Welcome to the weekly standard podcast. I'm your host Michael Graham with us on the weekly standard is numbers guru extraordinary J cost and J Let's just ruin everyone's new year. We haven't even hit to south 2016 and the Republican field is down to four According to your latest piece for the weekly standard. Well, I would call it for with an asterisk.
Let's just say no No, no the asterisk dropped out George Pataki. He's gone. Okay. Well, let's do it for trust me.
I lived in New York He's the biggest asterisks. I've ever met but anyway So who are the four candidates that have passed the J cost standard for 2016 before even get there and then why the asterisk? Okay, well, I think the four that I referenced are just the four who are at the top of the polls right now That's in order would be Donald Trump Ted Cruz Marco Rubio and Ben Carson and then the asterisk is somebody to watch I think would be Chris Christie who is not really at an impressive point in the polls right now But if you look at his trend line in New Hampshire, it's actually pretty gosh darn impressive his overall standing in the horse race numbers have not improved very much But his favorable rating has just done a complete 180 whereas when he started a campaign He was underwater in New Hampshire in terms of favorability. He is now one of the most popular candidates in the field up in Granite State and I favorability is not necessarily an indicator of of eventual vote strength But it's a pretty it's something to keep an eye on and so Christie somebody I'm kind of keeping an eye on well Let's go back into the four main candidates And I'd like to if we can dismiss Ben Carson out of hand and move on am I allowed to do that?
Yes, you're allowed to do that I think that Ben Carson is running a campaign that has been run many times over the years It's it you know, this sort of a campaign that's rooted in strong support from evangelical Christians in Iowa that is then so the theory goes To be used as a springboard to nomination based on a strong Holland South Rick Santorum came reasonably close to accomplishing that in 2012 Mike Huckabee did this came reasonably close in 2008 George W. Bush actually managed to do a version of that. He was very popular with the evangelicals Ben Carson has been trying to do the same thing But he is a worse candidate than a Huckabee in 2008 in torment 12 and certainly Bush in 2000 He is probably one of the weakest evangelical candidates that we've we've had in the last quarter century And you know as a graduate of oral Roberts University as someone coming from a family That's very friendly with Pat Robertson and his crew nothing against dr. Ben Carson But he's just not he's not gonna make a run and so even if he wins Iowa, it'll be shrugged off and and that'll be that So let's get to the real action Which of course is Donald Trump and everyone else J Cosmo Just go ahead and tell everyone that Donald Trump is gonna be the next president of the United States That's what it says in my Twitter feed.
That's what it says in my Facebook page Who am I who am I to question? You know, I let let us just pause for a minute during this holiday season and be thankful that our world is not governed by Twitter feeds in the comment sections on Facebook because it would be a much less pleasant place to live So you're saying that Donald Trump is not gonna be the next president I say because I've already got my inaugural plans You know, I was gonna get a room at Trump Tower and go shoot some crap at a Trump casino January 20th 2017 Should I pause on travelocity before locking in those plans? No, that's not like a pretty fun vacation anyway, but I certainly don't think that it will correspond to a Trump inauguration now I look I Trump has a lead in the national polls and that's you know, that is what it is But there he's got a lot of problems when you look close more closely at Trump You see a lot of cracks in the foundations of that campaign, you know He's not he wasn't a lead in Iowa, but he's not in the lead anymore And I think he's gonna lose Iowa I think he could lose Iowa by a substantial amount depending upon whether or not he can turn people out to vote and look That is some that is an important thing to bear in mind when we start thinking about the actual nomination process is that the timing matters And also whether candidates exceed or fail to exceed expectations. That is hugely important as well And the fact of the matter is that Donald Trump's campaign has been premised on on the leader in the polls Well, I think it's a pretty fair bet at this point that comes February 2nd, you know He will not he will be zero for one in the actual vote I want to stop you right there because it's I get what you're saying I think a lot of a weekly standard readers and listeners understand that argument But you make an I think a it's just as powerful point about the Trump phenomenon about who he actually represents these Rossboro voters from the 90s the talk radio wing if you will the Republican party I say this as a talk radio host and a long-time talk radio fan that there's a group of voters who get a sense that the elites The media leads the political leads the GOP establishment leads not only don't have their interests at heart But actively don't like them that who view them these working-class white guys as America's problem And if Donald Trump's I think it's fair to say that they've identified with Donald Trump You point out how strange it is that this multi-millionaire son is the guy who's found their voice But what about those voters you can see the fact is whatever happens and I have to settle those voters are real those voters want to vote For somebody and those voters in the past have been a key part of the Republican coalition who speaks for them if not Donald Trump Well, you know, that's that's a good question.
I don't know the answer frankly, you know, it's maybe nobody That's a real possibility They might have to select from you know a democratic candidate Hillary Clinton They don't like it a Republican candidate that they don't feel very medical to Ted Cruz is endeavoring to speak for them Ted Cruz uses rhetoric at times It's not the premise of his campaign right now But it could become if he wins the general election or if he wins the Republican nomination and heads into a general election campaign Look for him to go after both political parties That could satisfy those people But you know look it remains to be seen you know one of the things we need to consider here is the extent to which these people are Republicans anyway I mean, you know because we're talking if we're talking about the old disaffected parovos Then we're talking about people who were not in the Republican coalition in 1992 and who may not be registered Republicans and who may in some sense Consider themselves to be Republicans right now But wouldn't actually bother to go and vote in a Republican primary let alone a caucus in Iowa in the middle of the winter And you know so that I think is you know that sort of the question everybody's been wondering about these Trump supporters and the polls Is to what extent are they actually going to show up as voters? Well, can I ask a question about them as voters about can the Republican Party win in this era where the Democrats have powered up the Identity politics machine to you know, it goes to 11 now, you know, there's no there's no shame They ran you know for two presidential terms purely on vote for Barack Obama because of who he is as a person Hillary Clinton's counting on the magic of history You know her pollsters are the people around her basically saying we don't even care what's happening the polls right now Because at some point in September October of next year vote women are going to realize this is your chance for your woman president And so can Republicans stop that if the identity politics wing of their coalition is basically told to you know Take it take a hike. We're not gonna talk to you. We're not gonna represent you.
We have no interest in you Well, let's hope that the Republicans are smart enough not to do something like that And you know that of course is the question that we should be asking ourselves about Republicans because you know The Republicans reaction to the 2012 election was you know, at least among some quarters was we have to pass immigration reform Which is on the merit is something that should be done some version of immigration reform needs to be passed But the motivation for it was, you know, basically aping the Democratic Party's, you know, obsession with identity politics That is, you know, a gateway issue for Latino voters for instance is what you know was the sort of the storyline So and look if Republicans continue to you know wander in that direction and continue to ape and mimic the Democratic Party's obsession with the You know demographic profiles of voters and planes explicitly to racial and ethnic sort of, you know, tribalism Then these voters are gonna be left cold and they are gonna be left on the outside Looking in and they will be counting around for alternatives and look Michael I think something that is worth pointing out here is that the problem with Donald Trump is Donald Trump If Donald Trump were a better candidate if he were a more knowledgeable candidate if he had demonstrated Bieber and wider understanding of the issues if he was less inclined to insult people needlessly and gratuitously In other words, if he was if he was left apt to needlessly alienate people He could be he could be the guy to take the Republican Party away from the Republican establishment I think that's a vitally important thing We need to differentiate here is that there is a market for a candidate like that Trump's limitation is that he his appeal is not sufficiently broad But it is not difficult to envision a candidate in primary appeal is to the disaffected white working class and then upon that He graphs on say college educated evangelical and maybe even pulls in a portion of the African-American vote Which is similarly disaffected and there's no reason to think that that could not happen to the Republican Party So, you know, I in principle I think that Republicans should be should you Donald Trump as as a as a challenge or maybe if Trump himself fades out, which I think he will I think he nevertheless should be viewed as a warning signal of deep discontent with a substantial block of the country that normally votes Republican and that good, you know It's sufficiently motivated and united behind a candidate could remake the party itself Jacob so let me ask you then of the candidates who are left out your first four not Carson Trump, but Cruz and Rubio Who do you think has the best chance of building a 50 plus one coalition who are more and more accurately a Electoral College coalition to win the White House? Well, I think my first inclination is to say Marco Rubio Because I think Rubio has sort of been playing to the general electorate since the day He got into Washington DC whereas Ted Cruz has been playing to the Republican primary vote since he got into Washington DC So my first inclination is to say is to say Rubio But I pause because Ted Cruz is a very strategic politician And I I'll say this and I don't mean it as an insult to him, but he's very crafty I've been very considered in building a coalition to enable you know a backbench senator to spring to the top of the Republican field He has been appealing to a particular segment of the population and and he's done a very good job at it and the intentionality behind that because Cruz is a guy who's sort of appealing to disaffected that you know people who are angry about the Republican establishment But I mean come on if you look at Cruz's biography. He's not that much of an outsider himself. He's kind of an insider He's been very intentional and assiduous in courting these disaffected Republicans So I I think to myself well, you know There's no reason to think Cruz is going to continue this pose into the general election I think what Cruz actually wants to do is to become president of the United States And I think he's a really smart guy and I could very easily see him pivoting to a general election candidacy that has the potential to be very powerful politically He listened to Ted Cruz when he talks about the two parties in Congress as being a cartel And when he talks about insiders and corruption and money and politics and cronyism These are issues that have a real potential political power there because they they are consistent with the beliefs of the Republican electorate the base, but they also have enormous crossover appeal if you talk to liberals about the power of money to corrupting politics They get angry too, and you talk to them about the two-party functioning of the cartel I think they're gonna they're gonna be amenable to that and I think you know you look at a broad dissafact dissatisfaction with the two parties behavior in Congress Cruz has a message that as it stands right now is not really tailored to a general electorate But it could be it could be shifted and become a very powerful general election message Okay, let's conclude with this man There's so much good stuff and if you haven't read J.
Coss piece with the standard go to Lucas.com right now and read the whole thing But this one ask you about as someone who of the field you've given me in clients most towards Marco Rubio I keep looking Rubio going do you have any plan to win a primary of any? You're thinking that you're gonna lose every state and then at the end get appointed the nominee or something Tell me the what does a Marco Rubio primary voter look like J. Coss well look I think Rubio's plan is has been under a Rubio strategy Has not been given the credit that it deserves me first of all, you know His efforts he has to take the world as it is and not as he'd like it to be you know He's got two he's got two problems right off the bat The first one is it you know because he was he was you know the co-author of the comprehensive immigration reform You know his one of his political nemesis in the Republican Party of Steve King who is the congressman from Western Iowa Steve King was always going to come out heavy against Marco Rubio and he was all in deep King has a very powerful political organization Such as those organizations are anymore it was always going to be leveraged against Rubio Rubio was always going to have trouble in Iowa because of Steve King right off the bat In addition to that Rubio also has the challenge in New Hampshire Which is not so much he's not a good fit for the state in fact He's a very good fit for the state, but he's got a lot of competition Right and a lot of in a lot of candidates You know basically skip Iowa and and hope that New Hampshire doesn't pay any attention to the results in Iowa Which is actually a pretty good bet because you can't regularly ignore Iowa So Rubio has a very crowded field in New Hampshire. So if you're thinking about this from Rubio's perspective Well, what do you do?
What's the strategy? I mean you're not gonna win Iowa You know, there's always a chance for upside surprise in New Hampshire But the crowded nature of the field means it's gonna be tough to break out to what you do We'll be up at this playing a national campaign And I think what his strategy is is to look beyond the SEC primary on March the 1st and start looking towards the states that are later In the cycles he raises enough money and remains if he's not you know in sort of well No, Michael It's a more reasonable strategy than you would think because as a matter of fact Bill Clinton pulled off the exact same strategy in 1992 and the premise of the strategy is that there is a huge portion of the electorate That is not gonna be happy with the top two candidates in the field Bill Clinton did not win a primary until Georgia which was like three weeks into the process or actually was more I think six weeks and he didn't win a primary outside of the South until the Illinois primary Which was at the end of the cycle But the advantage that Clinton had was not so much that you know, he was winning the primaries It's that there was a wide swath of the Democratic Party that was dissatisfied with the people who were winning the primaries They didn't want Tom Harkin who had won Iowa They were not impressed with Paul Thomas who won New Hampshire They didn't think very much of Jerry Brown and that left Clinton and that I think is Rubio's strategy And it is not an unreasonable one This guy Rudy Giuliani to you has it does that have I mentioned that to you Jay? But Giuliani had a different problem Giuliani was outside of the mainstream of the party on a crucially important issue Which was abortion Giuliani was a bad fit ideologically for the party whereas Rubio is a good fit That is a crucial distinction what what some Giuliani ultimately was the fact that there was no state for him to compete in It wasn't so much that well, it wasn't just that it was that by the time He kept falling back and falling back and falling back and it gave John McCain an opportunity to consolidate the same vote That Julianne was looking to consolidate the Rubio's theory would be slightly different Rubio's theory would operate under the premise that the lane or whatever you want to call it the crews and Trump are operating in is Not gonna be it's just gonna leave a solid 40% of the Republican electorate feeling cold and that they're going to be looking for another candidate So Rubio wants to be the candidate their candidate and they're gonna become more important later in the process And by the way Michael, this is an important point to keep in mind When we think about these you know, it's you can't get yourself to you know Wound up about polling leads because as we learned in the 2008 Democratic primary battle But this is in fact an issue of delegates Yeah, it's a race for delegates and that what that means as well is that the allocation formulas for delegates are crucially important and this year the Winter take all states are pushed way back You can go all the way through March 1st and never win a state and still pick up delegates They'll be in the game and more importantly that the states that come later that our winner take all states like California New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin Those states are states where a guy like Rubio is going to be looking at as states where he can be competitive So if I so what is Rubio strategy ultimately there is a there's a substantial chance that he loses Iowa and then loses New Hampshire Okay, because you know Trump is probably gonna you know, they're the solid 25 to 30 percent of New Hampshire They could probably go for Trump. They went for Buchanan in 96 Okay, Rubio's strategy is not so much to be fighting against crews in Trump in New Hampshire His strategy rather is to prove himself a superior candidate to the competitors for the same vote and those competitors are Jeb Bush John Kasich and Chris Christie at this point primarily with Chris Christie having really I think the inside you know The the the the dark horse sort of title seeing the person to beat if Rubio So we can imagine a scenario in which Rubio finishes a solid third place in Iowa Maybe even second place who knows what's gonna happen to Trump and then finishes ahead of Christie Kasich and Bush in New Hampshire Then he if he gets that sort of anointed as the you know, we're gonna call it the establishment guy But that is such a lousy title Michael for this because we're not talking about professional We're talking about like 40 to 50 percent of the Republican party nationwide.
These people are insurance salesmen. They're bankers They're you know, they're professionals. They're not professional politicians to call them establishment voters is a real is a lousy phrase I don't like that phrase. I think that phrase has been overused.
I would call these people moderately conservative I think the probably the way to understand the party is you have the very conservative vote you have the moderately conservative vote in the moderate vote Historically speaking the party nominee who's been the person who dominates with the moderates and who and who wins an overwhelming share of the moderately conservative That's what Rubio's looking to go for and Jeb Bush and Chris Christie and John Kasich are looking to win those same votes and they're the competition Cruise and Trump are not really in that lane Trump is sort of out on his own He doesn't really have a clear fit Cruz is the one looking to consolidate the very conservative vote Rubio is the guy looking to win the Moderates and moderately conservative vote and and if he does better than if he does substantially better than Christie Jeb or Kasich in New Hampshire and especially if he forces them to drop out that's gonna help and that's his strategy and strategy is to look beyond The SEC primary on March 1st and to stay in the game and to stay flush with cash to be able to compete on television and Compete on the ground in State like Ohio and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and New York and Massachusetts and California where the delegate allocation formulas are much better That's the strategy and it is it is the smartest strategy for a candidate like Marco Rubio who has alienated People on the immigration issue and also has enormous competition in New Hampshire It is if I were picking you know a range of scenarios It's not the best scenario to win the presidency But given the forces that are outside of Marco Rubio's control the strategy that he has in place is the smartest one that he could formulate I totally disagree with the conventional wisdom about him being lackluster I think he's playing in smart because one thing to keep in mind is what if Marco Rubio had gone all in in Iowa? It had done all these things that all these local politicos who are annoyed because their net have not been sufficiently feathered by the Rubio campaign Well, didn't Scott Walker tried to do exactly the same thing in summer? He did he tried to do exactly the same thing He ended up spending all this money on staff and fuel organization as soon as his poll members lagged Expectations had been set and they were not met in the campaign collapse Marco Rubio could finish third in Iowa And and be just just fine from it because he never said any expectations that he was gonna win the state Jay Costes is why we talked to you This is why we love your work at the Weekly Standard and why I'm so glad we were able to get you for a year-end wrap up of where we are The presidential campaign and so now I can go to bed saying president Marco Rubio I'll be making my plans to travel to Florida now. Jay Costes.
Thanks for your time You've been listening to the Weekly Standard podcast, please be sure to check Weekly Standard dot com regularly for podcast updates I'm your host Michael Graham