensical) doubt around Obama concerning his eligibility to be president and his citizenship years ago, but now Trump has been able to help fuel a similar (more legitimate) cloud of doubt around Cruz and his eligibility.  I plan to address this whole eligibility question in a separate article, but for now, it is suffice to say that Cruz’s attempt to push this issue aside at the debate will have failed miserably in the eyes of far too many people in his own party, let alone non-Republicans, as even before this debate one of every four Republicans felt Cruz’s Canadian birth location disqualifies him from running for president; Cruz’s defense, and Trump’s attack, will hardly see subsequent polls produce a lower measure on this metric and it will dog Cruz throughout the primaries. 

New York Daily News/Reuters

Trump also got in another response to Cruz that, I am ashamed to admit, I thought was great: I consider myself a New Yorker, so perhaps I am biased, but I thought that when Cruz stood by his “New York values” comment, Trump really did a great job of making Cruz look “callous” and hollow.  Frankly, it was Trump’s best moment in any debate as far as I’m concerned; with just that one moment, Trump may have increased his support even more so.  While Cruz cheaply and repeatedly plays regional politics, Trump, as far as I can tell, has been careful to build his appeal all over the country.  Additionally, Cruz’s blame-the-media mantra as a response to a question about his recent loan scandals (he failed to properly disclose about $1 million in personal loans when he ran for the Senate, including a major loan from Goldman Sachs, where his wife worked at the time and still works) also, I believe, will fall flat with many primary voters.

Trump was not the only one to go after Cruz: Rubio and he also sparred on immigration.  Cruz effectively painted what he termed “that Rubio-Schumer amnesty bill”—simply noting Rubio’s bipartisan effort is enough to be an effective attack in this setting—while Rubio accused Cruz of flip-flopping (an understatement, as Cruz might have engaged in one of the most carefully planned, most shameless and calculated lies in American political history in an effort to play both sides of the immigration debate and to leave his options open depending on where the political winds and popular mood shifted throughout his quest for power, as William Saletan of Slate shows in his epic and irrefutable takedown and its accompanying timeline; I’ve written before that Cruz is undeniably a disingenuous charlatan and demagogue, but now we can demonstrably prove that Cruz is an “spectacular liar,” thanks to Saletan).  Cruz’s response to Rubio was to jokingly compliment him on being able to recite his team’s opposition research on him, and Rubio incredulously interjected “No, it’s your record!” back at Cruz, what I felt was one of his best lines of the night. 

Cruz sure talked a lot (more than anyone else) and had plenty of chances to make his points and be heard, but did little to reassure when he played defense

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, within striking distance of emerging as a strong second-tier candidate behind Trump, also got a good swipe in on Rubio, noting how hypocritical Rubio was at an earlier debate for chiding Bush for attacking him, Rubio had said, to help his poll numbers, when it seemed that Rubio was doing the same on the campaign trail when it came to Christie:

“I stood on the stage and watched Marco, and rather indignantly, look at Governor Bush and say, someone told you that because we’re running for the same office, that criticizing me will get you to that office.  It appears that the same someone has been whispering in old Marco’s ear too.  And so the indignation that you carry on, some of the stuff, you have to also own, then.”

Additionally, Christie contrasted his executive experience as a governor with the “talking” senators.  Christie also often appeared more adult that the candidates who were bickering but also managed some good zingers throughout the night that were well-received by the crowd.  Christie might have helped himself a bit, but he has never been terribly popular with Republicans nationally. And yet, the type of Republicans who could really help him—the independent, moderate-minded New Hampshire ones—might see his stronger series of performances after this one as reason enough to move to him from Kasich, who is less of a solid performer on debate stages even as he is ones of the most sensible candidates (Christie had several memorably positive moments in this debate, while it  is hard to identify any specific moments where Kasich could be said to have possibly increased his support).  Still, Kasich seems to be running a good campaignin New Hampshire.  They are both competing to be able to have some sort of result in New Hampshire that they can use to build momentum, and it is likely that only one of these two will be able to do so there.  After that, it becomes difficult for both as they are more or less Northerners in the eyes of Southerners who will be competing in a number of key primaries in Southern states, where they have almost no support.

Rubio was not bad, but was certainly not great.  He opened his comments with a deceitful, slanderous, already debunked attack on Hillary re: Benghazi, as well as with other spurious, empty attacks on her re: foreign policy, and later, even Fox-News conservative moderator Neil Cavuto pushed back against Rubio’s ludicrous, unsubstantiated claims that Obama “would” “confiscate every gun in America” and “get rid of the Second Amendment” if he “could.” Of course these played over well with the crowd and the base, but effective attacks from Cruz and Christie limited his ability to shine and he still struggles in trying to break out.

Jeb Bush, well, poor Jeb: he is campaigning much, much better now than he was this summer but it is probably too little, too late.  He spoke out passionately, yet again, against banning all Muslims from coming into America.  His content is better than most of the others’ on stage, but his delivery is still just a bit off even as it has gotten better.  It makes sense for him to stick around since he has so much money and thus a realistic chance to exert some influence on the race, the party, and the GOP platform, but as far as winning his party’s nomination, we may as well be writing his political campaign’s obituary… And yet, a glimmer of hope: the most recent South Carolina poll has him third, climbing back into relevancy; perhaps his money is paying off? And while it’s hard to see how he make up the huge gap between him and Trump there in one month, that bit of good news coupled with Cruz’s recent scandals is the only thing preventing me from declaring his campaign dead in the water.

And Dr. Carson?  Well, the oddballs who still support him likely didn’t see anything to make then run away from Carson in this debate, but it is certain that nobody else saw anything from him to bring them over to Carson.  In fact, he may as well have not even been there for all the good it did him; he himself joked, when asked his first question, that he was about to fall asleep, and frankly, I can’t see how that would have made any difference whatsoever on his impact in the debate.

Part of me missed Rand Paul, but I’m not a foaming-at-the-mouth GOP-baser who was never going to support him in the first place.  I did not miss Fiorina from the main stage at all: as I have written before, her business record is horrendous and she is a master of distortion while she also plays the gender card as cheaply as I’ve seen anyone ever play it in politics.  The only person who sounds as rehearsed as her is Cruz.  I’d love to see them both marginalized for the sake of the health of our democracy, but at the same time, a Cruz-Fiorina ticket (which is, to me, extremely unlikely) would be a dream come true for the Democratic Party.

So what happened?  Trump, Cruz, and Christie all had strong moments, but Cruz took some damage while the other two seemed pretty unscathed.  Rubio appeared competent and confident but was not the standout he needed to be even as he also took damage, while Carson and Kasich might as well not have been there for all their presence did to actually help them.  Bush either fits in with Carson or Kasich, or, if his campaign has a chance of being resuscitated, he at least didn’t do anything to have its life support cut off, but he remains a longshot unless either Christie or Kasich drop out after New Hampshire and endorse him (a lot of ifs there, and both are running ahead of him there), and even then would be nowhere near a favorite.

My prediction is that Trump—who could be said to be the big winner in this debate—stays on top and gains nationally and in Iowa and New Hampshire at Cruz’s expense, though I’m not sure how much.  It is hard to say whether Cruz will yield his spot to Rubio in Iowa or stay strong there and within striking distance of Trump.  It’s hard to say if Rubio goes up or down, and who gains at his expense if he goes down (Christie?  Kasich?  Bush?).  Maybe some evangelicals worried about Cruz might even flock back to Carson, though not because of anything Carson himself did.  Are either Trump, Cruz, or Rubio vulnerable enough to provide an opening for anyone else?  I have a feeling that those who left Carson won’t come back, but then again, Iowa does have a lot of evangelicals…  The Christie-Kasich dynamic in New Hampshire is interesting, so it will be telling to see where they move in the polls there between now and Iowa, where neither of them have a chance for any kind of a respectable showing; their hopes lie in New Hampshire.  As for Cruz, I think he absolutely needs a strong showing in Iowa to have a shot; if he does not finish in at least second place, evangelicals in Southern States will likely drift to other candidates.  If not Trump or Carson, does this mean a surprise, zombie-like surge from Huckabee or Santorum?  Fiorina is done as presidential material, but she could be quite an attractive vice-presidential candidate so expect her to stick around as long as she possible can.  All in all, lots of possibilities here.

In the end, though, I think this debate will remembered as the moment when Trump successfully fought off Cruz and also as the moment when Cruz entered peaking and left on the decline, and though I wouldn’t rule him out of Iowa yet, my prediction is Trump wins Iowa or virtually ties with Cruz and wins big in New Hampshire even if he doesn’t win Iowa.  Cruz’s scandals have the potential to really hurt him if he continues to trot out the garbage responses he gave to them in this debate. Trump is also way up in South Carolina, so the chance for someone else to derail Trump is now and after this debate, it is going to me much more difficult for Cruz to be that person, and right now there is not anyone else even close to derailing trump, as I can’t see Rubio and don’t see anyone else succeeding in that task, either, even if “The Establishment” is coalesces behind someone.  Keep in mind that more Republicans now see Trump as someone they could support being their nominee, a clear majority and dramatically way more than this summer. 

As I wrote back in early August, don’t dismiss The Donald.

What else does all this clearly show?  That the Democratic Party is the only mature, sane major party in America.

Other GOP debate coverage from this author:

December Republican Debate Exposed GOP As Joke on National Security

Republican “Debate” Circus Round 2: Trump vs. Fiorina and Why the Kids’-Table Debate Was Better

The Republican Field & Debate: Substance vs. Style: What Trumps What?

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, andTwitter(you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse January 16, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) January 16th, 2016

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

AMMAN — I apologize to my readers that this has not been put out sooner, but life, the holidays, all sorts of things can get in the way. Yet the serious issues raised by the mid-December Republican debate have not gone away, and are still just as relevant then as they are now, thus, this analysis, while a month after the event, is still relevant to the election and to the issues of security and foreign policy. The security-oriented debate was perhaps the most banal and predictable Republican debate yet. Most candidates said nothing novel or new, and simply repeated soundbites that have grown to be as repetitive as they are hollow and hyperbolic. On issues of international security, the Republicans are as loud as they are on any issue, and provide as stark a contrast to the Democrats as they do on any other issue, too. It is worth taking a brief look at the content of the debate (though almost nothing new was said), and then to contrast what leading Republicans’ present vs. what the Democratic front-runners present.

Gov. Jeb Bush competently called for safe zones and a no fly zone and spoke out against Trump’s Islamophobic ideas repeatedly. You almost had to feel bad for him: one of the least extreme candidates on the Republican side with roughly the most relevant experience has failed to launch repeatedly and is going nowhere fast. Sen. Rand Paul thoughtfully noted that America must be restrained, especially with Russia and notions of regime change, so as not to make things worse, and spoke out against surveillance. Gov. Kasich sounded moderate (except when he called for a Gulf War I-style invasion to take out ISIS), but said nothing terribly memorable or impactful. After these moments, apart from a somewhat interesting kerfuffle over surveillance, most of the rest of the debate was just hot-air bombast. And all these candidates, who are among the most substantive of the field depending on the issue, are all doing terribly in the polls (except for Kasich in NH, who is polling respectably in NH relative to everyone but Trump) and don’t seem poised to win anything.

Now, for the leaders: Dr. Carson just seemed to be the Donny of the debate: out of his element (what is surprising is that so many people don’t realize just how out of his element he is). I recognized him as woefully unpreparedfor prime-time as of the first Republican debate, and though his star has faded from his peak at the #2 spot behind Trump, I still feel Carson’s popularity with so many Republicans is a justified basis for my sustained contempt for those very Republicans, and by contempt I am referring to my feelings for them supporting someone who is so clueless when it comes to policy and politics.

As for the rest of the candidates, they pretty much tried their best to do their best John Wayne imitations, because in their minds, complicated geopolitics and dynamic terrorist movements operating in complex social, political, ethnic, and religious spheres call for Hollywood-inspired, simplistic solutions embodied by tough-talk soundbites and cowboy posing (their elevation of Reagan to the level of semi-deity should leave no doubt about this). These other candidates—Trump, Sen. Cruz, Sen. Rubio, Fiorina, and Gov. Christie (the first three now representing the top three candidates nationally)—almost farcically and comically competed as to who could sound the toughest against the terrorists. “KILL!” “DESTROY!” “CARPET-BOMB!” “HUNT DOWN!”” blah blah blah…

One of the most nonsensical moments came when Cruz, who had earlier recklessly said he wanted to find out “if sand can glow in the dark,” was asked if he would “carpet-bomb” Raqqa, ISIS’s “caliphate’s” “capital,” even though there were hundreds of thousands of civilians there; his response was that he would not bomb a city but, instead, would bomb where the ISIS soldiers were (HINT: THEY ARE IN RAQQA THE CITY, TED!). Yes, just another moment when the rhetoric was exposed as wholly inappropriate to the situation, and yet, almost invariably, such extremist statements were met with wild applause from the Republicans in the audience.  Fiorina, lying and misleading as much as ever, made it clear that she was an expert on national security because she named the Sixth Fleet… by name! Rubio sounded completely foolish when he (sensibly) noted that the main fight against ISIS had to be carried out by Sunni Muslims in the Middle East, then just moments later criticized Obama and Clinton for “leading from behind” and “outsource[ing] foreign policy,” apparently oblivious to the stupendous contradiction involved. So even though Rubio was often making more sense than the other leading candidates, he had plenty of moments when matched them in ridiculousness. Yes, these candidates stumbled over each other trying to sound as macho as possible in order to win the support of their childish Republicans base.

At this point, it’s useful to be reminded of some clear contrasts between the Republicans and the Democrats on foreign policy (especially for all the fools who claim there is no difference between the two parties):

1.) Hillary Clinton, the democratic candidate with the most relevant experience and the most moderate positions, is the front-runner, and has at least a 90-95% chance of winning the nomination according to statistics prodigy and super-accurate election predictor Nate Silver (he got every single state’s choice in the 2012 presidential election correct in his predictions); on the Republican side, the candidates with the least experience and most extreme positions are leading and, combined, dwarf the support of experienced, more reasoned moderates.

2.) For all their tough talk, top Republican candidates have offered very little specifically that would do now differently than Obama; they say they want to bomb ISIS, but Obama is doing that; several say they want push Sunni Muslims to lead the fight against ISIS with the promise of more aid if they do so, but Obama is doing that; they say they want to arm the Kurds, but Obama is doing that. The main differences amount to how they would talk about ISIS (more John Wayne/Reagan-esque posing line delivery!) and what they would do in terms of refugee entry into the U.S. All this more or less applies to the situation with Russia and Ukraine, too: you can count on Republicans to come up with needlessly provocative bombast even as they struggle to fault the specifics of his overall strategy. Thus, in general, the nebulous Republican criticism of Obama has more to do with semantics and style than with actual policy, and their “solutions” have proven maddeningly lacking in specifics.  They basically say they will continue Obama’s policies and strategy, just more intensely and forcefully, ignoring the potential negative consequences of going too far.  In other words, they have learned nothing from George W. Bush’s Iraq War.

lacking in specifics.  They basically say they will continue Obama’s policies and strategy, just more intensely and forcefully, ignoring the potential negative consequences of going too far.  In other words, they have learned nothing from George W. Bush’s Iraq War.

3.) However, one clear difference is that Republicans in general are far more willing to deploy American troops on the ground in harm’s way, and, it should be added, without any exit specific exit strategy, and are, in general, willing to rely more on force while disdaining diplomacy (see their response to the Iran nuclear deal), than are Democrats.

4.) Another clear difference is that Republicans, in general, seem less concerned with inflicting civilian casualties in fighting ISIS than Democrats

I suppose it is easy to see why the leading Republican candidates are ableto appeal to less educated voters with a cartoon understanding of the world that think the solution to Putin and ISIS is to for America to be more like John Wayne. Again, their hero Ronald Reagan is basically a second-rate, wannabe John Wayne, so this should not be any surprise. That so many Republican voters are falling for this silly nonsense is just another indication of the vast gulf between Democrats and Republicans in terms of seriousness and credibility on the major issues of the day.

See also: review of most recent Republican debate

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at @bfry1981)

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse November 24, 2015  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) November 24th, 2015

Carolyn Kaster / AP

One of the most annoying things about today’s Republican Party is that they constantly disregard core American values in favor of inventing their own, often creating new ideology based on the exclusion and denigration of others. The Republican campaign season began with an assault on illegal immigrants; now, the Republicans have set their sights on Syrian refugees, unleashing their latest broadsides on them. While Republicans currently fit into a strong nativist tradition in American history, this tradition has always contradicted the core founding principles of the United States of America and it is remarkable how even in 2015 those espousing such principles do not see how much their ideas contradict the core spirit of America. The contrasting tradition of bringing in wave after wave of immigrants and integrating them as unique parts of America, helping us to grow and change in exciting and productive ways, is a much stronger tradition.  Steve Jobs of Apple fame was a Syrian migrant’s orphan, and he is but one in a long list of famous American immigrants, from famed Yankees’ closer Mariano Rivera and Arnold Schwarzenegger to Andrew Carnegie and Albert Einstein.

It is amazing but also predictable how immediately after the Paris attacks, Republicans began to use that tragedy as a prop for their anti-immigrant/refugee shenanigans. There are three main tracks of this phenomenon: Republican presidential candidates, Republican, governors, and Republicans in Congress, and each track deserves a separate discussion.

The Presidential Candidates

As for the presidential campaign, none of the candidates on the Republican side have come out in favor of taking in Syrian refugees in the wake of the Paris attacks, with the exceptions of Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Ted Cruz; Bush wants to help refugees in general but to “focus” on Christian refugees, with the rationale that they in particular do not have a place to go in the Middle East (not entirely accurate but there are not many places they would be welcome there), but he would not exclude Muslims (this makes him, to his credit, the only recognizable—sorry Jim Gilmore—GOP candidate who is allowing for the possibility right now of settling Muslims refugees from Syria, even if one can view his desire to concentrate on Christian refugeeswith apprehension); Cruz has indicated that only Christian Syrians should be allowed into the United States. The rest of the pack—Dr. Ben Carson, Govs. Chris Christie, John Kasich, Mike Huckabee, George Pataki, Carly Fiorina, Sens. Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, and the recently exited Gov. Bobby Jindal—much like with the debate on immigration, seems to be pulled in a certain direction by leading contender Donald Trump, with he and all of them saying a loud “NO!” to Syrian refugees. Most seem to be doing so on the grounds of questioning the Obama Administration’s ability to competently screen refugees, but some seem to be suggesting significant numbers of refugees would be terrorists wishing us harm. Trump let it be known he would send them back out of the country if elected, and Dr. Carson even compared Syrian refugees to “rabid dogs.” And, sadly, some of these candidates were for helping Syrian refugees before the attacks in Paris.

In contrast, Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Gov. Martin O’Malley both want to bring in even more (up to 65,000 next year) refugees than the 10,000 Obama is planning to accept in 2016, and Bernie Sanders is also for taking in refugees, just another of many clear contrasts between the Republican and Democratic candidates this political season.

Republican Governors

Since 2012, not even 1,900 Syrian refugees have been settled in the United States. As for November 16th, twenty-five Republican governors had vowed to bar Syrian refugees from—or are against any entering—their states. This number has increased slightly since then as of November 19th, to include thirty-one governors of thirty-one states, thirty of which have Republican governors. Dr. Ben Carson even tweeted in solidarity with the governors not taking in Syrian refugees by showing a map of all the states saying no to taking in Syrian refugees but by showing a map that was, hilariously, disturbingly, and unsurprisingly to many, filled with mistakes and geographical errors:

Thus, basically, America’s Republican governors are pretty much against settling refugees in their states.

Republicans in Congress

Congress also seems intent on working against Obama’s program to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year. While some Congressional Republicans are calling for harsher measures or are using inflammatory rhetoric (one Alabama Republican Congressman claimed Syrian refugees were coming to the U.S. for a “paid vacation” and to mooch off of American welfare programs), the Republican-led House recently passed bill with some Democratic support that calls for reforms to increase scrutiny of refugees and the security procedures designed to vet them. It does not explicitly call for a long pause or a stoppage of the refugee resettlement program. But its critics contend that the changes are so sweeping and cumbersome that the process of implementing these changes would de facto result in a cessation of the program for some time, and that this is the very intent behind the legislation. This is why the White House announced that Obama would veto this legislation if the Senate passed a version of it. As it stands, the refugee application process is the hardest way to get into the United States, and can take up to two years; this leads me to agree with those who think that perhaps the Republican-led effort to make this process even more difficult is, at least in part and in the minds of some of its proponents, an effort to de facto stop the admission of Syrian refugees altogether (this is not unlike what was regrettably done concerning Jewish refugees hoping to come to America in the WWII-era; Anne Frank and her family were denied entry as refugees by the U.S.). Though more benign than simply barring Syrian refugees, the House’s Republican-dominated plan elongating and intensifying an already thorough process would seem to have the same effect as an outright ban, at least in the short-term future.

*****

Helping Syrian Refugees: as American as Apple Pie

Let’s be clear: denying most or all Syrian (Muslim) refugees passage into the United States would just be cruel, immoral, irrational, and bad policy. The current screening process is very thorough and it can take up to two years to get into the U.S. as a refugee, hardly a good timeline for committing terrorism, hence the 9/11 hijackers came in as tourists and students, not refugees, and none of the Islamic-motivated/linked terrorist acts in the U.S. since then have been perpetrated by refugees. Refugees, then, are not committing terrorism in the U.S. these days and are, if properly screened, a very minimal threat. I’m not going to write here that it is the burden of the U.S. to take in the most Syrian refugees; others should be shouldering that burden (I’m talking to you, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the rich Gulf, and it was Europe, not the U.S., which drew the disastrous borders of the modern Middle East at the end of WWI that still cause so many problems today, with France becoming the occupying power in Syria from 1919-1946). But I not only support Obama’s modest proposals to take in Syrian refugees, I support Hillary Clinton’s proposal to take in a lot more refugees than Obama is proposing. Republican efforts to shut the door to the some of the world’s most vulnerable people fleeing a deadly, brutal, and long civil war is hardly America taking a brave stance to help those facing death and persecution; rather, it is cowardly and pathetic. In general, three out of four Syrian refugees are women and children, and only two percent of Syrian refugees settled thus far in the U.S. are single men of military fighting age. Despite Republican claims, the current and thorough system actually has a very good track record and the idea that the Obama Administration would sloppily allow large numbers of terrorists into the U.S. as refugees is unfounded.

George Takei—Commander Sulu of Star Trek fame—was unjustly interned as a little boy along well over 100,00 other Japanese-American immigrants and citizens during WWII, thus, when he cautioned his Facebook followers that Americans needed to avoid letting the tragedy of the Paris attacks wrongly turn into fear, paranoia, and mistreatment of refugees and immigrants, he was speaking from experience.

Helping people in need is supposed to define us when we Americans are at our best. The poem written in honor of and engraved inside the base of the Statue of Liberty (a gift from France) reads: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” As Hillary Clinton exclaimed passionately to a crowd of supporters recently, “We can’t act as though we’re shutting the doors to people in need without undermining who we are as Americans and the values we have stood for!” Shutting the door to Syrian refugees, mostly women and children, as far too many Republicans want to do, simply plays into ISIS’s propaganda that the U.S. is anti-Muslim and that we are in a civilizational war to the death against the Islamic Ummah (global community). Integrating the refugees of Syria seeking a better life into the American fabric will only make us stronger and render ISIS propaganda as impotent as it is inaccurate, as Muslims fleeing ISIS oppression who settle into America and prosper as Muslims who are free to worship their religion the way they see fit, free from the terror of suicide bombings, forced sexual slavery, and beheadings, is a vision of hope that ISIS can never offer its followers and is among the best possible counters to ISIS’s destructive ideology. Yet once again, by talking tough with little thought for the real world consequences of their actions, Republicans are making us less safe, not safer, by empowering our enemies and their extremism.

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The events of the past summer and fall have clearly shown that there is only one major political party for rational, thinking adults in America, and here you will see the eleven major events from this period that have shown beyond all reasonable doubt that the Republican Party is no longer a serious political party and that only the Democrat Party provides Americans with an actual ability to govern.

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse November 13, 2015  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) November 13, 2015

Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

AQABA, EILAT, HAIFA, and TEL AVIV — An extraordinary series of events has occurred over the past few months: more so than at any other time in recent decades and possibly far longer than that, the American people have been treated to an exceptionally clear, stark contrast between its two major political parties. The contrast clearly shows there is a moderately-left-of-center Democratic Party that is inclusive, interested in governance, and pursues data/study-informed policy competing with a far-right, being-pushed-farther-to-the-right Republican Party that is exclusive, hates government, and is increasingly basing its positions on fear, irrationality, emotion, and anti-intellectualism.

Several events of late have made this contrast absolutely clear:

1.) Trump and Trumpism

When Donald Trump exploded onto the scene this summer, he immediately catapulted to the top spot in the Republican race and has held steady nationally there and in most states ever since, only recently sharing that spot with Dr. Ben Carson. There is no equivalent to The Donald on the left, or anywhere else, for that matter. That a loud-mouthed, brawling TV personality and real estate magnate like Donald Trump could rise to dominate the Republican Party is a uniquely Republican phenomenon.

The contrast is clear: if there was someone like Trump running for president now on the Democratic side, he would be shunned as a fringe candidate by Democratic voters and would likely not have even been invited to participate in the debates. There is not a chance the Democrats would flock to a Trump the way Republicans have, and this is a glaringly obvious difference.

Furthermore, his style of trading playground insults, making grandiose claims without providing details, and constantly describing one’s self in an unending stream of superlatives (“HUGE” and “THE BEST”) is simply anathema to the Democrats’ style: they have preferred candidates who are more measured, wonkish, and specific for many years.

2.) Everything about the Iran nuclear deal

I have written about this before, so I will just reiterate here: on an issue of such momentous and historic importance as finally being able to thaw our-decades-long cold war with Iran, the Republican Party has shown itself to not only to be blindly ignorant of the real world consequences having this deal or not having this deal, but also of the very basics of how diplomacy and international negotiation work. As I wrote previously, there simply is no logical argument against this deal when it stacked up against the real-world feasible alternatives. Republican (and Israeli) opposition only takes us far closer to war, further instability, and nuclear proliferation. In addition, the Republicans showed they were far from above treating this issue in the most partisan manner possible. That the GOP is willing to play politics with global war and peace and issues of national security is not something lost on the experts, and even some major Republicans who have held significant security-related positions in the past, like Gen. and Sec. of State Colin Powell, Sec. of Defense and CIA Director Robert Gates, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, and NSA Director Zbigniew Brezinski, have come out for it. But the people in the driver’s seat of today’s Republican Party did not seem to notice this. Many others will.

3.) The Republican debates

One after the other, the Republican main-stage debates provided a juvenile attempt at kow-towing to the base and trading insults in an atmosphere of fantastical illogic, devoid of substance and reason. The most substantive candidates were relegated to the sidelines, while the least qualified and most foolish were front and center. The leading Republicans candidates tended to focus on issues that are hardly the main issues affecting the American people: a blatant distortion of Planned Parenthood resulting from some highly edited videos, thus returning to the culture-war issue of abortion, along with a heavy and illogical focus on illegal immigration and vague talk of “leadership” in international affairs. The first two debates, especially, had a real circus-like atmosphere, while the third saw the candidates behave as if they finally realized they looked like a circus in the previous two and then saw them unite to whine about the so-called “liberal media” asking unfair (i.e., tough) questions. This is from the party that says Obama is not tough enough to stand up to ISIS, China, and Putin, but who cry like babies because of a few low-stature cable news moderators giving them a tough time. Most recently, Dr. Carson has engaged in a megawhinefest just because the media is asking reasonable questions about his background and his rather shocking claims on everything from boyhood fights to the Egyptian pyramids. I have not seen the latest GOP debate, but from all the coverage I have seen, little seems to have changed.

4.) Relative position of more extreme candidates in terms of support in Republican, Democratic Parties

While I touched on this in the last section, this point is important enough to make it separately: in the Republican race, generally the crazier less serious the candidate, the more popular that candidate is with Republican voters: hence, Trump and Dr. Carson are vying to be #1. Rubio seems to be a semi-exception in the #3 spot, but the champions of irrationality and foolishness can be happy again with Ted Cruz solidly in the #4 spot. That’s right: 1, 2, and 4 are extremists who say the most outlandish things. One can accuse Bernie Sanders with some fairness being a relatively extreme candidate in terms of his rhetoric, and he is a declared socialist. And yet, Sanders has pretty much always been far behind Clinton nationally, and never been close to being supported by a majority of democratic voters. He has only led temporarily in two states (Iowa and NH) and has since lost ground to Clinton who now leads handily in Iowa and is neck-and-neck in NH. Clinton is a moderate, pragmatic, and practical politician who is focused on results and not ideology or crowd-pleasing rhetoric. So, with the Democrats, the electable, mature, more serious candidate has dominated almost entirely, while the on the Republican side the candidate who is a verbal brawler and has no political experience—Trump—has dominated the race national and locally since he announced his candidacy and now shares the top spot with Dr. Carson, who has zero political experience as well and is a virtual wind-up-toy that spews nonsense and offensive commentary non-stop. The contrast in the thoughts and composition and maturity of the two parties could not be clearer.

5.) The Planned Parenthood “scandal”

It is a well known fact that in general, Republicans oppose abortion. Less well known factually is that Planned Parenthood is not an organization whose primary purpose is to provide abortions and access to them, but, rather, focuses on a variety of other health services to women; abortion accounts for only about 3% of its activities for roughly 12% of its clients. But Republicans don’t seem to want to know such details, and seek to 1.) frame the organization as “an abortion factory” and 2.) to completely defund all government funding for the organization regardless of how it would negatively impact the 97% of non-abortion activities and how that would harm millions of women who otherwise have limited access to certain health services. The Republicans have made so much noise about this you would think it is both the #1 issue on the minds of Americans and the #1 issue in terms of importance (it is hardly either). They have also engaged in outright massive distortion of the issue, trying to portray Planned Parenthood as some sort of organization that is focused mainly on abortion and on harvesting organs from live babies to sell to research organizations based on a few isolated, misinterpreted anecdotes. Republicans even went to the extent of the threat of a government shutdown over the funding of this organization; basically, the House, controlled by the Republicans, would refuse to pass any spending bill that would include funding for Planned Parenthood, including routine bills to increase the debt ceiling (without which the United States would default on its debt payments and jeopardize its credit rating) and keep the government fully open and functioning; such bills completely defunding Planned Parenthood would not pass the Senate and would not come anywhere near enough the two-thirds support required in either the House or the Senate to overcome a presidential veto from Obama.

And as far as the Democrats distorting an issue and an organization that provides invaluable services to women’s health and trying to defund said organization by using the threat (on ANY issue!) of a government shutdown and/or the U.S. defaulting on its debt obligation? Yeah, that’s just the Republicans, 110%.

6.) The first Democratic debate

By the time the first Democratic debate occurred, the Republicans had made clear to the world what they were about and how they conducted themselves. In stark contrast, Hillary Clinton engaged with Bernie Sanders in a relatively substantive discussion that showed they had a command of the issues and that was mostly cordial, polite, and focused on problems that Americans are actually concerned about. The discussion was more about policy and less about rhetoric, slogans, and talking points. Even the “attacks” that came most often from the (distantly) second-tier candidates were low-intensity and far more civil than the insults being flung at the Republican debates. But even the fringe candidates came off as serious and able to discuss issues of substance in a way the Republican front-runners have generally been unable to do. Jim Webb, the conservative Democrat who dropped out after the first debate, would immediately be one of the more substantive candidates in a Republican debate.

So, on the Republican stage, you have a massive clown car stealing center stage, and the substantive people are kept of the car and struggle to be relevant in the race; on the Democratic stage, the most serious candidates dominate, and even the lesser candidates behave like relatively substantive adults. That’s about as different as it gets.

7.) The Benghazi hearing fiasco

I wrote quite a bit about this before, so I will just give a brief summary here: a bunch of junior upstart House Republicans decided it would be a great idea to investigate Hillary Clinton on Benghazi even though there have been eight previous investigations (one State, two Senate, and five Republican-led House investigations) that did not succeed in tearing her down. Their committee uncovers Hillary’s ill-fated decision to use a private e-mail server in her home for her work as Secretary of State and, rather than focus on Benghazi, it focuses on her e-mails. Several Republicans came out and admitted that this is a political witch hunt. The Republican upstarts then confront Hillary Clinton, one of the most seasoned and experienced and articulate politicians still in service in America, in an eleven-hour public hearing that totally exposes them for the ill-prepared, ignorant, imbalanced, rude, and partisan hacks that they are while practically turning the hearing into a campaign commercial highlighting Clinton’s many strengths. On top of that, her fellow Democrats on the Committee fully exposed the hypocrisies, falsehoods, and inconsistencies in the behavior of the committee’s Republicans. Basically, the GOP came off looking like total ignorant fools whose partisanship knows no bounds and in front of the whole nation and they succeeded in enhancing Clinton’s national position greatly by sending such underwhelming nobodies to take on the force of nature known as Hillary Clinton.

8.) Pope Francis comes to America

Pope Francis came to America recently. Besides moving Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner to tears (repeatedly!), Pope Francis reminded Americans that Christians can at least have the ability to be loving, kind, inclusive, open, warm, and fun. In other words, cool. Like Pope Frank. We even found out that the Pope did not want to meet right-wing intolerantand religiously crazy Kim Davis and that his people distanced the Pope from herafter the “meeting” was made public. Basically, Frank was letting America know that he did not endorse her views, actions, or brand of Christianity. Yet Kim Davis’s Evangelical version of Christianity—intolerant, hypocritical, imposing, harsh, exclusive, judgmental, and white ethno-centric/nationalistic—is the version that the Republican Party has embraced; Francis’s Catholicism, on the other hand, was a stark contrast as he surrounded himself with the poor and people of color and all nationalities during his visit. A Republican Francis ain’t.

9.) The exit of John Boehner

Partly moved by the Pope’s visit, partly frustrated with being one of the only pragmatic, practical, and realistic voices in the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, and getting little love on the right or the left for his heroic and taxing roles in preventing government shutdowns, longtime conservative and Republican leader and Speaker of the House John Boehner surprised Washington with his resignation. The Republican base cheered, making it clear they felt there was no room in their party for pragmatic compromisers. As a parting gifts to America, Boehner avoided a shutdown and then rammed through a spending bill to prevent further shutdown fights for the next two years, with mostly Democratic and only modest Republican support. When the Republican party base and many of the Republican presidential candidates complaining that Boehner isn’t conservative enough and cooperated too much with Obama, it’s clear something is rotten in the state of Denmark…

10.) The rise of Carson and Carsonism

Add the inexperience of trump, but take away Trump’s brawling approach and the desire to actually govern and add a whole lot of right-wing Christian religious gibberish, and you get the soft-spoken Dr. Ben Carson. Carsonism combines the lack of political and governance experience of trump with an even higher level of irrationality and the big addition of the Evangelical Christian worldview, based wholly on nonsense. His unexpected rise to the tophas confounded all stripes of pundits and is even more shocking than the rise of Trump (I personally predicted Trump would be a force to be reckoned with but dismissed Carson almost immediately and was definitely wrong about his ability to gain voter support). Together, he and Trump speak for half of Republicans, and when you add in support for the super-Christians Cruz and Huckabee, you get closer to two/thirds of Republicans that are for Trumpism, Carsonism, or a governing style awash with Evangelical Christianity. Carson is a combination of Trump and Cruzism/Huckabeeism, which can be said to make him worse because there is even more content undeserving of respect in governance. Like Trump (and like Cruz and Huckabee), there is no equivalent on the left that has any real support. Just another crystal-clear contrast.

11.) The fall of Bush

Finally, we have the failure of the Bush campaign. Yes, I am already calling it a failure because I just don’t see how he comes back from where he is now(and where he’s been for some time) to win the nomination. I come to bury Bush, not to praise him, to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Mark Antony, so I’m not saying Bush is great. But especially in this field of Republicans, Jeb Bush speaks with a moderation in tone and language the leaders of his field do not, and has some moderate policy positions to back that up that they do not. He has years of experience in politics and governance, and while not a good governor, it is hard to argue he was awful in the mold of, say, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, and at the very least, he stakes out reasonable positions on immigration and on not using the threat of government shutdowns to achieve political goals. This makes him a dramatically more reasonable candidate that those leading the Republican field, and yet, even with $100 million in PAC money, Bush is at best in the middle of the second-tier candidates, polling in single digits; he is also in fifth-place even in Florida, where he was governor for eight years. Just like Boehner not doing well with his own party, if a man like Bush is losing to the likes of Trump, Carson, and Cruz, that says a heck of a lot about the party.

*****

Yes, when all this is added together, it is clear: we have one party with a strong majority ready to project a strong, experienced, accomplished, mature, and moderate candidate to the American people, and you have another party with a majority of voters ready to project weak candidates devoid of relevant experience, who engage in either brawling public spats of a childish nature or spew irrational conspiracy theories and extremist Christian theology as a substitute for an actual political campaign. The majority of the top Republican candidates and a majority of their voters are committing seppuku (Japanese samurai ritual suicide), disemboweling themselves in front of all of America. Hillary is looking with bemused disdain at the mess to her right, and is marching forward past the mess, along with the majority of her party and what should be a clear majority of the American public come November 2016. The nearly certain inevitable result—the return of the Clintons to the White House—will belong to Hillary and her coalition, but it will in no small part also come about because of the insanity of the Republican Party and in all the many ways this was made obvious in the summer and fall of 2015.

More Election 2016 coverage from this author:

Republican “Debate” Circus Round 2: Trump vs. Fiorina and Why the Kids’-Table Debate Was Better

Scott Walker’s Weak Wisconsin Record (and What His Candidacy Says About Today’s GOP)

The State of Illegal Immigration 2015: Reality vs. Republican Fantasy

The Republican Field & Debate: Substance vs. Style: What Trumps What?

Don’t Dismiss The Donald: 4 Reasons Why Trump Could Win GOP Nomination

All Hail Hillary! Her Political Nature Is Just What Washington Needs

If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse August 13, 2015 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) August 13th, 2015

GETTY IMAGES/CNN

AMMAN — The Debate last night was not the farcical circus it could have been.  Aside from Megan Kelly’s activism (how was it the job of her as a moderator to put in a big plug for candidate Carly Fiorina and her standout performance from the earlier second-tier kids-table-debate as the main debate for the top ten began?), she, Bret Baier, and Chris Wallace did a good job of keeping the debate lively and interesting with pointed, challenging questions and also kept the more rowdy candidates in line.  They were overall very fair, giving each candidate chances to shine but also putting them on the spot.  Trump was leading in all the polls so it is fair that he got more airtime, and most of the other candidates got the time they deserved relative to their standings in the polls and how close they are in these polls to each other.

The New York Times

The exceptions to the overall fairness were Scott Walker and Rand Paul: Walker was third in many pre-debate polls and second in others, while Paul had tended to also be at the top just behind Walker, Bush, and Trump, so the moderators should not have allowed them to be the next-to-last and last candidates in terms of speaking time.  But still, the debate was good television and surprisingly had a good amount of substance.  Below is an attempt to rank the ten candidates from the main debate (plus Carly Fiorina whose performance was pretty much the only major takeaway from the kids-table-debate of the bottom seven) in terms of substance, then style.

Substance rankings:

#1 Governor John Kasich (OH)

I’ve got to be honest; I had no idea who the hell John Kasich was before this debate.  But I do now, and I was very impressed.  He seems to be 2016’s Jon Huntsman: a substantive, serious, accomplished, sensible, rational Republican who is not afraid to compromise to get results and who does not run on hatred or discrimination in any way.  Of course, all this means that he has zero chance of being chosen by the Republican base as their champion since they seem to abhor most, it not all, of his qualities, even if it would improve their chances of winning in the general election.  Kasich is the popular governor of Ohio.  He was one of a small number of Republican governors who supported Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, and gave a very rational and eloquent defense of this decision, talking about the relationship of the mentally ill, prisons, and emergency-room-care costs to Medicaid.  He did a great job referring to many specific achievements with specific numbers, discussing his record of success in Ohio on multiple fronts with ease.  He also touted his record as a congressman in Washington as Chairman of the House Budget Committee, where he was instrumental in helping to achieve a balanced federal budget with the Clinton Administration and Congress. He showed moderation on both gay rights—saying it was time to accept the Supreme Court ruling and move on—and on immigration, a moderation that will be key in the general election as the election takes place within the United States of America, not just the states of the rebellion of the so-called “Confederate States of America.” This man should be leading in the polls, but the fact that he is not says much about today’s Republican Party. He seems to be the most well-rounded candidate, with national and state experience and a record of balancing budgets and expanding healthcare.

#2 Governor Christ Christie (NJ)

Christie had a lot of details on his record of service—from being a U.S. Attorney that was appointed on September 10th, 2001, who helped to lock up and prosecute terrorists under the Patriot Act to being a governor dealing with tough budgetary and economic issues and having to govern in a blue state—that he weaved in comfortably and impressively into his answers.  He had a lot of specifics to discuss but was able to tie each of them into broad themes as well.   Christie was very eloquent and passionate when discussing everything from terrorism to balancing budgets and dealing with social security, and made an impassioned case for surveillance in a feisty exchange with Rand Paul.  Paul made good points, but Christie won stylistically and many would also say substantively.

#3 Senator Marco Rubio (FL)

Senator Rubio gave a good talk about immigration, talking about the need for comprehensive reform, and demonstrated his knowledge and experience on the issue and getting quite specific.  He talked about his own personal, family, and political background—weaving each one into a compelling narrative—and he talked about how the economy has changed dramatically just in the last few years in a way no other candidate did.  He was clear and sharp, addressed what he was asked directly, and had clever and effective attacks on Hillary Clinton.  He definitely had one of the most substantive performances in this debate.

#4 Senator Rand Paul (KY)

Paul’s points on ISIS were misleading, but he made a solid case for civil liberties and his defense of them as well as for trimming spending.  Yet his line about wanting to “collect more records form terrorists, but less records from innocent Americans” was, to use Christie’s words, ridiculous, because, as Christie also pointed out, “how are you supposed to know” people are criminals or terrorists before they commit their acts,  and that’s why some degree of surveillance is necessary.  That’s not to say that his point was invalid, or that Christie’s points don’t deserve some scrutiny, and Paul made valid points on surveillance and defended them well, even if Christie arguably got the better of him. Paul’s opposition to the Iran deal made absolutely no sense.  Still, even with his even performance, Paul still brought more substance to the table than most.

#5-#6 Tie: (former) Governor Jeb Bush (FL) and Governor Scott Walker (WI)

Governor Bush did a great job defending the humanity of illegal immigrants while still making a competent case for how to deal with illegal immigration.  He did a good job selling what he claims are his achievements in education during his governorship, but that record is actually spotty and questionable at best.  He answered the question on him being his own man well, gave complete answers that addressed what he was asked even if he stumbled verbally.  He sort of flubbed a question about his approving of a Bloomberg charity budget that included funding for Planned Parenthood (the current overblown Satan in Republican politics) but then ended that question with a strong defense of his overall “pro-life” record. Hard to say he did “great” or even “good,” he did ok.

Scott Walker was weak on immigration, against the only practical solution—comprehensive immigration reform—and instead doubling down on his closing of any path to citizenship for illegal immigrants currently in the country.  His came off as extremely anti-labor/union.  He is just as impractical on abortion, calling for a total ban with no exceptions.  With all his solutions, he was for extreme positions that are generally untenable in the general election.  He had little substantive to say, and was unable to answer even a basic question about foreign policy (likely because he knows almost nothing about foreign policy) and like the other candidates, and made no sense on Iran.

#7 (up from the kids-table-debate) Carly Fiorina

Though surrounded by generally weak competition that helped her to look stronger than she actually is, Fiorina was still able to highlight her international business experience to her advantage, highlighting her personal relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and King Abdullah of Jordan and surprisingly giving herself multiple strong moments on everything from ISIS to the economy.  As the only woman candidate for a party nervous about Hillary, many Republicans are desperate to see her rise enough to at least be vice-presidential-running-mate material.  If she does end up winning either the nomination or a VP slot, this debate will be the moment where people will say it all began.  Still, it remains to be see if she can share the stage and perform well enough with the big boys.  But look for her to be in the top ten for debate #2 and, perhaps to become one of the more substantive candidates in the overall Republican race.

#8 (former) Governor Mike Huckabee (AR)       

Love it or hate it, Huckabee’s invoking of the 5th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution represent a creative, bold, and somewhat rational approach for conservatives to abortion and will certainly win approval from them.  He looked weak compared to Christie on the issue on social security reform, playing for sound bites instead of substance.  He did not speak much in depth on issues, instead appealing to a more general sense of the way America should be governed.  Definitely not one of the more substantive candidates.

#9 Donald Trump

Christie accused Paul of blowing a lot of hot air, but without question the most hot air was blown by Donald Trump.  His perhaps his most substantive point was making it clear that he opposed the Iraq War back in 2004 because he said it would destabilize the region.  He also made intelligent comments about single-payer healthcare working in Canada and Scotland and with getting rid of restricting the healthcare choices available that exist because of a person’s location.  At the same time, theatrically is what characterized the rest of his extensive airtime, no substance.  Lots of tough talk and generalities, but little specific for policy analysts to consider.

#10 Senator Ted Cruz (TX)

Senator Cruz resembled not so much a living, breathing human being but a doll where you pull the string and the doll spews out a number of canned, recorded, unoriginal lines.  All Cruz managed to do was rile up the base and impress no one else.  With position after position, he advocates for extremist position only supported by the right-wing base of the Republican Party that have no chance of passing Congress of being supported by the American people as a whole.  With such a lack of substance, it is not surprising that he goes all out with demagoguery.  His focus and solution for ISIS is a semantic one about focusing on Islam and emphasizing the Islamic nature of ISIS, which would likely be counterproductive by giving ISIS more legitimacy by constantly emphasizing their Islamic aspects as opposed to other aspects, regardless of that fact that ISIS clearly draws inspiration from extremist interpretations of Islam, as many religious extremists from many religionstoday draw and in the past have drawn inspiration from extremist interpretations.

#11 Dr. Ben Carson

While not tripping over his words like Jeb Bush, Carson had almost nothing (and perhaps nothing) substantive to say.  He got his mention of the “Saul Alinsky” model which will mean nothing to anyone outside the Republican base during a general election.  He either just did not answer the questions he was asked or spoke in such vague generalities that no one could have a clue what he would specifically do as president.  Using Christianity and the Bible as the basis for his tax plan showed why this man is not one that anyone should take seriously (unless they are discussing neuroscience).  Just being smart—the man is a neurosurgeon—does not qualify someone for being president.  Being a neurosurgeon in this race (the man said Obamacare was the worst thing to happen to America since slavery) seems to be Dr. Carson’s version of staying at a Holiday Inn Express…

Style Rankings:

#1-#2-#3-#4 Tie: Trump, Rubio, Christie, Kasich

Trump was able to throw everything the moderators threw at him and threw it right back at them.  He remained unbowed and unapologetic and arguably didn’t come off the worse for any of his kerfuffles with candidates or moderators and rhetorically got the better of anyone who crossed him.  The hostile questioning played right into his narrative of being a victim of the media and the Establishment, and he dominated the debate overall, getting the most time and the most coverage/buzz.  It may have been a lot of political hot air, but it was hot air at its best, wildly entertaining and engrossing.

Rubio badly needed his good performance from tonight.  From his nervous, infamous State Of the Union response speech’s water bottle antics to his numerous appearances in Senate committee hearings in which he came off as a vapid lightweight who was out of his depth, there was considerable and very legitimate concern about whether this man could hold himself together under the spotlight, retain composure, and be a man of substance.  Well, for the first time on the national stage, he did just that.  He must have spent a lot of time working on his flaws, prepping, and practicing because the Marco Rubio I saw that night was a different man: poised, confident, funny, and ready for primetime, with some of the most memorable moments from the debate, particularly with his jabs at Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.  It was his finest public performance since becoming a U.S. senator and he since seems to have climbed to the top tier of candidates as a result, with strong boosts in multiple national and state polls.

Christie had a great night, though it may not help him much as he is disliked by the Republican base.  Still, he was very passionate and could weave effective and emotional storytelling into statistics and policy details with ease.  He came back from a very cheap shot about hugging Obama from Paul and got the better of him in that exchange on both (arguably) substance and style.  He was able to handle very tough questions and turn them into positive laundry lists of his accomplishments.  He came off as strong, intelligent, articulate, passionate, and able to handle anything anyone throws at him.

Kasich stayed direct, positive and hopeful throughout.  He declined to attack Trump when the moderator pitched him a big fastball down-the-middle for him to be able to do so.  His overall message was inclusive and not divisive, even included reaching out to minorities that are less successful, and even though he is against gay marriage, he showed that he would show and has shown respect and tolerance for homosexual Americans in a way few if any of the other candidates have.  In fact, his whole style advocates a conservatism that leaves a big place for love and caring for people and a big heart.  In a party that often seem heartless towards the poor, minorities, and illegal immigrants, this is a message that will resound on the national stage.  Unfortunately for him, it is unlikely to resound among the Republican base.  He played his home crowd (the debate was held in Ohio) to his advantage, and presented a good balance between wonkish statistical policy accomplishments and a tender, caring heart.  His overall strong performance seems to have helped him in New Hampshire and Michigan, but not anywhere else so far or nationally.  This is not to the credit of the Republican Party and their voters.

#5 (guest-from-the-kids-table) Fiorina

There is no question that Carly Fiorina was the standout performance of the kids-table-debate of the bottom seven (out of seventeen!) candidates.  On one level, this is a big deal: barring some awful implosion, she unquestionably will be part of the adult-dinner-party next debate.  She was very articulate and good at delivering her talking points and stood far above almost everyone else on that stage, save for Santorum (see the note at the end).  And she was able to weave her experience into her answers in a way that was (rhetorically) impressive, and even managed a few decent jokes.  But at the same time, we have to remember 1.) that she was standing out when surrounded by six bottom-feeders and 2.) that no one at either debate saw her as a threat or felt the need to attack her; it was a pretty smooth ride for her without adversity.  It very much remains to be seen if she can come off as poised and polished when she is under attack from rivals and surrounded by far more accomplished and theatrically-savvy candidates.  The evidence suggests she cannot; she was crushed in her U.S. Senate campaign against California Senator Barbara Boxer in 2010 and on numerous appearances on Real Time with Bill Maher during extended discussions, she has been unable to go past surface-level talking points or discuss anything with a degree of depth and detail that shows an accurate understanding of what she is talking about, even if she sounds better than most Republican candidates.  She is also quite vulnerable on her business record, having been fired as CEO of Hewlett-Packard.  Still, Fiorina may have gained as much as anybody from the debates, maybe even more than any other candidates.  Especially being the sole woman and, thus, a weapons against Democratic charges that Republicans are anti-women, do not expect the party or voters to cast her off the island anytime soon.

#6 Carson

Like Mr. Cruz below, Carson utterly lacked substance.  Yet he was a crowd favorite, delivering heartfelt religious sentiment and amusing applause lines.  He came off as sincere and was able to stay above the sniping occurring between other candidates.  He seemed very much the non-politician (a strong asset to the Republican base) and seemed very natural and at ease on stage as well as very genuine and authentic.  He gave a particularly eloquent message about a person’s brain—not his skin color-defining him or her (though this type of answer does risk downplaying the very real racial problems that exist in America).  Though he seemed unable or unwilling to answer multiple questions, he still let his charm, ease, and message come out clearly.  If we were grading only with style points that the Republican base cares about, Carson would be ranked even higher, and this is beyond doubt as he has surged in most post-debate polls, even as high as second-place in Iowa!  To non-Republicans, he is not someone to be taken seriously; yet it is likely that the Republican base’s love of him means he could have staying-power long into this race.  Frankly, I was ready to write him off as a candidate after his debate performance, but (full disclosure) I am a liberal Democrat and I clearly underestimated his popularity with the base and how his answers would play with that base.  And as an African-American, his simply being in the race is ammunition against Democrats’ charges of the Republican Party being racist and only a party for whites.

#7 Huckabee

Huckabee was humorous and charming in his usual way, smiling throughout and getting plenty of folksy and faith-related comments out there in ways that are sure to continue to endear him to the base.  He certainly did not hurt himself even if he did not stand out.  The crowd consistently warmed to him and he did end the debate with one of the best lines of the night, seeming to hit Trump powerfully and harshly but, actually, in the end, revealing his attack was on Clinton, not Trump.  Yet that was also his only real standout moment besides the abortion answer (see above), as his other answers were predictable and unmemorable if decent.  He didn’t do badly at all, but will have to do much better if he is to rise above the pack.  Still, as a popular Fox News TV personality and as the man who came in second in the Republican primaries of 2008 to John McCain, it will be interesting to see where he is in a few months if other candidates drop out.

#8 Cruz

If Cruz’s lines didn’t come off as so rehearsed, forced, and canned, I might have tied him with Carson or Huckabee.  Both he and Carson utterly lacked substance, but Cruz really came off as a demagogic manipulator.  His lines went over well with the audience, but will only serve to alienate him more with the general public.  Still, he, like Carson, has seen something of a bounce post-debate, though not as big or consistent as Carson’s.  Love him or hate him, he the Republican base loves him and Cruz knows how to retain at least some significant support among it.

#9 Paul

Paul had a very uneven night.  Yes, he got his applause and moments defending civil liberties and smaller government, as was expected, but he didn’t necessarily come off better with his attacks on Trump and Christie.  He had less speaking time than anyone else, but also had moments where he could have given longer answers used more time and declined to do so.  Direct and simple—like his approach to government—but also leaving him a bit on the sidelines.  He showed he could pick a fight, but chose the two brawler candidates best able to respond harshly back—Trump and Christie—to get into fights with and thus, in the end, it’s hard to say he had a good night.

#10-11 Tie: Bush-Walker

Though their performances differed, they ended about equalizing each other; where Walker may have been more articulate, his performance often fell flat and to muted applause with a few exceptions, which were mostly him making jokes about Hillary; where Bush maybe got a better response from the crowd, he stumbled over his words consistently (perhaps the bar is low because of his association with his brother?)  Neither did any serious damage to themselves or anyone else with their performances, but neither really gained anything either, and others’ gains (e.g., Carson, Fiorina, Rubio) already seem to be coming at their expense (their support has dropped in multiple post-debate polls) more than any other candidates. Both ran like they were the frontrunner, trying to not do badly/lose as opposed to trying to win.  Yet, since neither are the frontrunner, this didn’t make sense and it did not help.  Even if they didn’t do badly per se, not standing out has meant they have already begun losing support to other candidates.

Honorable Mention: (former) Senator Rick Santorum (PA)

Don’t completely give up on Rick Santorum.  He is very intelligent, articulate, passionate, genuine, competent, and has a level of charisma.  He came in second behind Romney in 2012 in the Republican primaries.  He has a fairly uniquely moderate economic message among Republicans even if he is socially extremely conservative.  If anyone makes it out of the kids-table-debate-level besides Fiorina, my money would be on him.

****

Thus, we see a war here with substance versus style in the two very different rankings one would have to give the winners of substance vs. style in these debates even if one disagrees with my specific rankings.  Kasich, Christie, and Rubio would be the best combination of both, though it would seem that only Rubio has a shot among those three candidates.  Part of me would love to be proven wrong.  Two things are for certain: 1.) already, this race is full of surprises and we are still about half a year away from the first contest in Iowa, and 2.) as we watch all this unfold, there will be more surprises yet to come.  Part of me is rooting for substance to win for the sake of the quality of America’s politics, and part of me for entertaining, substance-less style, since my personal preference is for a Democrat to win in 2016.  We’ll have to stay tuned to see what Trumps what and who Trumps who for the Republican nomination and for the presidency.

More Election 2016 coverage from this author:

Don’t Dismiss The Donald: 4 Reasons Why Trump Could Win GOP Nomination

All Hail Hillary! Her Political Nature Is Just What Washington Needs

If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)

*****

You may not respect his message, his positions, or the man himself, but you must respect his candidacy for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse August 10, 2015 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) August 10th, 2015 UPDATED (see bottom)

Also published by Stupidparty Math v. Myth.

AP

AMMAN — In the ideal America, egocentric and eccentric billionaire and reality-TV personality Donald Trump would never have a realistic chance at getting the nomination of one of America’s two major parties to be its candidate for president of the United States. Many liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, would not dispute this statement.

However, this is not an ideal world, and America is far from an ideal society too. If you don’t understand the very real reasons why Donald Trump has a real chance at being the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, then you don’t understand the Republican Party, American politics, or American society. Below are the main reason why Trump isn’t going away and why he has a real shot at winning the Republican primaries, if not the general election.

1.) The Republican Party Is-A-Changin’

The Republican Party is in a state of open division and flux, and for all you Game of Thrones fans, remember: “Chaos is a ladder” (spoilers for GoT in this link). The whole significance of the Tea Party movement is that it was a bloody, forceful attempt to pry the steering wheel out of the hands of the establishment and the elites who had been in tight control of the party for years. This peaked in some ways with the 2010 midterm elections in which extremist Tea Party candidates (Christine O’Donnell, anyone?) lost some key and very winnable Senate races to vulnerable Democrats but still managed to win many elections and were the major factor in the Republicans taking the House of Representatives from the Democrats. However, Tea Party candidates were thought to have gone too far in the 2012 election, hurting the Republican Party and even Mitt Romney in Obama’s reelection. Much of the conventional wisdom maintains that the Republicans learned their lesson from the 2012 Tea Party-driven electoral disaster, and have since moderated. What has actually happened is that the Republican Party has lurched to the right, with the Republican Establishment coopting the Tea Party style and message (and lack of substance) out of the fear of being “primaried”: incumbents losing in primaries before even having a chance to go toe-to-toe with a Democrat and losing to extremists within their own party who accused them of being too moderate. The party was hardly moderate before, but even now, it still falls short of the extreme rightist platform and style envisioned by true Tea Partiers. So there is still a war going on within the Republican Party; before Trump’s meteoric rise, this was perhaps best exemplified by the clash between freshman Senator (and all-around disingenuous charlatan) Ted Cruz on the one hand, and more moderate republicans like Speaker of the House John Boehner, Representative Peter King, Senator John McCain, and the Republican leadership on the other. Cruz is hardly alone in his extremism, though: the likes of Representatives Louie Gohmert and Steve King are but a few examples.

Into this struggle for the soul of the party strode Donald Trump. Among other things, he is very aggressively taking on the Republican Establishment in a way that electrifies the base, insulting John McCain, feuding with Rupert Murdoch, attacking both George W. and Jeb Bush, and, in addition, he has enough money (“TEN BILLION DOLLARS,” to quote Trump directly) that he is not at all dependent on the establishment for financing or support. Trump also has no experience as part of the Washington, DC, political machine, thus, he can avoid having to check the rather unpopular box of “Washington insider.” So can Jeb Bush, but he has the last name Bush (and will be reluctant to criticize his brother or father) and will be tainted with that label as a result. Other candidates who want to draw the non-Washington insider vote will most certainly be competing with Trump.

2.) Divided They Fall

History is full of weird winners. In particular, it is not difficult at all to find examples of when one faction or person was able to triumph because its numerous opponents could not unite and stop fighting among themselves. Ancient Rome, for example, was eventually brought down by much weaker “barbarian” factions because its intermittent civil wars among different Romans devastated Rome’s strength and left it vulnerable in ways it should never have been. The Egyptian opposition to Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood could not unite in elections during the Arab Spring, and thus paved the way for Morsi’s victory and troubled presidency, which, in turn, paved the way for General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s countercoup/counterrevolution and the destruction of a nascent Egyptian democracy. Al Gore lost to George W. Bush because immature liberals in Florida and New Hampshire voted for Ralph Nader—a realistically hopeless liberal alternative to Gore and thus a merely symbolic vote that gave Bush victory in both states—because they viewed voting as a masturbatory act of self-gratification instead of a duty to vote with an eye towards the real world impact of voting and not as act designed to make you most pleased with yourself and your conscience, the real world be damned… I’m sure you can think of other examples easily.

As for the Republican primaries, there are currently seventeen Republican candidates. Though Donald trump is nowhere close to garnering support from a majority of Republicans, he still has a commanding lead over his rivals in the latest round of scientific national polling, and even if a full third of the candidates dropped out tomorrow, that would still leave ten other candidates among whom to divide the non-trump vote. The latest polls have trump with the support of about 25% of Republicans nationally. That means the other 75% of support is currently divided among the other sixteen candidates (if that vote is divided equally, each candidate would have only roughly 4.7% of the vote). Jeb Bush, in second place, barely broke into double-digits, and the other fifteen candidates did not break into double-digits. Trump is doubling (or more) the level of support of the candidate right behind him in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, what are supposed to be the first three contests for the Republican nomination.  And in Florida, where Jeb Bush was governor for eight years and Marco Rubio has been a sitting U.S. senator since 2011, Trump is ahead of Bush by 1 % and ahead of Rubio by 20 % as of the latest poll! The first three contests are just six months away or less, and Florida just seven; a lot can change, and a lot must change, for Trump to lose at least the first three contests. But if he manages to stay ahead—and it’s his to lose and the burden is on other candidates to rise up—and wins the first three contests (let alone carry that momentum into Florida and prevail there), it’s very hard to see him losing the nomination.

Normally in the Republican primaries, there is one frontrunner or two candidates duking it out, maybe one dark horse candidate, and everyone else is on the bottom. In this case, there are fifteen candidates currently averaging in single digits. Where normally the few bottom dwellers would drop out and lose campaign cash relative to those on the top, almost all the candidates here are bottom feeders feeding on scarce resources. What this means is that almost all of them are close in both polling status and resources, making the incentive for staying in the race that much higher and the incentive for dropping out that much lower. This, in turn, means that they will likely continue to divide the non-Trump vote among them for months into the primaries, only helping Trump’s chances. The battle for being number #3 (or #4?) , with enough delegates at the convention to dictate things to the eventual nominee, including maybe even forcing the nominee to pick a certain vice presidential nominee, could thus carry a significance that no recent election has shown and bring us back to the old days of backroom wheeling, dealing, and kingmaking of the old-school political conventions. A divided or unpredictable convention, in the world of twenty-first century media, would be a political spectacle like nothing we’ve seen since the Florida debacle in 2000. In such an atmosphere, a man like Trump who seems to thrive on his cantankerous relationship with the media could indeed use the chaos to his advantage and that could very well mean a Trump ascension of the Littlefinger ladder to the Iron Throne of the Republican nomination (if you’re interested, read my take on the political and foreign policy lessons from Game of Thrones).

3.) Republican Primary Voters are a Different Breed

They Republican base voters are in an active revolt against their party’s establishment, and are in a perpetual revolt against the media. Trump picking a fight with Fox News—yes, even Fox News—and debate moderator/Fox News personality Megan Kelly (who did, frankly, in some ways seem hostile and out to get him even if her questions were totally legitimate)—works brilliantly for him in important ways. See, two things members of the Republican base hate are 1.) being told by The Republican Establishment/Elites who to vote for and 2.) being told by The Media Establishment/Elite who to vote for. They way they and Trump see it, both the Republican and Media Establishment (Fox News combines both of these) are out to get Trump, and this is actually true in a number of ways. Mainstream America thinks of Fox News as representing Republicans, and compared to most media, it does in a relative sense. But the base really gets its kicks from media sources like Breitbart and Drudge that have been quite friendly to Trump. They are also even generally older and whiter than the Republican Party in general, a party already known for being older and whiter than the average American, proportionately speaking. This makes them an extreme element in a party that has, as discussed, already become more extreme. In flocking to Trump and his extreme statements, along with Trump the GOP base is giving a big proverbial middle-finger to their own party’s Establishment and to the media in general, who both seemed eager to dismiss him as a farcical sideshow. All this leads directly to the final point…

4.) Trump Knows How to Play the Media to His Advantage Like a Harp

Trump is also brilliant at playing the media here; his provocations ensure he is dominating the news coverage and this is depriving oxygen to other candidates desperate for attention and airtime and who are at risk of suffocation, while at the same time any hostility from the media plays into his narrative that the media is out to get him and is trying to control the election, a narrative that the Republican base is only too eager to believe. That the Republican Establishment’s principal way to go after him is through the media itself is not lost on the base here, either. So in many ways, what others see as mistakes that will “doom” Trump’s campaign are actually nice big plates of red meat for the Republican base, the exact type of people whose support he needs to win primary contests and win the nomination. He is the incarnation of their resentment and they seem eager to support him because of that. And the more these feuds continue, the more that the media, frankly, can’t look away from him because they know covering him will draw viewers and make them lots of money, as the recent debate’s ratings proved (see below). The satirical newspaper The Onion captured the sentiment the best with a faux piece satirically “written” by Trump for parody purposes titled: “Admit It: You People Want To See How Far This Goes, Don’t You?”

*****

I am not here to say that I think Trump will win. I am here to simply say that dismissing him as a sideshow is naïve. Currently, he is the show (not only was the debate featuring Trump the most-watched primary debate ever with some 24 million viewers, it was the most watched program ever broadcast [only] by cable news and easily beat the NBA finals’ and a typical Monday Night Football game’s ratings). Again, as mentioned, someone has to climb up from the pack and beat him. Bush had (see below) been the second highest in the polls, and has raised a lot of money ($100 million+ including his PACs). But he has not been impressive thus far and would need to greatly improve his performance for him to win, and his greatest advantage—his name—is also his biggest curse. Walker had (see below) been third generally, but not even generally above 10 %; he, too, would need to cover a lot of ground to reach first and hardly distinguished himself during the debate even if he did ok. Both Rubio and Fiorina had a good night (the latter only at the kids-table debate where no rivals treated her as a threat or challenged her), but one good night for candidates so low in the polls does not bestow a crown upon either, and they are both quite vulnerable in their own ways (to be discussed in a forthcoming piece). With early signs showing Republican voter support strong and not falling for Trump in multiple unscientific flash polls and in the first scientific poll released since the debate (the latter showing him still nearly doubling the second-place candidate who is now Ted Cruz!), with Bush and Walker falling to be tied now for sixth place, the burden is on one of these problematic candidates or another to make up the gulf in popular support between them and The Donald. Love him or hate him, just don’t be writing Trump off yet.

UPDATED: Another national poll just released today taken wholly after the debate has Trump up to 32 % with a big post-debate boost, almost tripling the support for second-place-Bush who is at 11 %. Ben Carson (!?) has jumped to third place with 9 %, and Walker and Rubio tie for fourth place at 6 % each. In addition, a new Iowa-specific poll has trump increasing his lead, putting him at 19 % to Walker’s and Carson’s tied second-place 12 %, followed by Bush at 11 % and a big boost to Carly Fiorina nipping at Bush’s heels with 10 % and Cruz just behind her at 9 %… As I suggested above, one can almost see Trump as a Roman emperor watching his rivals hack at each other as gladiators in the Colosseum in the sense that he rises above the (polling) fray and the rest take votes away from each other…

More Election 2016 coverage from this author:

The Republican Field & Debate: Substance vs. Style: What Trumps What?

All Hail Hillary! Her Political Nature Is Just What Washington Needs

If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)