The 2016 Republican Race So Far
The supposedly “strongest field” of Republican candidates in decades was full of no-hopers, has-beens, and also-rans that weren’t going to get close to winning the nomination, and this was fairly obvious from the start. The “top tier” of Walker, Bush, and Rubio was also not nearly so formidable as it was made out to be a year ago, and all of them flopped when they were put to the test.
.. Especially for those “top-tier” candidates, one of the biggest weaknesses was being too wedded to Bush-era ideological commitments and to George W. Bush personally. That not only put them at odds with many Republican voters, but it also convinced many more that they were simply out of touch and clinging to discredited or outdated policies.
.. The three remaining candidates are very different from one another, but one thing they have in common is that they have all to one degree or another flouted some aspect of party and/or movement orthodoxy.
.. The Bush-era throwbacks and retreads failed in no small part because they wouldn’t or couldn’t do the same, but instead kept trying to defend the agenda and legacy of one of the worst presidents of the last century.