GOP Voters: See You in Cleveland
By Daniel Henninger, WSJ
Dive into the political Web and somewhere you’ll find this now-unavoidable headline: 10 Things We Learned From the GOP Debate. Let’s keep it simple. What we learned at the debate in Milwaukee was one thing: This campaign won’t end until it gets to Cleveland.
None of these candidates looks likely to pull away and capture the majority of primary delegates before the party’s nominating convention in Cleveland next July. After Tuesday’s debate, the fourth evening we’ve all spent with these people, it’s hard for me to see why a round of brokering in Cleveland isn’t the most likely outcome.
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Ben Carson just spent a week passing through an intense crucible over his biographical credibility. After Tuesday evening’s good performance, I’d say Ben Carson isn’t going to fade. As to Donald Trump, well, we’re close to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and every year you simply marvel at how those fabulous balloons stay afloat.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump, wending his way through the minimum wage issue, said: “Wages are too high.” He survived saying John McCain isn’t a war hero and George W. Bush didn’t keep us safe on 9/11. But this?
Mr. Trump’s blue-collar base is entering its eighth year of Barack Obama’s low-wage economy. If saying wages are too high doesn’t sink him, then he isn’t going to fade from the primaries. Still, that crack just gave Hillary Clinton’s campaign its Mitt Romney Moment. They would plaster the billionaire’s “wages are too high” across every TV market in the Midwest’s battleground states.
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Jeb Bush, meanwhile, is obviously prone to brain cramps. The people of Washington, Iowa, likely will forgive him for clutching on why they aren’t like Washington, D.C. John Kasich’s remark about what Jeb was “trying to say” about bank capital requirements was nasty if irresistible... Mr. Bush needs to finish no worse than fourth in Iowa’s February caucuses and notch a win or second in New Hampshire. If he survives those tests, the Bush money and campaign machinery will make him competitive through South Carolina and Super Tuesday.
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Take Ted Cruz. His strategy is to collect “outsider” support if the Carson or Trump campaigns falter. It’s a plausible gambit. But . . . his top pander line—“If Republicans join Democrats as the party of amnesty, we will lose”—fell flat with the Milwaukee audience. Set aside the substance of this issue. The problem is that it was so patently opportunistic. It’s a Cruz quirk and liability. At the margin, it could suppress his vote in big-state primaries, such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—battleground states in the general election.
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Get used to hearing “no clear winner” and “no clear front-runner.” Until Cleveland.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/see-you-in-cleveland-1447286081
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