Posted on 09/17/2015 4:35:35 PM PDT by nhwingut
WASHINGTON -- The relatively rare moments of economic analysis and political outreach in the second Republican debate -- Chris Christie talking about income stagnation, or Marco Rubio lamenting the "millions of people in this country living paycheck to paycheck," or Ben Carson admitting the minimum wage might require increasing and fixing, or Jeb Bush setting out the necessary goal of accelerated economic growth, or John Kasich calling for a "sense of hope, a sense of purpose, a sense of unity" -- only served to highlight the opportunity cost of the Trump summer.
Let me recall a little ancient history, from three years ago. After the 2012 presidential election, the Republican Party was left with a number of large political deficits -- with minorities (particularly Latinos but also Asian-Americans), with women, with younger voters, with working-class voters in key states (such as Ohio). In the arc of that year's GOP nomination contest -- involving 20 debates and tens of millions of dollars in ads -- issues such as upward mobility, education, middle-class concerns, poverty, strong communities, safe streets, corporate welfare, the environment, cultural renewal and immigration were either hardly mentioned or, in the case of immigration, discussed in the most disaffecting way possible.
Mitt Romney was nearly beaten by a series of joke candidates and survived by taking positions that exaggerated GOP weaknesses in the general election. In the hopes of serious Republicans -- or at least Republicans serious about the success of their party -- the 2016 election process would begin the recovery.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Historic torpedoing of a candidate.
Good God they will do anything for illegal immigration.
Gerson is a Bush/Rove whore.
The GOP needs to die. It’s ran by liberal Dems.
Guess Gerson doesn’t know that if the four million evangelicals/conservatives had not stayed home on election day, Romney would have won. It really does not depend on the Latino vote if all the Whites turn out to vote. That would be a good lesson for Latinos to learn next year.
ARE YOU READY, AMERICA..?
I’m a Cruz guy...but enjoy what Trump is doing to upset these grey beard low-t establishment RINO’s...love it!
I hope the GOPe crashes and burns never to rise again
If the GOP successfully kills Trumps run, they deserve everything they don’t get.
Namely our votes.
They all have more in common with Obama than they do Trump. They will never invite Donald over to dinner like they did the Mooselip commie.
Pray America is waking
The GOP needs to die. It’s ran by liberal Dems.
Nailed It !
Trump is the skunk at the party!
Carly’s co chair is a CNN insider, that explains Carly’s heads up on the questioning.
The really big mistake the GOPe is making by mustering all of its forces, including a platoon of nothing-burger candidates and a gaggle of phoney-conservative PACs, is that nuking TRUMP is a scorched earth policy. They do not appear to understand that any establishment candidate they might squeak through the primaries will lose in a landslide because they terminally pissed of 40% of their base, but also that they will lose the down-ticket across the board, including Congress, the Governors, and the State houses, because the base will stay home.
Yes, I know the money-people behind the GOPe won’t care because they’ve simply bought ALL the politicians on both sides of the aisle anyway, so THEY can’t lose no matter what happens, but you’d think that GOPe party apparatus and their other candidates WOULD care about losing. Perhaps the GOPe REALLY is the stupid party, after all.
Interesting that the GOP wanted an allegiance pledge from Trump, yet asks nothing of the establishment shills.
The GOP needs some wreckage. Two victories in election off years and nothing to show for it. Sometimes the best thing is to tear it down and rebuild it from the base up.
The only ones with a chance now are the Top 5 in the polls after this debate.
The rest may be running for VP. I doubt any of them will be called to be VP.
I don’t think that such losses matter to them at all.
They will still be in government doing exactly what they do now, pretending to oppose what they are for.
The only difference is that it’s easier to accomplish this technique in the minority.
Trump isn’t my horse in this race but the article is absurd. Trump could waltz right into the White House against any of the possible D candidates ( especially Hillary given her damaged-goods status)
I wish sometimes that FR had “thumbs up” - you and I are cut from the same cloth. I do not begrudge Donald Trump one iota of his success, one way or another, the GOPe must be pushed to the side. We can’t have party leaders who would rather lose than win on the issues that got them elected in the first place.
Why should the GOPe expect anything but the contempt of the voter after so many betrayals?
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