Republican leaders did everything they could to prop up Marco Rubio. After Scott Walker flamed out early; after Rick Perry found he needed more than smart glasses to stage a second presidential run; after Bobby Jindal couldn’t even excite members of his immediate family; after Chris Christie got out-bullied; after the great legacy candidate Jeb Bush found it takes more than punctuation to … Read More
When the 2016 primary calendar was released, March 15 was a day you might have circled in red. It was designed to be the beginning of the end of the primary season, the day when the waning hopes of also-ran candidates would dissipate under the weight of electoral math. Iowa and New Hampshire would eliminate pretenders, South Carolina and Nevada would winnow … Read More
As the campaign season develops, we are likely to hear about how difficult it is for a political party to hold the White House for more than eight years and how this will give the eventual Republican nominee a tremendous advantage in the general election. Indeed, we are already hearing about predictive models that rely on assumptions about how voters … Read More
Wolves and Sheep is approaching its one month birthday, and I doubt it could have launched during a more unstable moment in American politics. Much has happened since we started this project on Valentine’s Day, so let’s see if we can connect a few dots to make sense of the national political picture as of Saturday March 12:
I generally prefer to leave the horserace analysis to CNN, especially because it’s easy to overhype the significance of an event only to find that no one remembers it a week later. However, I think it is worth acknowledging that Bernie Sanders’ victory in Michigan yesterday snuck up on just about everyone and was one of those events that can alter … Read More
You may hear commentators talk about today’s Michigan primary as an ideal opportunity for Bernie Sanders to demonstrate strength against Hillary Clinton in a major industrial state where his message of economic fairness should resonate with voters hit perhaps harder than anyone by the changing economy. Analysis like this makes perfect sense from a messaging perspective but misses the mark because it ignores … Read More
Mitt Romney took to the airwaves last Thursday and reamed into Donald Trump, urging Republican voters to oppose his nomination in a tone-deaf plea to return the party to its rightful owners. He called Trump a phony, fraud and bully, and urged the Republican electorate to vote strategically – Rubio in Florida, Kasich in Ohio, Cruz anywhere he’s strong enough – to … Read More
Yesterday, I raised the possibility that the Republican Party has split into two incompatible parties living inside a single body. One Republican Party is traditionally conservative and has been unable to settle on a nominee from among Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Jeb Bush and a host of governors who long ago left the scene. The other Republican Party is reactionary, obstructionist and … Read More
For those of you who live in Philadelphia, I will be on Radio Times on WHYY/91FM this morning at 10 am as part of a panel discussing yesterday’s Super Tuesday results. UPDATE: You can listen to the broadcast here.
Initial thoughts on Super Tuesday: Republicans. Major American parties are alliances of disparate interests. They work effectively when their coalition partners can find enough common ground to put aside their differences, and they fail when differences stand in the way of compromise. With the radicalization of a significant element of the Republican Party during the Obama years, it’s reasonable to ask whether … Read More