I’ll give Rubio this. This morning’s stump speeches are a different Rubio, a whole new operating system, harsher, funnier, freer. The one we’re listening to now is identical to the stump speech this morning. But okay, that’s a stump speech. The thing is, I don’t think it’s enough. He’s already defined. Trump is too far ahead. Contrary to what almost everyone said last night, Trump did very well. And Tuesday is the big windfall of delegates. The Christie endorsement didn’t change the tide. It just cemented it. Another punch to the face for Rubio when he could least afford it.
Trump announces: “We’re going to open up those libel laws. So that when the New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”
In amazing moment at Texas rally, coming off the Christie endorsement press conference, pulls out a water bottle and does a bit of impromptu anti-Rubio performance art. Watch.
Trump now proposing 2006/07-style “surge” in on-going War on Christmas.
With the Christie endorsement and Trump’s once-again dominance of the daily news cycle, I think we can say that the MSM’s latest imaginary Rubio comeback last approximately eleven hours.
I’m hearing a cavalcade of Republican operatives and pundits on the cable nets this morning explaining how Trump is basically done, caput, might as well get out of the race now. Hard-charging Rubio flustered him, beat him up, showed that he doesn’t deal in policy details. We all have ways in believing what we want to believe, especially when the alternatives are so bleak. I’m willing to believe that Trump lost some of his support from the part of his coalition which is made of people who thought he was a leading public policy mind. But I’m figuring there weren’t that many of those people. So probably not a problem.
The hits about Trump not being a real conservative were, I think, equally off the mark and actually revealing about how Movement Conservatives and Republican elites don’t fully get what a lot of their voters actually mean by ‘conservative’.
Let’s state the point clearly: Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz failed utterly to put a dent in Donald Trump or his seemingly clear path to the Republican nomination. In their defense, it was a huge challenge. If Trump does as well on Tuesday as the current polls suggest, he will likely be unstoppable. Not necessarily because the numbers will make him inevitable but because the pageantry of winning will continue to elevate Trump and overwhelm Rubio and Cruz. To prevent that, one or the other needed to land a devastating blow – something on the level of what Chris Christie did to Rubio before New Hampshire. Frankly, it needed to be even worse. They didn’t come close.
10:11 PM: It’s disorienting when Trump says things that basically make a lot of sense.
10:15 PM: “One of the saddest things I’ve ever seen.”
10:16 PM: Rubio’s line about Israel-Palestine not being a real estate deal would be a good line if Rubio weren’t losing so badly.
10:18 PM: Interesting that the logic of Kasich’s argument here is that what President Obama is doing now is getting results with China and North Korea.
10:28 PM: All we have to see here is that Cruz and Rubio are lost in this conversation about who wrote a check to John Kerry and did he say something about Libya. They’re lost. None of this matters.
10:30 PM: “This guy is a choke artist and this guy is a liar.” … Rubio: Do you see how he’s being mean again?
10:35 PM: Cruz and Rubio doing so badly even Blitzer’s standing up to them.
10:36 PM: What Rubio just said makes no sense. Apparently doesn’t know what a backdoor is.
10:40 PM: I’m not sure the president is supposed to intervene in on-going Court cases.
10:41 PM: Interesting juxtaposition between three overlapping ridiculous ideas about border walls.
9:44 PM: I’m sorry but this intra-family risk pooling that Carson is talking about is perhaps the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever said.
9:46 PM: Cruz can’t alpha Trump. But at least he can stomp Wolf Blitzer.
9:49 PM: Cruz has managed to corner Trump into ceding the ‘die in the streets’ position to Cruz.
9:50 PM: This ‘dying in the streets’ debate is a good example of the way Republican elites managed to convince themselves that their middle class and working class supporters are laissez-faire free marketeers who want to cut their own Medicare. Cruz thinks he managed a huge coup by proving that he will let people “die in the streets” whereas Trump will not. Completely meaningless point in policy terms and one that makes him look stupid to basically everyone who’s not employed by a right-wing think tank in Washington. (And because Trump is saying it, everybody gets that we’re talking about white people.)
9:57 PM: Constant audits? Seems like kind of significant? What? (I think the moderators didn’t follow up on the audit thing because they were so floored they didn’t even know what to think.)
10:02 PM: “I haven’t even started on her.”
10:03 PM: Classic Trump: “Last week in Nevada, I beat him in a landslide. Hillary Clinton irk take a look at “USA today,” take a look at the Q poll, I beat her and beat her badly and I only had one little interchange and that was four weeks ago when she said I was sexist and believe me, they had a rough weekend that weekend between Bill and Hillary.”