More than a dozen Republican presidential candidates spent a year of the nominating contest waiting for someone else to attack and take down Donald Trump. But the GOP contenders had a common goal with a flawed strategy: Trump’s opponents should have attacked the celebrity’s supporters instead of the candidate, an expert on loyalty says. […]
With the GOP national convention still almost two months away and Donald Trump already wooing skeptical Republicans, it’s too early to know how divided the Republican Party will be in November. But minimizing that divide is critical to Trump’s prospects. The party’s last serious fracture occurred in 1964, when a polarizing nominee resulted in a […]
Stu and I have been working together for nearly 15 years and any acute political instincts I’ve developed I owe to him. In many ways, we’ve morphed into the same mind, including our valuations of players in fantasy baseball. But after reading Stu’s column, “Ryan Rides to the Rescue — But Not Until 2020, ” […]
The warnings about jumping to conclusions about November are widespread. I’ve heard that it’s early in the presidential race and that we underestimated Donald Trump last time so we should be careful now. I’ve also heard that Trump’s strength with working-class whites could change the electoral map, giving him a path to an Electoral College […]
I recently asked a veteran Republican strategist how his party picks up the pieces after what now looks to be a very difficult 2016 election. His answer was quick and decisive: Paul Ryan. If November’s elections are as messy for the GOP as they now appear, with Republicans failing once again to win the White […]
Both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have glaring weaknesses as presidential nominees, but that’s only the beginning of the GOP's problems. Just as important, the current mix of top issues is simply terrible for Republicans in general and conservatives in particular. The country moved noticeably to the right starting in the early 1980s with Ronald […]
There has been plenty of talk from the two leading Republican presidential contenders about how they will attract voters who didn’t embrace recent GOP nominees. For Ted Cruz, his pool of new voters supposedly includes conservatives who didn’t bother to vote because they saw few differences between the parties. Donald Trump, on the other hand, […]
Political observers – yes, including myself – have argued for years that the Republican Party has moved too far right, allowing its most ideological elements to limit its legislative options, prevent it from addressing national problems, and damage its appeal to key swing and emerging voter groups. But instead of Democrats responding by positioning themselves […]