If CNN is right, Donald Trump is going to run the table tomorrow. The poll was conducted February 24 to 27th. That makes this poll difficult to evaluate. While some of this was after the Thursday night debate, it may or may not reflect any recent changes. It is quite possible that people are just sick of the whole thing so they are going to vote for Trump, regardless of the obvious problems and end this. If that is what is happening, the CNN poll is probably right. However it is also possible that some of the back and forth between Trump and Rubio has had an impact. If people are paying attention, there should be some serious questions about Donald Trump. No one really knows. Sadly, in this election cycle, widespread stupidity is the most likely outcome. I still expect Cruz to win big in Texas but am not sure it will matter.
What we do know is that CNN wants Trump to be the candidate. That is not necessarily a good thing for Republicans. We also know that Fox News wants Marco Rubio. The Republican establishment wants anyone but Trump or Cruz. They would probably choose Trump over Cruz because they think they can make a deal with Trump.
This means if Trump has a big day tomorrow, the Republican establishment is likely to do one of two things. They will either unite behind Trump or launch a suicide mission to stop him with a draft candidate like Mitt Romney or even Rick Perry. That, of course, will be a miserable failure. They are least likely to do the one thing that would stop Trump, which is uniting behind Ted Cruz.
Sadly it looks like we are could end up with a choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It is hard to imagine ever voting for Hillary Clinton but Donald Trump at least makes that something to reluctantly consider. Both are horrible choices for President of the United States. As soon as the nomination is secure, we can expect Trump to move to the left and Hillary to move to the right. Both are willing to say and do anything to gain power. It may shock people to learn that Hillary is probably more likely to protect the second amendment than Trump. She won’t do that until Bernie Sanders is dead and buried, but she is well aware of the power of the NRA. Hillary is not stupid and she knows that the NRA has a 58% approval rating. Hillary cannot afford to have the NRA running ads opposing her during a general election.
The results this week in South Carolina prove that people are more than willing to jump on a bandwagon even when it is obviously headed toward a cliff. How else do you explain Democrats giving such a huge victory to Hillary Clinton? They just ignored the huge problems and voted for her anyway. If Republicans are equally stupid, Donald Trump will soar to a victory tomorrow. It will be small comfort that we will deserve the disastrous results likely from stupidly allowing either of them to be President of the United States.
One final thought. The last time I checked, at least 13 million people listen to Rush Limbaugh every day. Another 12.5 mill listen to Sean Hannity. In the last couple of days, Rush has been much stronger in endorsing Ted Cruz. His spin on the Republican debate was very different than the main stream media. Following is a link to his February 26, 2016 broadcast.
In terms of substance? I disagree with Chris Wallace. I think there was substance in this debate last night, and depending on what you want — depending on what you were hoping to see and then what you think going forward — there’s really only one candidate in this debate last night which was chock-full of genuine policy-oriented substance, and that was Cruz.
We are about to find out how many people listen to Rush Limbaugh and whether or not he impacts how they vote. Bill O’Reilly has the biggest audience at Fox News. In 2015, during his best week he logged about 3.3 million viewers. He averages just under 600,000 per night. So, who has more influence?
TDM
Seriously depressing