Today, the Boston Globe editorial page, which is generally great (except for its support of oil & gas pipelines [but nobody’s perfect]), continues its crusade to rob Republican primary voters of the candidate they actually want, Donald Trump, in favor of the candidate centrist editorial page writers love, John Kasich:
Where’s Charlie Baker? The Massachusetts GOP holds its presidential primary on Tuesday, but Baker, the state’s top Republican, has been keeping a low profile. The presidential candidate he endorsed, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, dropped out of the race weeks ago, and Baker hasn’t made a second pick.
That’s too bad. Baker could make a difference at a critical time. The governor ought to use some of his carefully amassed political capital to convince Republicans and unenrolled voters to back one of Donald J. Trump’s opponents, with the goal of keeping the New York businessman’s delegate haul from Massachusetts as small as possible.
Baker, you’ll recall, endorsed Chris Christie, who five days later finished sixth in NH with 7% and 0 delegates and immediately dropped out of the race. A new WBUR poll has Trump at 40% in Massachusetts, a huge (yuuuge) lead in a five-candidate race. Trump is much closer to getting an outright majority than he is to Rubio & Kasich, who each trail Trump by 21%.
Unless a Baker endorsement would immediately more than double Kasich’s support, there’s not much reason for Baker to jump in. Lindsey Graham endorsed Jeb Bush in SC and Bush ended up with 8%, barely ahead of … you guessed it, Kasich.
Nationally, Kasich is a distant 4th at 9%, barely ahead of Ben Carson, who spent last night awkwardly yammering about the “fruit salad of life.” Him. Your savior’s tied with him.
This is the Globe’s second editorial this week on the theme of We Must Shove Kasich Down the GOP’s Throat. This section of Monday’s editorial shows where the Globe mixes up the GOP’s disease with its orange-skinned symptom:
Trump’s campaign has revived some of the ugliest traditions in American politics, including the scapegoating of religious minorities and immigrants. He has yet to put forth a serious platform of ideas about how he would govern or what a Trump administration would seek to accomplish. Just his nomination by one of the nation’s major parties would be an international embarrassment.
As Steve writes at Crooks And Liars, the Republican Party has been getting its kicks on scapegoating minorities and immigrants for decades, all the way back to the days of Richard “Southern Strategy” Nixon & Ronald “Welfare Queens” Reagan. Trump’s only innovation is to lower the dogwhistles into the range everyone can hear:
Republican voters spend their days listening to Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage and spend their nights watching Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. They’ve been in a state of total war with the rest of America for years — if you’re not white, or not heterosexual, or not Christian or Jewish, if you fear gun violence or want a rise in the minimum wage or believe that human beings cause climate change, Republicans hate you. Donald Trump has merely taken a portion of that hatred and talked about it out loud. He’s the culmination of the last few decades of Republicanism — and the Republican Party should not be saved from him. The world should see that this is what the Republican Party is. It’s not up to us to save the party from the consequences of its own actions.
I also believe that, in some ways, he’d be a less dangerous president than Marco Rubio or John Kasich. Unlike Rubio, Trump is not promising the elimination of the capital gains tax, which could literally allow some billionaires to pay no income tax whatsoever. And unlike Kasich, Trump is not demanding a balanced budget amendment, which if it had been in effect in 2007, would have made it impossible for Presidents Bush and Obama to stimulate the economy enough to avoid a full-blown 1930s style depression. And that’s just a small portion of what we have to fear from a mainstream Republican presidency in the era of the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson. Trump is a menace, but he’s far from the only menace in his party.
The Republican Party is an abusive drunk and deserves to wake up in a pool of its own vomit. We don’t have a responsibility to clean it up and make it presentable after what it’s done to us, and given what it would like to do to us in the future if given a chance. Why is the Globe so protective of the GOP? Why is it afraid to have the world see it for what it is? I say Trump should win the nomination. Let the party wallow in its own stink.
Read Ben Domenech’s account of how even allegedly pious evangelicals are supporting the clearly non-religious Trump because he’s the angriest, hippie-punchingest culture warrior of the candidates.
Urging Republicans to support John Kasich is like asking zombies to stop eating brains. The battle was lost long ago and asking nicely isn’t going to help.
Look, my main problem with today’s “centrism” is that so much of it is based on avoiding trying to win at politics, because that’s just so dirty and beneath the centrists, who think their ideas & candidates deserve to win on righteousness alone.
Want to stop the Republican frontrunner? We have an app for that! For all my complaints about the two-party system, it’s really good at stopping the terrible presidential candidate of one party. Help Trump’s opponent, be it Hillary or Bernie, win at politics and the problem’s solved.
Kasich lead defunding Planned Parenthood in Ohio
You are correct of course about PP, but he doesn’t come across as angry, which is how their conservatism is judged. I’m sure there are Kasich supporters who are banging their heads against the wall trying to assure other Republicans that he really is conservative, much the way I have felt trying to convince people that Clinton really is progressive. Both of us would be right of course, but our respective purity police won’t hear of it.
His team may have chose to run temperate ads as a way to separate himself from the angry, ranting ads of most of his opponents. To an extent, it has worked. Many voters think of him as moderate, but those who recall his years in the House. remember a different person, a sharp tongued ally of Newt Gingrich in the heady days following the Contract for America.
…but even Newt Gingrich and his allies had some sense of what it meant to govern and offer ideas, especially compared to the current crowd.
So what is a liberal temperament?
There are definitely some man-the-barricades progressives that are more likely to support Sanders than Clinton, but I’m not convinced it’s a mirror image. A liberal temperment may also be one of extravagant welcome and inclusion both of different people and different ideas.
Samantha Bee did a great takedown on Kasich’s so called “moderate” status.
(Yo, editors, embed if you will…)
Thank you, jasiu.
You gotta wonder if Comedy Central feels it made the right move. I like Trevor Noah, I just think he hasn’t found his own editorial voice and is doing a muted version of Jon Stewart’s.
Noah sees Trump and thinks “funny accents”
His bit about Trump being like an American Mugabe was fairly well executed and was the kind of criticism that would appear to be uniquely suited to Noah’s international perspective and upbringing. He’s great at stand up and on other talk shows, but doesn’t have a good interview rapport and the quality of the writing has certainly suffered. It’s a lot closer to Weekend Update now, which makes it far less interesting.
Christie was fair enough. Maybe a favor owed, but anyway to a guy who seemed like a legitimate candidate who isn’t really loathed by anyone, and a guy who seemed in the same “lane” of Republican governors of blue northeastern states.
Now, he could endorse Kasich, and piss off the entire mouth-breathing rump of the Mass GOP, or endorse trump, and piss off far too much of the MA “non-aligned” electorate upon whom he depends far more than he does aforesaid mouth-breathing rump. Or he can miss the memo and avoid making a loss for no gain.
(Duh!)
The GOP doesn’t have a corrupt superdelegate system to take the choice of nominee away from the hoi polloi.
It’s like your state committee system. There was a graphic in my paper the other day. GOP state committe has 80, 40 men and 40 women. After all your add-ons and set-asides you have….379. Of course, the practical result of this is that you have many unfilled elected seats, and many more uncontested ones. Why bother to get signatures or ASK for a vote like Fred suggested when it can all be worked out in a backroom later?
Likewise your nomination process. By all means, use coin tosses or card draws to settle caucus results. It really doesn’t matter as your elite will be picking the delegate in your rigged game anyways. Since the Globe is a Democratic Party house organ, it is understandable that they are flummoxed by the apparent inability of the GOP to choose a nominee since they assume we subscribe to your corrupt standards and they don’t actually know a Republican to ask except Todd Domke who hasn’t been involved for many years.
If you think that “the Globe is a Democratic Party house organ”, then you haven’t looked at it since its acquisition by the current owner.
…for admitting the accuracy of my analysis if John Henry is what you have to base your dispute on.
Are you saying he makes them more or less MA DEMS sycophants?