Monday, February 15, 2016

Republican Herd Stubbornly Refuses to Be Culled

As the contest in South Carolina approaches, I am amazed by the number of republican candidates that still hold on to some shred of an idea that they may pull this thing off and win the nomination. Of course, I admire their tenacity and respect the fact that they have some reason to cling to hope. This has been a season of unexpected events.

Not many people took the candidacy of Donald Trump very seriously when this campaign season began a year ago. No one took Bernie Sanders seriously then either but he has also made his potential for winning the Democratic candidacy very obvious, with unexpectedly strong support from more than just the youth vote. A number of lesser republican candidates have similarly experienced support that even they may not have believed possible.

Who would have expected that Jeb Bush would be fighting just to stay in contention? That Chris Christie and Rick Perry would already be out of the race after experiencing such national popularity as vocal and successful republican executives? Scott Walker was a major contender for this election a year ago and now hardly anyone remembers that he was in the race.

Instead, we have a junior Senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, contending for the candidacy with much more support than Jeb. We also have a Texan Senator, Ted Cruz, despised by apparently all of his colleagues, also challenging the unlikely billionaire front-runner, Donald Trump. Meanwhile, everyone is wondering if a neophyte neurosurgeon, Ben Carson, will make a comeback and regain his prior strong support for the nomination.

Given this background, you can't blame anyone for thinking that they might win. Nevertheless, I still blame George Pataki. Thankfully, he finally retired his run for the nomination several weeks ago.

With less than a week until the South Carolina decision, Trump remains in the lead. In fact, has increased his support, much to the chagrin of the media which still likes to trumpet headlines about the Donald's nonexistent losses. Immediately after the last debate, which media pundits claimed was a huge loss for Trump, they ran headlines saying that he had suffered terrible losses. Nevertheless, polls taken the following day showed the billionaire even more solidly in the lead.

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