What today's polls show with Cruz's surge in Iowa-he's also surging in national polls-is that Cruz's attacks on Rubio has been effective.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/11/ted-cruz-surges-in-iowa.html
Yes, Rubio has tried to turn it around and claim that Cruz is the one who's weak on immigration by cherrypicking certain votes without context. But at the end of the day Rubio was for Gang of Eight-and hence 'amnesty' and how does he ever outrun that in this GOP primary for the ages?
"The immigration issue is changing the fate of political parties across the Western world. And young and fresh as he is, on immigration, Rubio is the candidate of the recent past. Someone else is the future."
"That someone might be Ted Cruz. Now, Cruz's immigration attack on Rubio has been met forcefully by the Rubio campaign so far. But Cruz can rely on talk-radio stalwarts like Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, and others to hammer Rubio on the issue constantly. This is bad for party mandarins. Cruz is loathed by his colleagues in the Senate. His persona electrifies his supporters and his detractors. To the establishment, Cruz looks like Barry Goldwater 2.0 — an uncontrollable right-winger, destined to be blown out."
http://theweek.com/articles/588673/gops-nightmare-scenario-real
For this reason, Rubio's only solution is to tack as far Right as he can on immigration. He has repudiated his own bill of course. But Cruz and Laura Ingraham will keep reminding voters of that.
So he has to try to stake out a very harsh position on immigration reform. He has promised now to overturn Obama's executive action on the Dreamers. But he needs more. Some say his actual position on immigration is crueler than Trump's.
"The Promise and Peril of Marco Rubio’s Trump Triangulation
He has unwittingly outflanked the Republican front-runner—on the right."
"If the range of Republican attitudes toward religious minorities and non-citizens who want to live in the U.S. extends from one exclusionary pole, represented by Donald Trump, to another pole of grudging tolerance, represented by Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio is dancing around the middle point between them."
"While Trump wants to deport millions of unauthorized immigrants, and Bush does not, Rubio selects his words carefully to keep himself in the good graces of voters of both proclivities. Trump is stoking Islamophobia shamelessly. Bush is criticizing him. Rubio is tiptoeing around the conflict as painstakingly as he can. "
"In purely affective terms, Rubio is positioning himself masterfully, courting, or at least refusing to offend, both the party’s nativist faction and its more ethnically inclusive donor class. The trouble for him is that the rhetorical middle between Trump’s xenophobic policies, and Bush’s reality-based rejection of them, is an incoherent substantive realm that is in many ways crueler and more reactionary than Trump’s outright rejectionism. By successfully adopting a more measured, less inciting form of rhetoric, but refusing to condemn Trump’s bigotry, Rubio has unintentionally outflanked Trump—on the right."
https://newrepublic.com/article/124347/promise-peril-marco-rubios-trump-triangulation
Thank you. This is a point I've often tried to make about Rubio. I agree that his position is in a sense the cruelest of all. Because of the uncertainty.
"The question of a policy’s relative left-ness or right-ness is inherently subjective. Rubio is eschewing absolutism precisely because he expects to correct course toward the center if and once he cinches the nomination, and to the extent that he does intend to veer leftward in the general election, he is indeed a less extreme politician than Trump. But if you’re an undocumented immigrant or a devout Muslim, life under Rubio’s policies would be harsher and more uncertain than under Trump."
This triangulation is the same on Muslims.
"It’s not about closing down mosques,” Rubio told Fox News’s Megyn Kelly last week. “It’s about closing down anyplace—whether it’s a cafe, a diner, an internet site—anyplace where radicals are being inspired. … Whatever facility is being used—it’s not just a mosque—any facility that’s being used to radicalize and inspire attacks against the United States, should be a place that we look at.”
"The purpose of this tack was to deemphasize the explicitly religious nature of Trumpian Islamophobia. But rather than shift frames from policing religion to policing crime—by perhaps arguing that no mosque (or church or synagogue or cafe or website) provides legal refuge to terrorists—Rubio instead simply promised to shutter more and different mainstays of Muslim communities than Trump did."
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/11/ted-cruz-surges-in-iowa.html
Yes, Rubio has tried to turn it around and claim that Cruz is the one who's weak on immigration by cherrypicking certain votes without context. But at the end of the day Rubio was for Gang of Eight-and hence 'amnesty' and how does he ever outrun that in this GOP primary for the ages?
"The immigration issue is changing the fate of political parties across the Western world. And young and fresh as he is, on immigration, Rubio is the candidate of the recent past. Someone else is the future."
"That someone might be Ted Cruz. Now, Cruz's immigration attack on Rubio has been met forcefully by the Rubio campaign so far. But Cruz can rely on talk-radio stalwarts like Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, and others to hammer Rubio on the issue constantly. This is bad for party mandarins. Cruz is loathed by his colleagues in the Senate. His persona electrifies his supporters and his detractors. To the establishment, Cruz looks like Barry Goldwater 2.0 — an uncontrollable right-winger, destined to be blown out."
http://theweek.com/articles/588673/gops-nightmare-scenario-real
For this reason, Rubio's only solution is to tack as far Right as he can on immigration. He has repudiated his own bill of course. But Cruz and Laura Ingraham will keep reminding voters of that.
So he has to try to stake out a very harsh position on immigration reform. He has promised now to overturn Obama's executive action on the Dreamers. But he needs more. Some say his actual position on immigration is crueler than Trump's.
"The Promise and Peril of Marco Rubio’s Trump Triangulation
He has unwittingly outflanked the Republican front-runner—on the right."
"If the range of Republican attitudes toward religious minorities and non-citizens who want to live in the U.S. extends from one exclusionary pole, represented by Donald Trump, to another pole of grudging tolerance, represented by Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio is dancing around the middle point between them."
"While Trump wants to deport millions of unauthorized immigrants, and Bush does not, Rubio selects his words carefully to keep himself in the good graces of voters of both proclivities. Trump is stoking Islamophobia shamelessly. Bush is criticizing him. Rubio is tiptoeing around the conflict as painstakingly as he can. "
"In purely affective terms, Rubio is positioning himself masterfully, courting, or at least refusing to offend, both the party’s nativist faction and its more ethnically inclusive donor class. The trouble for him is that the rhetorical middle between Trump’s xenophobic policies, and Bush’s reality-based rejection of them, is an incoherent substantive realm that is in many ways crueler and more reactionary than Trump’s outright rejectionism. By successfully adopting a more measured, less inciting form of rhetoric, but refusing to condemn Trump’s bigotry, Rubio has unintentionally outflanked Trump—on the right."
https://newrepublic.com/article/124347/promise-peril-marco-rubios-trump-triangulation
Thank you. This is a point I've often tried to make about Rubio. I agree that his position is in a sense the cruelest of all. Because of the uncertainty.
"The question of a policy’s relative left-ness or right-ness is inherently subjective. Rubio is eschewing absolutism precisely because he expects to correct course toward the center if and once he cinches the nomination, and to the extent that he does intend to veer leftward in the general election, he is indeed a less extreme politician than Trump. But if you’re an undocumented immigrant or a devout Muslim, life under Rubio’s policies would be harsher and more uncertain than under Trump."
This triangulation is the same on Muslims.
"It’s not about closing down mosques,” Rubio told Fox News’s Megyn Kelly last week. “It’s about closing down anyplace—whether it’s a cafe, a diner, an internet site—anyplace where radicals are being inspired. … Whatever facility is being used—it’s not just a mosque—any facility that’s being used to radicalize and inspire attacks against the United States, should be a place that we look at.”
"The purpose of this tack was to deemphasize the explicitly religious nature of Trumpian Islamophobia. But rather than shift frames from policing religion to policing crime—by perhaps arguing that no mosque (or church or synagogue or cafe or website) provides legal refuge to terrorists—Rubio instead simply promised to shutter more and different mainstays of Muslim communities than Trump did."
The only thing I'd add is that the real danger of a Rubio-or a Jeb-which is why I don't want an establishment GOPer in the general is that Rubio's triangulating rhetoric could lull certain independents and other low information voters into thinking 'Maybe he won't be so bad on immigration and Muslims. I mean that's what he says.'
This is how GOP politics is supposed to work. What Trump has done is broken the system down by telling the truth.
"Yes, Rubio has tried to turn it around and claim that Cruz is the one who's weak on immigration by cherrypicking certain votes without context."
ReplyDeleteYou don't need to cherry pick anything... just point to Cruz repeatedly dodging the question regarding if he'd support Trump's plan to deport 11 million. He was being asked by a Fox News reporter... and he finally got so annoyed he accused the reporter of asking questions like a member of the liberal media would. But he never answered. If I was Rubio I'd turn that interview into an ad.
Also Rubio should just lie. He should say he supports Trump's plan to deport 11 million. Then if he wins the nomination just pretend he never said that. The electorate is so stupid they won't notice.
I think both Rubio and Jeb actually are in sync with their donors on immigration. They represent the donor class, and immigration (particularly the illegal kind) might be good for them (the donors). That's my impression.
I don't see Rubio outflanking anybody on the right on immigration. I'd bet you money that in either a general electorate poll or a GOP voter poll he's not seen as to the right of either Cruz or Trump. He's desperately trying to hide what he really thinks, as is Cruz.
Again, Rubio should just cynically lie and say he's for deporting 25 million, and that only pussies like Trump want to keep the other 14 million "terrorists," "child molesters" and "rapists" in the US. He should say he's for waterboarding (or worse) toddlers until they give up their vermin parasite parents. Say they deserve it. That's a proven winner. Then say he'd kick the Canadians out too, including foreign scum like Cruz. Say he'd kick both Cruz and McCain out because they weren't born in the US and thus they don't belong here. He should go Trump^2 or maybe 10^Tump or Trump! ... lie his ass off. Trump has demonstrated there's no downside to it. Start bringing pinatas to his campaign rallies that look like an immigrant family, and beat them to pieces right there on stage. Maybe fill them with hamburger and pig's blood so it makes a gory mess ... that should be a crowd pleaser with the base!
Why do you want Rubio to win? My provlem is that how do we know which is the lie and which isn't?
ReplyDeletePlus you seem not to have understood that post I linked to's analysis. To neither take Trump's side totally or repudiate it, he's actually crueler to the immigrants by increasing their uncertainty.
That piece made a good case that Rubio is to the Right of Trump by 'triangulating'.
I don't see why lying helps Rubio more than Cruz or Trump. And in fact it has helped Trump the most.
I don't get why you think Rubio is humane on immigration. First of all, there is no substantive difference between Jeb and Rubio and the outsiders-it's just sylistic.
I'm begging you to read this Huff PO piece by again making it sound like Rubio is good on immigration or even preferable to Trump, etc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-good-chunk-of-gop-field-wants-to-repeal-the-14th-amendment_55d24915e4b055a6dab12015
I have to insist you confront a few points I've made repeatedly.
1. Getting rid of 11 million people is not just trump. It is the mainstream of the GOP. Look at the history. Even Jeb by saying 'anchor babies' is not closing the door.
2. For that matter, 40% of Americans-not just GOPers-actually agree with deporting 11 million.
This is not a fringe position by numbers.
Trump is radical not for his views but for his bluntness