Been a long while since I posted this...
Posted on 03/06/2016 7:58:08 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Maybe Donald Trump isn't invincible, after all.
On Saturday, Ted Cruz nuked Trump from orbit in Kansas, pantsed him in Maine, and almost scored coups in the other two states, Kentucky and Louisiana, where he fell short of Trump by just two delegates in the first case and one in the second. Overall, the Texas senator trails Trump in the delegate race by a very manageable 378-295. There's an awfully long way to go to get to the 1,237 needed for the nomination.
It's enough to launch a thousand think pieces on what's become of the GOP's once-unstoppable frontrunner. But perhaps that isn't the big story. After all, Trump's still in the lead. Cruz faces a formidable challenge to beat him outright, even head to head in a cleared-out field.
To my mind, the most fascinating and important aspect of Ted Cruz's Super Saturday is what has become of the GOP's formerly sparkling golden boy, Marco Rubio. The poster child for the party's hopefulness of audacity has simply failed, limping out of Saturday night's matchups with zero wins and 13 delegates. Rubio has now competed in 19 presidential primaries and caucuses. He's lost 18 of them.
As important as it is for Republicans to comprehend why Trump and Cruz have done so well, they could benefit even more from coming to terms with why Rubio has done so poorly. For Trump's support is a mirror image of the party's full court press for Rubio.
Republicans may have finally discovered Donald Trump's Achilles heel
From the beginning, Rubio was the face of establishmentarianism today, establishmentarianism tomorrow, and establishmentarianism forever. More Dubya-esque even than Jeb, more chipper than even Lindsey Graham, he was, on paper, the perfect dauphin: Change generations and ethnicities, and pow -- no further change needed!
It is this flawed conceit that Republican voters have soundly rejected. But as the Rubio campaign floundered, it swam deeper into the depths. Gone was the candidate's bold but borderline overshare testimony to his faith, replaced by huffy digs at Trump's equipment. Instead of putting meat on the bones of his vaguely plausible yet deeply absurd claim that nothing matters if we're not safe, foreign policy substance was substituted with ever more hyped-up rhetoric -- flowery talk of Reaganesque optimism doubly unplugged from the state of the party and the state of the nation.
The post-mortem brigades will do the GOP a disservice if they chalk up Rubio's fade to the quirks of the race or, even worse, to some martyrdom theory. The party, according to some, owes Marco a debt of gratitude for his kamikaze attack on the bully who no one would punch. Certainly it seems, at first blush, they at least should owe him some thanks. On the other hand, it was Rubio's insanely arrogant belief that he was the perfect candidate for 2016 that got the Republicans into this mind-melting mess in the first place. It was Rubio who made Jeb Bush drag out his campaign out of spite, Rubio who took points off of Cruz's board while adding nearly none to his own, and Rubio who lacked the foresight to kick Kasich to the curb and out of his lane.
For all his talent and good intentions, Rubio proved that there's something much worse in this populist season than being born on third and thinking you just hit a triple. However subliminal, his sense of upwardly mobile entitlement was weirdly off-putting and perversely reminiscent of the entitled yes-kid who thinks he should get what he wants because he knows exactly how to give his teachers and school administrators exactly what they want. Rather than embodying the 20th-century Republican story of increase earned through luck and pluck, he became an avatar of the 21st-century striver whose stock in trade is his special snowflakehood.
It remains to be seen whether Rubio can overcome the caricature he encased himself in, accept his loss for what it is, and get out of Ted Cruz's way. Even if he does, there's no clear sign he could find a place beside Cruz on the ticket. With John Kasich polling better against Hillary Clinton, and better able to play copacetic foil to Cruz's stern scold, Rubio's personality as well as his policy are simply not needed on the campaign trail.
Nevertheless, a hard core of party bigs still seem convinced he's essential to the GOP's future. And left to his devices, Rubio will not drop out, before or after Florida. He will become a pawn in a grand yet tawdry game of thrones at the convention -- and in so doing, it's safe to say, put the GOP at far greater peril of being split to pieces than anything Trump and Cruz can manage together. Rubio is the face of a wing of the party that acts like the future but is really yesterday's news. And thinks it's full of winners but, so many times already, has decisively lost.
The era of Rubio is over. We live in the age of Trump and Cruz now.
Chuckie is smiling in NY.
Trump better be preparing with some very good advisers for Thursday night's debate. The last debate DID hurt him.
The downfall of Rubio is definitely not something I’ll ever complain about!
“The Audacity of Hopelessness”
I don’t know if Rubio is trying to win or just in there to keep splitting the delegates. He keeps picking up a couple here and a couple there. Is it his job to insure a brokered convention and the Romney nomination.
Hey, nobody wants to elect a 10 incher.
Let’s help him move on to his future career as porn star.
He’ll continue to do as he’s told, he’s going to need that big bucks job they promised him.
Don’t give up your day job.
Rubio is a loser.
What a monumental shame it is that Trump and Cruz are not a team :-(
We knew that about Bubbles from the time he stabbed his supporters in the back before the ink was dry on his certificate of election to the Senate.
Ain’t over, yet. It may still happen.
your first sentence, I was thinking of this just today, I like it for the reason you stated....
Yep Rubio is going to try to do to Trump what Criste did to Rubio in NH. Dirty Trumps brand enough, with the willing help of the gutter slime behavior of the “conseravtive” Media outlets.
NR, TownHall Red State etc better wake up to the fact campaigns come and go, a reputation for reckless hysterics and out right lying is not going to be forgotten once the campaign ends.
There are supposeld “Conservative” writers and magainse/blog sites making career ending choices these days.
The Leftist media we expect to use these sort of dirt bag tactics, when our OWN start using them customers are left wondering if the dirt bags were ever really on our side at all?
You are a smart guy 2DV, I’d love for it to be true about Kabuki..
I’m no intellectual midget but I’m so worried about the general election I can barely think properly these days.
I’d sleep much better if I found out that Trump and Cruz buried the hatchet.
No way the GOPe is going to support Ted Cruz, at least not without a establishment operative as VP, ala Reagan-Bush, which will put us all back in the same boat when have been for a long time. If he aligns with Trump, they can take over the party and it is game over for the GOPe.
Remember that they met at Trump’s office. What was that about?
BEST Primary ever. We all have our personal choices but let face it. What choices they ARE!
All the GOPE money candidate out or capsized and sinking. No matter what happens from here, they lose, we win.
Been a long while since I posted this...
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