5 Reasons Trump Will Win The Nomination
AP Photo/Matt Rourke
FEBRUARY 22, 2016
So Donald Trump won big in South Carolina. And the two guys trailing him,
Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), are too busy slapping
each other like Napoleon Dynamite and his brother Kip.
And thus Trump will win the nomination walking away. As I wrote on
Saturday night, Cruz and Rubio are splitting the vote in a way that
virtually guarantees a Trump win. Here are five reasons Trump is now the
most likely nominee:
The Math. As I wrote on Saturday night:
The blue, winner-take-all primary states in which Rubio needs to
clean up come late in the process; there are just 778 delegates
there, and another 162 delegates in purple states. Even if Rubio
were to win all those delegates – which he won’t --that’s not
and Trump divvy up the south.
And there’s no guarantee that Cruz even divvies up the south with Trump
or the north with Rubio in upcoming primaries.
Trump currently leads the polling in 10 of the next 14 states. Many of those
polls are old, but they were taken at a time when the national polling for
Trump vs. the field looked about the same as it does now. Trump is ahead
by 36 percent in Massachusetts in a poll released today. He’s also
leading in Nevada, Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia,
Oklahoma, Minnesota and Louisiana. And Trump is closing in on Cruz in
Texas – he trails by just 5 points in the latest poll (three weeks old, before
South Carolina and New Hampshire). Trump trails Rubio by two points in
the last Colorado poll (in November, when Ben Carson was still leading the
state), and he’s was four points behind Cruz in Arkansas as of early
February (before South Carolina and New Hampshire); the last poll in
Kentucky had Trump trailing Rand Paul and Jeb Bush, with Scott Walker
just trailing Trump – so, as you can tell, that poll is from last June. In other
words, there’s a very solid shot that Trump leads
all 14 of the next states. All of them.
The Anti-Wall Street Narrative. According to Reuters, Rubio is winning
among Wall Street fundraisers. They report that he’s “received more than
$4 million from the employees of banks and investment firms.” That’s more t
han former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who picked up $2.45 million;
Hillary Clinton came in third, with $723,361. Notice that Ted Cruz is nowhere
on this list. That’s because Wall Street doesn’t like Cruz – he pledges to cut
ties between Wall Street and Washington, D.C. But because Trump has
smacked Cruz for his wife working at Goldman Sachs, it’s unlikely that Cruz
can steal the mantle of anti-Wall Street warrior from Trump. Trump is also
anti-free trade, which cuts against Wall Street and plays into his heavy blue
collar base. Going into the south and Midwest, that’s a real advantage for Trump.
The Anti-Establishment Narrative. Rubio’s big bump in South Carolina
actually re-enshrines Republican anger against the establishment. Trump
is currently dominating the primaries without a single major endorser. His
biggest names: Sarah Palin and Jerry Falwell, Jr., both of whom have been
considered outside the mainstream. So Rubio, his supposed chief opponent,
returns serve with Tim Pawlenty? With Mitt Romney (perhaps)? With
Nikki Haley, who targeted Trump specifically in her response to the State of
the Union Address? All of this makes Trump supporters more angry, and even
alienates some of the Republican electorate that sees these Republicans
as emissaries of the cowardly portion of the party that lost to Obama twice
and then proceeded to surrender to him repeatedly in the Congress. Cruz
is actually anti-establishment – Bob Dole said he’d prefer Trump to Cruz –
but he doesn’t read that way. He reads as a religious Senator more like
Rick Santorum than like the fire-in-the-belly, tear-them-all-down type he
actually is.
Rage. Trump summed up the appeal of his candidacy this morning:
This is correct. Every time Barack Obama persecutes conservatives, they
react with anger – and with a call for strength. Every time Hillary Clinton
rips Americans for earning, for their supposed racism, many Americans
resonate to Trump’s pledge to fight back. With every sanguine economic
report from the Obama administration – and the simultaneous suffering of
millions of Americans out of work – Trump’s promises to make America
great again only echo more loudly.
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Ego. On Saturday night, I wrote that
a Rubio/Cruz détente was wildly
unlikely, mainly because Rubio has
spent the last several weeks smacking
Cruz as a liar; Cruz has been smacking
Rubio back as an unprincipled weakling.
Rubio has spent more time cannibalizing
Cruz’s vote than targeting Trump, who is now wheeling on Rubio. So the
chances of either one stepping aside for the other is slim. And Trump isn’t
going anywhere.
So here we are. Right now, you’d have to put Trump’s shot at the nomination
well above 50 percent. An odd confluence of reactionary emotionalism,
strategic incompetence, and media savvy have made Trump’s path to
the nomination the easiest of anyone’s. And ego will keep it that way.
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