Posted on 01/16/2016 12:19:35 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
As we enter the third week of January--just two short weeks away from the Iowa caucuses--it is beginning to dawn even on the most stolid political media figures that Donald Trump is the likeliest bet to win the Republican presidential nomination. It is also becoming apparent even to those most in denial that in the event of Trump's failure Ted Cruz, the most hated man in Washington and 2nd most unelectable of the GOP candidates in November, will almost certainly become the nominee.
Most of the political and journalistic class see the prospect of a Trump/Cruz nomination as so unthinkable that they have spent months denying its very possibility in the face of overwhelming evidence. That's understandable for two reasons. First, the history of recent Republican elections strongly suggests that Republican voters flirt with anti-establishment candidates before choosing the traditionally sober candidate. Those who believe that this election represents a realigning paradigm shift--even if, as with the those who predicted the housing bubble calamity, they are ultimately right--are presumed wrong and unserious by default. Second, the mere notion that a majority of the GOP electorate would walk into a voting booth in cold blood and choose Trump or Cruz as their nominee would upend the accepted journalistic narrative in which both parties are presumed equally extreme, and destructive partisan rancor is blamed not on the will of the voters but on the political culture of Washington.
Still, wishful thinking is finally succumbing to the obvious: it's a two-man race between Trump and Cruz. Each passing day makes the possibility of an establishment comeback increasingly remote....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonmonthly.com ...
Agreed. Most of the posts I’ve read today consist of a handful of posters bombing each other as “Trumpets” or “Cruzbots.” Reminds me of the last scene in the classic Twilight Zone episode “When the Monsters Came to Elm Street.”
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