Senator Lindsey Graham continues to win plaudits for the remarkable, off-the-cuff speech he delivered yesterday, in which he excoriated his party’s extremism on immigration as political suicide. Graham said the route to winning the White House is not to maximize GOP base turnout, but rather to halt “the incredibly hateful rhetoric driving a wall between us and the fastest growing demographic in America,” i.e., Latinos. Graham added that “most” of those who come here illegally “are good,” and mocked the idea (embraced by Donald Trump) of “forced deportation.”
“We’re literally gonna round ’em up. That sound familiar to you?” Graham said. “You think you’re gonna win an election with that kind of garbage?” Graham also said: “I believe we’re losing the Hispanic vote, because they think we don’t like them.”
Unfortunately for Graham, a new CNN national poll out this morning — which shows Trump continuing to dominate — finds that a majority of Republicans want what Graham described as “forced deportations.” Even more striking, two thirds of Trump’s supporters want this. The CNN poll asks:
Do you think the government should attempt to deport all people currently living in the United States illegally or should the government not attempt to do that?
A majority (53 percent) of Republicans and GOP leaners think the government should attempt to deport “all” those here illegally. Among Trump supporters, 67 percent agree. Among Americans overall, the numbers are the other way around: They oppose this by 63-35.
This is in sync with our polling, which has found a lot of overlap between Trump backers and those who support mass deportations and want to bar the entry of Syrian refugees. It is also in sync with polls earlier this year that found large percentages of GOP voters agree with Trump’s various immigration pronouncements and prescriptions.
Dave Weigel has a great piece today in the Washington Post calling out the “data wonks” for failing to see the real story of this election developing. He talks about the endless assurances that Trump was going to fade along with dismissals that something real was going on here. He concludes:
Few if any reporters will tell you that they expected this to happen. Some may fantasize about another universe, where the field is Trump-less, and candidates like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) are dominating the news with substantive fights about privacy rights and terrorism. Even this summer, the rise of Trump was seen by the Republican establishment as a way to freeze the field, while the grown-ups could hibernate and take over when it counted.
We do not live in that universe. We live in the one where, as Philip Bump points out, 53 percent of Republicans want all illegal immigrants to be deported and many are finding a champion in Donald Trump. Nate Silver left room for this one year ago, when he contradicted the conventional wisdom that Jeb Bush would win the GOP nomination because establishment candidates always pulled it off.
“Bush may face more vigorous competition on his right in 2016 than [Mitt] Romney did in the likes of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry in 2012,” Silver wrote. “And to the extent that Republican voters have shifted slightly further to the right over the past four to eight years, that could make his task harder at the margins.”
Yeah, that’s true.
Here’s the thing. Trump may not make it all the way. But as Weigel says, this phenomenon is saying something about the country. And, from my point of view, it’s pretty awful. We’re looking at a rather large group of people who are being worked up into a frenzy of bigotry, xenophobia and irrational fear of terrorism. There is every reason to believe the Republican party will be heavily influenced by this and that the Democrats will lose their nerve. It’s not good.
I wrote about Christie’s so-called national security cred for Salon this morning: Governor Chris Christie seems to having something of a renaissance in the press these days. The influential Manchester Union Leader,the leading conservative newspaper in New Hampshire, endorsed him and he’s inched up a bit in the polls there, but a guy who was relegated to the kiddie table in the last presidential debate is suddenly getting more attention than his numbers would indicate is called for.
A little research shows that he started to get a bit more traction in the press after a specific event: the Paris terrorist attacks. One might wonder why that would be considering that he’s not exactly a foreign policy expert (not that any of the GOP candidates are except perhaps for Lindsey Graham who didn’t even make it to the kids table last time). Apparently, even though he’s really just another Governor with no military or diplomatic experience the fact that his state is next to New York where the 9/11 terrorist attacks took place and he was a federal prosecutor makes him a reassuring expert.
The prosecutor part of the story is interesting since he’s been fudging it a bit for years. Christie’s experience prior to being U.S. Attorney was as a corporate lawyer and major Bush bundler. He had very little political experience and none as a prosecutor before being appointed. (You may recall that the Bush administration treated these jobs as purely political appointments so many of its nominees were hacks like Christie.) On the campaign trail and even in one of the early debates he claimed he was appointed by President Bush on September 10th 2001 and the impression he always gives is that his first day on the job was 9/11. But the truth is that he didn’t actually become US Attorney for several weeks afterwards. It’s not terribly important but it shows a certain propensity to gild the lily.
In his stump speech he commonly makes the claim that he is particularly qualified on national security because he prosecuted terrorists. He says, “I’m the only person in this national conversation who has used the PATRIOT Act, signed off on it, convicted terrorists because of it” as if that makes him especially qualified on national security.
In August 2003 … the New York dailies breathlessly reported what one US official called an “incredible triumph in the war against terrorism,” the arrest of Hemant Lakhani, a supposed terrorist mastermind caught red-handed attempting to acquire a surface-to-air missile. Only later did the government admit that the “plot” consisted of an FBI informant begging Lakhani to find him a missile, while a Russian intelligence officer called up Lakhani and offered to sell him one.
This terrorist mastermind tried to pay the fake arms dealer with a personal check.
Lakhani was a 70 year old con artist who, as Reason put it, “gets sent to jail for buying a fake missile from a fake arms dealer to be delivered to a fake terrorist group at an airport Hilton.” Not that he didn’t think he was actually participating in a terrorist conspiracy. But the idea that he could have actually pulled one off is very far fetched. Not that Christie lost any sleep over it. He said:
“I’m not going to sit around and second guess it. What was done was done, and I think ultimately the jury decided that question…there are good people and bad people. Bad people do bad things. Bad people have to be punished. These are simple truths. Bad people must be punished. ..I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t know, if this had fallen apart, what Hemant Lakhani would have done next.
That’s the kind of guy I want in federal prison, and so that’s where he’s going to go. And at the end, that’s the success of the Lakhani case.”
That pretty much sums up the level of sophistication Chris Christie brought to his job as a federal prosecutor.
[…] Yesterday he demonstrated his unique understanding of national security at a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition where he said:
For the first time since 9/11 I think we’re going to have to confront the loss of American life on American soil to terrorist conduct. Now there’s many people today who are trying to speculate about what happened in San Bernardino, but let me tell you as a former prosecutor, from the time I began to watch the events unfold last night, I was convinced that was a terrorist attack.
And the president continues to wring his hands and say “we’ll see” but those folks dressed in tactical gear with semi-automatic weapons came there to do something. And let’s remember everybody. If a center for the developmentally disabled in San Bernardino California can be a target for a terrorist attack then every place in America is a target for a terrorist attack.
First of all, if San Bernardino is officially classified as terrorism it would hardly be the first time since 9/11. Setting aside the controversy about domestic terrorism for another day, we have certainly had other terrorist attacks perpetrated by Islamic extremists. The Boston bombing, the Ft Hood and Chattanooga Tennessee shootings are all examples. And needless to say, “folks dressed in tactical gear” as a sign of terrorist intent is daft and the idea that a workplace might be the target for gun violence is something we’ve known for a very long time. None of this should have been news to anyone.
There’s more at the link. Christie is highly unlikely to win anything. But I noticed yesterday that he was treated respectfully in the press yesterday as they were talking about all the presidential candidates, even as he was spouting nonsense, and it was a little bit alarming.
What passing 400 ppm CO2 means to climate scientists
by Gaius Publius
NASA | A Year in the Life of Earth’s CO2 (source). Note first that emissions are greater in the industrialized northern hemisphere, which probably explains why the Arctic is melting first. Then note the difference between winter emissions in the north, which remain airborne, and summer emissions, which are partially withdrawn by growing vegetation.
This is written for anyone who is climate-concerned, but specifically for our DC readers in the policy-making community. This is the issue at which cautious incrementalism collides with urgency. If a meteor were headed for earth and due to crash in a year between 2020 and 2040, I doubt our policymakers would be talking about how long to delay before acting.
The climate emergency is that meteor. 2020 is five years away. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not feeling lucky. Neither are these folks.
What Passing a Key CO2 Mark Means to Climate Scientists
From Andrea Thompson and Brian Kahn at Climate Central comes this, a series of comments from prominent climate scientists on our passing a key climate milestone, a persistent 400 ppm of atmospheric CO2.
As the animation above shows, CO2, one of several greenhouse gases and the longest lived, passes into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels (primarily), then is partially draw out by the activity of plants in the summer, and other factors, such as dissolution in the ocean. More remains in the air than is drawn out, however, which counts for increasing atmospheric concentrations, year by year.
Here is the authors’ introduction to the scientists’ comments:
Because CO2 sits in the atmosphere long after it’s burned, that means we’ve likely lived our last week in a sub-400 ppm world. It also means that the reshaping of our planet will continue for decades and centuries to come, even if climate talks in Paris in two weeks are successful.
To get some perspective on what this means for the world, we asked leading climate scientists for their insight on passing this milestone as well as what it means for their particular areas of research. Below are their answers, some edited lightly for clarity or length.
And now a few of the comments:
How Do You Feel About CO2 Levels Passing This Threshold?
Ralph Keeling, director of the Scripps CO2 Program: “It will take some getting used to psychologically, like a round-numbered birthday. For someone who remembers when CO2 was only around 330 ppm, it’s a pretty big change.”
Jason Box, ice researcher at the Geologic Survey of Denmark and Greenland: “I feel very concerned because the last time atmospheric CO2 was this high, global sea levels were at least six meters higher. You can see a recent study by Andrea Dutton and others on sea level rise due to polar ice-sheet mass loss during past warm periods.”
Katharine Hayhoe, atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University: “As a scientist, the difference between 399 ppm vs. 401 ppm is negligible.
As a human, though, passing both the 400 ppm and (potentially) the 1°C threshold within such a short time period makes it clear we are already living in a different world. We have blown past targets that were being considered as viable when I entered graduate school. We have significantly reduced the options available to us in the future. If we aren’t going to blow past the next set of thresholds — 500 ppm and 2°C — within just a few more decades, we have a lot of work to do in Paris in two weeks and beyond.”
Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute: “In some ways, the number 400 ppm is no different than 395 ppm or 390 ppm — it is just that we like watching our odometers turn over at even numbers with lots of zeros. But this feels far more important than pure symbolism. The truth is, when I was born, atmospheric CO2 levels were around 300 ppm. Today — maybe even this week — will be the last time anyone alive experiences a level below 400 ppm, and no one born in the coming century or even longer will ever see less than 400 ppm again. That is a deep, deep observation, with ramifications for our children and for every future generation.”
Pieter Tans, head of the Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases Group at the Environmental System Research Laboratory: “What do I feel about this? Awe! To me, it demonstrates the continuing and unavoidable rise of CO2 as long as mankind continues to burn coal, oil, and natural gas in quantities so large that natural systems are being overwhelmed.”
There are more questions and more comments, all of them interesting. The questions include “What Does Reaching This Level Mean For Your Area Of Climate Science?” and “Do You Think This Milestone Will Spur Action On Climate Change?” Please read the rest.
Four Takeaways
To make it simple, here are four takeaways from the article:
From Jason Box, quoted above: The last time atmospheric CO2 was this high, global sea levels were at least six meters higher.
Katherine Hayhoe, above: If we aren’t going to blow past the next set of thresholds — 500 ppm and 2°C — within just a few more decades, we have a lot of work to do in Paris in two weeks and beyond.
John Church, from an unquoted part of the article: The oceans, glaciers and ice sheets are all out of balance so sea level will rise for centuries, and more.
Julienne Stroeve, from an unquoted part: Any action on climate change will be driven by economics; sadly that’s the way the world currently works.
All four statements are true — “we have a lot of work to do” is of course a huge understatement — but the fourth statement is only conditionally correct. In “incremental times” the fourth is spot-on. In revolutionary times, however, times in which the villagers opt for an “Easter Island solution,” there are choices other than protecting the wealth of our “leaders”:
You’re a villager on Easter Island. People are cutting down trees right and left, and many are getting worried. At some point, the number of worried villagers reaches critical mass, and they go as a group to the island chief and say, “Look, we have to stop cutting trees, like now.” The chief, who’s also CEO of a wood products company, checks his bottom line and orders the cutting to continue.
Do the villagers walk away? Or do they depose the chief?
There’s always a choice …
Six meters or more of sea level rise before 2100 is at least 19 feet. The seas continuing to rise “for centuries” is the end of coastal living worldwide, the absolute end, except in easily moved villages. Me, I like the Easter Island solution more and more. Simply depose the chief.
What Does “Depose the Chief” Mean?
Until the Democratic primary is over, “depose the chief” means replacing the “carbon friendly” and “solution at the margins” Barack Obama with only Bernie Sanders, at least until Hillary Clinton stops being a carbon candidate herself.
You can help in two ways. First, contribute to Bernie Sanders campaign, and optionally, the campaigns of all candidates who have endorsed him. (Adjust the split any way you like at the link.)
Second, understand that moving quickly means just that — a World War II-style national mobilization. Consider adding your name, voice and effort to this group and signing the pledge to mobilize.
Otherwise, we could end up here:
Climate translation:
“I know what you’re thinking, Mr. & Ms. American. You’re thinking, ‘Do we have until 2020 to stop making Exxon and Big Oil rich, or can we wait till 2040 to take them on?’ Now, to tell you the truth, no one really knows. But being this is civilization-ending CO2 emissions we’re talking about, which will blow your grandchildren right back to the stone age while you watch, you’ve got to ask yourselves a question — Do you feel lucky?”
Me, I don’t feel lucky.
“You are here” and rising at >2.1 ppm/year. Atmospheric CO2 across a span of time longer than our species has existed (source; click to enlarge).
Very serious people Ron Fournier and Andrea Mitchell discussed the political fallout from the San Bernadino massacre last night with Chuck Todd. To their credit, they spoke at length about the intensification of xenophobia on the right among Republican presidential candidates. Mitchell called out Donald Trump for bragging that tragedies boost his poll numbers.
Of course, no Village discussion is fair and balanced without “both sides do it“:
Andrea Mitchell: There’s a creepiness going on here on both sides – the fact that there was, you know, prayer shaming going on and the bloggers…
Todd: I don’t know what the left was doing on that. By the way, it was some people, and there were plenty of liberals that said ‘What are you guys doing here?’ There’s nothing wrong with offering prayer.
On Obama’s response to yet another mass shooting:
Fournier: He knows where this is headed and he knows his party is headed in the wrong direction … In a sane political environment, if you have one party doing prayer shaming and another party demonizing and profiling Muslims, they’d be laughed out of politics. They would be marginalized. We wouldn’t write about them [crosstalk] We have two very dysfunctional parties and a media now that is not even [crosstalk]
Mitchell: This is not a serious political debate.
Todd: No.
Fournier: It’s dangerous.
Prayer shaming? They were talking about Igor Volsky’s Tweetstorm and the New York Daily News calling out political “leaders” for offering only thoughts and prayers in the wake of this and every mass shooting, rather than kind of action they demand, say, when terrorists behead a journalist or shoot up a foreign nightclub. Those kinds of tragedies demand a show of strength — boots on the ground and bombers in the sky. Mass shootings at home get only thoughts and prayers and more impotent hand wringing.
A day after 14 people were killed in the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, all four Republican presidential candidates in the US senate – Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio – opposed a measure that would introduce tighter gun laws.
They were among Republicans who overwhelmingly voted down a measure that would introduce tighter gun laws by extending FBI background checks on every firearms purchase.
As the country is becoming numb to these tragedies, we have Villagers comfortably dumb — if not deliberately obtuse — about why people might be fed up with Washington dysfunction on gun violence in the midst of an epidemic of mass shootings.
What is laughable is not marginalizing idiots who insist the answer is that every citizen go about her/his daily business packing for a gunfight at the O.K. Corral. But then, this is America. In Guns We Trust.
For years and years, I’ve been saying that Scalia’s jurisprudence is incoherent, inconsistent, and bizarre, with a strong bias towards justifying the oppressive potential of the majority and and an equally strong contempt for the rights of minorities. But what do I know?
Here are two folks that do. Their conclusion: Scalia’s jurisprudence is incoherent, inconsistent, and bizarre, with a strong bias towards justifying the oppressive potential of the majority and and an equally strong contempt for the rights of minorities.
A taste of the op-ed. The entire thing is worth reading:
In a recent speech to law students at Georgetown, he argued that there is no principled basis for distinguishing child molesters from homosexuals, since both are minorities and, further, that the protection of minorities should be the responsibility of legislatures, not courts. After all, he remarked sarcastically, child abusers are also a “deserving minority,” and added, “nobody loves them.”
Not content with throwing minorities under the bus, Justice Scalia has declared that Obergefell marks the end of democracy in the United States, stating in his dissent that “a system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.”
The logic of his position is that the Supreme Court should get out of the business of enforcing the Constitution altogether, for enforcing it overrides legislation, which is the product of elected officials, and hence of democracy. The model he appears to be embracing is that of the traditional British Constitution; until recently, Parliament was deemed to be Britain’s “supreme court.” It could overrule judicial decisions, but courts could not invalidate parliamentary legislation.
We doubt that Justice Scalia would go that far, for he has repeatedly voted to strike down statutes that he believes violate the First Amendment and various federalism provisions of the Constitution, as well as affirmative action measures that he thinks are in conflict with the 14th Amendment.
But who knows? Maybe he’ll now cease voting to strike down statutes under any provision of the Constitution, as otherwise he might be thought of as one of those “unelected lawyers” who so threaten our democracy. Not only an unelected lawyer, but — a patrician. For he said in his Obergefell dissent that “to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.”
Anti-Muslim rhetoric, recently on display as lawmakers discuss the issue of resettling Syrian refugees, began on the fringes of the far-right and has infiltrated mainstream politics, according to a new report released by the National Security Network.
“The current political climate is the culmination of a years-long and well-funded effort to bring Islamophobia and xenophobia from the far-right fringe to the political mainstream,” report authors J. Dana Stuster and Samuel Davidoff-Gore write. “This rhetoric and legislation has a direct lineage stemming from a network of hate groups and conspiracy theorists. The legitimization of these extremists’ views in the political discourse is an irresponsible denigration of American democracy.”
As the report points out, anti-Muslim rhetoric is becoming increasingly prominent among Republican presidential candidates. Real estate mogul Donald Trump has said he would consider closing down mosques and keeping a database of American-Muslims while neurosurgeon Ben Carson has compared Syrian refugees to “rabid dogs.”
Before presidential frontrunners used such terminology, though, it was largely restricted to the fringes of the Republican party. During Mitt Romney’s 2012 run for president, the former Massachusetts governor “rebuked Islamophobic statements from members of his party.” The Republicans then issued a report that called for policies that would try and portray their party as more inclusive.
Now, the party appears to have instead welcomed fringe ideas into the mainstream. As the report reads:
However, politicians belonging to the Republicans’ Tea Party insurgency have maintained a mutually-reinforcing relationship with the bigots at the fringe of their party. Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in particular has given these groups access to Congress, headlining the “Uninvited II” conference established by groups from which CPAC has distanced itself. And last year, Gaffney was not only back at CPAC, but his organization, the Center for Security Policy, was listed as a contributing sponsor of the event. The Republican establishment has apparently given up trying to ostracize Gaffney and his ilk, and in September, the Center for Security Policy cosponsored a Capitol Hill rally protesting the Iran nuclear agreement, featuring Cruz, Donald Trump, and former Gov. Sarah Palin.
The latest targets of anti-Muslim sentiment and speech in the U.S. are Syrian refugees.
I don’t think I’m going to be going out on a limb to say that this is going to escalate quickly. Just watch cable TV. Or the GOP presidential candidates.
The Senate just voted down yet another attempt to deny people on the terrorist watch list the ability to buy guns without further investigation. So much for that.
Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn encourages terrorists to use American gun shows to arm themselves for potential Mumbai-style attacks. Gadahn’s video laid out a new tactic for Al Qaeda to continue their murderous terrorist agenda:
America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?
At gun shows buyers can purchase guns from private sellers without passing a background check. An investigation by the City of New York showed that even buyers that identified themselves as people who “probably couldn’t pass a background check” were able to purchase guns at gun shows. The investigation also showed the wide variety of guns available at gun shows.
The front runner for the GOP nomination really said this:
“We’re fighting a very politically correct war. And the other thing is with the terrorists, you have to take out their families. When you get these terrorists you have to take out their families. They, they care about their lives. Don’t kid yourself. But they say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.”
You have to listen to the whole thing especially the “analysis” of the facts on the ground in the middle east.
When Donald Trump descended from that escalator to announce his presidential run nearly six months ago you probably couldn’t have found more than three people in the whole country who thought he had a chance. It was even reported at the time that he had paid actors at fifty bucks a head to enthusiastically cheer and clap for his bizarre announcement speech, in which he declared his intention to build a big beautiful wall to keep out all the immigrant rapists. It seemed like a joke or some kind of political performance art. Everyone settled in to enjoy the show, never dreaming that anyone would take him seriously.
But over the course of the last half year he’s stayed at the top of polls and, even more astonishingly, gotten away with saying things that no other political figure could have ever gotten away with. With each gaffe, insult, mistake, faux pas, slander and cheap shot, his followers become even more loyal.
The latest polling average by the Huffington Post pollster has Trump at 34.4 percent with Rubio at 14.6 percent, Carson at 13.9 percent and Cruz at 13.4 percent. He’s not going down. He’s going up. And now that the primary season is in full effect, everyone’s starting to wonder whether he might actually win.
There have been a flurry of recent articles reporting that big GOP donors starting to get nervous, particularly since their designated candidate, Jeb Bush, sank in the polls a few months ago and hasn’t been able to climb back up. But they are stumped about what to do about him. On the one hand they’re sure he’s going to implode and on the other worried that any money they spend trying to take him down will be wasted.
This article in last week’s Washington Post by Matea Gold and Robert Costa is filled with colorful anecdotes and quotes from various consultants, advisors and party poohbahs wringing their hands and clutching their pearls over the problem. But the best are the big money donors who are convinced that the voters will see the light and all will be well:
“He is going to implode himself,” said Frank VanderSloot, the chief executive of an Idaho nutritional-supplement company who is backing Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.). He said he recently turned down a funding request from a group seeking to run anti-Trump ads. “It’s just going to take a little time for people to take a step back and look at his track record, see who he is and how he’s changed his positions and how unprepared he is to be president of the United States,” VanderSloot said.
That view is shared by Andrew Sabin, a longtime New York donor supporting Bush. “I’m not worried,” Sabin said. “The voters are not going to think out their candidate until a week or two before they go into the voting booth.”
Their faith is rather charmingly naive. They don’t seem to realize that the voters who are flocking to Trump hate people like them and have no respect for anything they believe. It’s not the money, of course. The fact that Trump is a billionaire is one of the things they love about him. He’s a winner. What they hate is the fact that these elites don’t think Trump is qualified. His lack of political experience is irrelevant.
One party strategist privy to recent research on Trump voters said that none of the messages tested swayed them — including his past support for universal health care or fond words about Bill and Hillary Clinton. “They’re incredibly angry, and he’s the first guy in their mind who speaks to that anger in a visceral way,” said the strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the findings. “They have a deep longing for that.”
He says out loud what they are thinking and he does it without any self-awareness or sense that there’s anything wrong with it. He validates their rage.
The large field has all the Super PACs tying themselves in knots trying to game out the ramifications of taking on Trump, worried that it will end up benefiting one of their rivals. John Kasich’s Super PAC decided to take the plunge and was greeted with a threat of a lawsuit from Trump’s lawyer:
Fred Davis, the GOP admaker crafting the super PAC’s spots, said the missive is an example of why more donors are not stepping forward to take on Trump.
“I think the reason people are hesitant is that he’s a bully,” he said.
Trump and his followers were undoubtedly thrilled with that admission.
So the campaigns, the big donors and the Super PACs have been pretty much paralyzed by the Trump phenomenon. At this point they are just hoping he’ll implode and they can run the campaign they always planned to run. But others in the party, those with concerns beyond the presidential election are starting to do some serious analysis and strategizing around Trump.
Yesterday, Robert Costa and Philip Rucker reported that the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee wrote a seven page confidential memo that “urges candidates to adopt many of Trump’s tactics, issues and approaches — right down to adjusting the way they dress and how they use Twitter.”
I’d guess that after San Bernardino Trump’s going to go full anti-Muslim jihad. His poll numbers will almost certainly go up some more and the other candidates will almost certainly follow his lead…
