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George Orwell would be proud of Senate Republicans. Or maybe he wouldn't be "proud," but he certainly wouldn't be surprised. This is because he coined the word "doublethink," which is precisely what these Republicans are now revealing to the world. In fact, the Republican position is fast becoming "triplethink," an even more jaw-dropping feat of mental contortion.
Although at the present time it's kind of hard to believe, there is a faction of the Republican Party which looks towards the future and sees some very problematic demographic shifts awaiting it. These forward-looking types tried to educate the rest of their party after they got shellacked in the 2012 presidential race, dissecting the festering corpse of Mitt Romney's campaign in an autopsy, and then issuing a post-mortem document pleading Republicans to begin instituting some basic changes. Mostly, these changes can be boiled down to: "Don't badmouth minorities so blatantly, because if you do so it is very hard to convince them to vote Republican." Also pointed out was the fact that young Americans are much more inclusive than the Republican Party as a whole, and losing an entire generation of voters is going to hurt for decades to come.
Since we're all going to be busy tonight watching the next round of election returns come in, I'm not even going to attempt any political analysis today. Everything might change in a couple of hours, so why bother? Instead, I'm going to just toss out a wonky diversion for everyone to contemplate while we wait for West Podunk County to get its act together and get the damn numbers in to election central.
It's time to play "guess the primary results" once again, boys and girls! Before we get to confidently (or not-so-confidently, in some cases) predicting tomorrow night's results, I have to first update my record from the last time around.
Another week of presidential primary season has slouched by, which means we personally have been watching way too many debates and staying up way too late watching election results come in, once again. Well, actually, that last one was really just a taunt, since living on the Left Coast means we don't have to stay up nearly as late to find out what happened in Hawai'i as everyone to our east. Heh. Every once in a while, being three hours behind works to our advantage!
The Republican presidential candidates are about to debate again, which is always entertaining for Democrats to watch (in horrified fashion, of course). The current state of the Republican race is that it has reached the point where loud voices are beginning to demand that both Marco Rubio and (to a lesser extent, at least so far) John Kasich bow out of the race. The logic is persuasive, to all but the candidates' inner circles: "You can't win the nomination, and your continued presence in the race is preventing our best shot at dethroning Donald Trump, so for the good of the party you should drop out." Look for this to be the one thing Trump and Ted Cruz agree on, tonight -- that Rubio and Kasich should just pack it up and go home. But while this argument is being made on the Republican side, for Democrats the argument just isn't going to be valid. Because the one thing Hillary Clinton cannot do is to call on Bernie Sanders to exit the race.
There is a lot going on in the political world to talk about today, but in the background of the raging presidential campaign President Barack Obama hit a second-term milestone today. His job approval polling average is now once again "above water" -- defined as more people who approve of the job he's doing than disapprove. This might not sound all that momentous, but it is actually the first time in almost three years that it has happened. Obama's public job approval has been on a major upswing this year, which (if it continues) might significantly boost the chances of the Democratic nominee winning in November. So while Obama's poll rise hasn't been a topic for conversation in the presidential race so far, it could prove decisive later on.
If it's Tuesday, there's bound to be a primary somewhere, and today is certainly no different. So let's jump back into the prediction game once again, where we make wild guesses about who will win tonight's contests. As always, before we begin, we've got to update the scoreboard. Last weekend there were five contests on the Republican side and four for the Democrats.
Well, that was a quick counter-revolution. The Republican Party establishment, realizing it was teetering on the edge of a very dark abyss, tried to marshal its once-formidable forces to defeat Donald Trump. Out trotted Mitt Romney, backed by John McCain -- the party's two previous presidential candidates -- to condescendingly explain (establishment-splain?) why Trump was utterly inconceivable as their proud party's nominee. Trump was beyond the pale, absolutely unacceptable, not welcome, an interloper, and the only possible thing to do would be to shun, expel, reject, ostracize, and shame Trump into handing the Republican Party's voters back to their rightful owners. The hashtag "#NeverTrump" appeared as a rallying cry, and millions of dollars are being donated by fatcats for the purpose of (finally!) running some scathing anti-Trump ads to take the insurgent down.
It's been a wild and crazy week -- so much so, in fact, that we're going to start with a quote we never thought would become appropriate to use in a column about politics. It's from the movie Taken, where Liam Neeson's character utters the classic line: "Now's not the time for dick-measuring."