Posted on 10/10/2015 11:20:35 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Cycles in presidential campaigns begin with hopeful conjecture, outright lies, blind tabloid items that cant ever be proved or disproved. This week the Marco Rubio cycle began. Marco Rubio is now the front-runner for the Koch brothers support and cash, the New York Daily News reported yesterday morning, citing a source who ran into David Koch at a recent event in Manhattan. That sourcing sounds pretty shaky David Koch has never seemed like someone who blurts out his political plans to the restroom attendant, though, who knows, people always surprise you but of course its hard to imagine that the item isnt true. By the time Rubio and Donald Trump arrived in Las Vegas yesterday to speak in separate events at the same time, the hype seemed almost anxious: High Noon Out West Between Trump and Rubio the Kid, the Times had announced this morning. Trump has recently lost interest in insulting Jeb Bush and started insulting Rubio. As an insult comic, the Donald has lately been somewhat overrated, and he has taken a grasping line on Rubio: that the younger man was sweaty and needed to gulp water during the second presidential debate, that this marks him as a lightweight. Hydration issues aside, that Trump has trained his own sights on the Floridian (much as the press has, and evidently the Kochs) has helped to confirm that the partys outsider energies may be dissipating a bit. In this new phase the races pivotal figure may no longer be Trump, the most bombastic candidate, but Rubio, the most talented one.
If the Times is right and Las Vegas was the site of the showdown, then the symbolism isnt especially auspicious for the casino magnate turned populist politician. Trump is inescapably the candidate of the Strip, of the Vegas illusion, of everything about the city that feels gaudy and impermanent. Rubio can lay claim to a more human experience here. As a child Rubio spent six years living in a working-class Las Vegas neighborhood while his father worked here as a banquet-hall bartender behind a portable bar, his son likes to say in his speeches, and that portable carries some feeling for the precariousness of working-class life. The casinos offered little for kids, and so the Rubio immigrant parents took him driving past the grand Vegas mansions, Liberaces among them, explaining to their kids that this kind of success was possible for them in this country. As Nevadas politics have matured as the place has become increasingly Hispanic and increasingly pivotal, as the states key figure has become Brian Sandoval, the Hispanic Republican governor they have left behind Trumps great themes, of the certainty that America will always win, and moved right into Rubios, of whether the promise of the American Dream that the country holds out to immigrants is still possible.
During the 2008 campaign there was much worrying over the nearly complete whiteness of Iowa and New Hampshire the way the early primary states might suppress the influence of black voters in the Democratic primary. But this time the singular hue of Iowa and New Hampshire has had a different effect. It has kept off-screen the Republican Partys essential demographic challenge, of winning something other than the votes of white men. Rubios argument is that though immigrants can cause problems, they also supply a restorative aspiration and optimism. That is just as much the modern Nevada story as it is Rubios own.
Step back from todays showdown, take a slightly longer perspective, and it is startling how well the race has gone for Rubio so far. One of the two early favorites for the nomination, Scott Walker, has already abandoned the race; the other, Jeb Bush, is struggling badly. Even though the early campaign has emphasized immigration, the issue on which Rubio is most alienated from the mainstream of the party, he has not taken a direct hit, in part because he has run a low-key and noncombative early campaign, and it seems likely that as Rubio comes to the fore the energies around the issue may fade, at least a little bit. Analysts have noticed how rapidly Rubio is catching up, both in the polls and in the betting markets.
Meanwhile, Rubios campaign has been filled with small-scale genial deftness. Asked on Fox News about the Black Lives Matter protests, he called it a legitimate issue and said that a professional African-American friend of his had been stopped by police eight or nine times in the past 18 months for no legitimate reason. Far more than Bush or Trump, Rubio has seemed to grasp that the essential challenge of the current election is not only ideological but also generational: a battle over whether Hillary Clinton can complete the long post-baby-boomer project, which moved through her husbands presidency and Obamas, of moving the countrys politics to the left in ways that reflected social transformations of the '60s. Turn the page on yesterday, Rubio urged, when I saw him in New Hampshire on Wednesday. This is the obvious message that Republicans would want to take into a general-election campaign against Hillary Clinton. It is also one that, among the leading Republican candidates, uniquely suits Rubio.
Rubios crowds are still not as big as Trumps, and he has raised much less money than Bush has. That he has so far stayed away from the center means that the senator is still a somewhat vague and soft-focus candidate, of hope but not clear edges. He still has not effectively defended his record on immigration to his partys base, has not been forced to reconcile his dreamy budget with reality, has not had to defend his militarism against charges that it is naïve, or had to prove that his social conservatism was not badly outdated. He has never attacked. Even now you see the idea of the candidate more clearly than you see the candidacy itself.
The most interesting political question of the past four years whether the right-wing insurgency represents a basic reordering of conservatism or simply an expression of its anger (the Tea Party: Revolution or Evolution? Discuss) has not yet been resolved, and as frequently as Rubio is compared to Obama, he has to map less-certain terrain. In Washington conservative politics has become an identity demonstration as much as anything, and if that is the mood in the early primary states by the winter, the senator from Florida probably cant win. And so even as he surges, his campaign has an interstitial feeling. Rubio avoids conflict, talks hopefully about the future to the elderly, assembles positions on which he might move either right or left. And, as Trump noticed, he minds his hydration, since in a marathon the last thing you want is to be beset by thirst.
It never ends with you, does it?
You forgot Trump leads Lindsey Graham in SC by 27% and a cell phone.
Donald Trump Breaks Lindsey Graham Like a Boy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3PQOP6eax8
weyull, I was disregarding the 1 percenters.
Okay, whuteva.
Watching these idiots try to rally around the Waterboy is about as pitiful as watching these idiots try to rally around Mitt Romney’s not ready for prime time silly Veep pick for Speaker.
The GOP is a nonstop fail train.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2015/10/trump-holding-steady-nationally.html#more
Donald Trump leads the field with 27% . . .
Ben Carson . . . 17% . . .
Marco Rubio at 13%,
Jeb Bush at 10%,
Ted Cruz at 7% . . .
Trump continues to lead with every subgroup of the GOP electorate . . . concerned about electability . . . a candidate who’s sufficiently conservative . . . Tea Party voters . . . non-Tea Party voters . . . Evangelicals . . . non-Evangelicals . . . moderates . . . ‘somewhat conservative’ voters . . . ‘very conservative’ ones . . . men . . . women . . . young voters and . . . seniors.
Rubio . . . gone from 5th place at 7% to 3rd place at 13% over the last five weeks . . . No one other than Rubio has seen more than a 2 point gain since our last poll.
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Objectively, Trump is still the defining figure in the GOP race, but Amnesty Boy is being looked at by potential voters.
That was rip roaring hilarious....thanks for sharing.
Because he talks as good a game as 2004 obama
Lol!
I’m waiting for the Lindsay Graham surge!
I’ve heard that’s every morning right after breakfast.
Read the first sentence and knew the rest was a waste of time. The Times is still making the mistake of thinking the base will allow money to make our choice.
People block out ads with devices such as Tivo. It’s not 1972 anymore.
Rubio defining the campaign?! The only meaningful defining moment will come when he drops out. Tagged as an amnesty supporter with lots of skeletons in his closet and no experience, he is just a kid with a cute face. Trump has him pegged.
ROTFLMAO!
I see they are rolling Mr. Amnesty himself Rubio back out again!
I guess Carly went down in flames? LOL!
ha nothing to do with ads. Initial premise was so wrong i passed on the rest.
LMAO
Pure fantasy = lie
Remember all this BS when on 2-21-17 Trump is behind the desk in the oval office.
Gang of eight and their treason will be remembered when we get closer to prime time.
Oh, puh-leeeze.
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