When Does Marco Rubio Start Winning? And Where?
Our Tim Alberta asks a fair question about Marco Rubio: When does he start winning states? Rubio's team insists they are focused on winning a long-term delegate fight against Trump and Cruz. Yet both of those candidates have already notched wins. Sooner or later, to sustain the perception of viability, Rubio will need to win somewhere. And it's not unreasonable to ask, as Miller did: If Rubio can't win here, with most of the state's Republican apparatus supporting him, where can he? The danger for Rubio isn't that he flops without a first-place showing here. South Carolina, at this early stage and with six candidates still alive, isn't a must-win for anyone. But with Haley now on board, and the wind clearly at his back, Rubio would be devastated by finishing behind Cruz. That's the scenario Cruz's campaign -- which is deceptively strong on the ground here -- is teeing up as the media seizes on the narrative of Rubio's rise. (Polls showed the two senators battling for second place behind Trump prior to Haley's endorsement.) To be clear: Rubio's expectations are rightfully high here not just because he has these three influential state Republicans in his corner, but because his campaign has deep roots in South Carolina and always viewed it as Rubio's best chance to score an early-state victory. 
Every non-front-runner campaign plots a strategy that includes some element of, "and then we beat expectations in this state, and then BOOM! -- it gives us momentum and donations and we jump ahead of our rivals!" But Ted Cruz is doing about as well in South Carolina after winning Iowa as he was before. After John Kasich's second-place finish in New Hampshire, a couple of polls showed him jumping up from the 9–10 percent range to the mid-teens in South Carolina . . . and he's still in single digits just about everywhere else. He's not betting much in the Palmetto State; he won't be there on Election Night. What if winning or coming in second in an early state doesn't give you a sudden, dramatic boost of support in later states? If people in the March 1 SEC primary states don't care if Iowans or New Hampshire voters liked you . . . what then? Yesterday NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed both Cruz and Rubio beating Trump among Republicans head-to-head. The problem for both of them is that there's no sign this is going to be a two-man race anytime soon. I suppose if Rubio did abominably badly in South Carolina, he might drop out. A two-man race? Heck, we may not get a three-man race after South Carolina. Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, and John Kasich don't sound like they're ready to quit anytime soon. Bush was sarcastic when he said yesterday: "It's all been decided, apparently. The pundits have already figured it out. We don't have to go vote. I should stop campaigning maybe." Yes, yes, those mean, awful pundits who can look at polling and see that Bush has never finished higher than a tie for third, with 15 percent in South Carolina since July. Not only are Bush, Kasich, and Carson not doing particularly well in South Carolina; you have to look far and wide to find a poll of any other state conducted in 2016 where they're in double digits. Public Evenly Divided on Need to Replace Scalia in 2016 If you're a Senate Republican, you're probably more concerned about the polling numbers in your particular state, but for now, this should reassure the GOP: A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll of registered voters found that 43% preferred the Senate to vote this year on Mr. Obama's choice to fill the unexpected opening, while 42% said the position should remain vacant until 2017, when a new president could nominate a replacement. The remaining 15% had no opinion. The survey found voters were split deeply along party lines, with 71% of the Democrats favoring Senate consideration of an Obama nominee and 73% of Republicans supporting no action until the next president assumes office. Voters who identified as independent were almost evenly divided, 43% to 42%, on whether senators should take up a court pick this year. The notion that Obama's past work as a constitutional law professor/lecturer would give him uniquely good judgment as president is pretty thoroughly dispelled, but it's rather satisfying to see him get things wrong: "The Constitution is pretty clear about what is supposed to happen now," said Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. "When there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court, the president of the United States is to nominate someone, the Senate is to consider that nomination, and either they disapprove of that nominee or that nominee is elevated to the Supreme Court." . . . The problem for Obama: The Constitution doesn't say that, at least not explicitly. The pivotal words say the president "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint" Supreme Court justices. It doesn't actually say the Senate has to do anything, and in a separate provision the Constitution says both houses of Congress can determine their own rules. "The text nowhere requires the Senate to hold hearings or give a vote," said Ilya Somin, who teaches constitutional law at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia. "The only requirement is that a nominee can't actually take a position on the court unless and until the Senate gives its advice and consent." It was an early warning sign that when Obama first described the qualities he considers to be a good judge, he inadvertently revealed his belief that judges aren't necessarily supposed to be impartial, objective, and metaphorically blind: I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives -- whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation. I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes. Picture going into a courtroom and before proceedings begin the judge says to the opposing party, "I identify with your hopes and struggles." Do you feel confident you'll get a fair trial? What if Trump and the Democrat Are the Only Options in 2016? Allahpundit argues there won't be a major third-party bid in 2016. The odds are good that the choice before America in November is either Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders vs. Donald Trump. I keep seeing anti-Trumpers on social media talking about a conservative independent effort this summer if Trump ends up as the GOP nominee, but the more I think about it the harder it is for me to imagine how that'll work. Realistically, who's going to sign up to lead that effort? Plenty of establishment Republicans will glom onto Trump, whether because they think he'll be "malleable" in office or because they see no chance against Hillary if the right is split or simply because they're opportunistic cretins who are happy to deal with a guy who represents various things they claim to oppose. Maybe you could enlist someone like Jon Huntsman to run as the "conservative" third-party guy, but . . . conservatives don't like Huntsman and you're unlikely to build any real momentum behind him. The obvious choice to lead the effort would be Mitt Romney given his name recognition, but I doubt Romney wants to wade back into the arena when the likeliest outcome is that he spends six months being insulted by Trump and then finishes a very distant third. There's no name on the right, I think, that's big enough to attract so many votes that they'd threaten to outpoll Trump; that being so, the best a conservative third-party could aspire to is to tilt the election to Hillary, which would cause a deep rift on the right in years ahead. The fantasy of an independent conservative who's going to ride to the rescue feels to me like just another in the many anti-Trump fantasies that have failed to come to pass this past year -- Trump will gaffe his way out of the race, Republican voters will eventually turn serious, Trump's ground game will ensure his defeat, Trump will weaken as candidates start dropping out, and so on. No one's coming to give conservatives an alternative to Trump. The question in November will be purely a matter of how many stay home. For those of you who are Trump critics and skeptics, who have been called, "cuckservative," RINO, Establishment, GOPe, ethnomasochist, and so on . . . how eager are you to lend a hand in that general-election battle? Just how enthusiastic are you to join forces with Trump's fanbase to put their hero in the White House? I mean, if the alt-Right wanted traditional conservatives to help elect Trump in November, maybe they shouldn't have given David French a "Cucky" award for adopting a black child. ADDENDA: Shepard Fairey, the guy who made the red-and-light-blue Obama "HOPE" poster, has jumped onto the Bernie Sanders bandwagon: 
That's just perfect. It screams "national socialism" to me.  | 
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