“I think the more he exposes himself, putting forward solutions that are unworkable, the charm begins to fade after a while when you realize there’s nothing behind the curtain.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by Politico, referring to Donald Trump as “the Almighty Oz” in the Republican field.
Washington Post: “The longer he floats atop the polls, the more Donald Trump has started to make people here feel a bit queasy, forcing them to contemplate whether his candidacy is really something they need to worry about. As Trump published his immigration proposals this week, Mexicans expressed growing concern about his bid for the Republican nomination.”
“The Mexican government has tried mostly to stay above the fray. Over the past few months, Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Meade and other top officials have gone on record with their displeasure about Trump’s comments. But they’ve also chosen not to engage Trump’s near-daily anti-Mexico barrages, in part because the candidate’s proposals change so often and also because officials don’t expect he’ll be president.”
Gov. Scott Walker (R) “took aim at the four senators who are competing against him for the GOP nomination, berating them for failing to repeal the Affordable Care Act,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Walker: “You see, they told us during the last election that if we just elected a Republican Senate, the leadership out there would put a bill to repeal Obamacare on the desk of the president. It’s August, we’re still waiting for that measure. We need to have some leadership in Washington.”
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“Bill Clinton was called the first black president because he crossed racial lines so easily, a distinction he lost when Barack Obama became the first actual black president. But for decades, some Americans claimed that the nation’s first black president was really Warren G. Harding,” the New York Times reports.
“It turns out that he wasn’t, really. At least that is the result of new DNA testing that according to scientists showed for the first time that Harding almost certainly had no recent ancestors with African blood, despite assertions that were spread far and wide a century ago in efforts to sabotage everything from his marriage to his political career.”
“It’s going to be very easy. You just watch.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by ABC News, on finding all the undocumented immigrants he wants to deport.
Nate Silver: “Personally, I give Clinton about an 85 percent chance of becoming the Democratic nominee. (The general election is a whole different story.) That’s a pinch higher than betting markets, which put her chances at 75 to 80 percent.”
“But wait — wasn’t Clinton ‘inevitable’ in 2008 too? Not to nearly the same extent. Her lead in the polls is considerably larger this time around, her edge in the endorsement race is much greater, and her opponents are weaker than Barack Obama and John Edwards were. If you set a lower threshold for ‘inevitability’ and included Clinton’s 2008 campaign in your equation, you’d probably also need to include winning campaigns like Romney in 2012 and Mondale in 1984, in which case the front-runners would be six-for-seven — an 86 percent success rate, which is about where I’d put Clinton’s chances now.”
“In fact, Gore is the only non-incumbent in the modern era to have swept all 50 states. (Two incumbents, Gerald Ford in 1976 and Jimmy Carter in 1980, also lost some states.) More often, candidates similar to Clinton have lost Iowa or New Hampshire, along with a few other states, before consolidating their support and eventually winning fairly easily.”
Matt Latimer: “Regardless of whether Clinton survives her primary battle with an ever growing list of potential foes, Republicans ought to think hard about the reasons why Bush might be the easiest of the serious GOP contenders for the Clintons to beat. And it’s not just because they’ve done it before.”
“Think the Clintons have political baggage? Well, so do the Bushes. And Jeb is being crushed under the weight of it. So far, Bush evokes as much allure among the Republican rank-and-file as a Dixie Chicks concert on Earth Day. There’s a reason almost no one has commented on Jeb Bush’s performance in the first GOP debate. He wasn’t terrible. He wasn’t great. He was just, well, there. Mediocrity is apparently the plan.”
“Even if GOP elites are right—that Donald Trump isn’t ready for the big stage—they better make sure their chosen understudy isn’t going to fare far worse.”
“There are like 10 things I would change in the Constitution with a magic wand.”
— Jeb Bush, quoted by the Washington Post, when asked if he supports revoking birthright citizenship.
A new CNN/ORC poll finds Donald Trump leading the GOP presidential race with 24%, followed by Jeb Bush at 13%, Ben Carson at 9%, Marco Rubio at 8%, Scott Walker at 8%, Rand Paul at 6%, Ted Cruz at 5%, Carly Fiorina at 5%, John Kasich at 5% and Mike Huckabee at 4%.
Key finding: “Trump is the biggest gainer in the poll, up 6 points since July according to the first nationwide CNN/ORC poll since the top candidates debated in Cleveland on Aug. 6. Carson gained 5 points and Fiorina 4 points.”
Also interesting: “Trump has quickly won the trust of Republican voters on several top issues. According to the poll, 45% say they trust Trump more than any other Republican candidate on the economy — up 25 points since June, 44% say they trust Trump over the others on illegal immigration — up 30 points since June — and 32% trust him most to handle ISIS, no other candidate comes close on any of these issues.”
“Donald Trump’s feud with GOP pollster Frank Luntz escalated Monday – with Trump calling on Fox News to fire Luntz from overseeing its post-debate focus groups, and Luntz launching a profanity-laden tirade to describe the real estate showman turned renegade presidential candidate,” Politico reports.
Trump also accused Luntz “of harboring a long-held vendetta because Trump refused to do business with Luntz’s polling firm.”
“Monday’s war of words, another chapter in a series of Trump vs. Luntz moments, was touched off when Politico asked Luntz about private comments that seem to call into question his objectivity as the man who facilitates the focus groups that appear on Fox News.”
Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential campaign “won’t reimburse the state for the cost of his security detail when he travels on political trips, it is paying for a helicopter ride he took Monday,” the Bergen Record reports.
“Christie rode on a State Police helicopter following interviews in New York City Monday morning, a flight that was captured on video and posted on Twitter as thousands of New Jersey Transit riders were facing hours of delays — the latest in a series of difficulties for commuters trying to cross the Hudson River — and as a car fire in the Lincoln Tunnel stalled motorists.”
Washington Post: “The ideas once languished at the edge of Republican politics, confined to think tanks and no-hope bills on Capitol Hill. To solve the problem of illegal immigration, truly drastic measures were necessary: Deport the undocumented en masse. Seize the money they try to send home. Deny citizenship to their U.S.-born children.”
“Now, all of those ideas have been embraced by Donald Trump, the front-runner in the Republican presidential race, who has followed up weeks of doomsaying about illegal immigrants with a call for an unprecedented crackdown.”
Andrew Ross Sorkin says “it is curious to those of us” who have reported on Carly Fiorina’s business career “that there has not been a greater focus in recent days on her ‘track records and accomplishments,’ as she suggested she should be measured by.”
“Even more striking, Mrs. Fiorina, the only former female chief executive among the candidates, continues to promote her business experience on the trail, yet she was fired by Hewlett-Packard after the company’s stock dropped by half in 2005. She has long blamed her failings at running the technology giant on the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the deepening recession in Silicon Valley after the Sept. 11 attacks.”
The Washington Post says Donald Trump “seems to be making up his own platform as he goes along.”
“Looking back over his interviews and speeches, it appears that Trump came into the race with only a vague idea — or perhaps no idea — how he wanted to handle some major, obvious, policy issues. So, when someone pointed out a new wrinkle that Trump hadn’t thought of, he came up with a new answer. And then another.”
“On some issues, Trump’s campaign has gone through more than half a dozen plans in two months. And counting.”
Even though Donald Trump leads in every poll, the Huffington Post “is doubling down on its decision to banish coverage of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to its entertainment section, saying it is ‘more committed to the decision than ever,'” The Hill reports.
Greg Sargent: “The sight of Donald Trump rolling out a new, and highly specific, immigration plan has been more than a little unsettling: It shows that Trump is now genuinely playing in the GOP primaries to win, and reveals in stark relief how exactly he intends to go about doing that.”
“Trump’s plan to combat illegal immigration — unveiled yesterday — may make it harder to avoid reckoning with the real source of Trump’s appeal to his supporters. If his lead among GOP primary voters continues, it will challenge the platitudes about how it is rooted in their desire to see ‘disruptions’ or in their general dissatisfaction with the political establishment.”
The Hill: “Trump is showing more confidence about his chances of winning the party’s nomination and the presidency in 2016.”
A new Morning Consult survey finds Donald Trump maintaining his standing at 32%, far ahead of Jeb Bush at 12%, followed by Ben Carson at 7%, Mike Huckabee at 6%, Marco Rubio at 6%, Ted Cruz at 5%, Carly Fiorina at 4%, Chris Christie at 4% and Rand Paul at 4%.
Jonathan Chait: “Trump has already endured numerous mortifying gaffes, by ordinary standards, and an apparently unsuccessful effort by Fox News to destroy his standing within the party during a highly visible televised debate. He will not run out of money. He can, and probably will, take his candidacy all the way to the end.”
“The worst-case scenario for Republicans is if Trump decides to run a third-party campaign. Even managing to get his name on the ballot in a handful of states would bring victory out of reach for the GOP’s eventual nominee. The best-case scenario is that Trump straggles through the race, eventually supporting the nominee. But this scenario is also far from ideal. It means that Trump has shaped the tenor of the race in almost precisely the opposite way the party establishment had hoped.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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