But it must be acknowledged that if you were scripting a path to the nomination for a populist candidate who only has a third of the party in his corner, this is almost exactly the script that you would write — with a strong but still-limited hard-right candidate like Cruz, and then a logjam of weak and deluded mainstream politicians competing deep into the primary season for the rest of the vote.
.. Or does the idea that it’s safer to let Trump “rent” the party than to cede it to Cruz actually have purchase outside of a few donors and consultants?
.. What we should be rooting for — what I’ve tried to hope for — is a candidate who can channel, à la Richard Nixon with George Wallace, the legitimate grievances of the Trumpistas while stiff-arming his rank, un-republican fascismo.
.. Or should we begin to root for Donald Trump — not as a candidate actually to champion, now or in the fall, but as an agent of divine retribution for a corrupt and stumbling party, a pillaging-and-torching Babylonian invasion of which it must be said: The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
A Multifront Republican Battle in South Carolina
Mr. Bush injected his stump speech with a new shot of urgency after Mr. Trump’s victory, warning South Carolinians that the Republican Party’s identity was at stake. “Our party is being hijacked by people who do not believe in the goodness of the conservative cause,” Mr. Bush said. “I do. I believe it.”
.. “I don’t think you can keep saying, ‘Trust me, I got a plan for it,’ ” Mr. Rubio said. “I think as we get closer, especially now that he’s been successful in New Hampshire, I would expect people will be pressing for more details.”
.. The Florida senator is trying to position himself as something of a hybrid candidate, acceptable to the establishment and to the hard right
.. South Carolina does not register voters by political party, so any voter can cast a ballot in either the Democratic or the Republican primary, though not in both.
Trump’s Unspeakable Strategy to Erase His Past
Many commentators claim that this wild rhetoric helps Trump suck up media oxygen or appear like a straight-talking political outsider. But the most important benefit of the anti-immigrant language is that it inoculates Trump against the charge of being a closet liberal.
Trump has a seemingly fatal vulnerability in the Republican primary: His past support for a host of moderate and liberal positions. In recent years, Trump said he would “press for universal health care,” claimed that he was “pro-choice in every respect,” remarked that “I hate the concept of guns,” stated that Hillary Clinton would “do a good job” in negotiating with Iran, asserted that the GOP was “just too crazy right,” and even said, “In many cases, I probably identify more as a Democrat.”
.. For Trump, the solution has been to announce something so outrageously offensive to liberals, so contrary to every progressive shibboleth, that its utterance immediately disqualifies him from being a leftist.
.. What Trump needs is something that is literally unspeakable for a liberal. Trump’s immigration policy is just the ticket. Virtually no progressive would dream of banning the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims from visiting the United States. The very idea represents a kind of exclusionary nativism that is anathema to liberals. Trump’s anti-immigrant language is an efficient way of proving that he has abandoned the left. In a single glorious moment of illiberal demagoguery, he can achieve what would otherwise take months of debate and rebuttal.
.. Once Republican voters identify with Trump, it unleashes what psychologists call “cognitive consistency.” People will rearrange their beliefs to produce an unswervingly positive view of the candidate.
.. The anti-immigrant language is therefore central to Trump’s political rise and to his victory in New Hampshire. Strip it away and Trump would be widely criticized as a conservative in name only.
Ahead of N.H. primary, questions for Rubio, Trump and Cruz
A few weeks ago, it appeared as though there was something between acceptance and resignation within the GOP establishment about the possibility of a Trump nomination. Today there is considerable resistance to his candidacy among those elites and many rank-and-file Republicans.
.. Given the choice between Trump and Cruz, in a hypothetical two-person final for the nomination, Cruz trounced Trump by 53 percent to 35 percent.
.. Cruz offered a lawyerly defense of his campaign’s actions, blaming media reporting for the mistake. He also apologized to Carson. But the low-key retired neurosurgeon sliced apart Cruz’s defense with a quiet but deadly response that completely undermined the senator’s argument.
Cruz’s goal has been to consolidate the entire conservative coalition — evangelicals, tea party activists and the smaller pool of libertarians. Getting into a fight with Carson won’t help him do that.