Posted on 01/01/2016 5:48:32 AM PST by Kaslin
One thing that's striking about the presidential race, which, finally, officially begins soon, is how much the race has been shaped by Barack Obama. The course of the contests for both the Republican and Democratic nominations would be inconceivable absent the course of the Obama presidency.
This is most apparent in the phenomenon that goes by the name of Donald Trump. Trump's gratuitous insults of rivals reflect the coarseness of Obama's nonstop insults of Republicans and anyone who does not share his views and priorities. Despite his pre-presidential promises of nonpartisanship, Obama has been the most grating and vitriolic partisan president of the last 60 years.
Trump's more outlandish proposals -- making Mexico pay for a border wall, making common cause with Russia in Syria -- can be seen as a variation on Obama's insistence that climate change is the nation's No. 1 problem and his acquiescence in, well, making common cause with Russia in Syria.
And the adoring crowds that throng Trump's monster rallies, what do they remind you of? The crowds that cheered Obama in 2008 as he promised to fundamentally transform America and stop the rise of seas.
The Republicans who have emerged as Trump's chief rivals, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, had interesting beyond-the-Beltway careers pre-2008 (Rubio in the Florida legislature, Cruz in the Texas attorney general's office) but emerged as national figures only after Obama's inauguration.
Both won upset victories against established figures in open Senate races. In 2010 Rubio challenged Gov. Charlie Crist, who famously hugged Obama in February 2009, forced him out of the Republican primary and beat him handily in the three-way general. In 2012 Cruz challenged Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, held him under 50 percent in the primary and then won the runoff and general election.
Thus both these freshman senators got elected from the nation's third and second largest states as Obama opponents. Their differences on immigration and foreign policy are framed as arguments over which one is more anti-Obama.
So Trump, never a political candidate until 2015, and Rubio and Cruz, unknowns nationally six years ago, have been far more successful at engaging the attention and winning the support of Republican caucus-goers and primary voters than have rivals with greater but -- since they have not held public office since 2006 -- less recent achievements.
Jeb Bush is the prime example. I used to write that he was the most effective conservative governor in the last dozen years; now I have to delete "dozen" and substitute "20." Today's Republicans seem uninterested in Bush's genuinely impressive record in Florida. They're troubled by his current support of Common Core, which he sees as imposing rigor but they see as imposing liberal mushiness, and by his conviction that massive low-skill Latin immigration benefits the nation.
Even further down the pack are the last two Iowa caucus winners: Mike Huckabee, who didn't run for re-election as governor of Arkansas in 2006, and Rick Santorum, who was defeated badly for re-election in Pennsylvania that year.
Republican voters seem less interested in John Kasich's conservative achievements as House Budget chairman in the 1990s than his support of Obama's Medicaid expansion in 2014. Chris Christie has gained ground by campaigning on his pre-2008 record as U.S. attorney and ignoring his post-2008 record as governor of New Jersey.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton's career predates the Obama presidency by a lot. At Yale Law she worked for Joe Duffey's Senate campaign in the election of 1970, when Obama was nine and Rubio and Cruz were not yet born.
But this year Clinton is running more on, or to the left of, the platform of Obama (who has 44 percent job approval) than on that of Bill Clinton (who left office with 65 percent job approval). She is obviously, though not particularly deftly, responding to a leftward lurch among Democratic voters, an impulse often seen in the final years of Democratic administrations: See Gene McCarthy in 1968, Ted Kennedy in 1980, Ralph Nader in 2000 and Bernie Sanders in 2016.
Clinton hopes to replicate Obama's 51 percent coalition at a time when partisan preferences have been stubbornly stable for two decades. But turnout generally has been falling during the Obama presidency; Clinton is unlikely to match Obama's turnout and percentage numbers among blacks, and Republican debate viewership has set new records. It's possible that the Obama presidency, having reshaped the nomination contests, may be reshaping the general electorate -- and not to Democrats' benefit.
If you think the last seven were bad wait until you see what he has in store for America in his last one.
from some of the gun laws I've seen proposed lately disarmament is his priority # 1 this year and incrementalism and the MSM (plus the staged shootings) are his tools .
the 2010 and 2014 elections fortell the future.
What kind of "bench" does the Democrat Party have?
If the Republicans win in 2016 - especialy with a Trump/Cruz ticket, you are looking at a possible 16 years of Republicans in the White House. The only thing standing in the way of this would be Republican scandals.
If the Republicans win in 2016...who will the Democrats run in 2020? If Trump/Cruz create an economy like the one Reagan did, no Democrat (Socialist) stands a chance.
The Democrat party is rotting. It is chasing away the white working class that supported it in the past (Reagan Democrats). Trump will bring them to the Republican side, where they will stay.
In a few years, the Democrat party will be nothing more than angry minorities and losers (homosexuals). But who will fund it?
My thought exactly.
“The Democrat party is rotting. It is chasing away the white working class that supported it in the past (Reagan Democrats). Trump will bring them to the Republican side, where they will stay. In a few years, the Democrat party will be nothing more than angry minorities and losers (homosexuals). But who will fund it?”
This all came to pass with the Republican Revolution in 1994; the left simply went to work dividing the whites (along gender, social and economic issues - fabricated or real) and won the last two presidential races. Nowadays whites are an even smaller part of the electorate (and will continue to diminish, unless they start breeding again); I’m not so optimistic about where this is heading. Obama’s election in 2008 was understandable because McCain was a nothing; his re-election in 2012 (after four years of public failure) should have made anyone think long & hard about who votes in this country. Many whites have been transformed into urban black voters in terms of their priorities (by a massive, perpetual 24/7/365 media blitz) and the 47% from 2012 is almost certainly higher now.
The greatest threat to this country is the MSM. I hope tha tboth Trump and Cruz recognize that and have plans to address this issue.
Trump plays the media
Also - the Republican sweeps in the last few elections have knocked the up-and-coming Democrats out of the running, leaving only the Old Fart Hippies in the fray.
Eisenhower was a vitriolic partisan president?
Perhaps the 1960's and LBJ?
You’re absolutely right; everyone has to realize this (and create an alternative). This site is a good start; talk radio helps as well.
nothing he does will have permanence or even any effect
his orders will not be obeyed and will get, if not destroyed, at least held up in the courts.
he will pretend to be relevant, but in fact, he is a dead duck
Personally, after the damage Obama has inflicted on the world as well as the American way of life, and relationships, I believe no ordinary candidate is capable of any objective repair, but TRUMP.
The times call for an extraordinary man, yes, a MAN. TRUMP may be a street fighter, but he is a realist in business and what he says politically is what I believe.
To judge him entirely by his stump speech persona is a miss.
He is thoughtful and reflective in private interviews where he is allowed a little dignity by the interviewer, and I see a confident man who has been around, on economics, on border security, etc., etc., and is as gob smacked as am I to see what has happened to our country.
NO one else is ready and I think he is a God-send. I say often that our Lord did not always use only prophets and saints to answer prayer and to work his will.
Further, no one else is prepared, personally, without handlers, to take on the real bully in this political universe, HILLARY CLINTON.
It is time for a citizen president, even if he is wealthy and brash. We have done much worse.
TRUMP comes with ideals and not with a swarm of mafia underground like Clinton, McConnell and the universal donor class.
No one else could beat her, and we have to win.
And extra cool points to you for the use of “gob smacked.”
earlier, we had a Free Republic media chapter dedicated to solving the media problem
there were 500+ freeper members working to bring about the change
alas, almost all of the 500 are gone, their efforts not really successful
in their place are a new generation with no spine nor inclination to act
Just wait until we set the IRS on liberal groups and pretend we don't know 'what the big deal is....'
( kinda kidding here - I would hope we would never become the thugs and criminals democrats have become)
Bill Clinton left office with such high approval numbers because the press was able to lie for him. The internet was in it’s infancy - even Drudge was unable to defend the truth to a large enough number of citizens to make a difference.
That’s not the case today... old style ‘gatekeepers’ have been discredited. The New York Times’ ‘wisdom’ isn’t worth much beyond people too stupid to use a computer.
Off course they won’t, because they think denial is a river
But either do any liberal media. I am quite sure the democrats even Obama and Valjar don't know they have ruined their parties chances of majority rule for decades, because all they ever hear is cbsnbcabccnnmsnbe,nytlat etc. and how the dems are the best and R's are racists, homophobes, muslimphopes(whatever) and everything else evil on this entire planet.
The R's are acting toward the democrat party, appeasment, like the democrats are acting toward ISIs, appeasement, funny that!
two thumbs up for the conclusion and if i hand more hands it would be a greater number.
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