Live from the Roasterie: The Party--Republican, that is--ain't doin' no decidin'. Or, rather, the Party decided for JEB!--and the base rejected the Party's choice, and now the Party cannot re-decide for Kasich or Rubio (or Romney) in time for it to do much good. That is how I see it.
: Who Says the Party Has to Decide?: "Relevant to yesterday’s post is the conviction of some GOP money men that the Great Jeb! is coming...
...Jeb Bush has convinced major GOP donors and supporters that the polls are wrong. ‘I am like the Israelites following Moses, and I am not the only one,’ said Mike Fernandez, the top donor to Bush’s super PAC, after a new CNN poll showed Bush an astounding 33 points behind the poll leader. ‘Unfortunately, it might not be that many of us.’
The previous two Republican cycles conformed roughly to a "The Party Decides" model... although the extent to which Romney [in 2012] struggled to win the nomination while running essentially unopposed should have been a sign of some vulnerability for the thesis. What we’re seeing this year is what happens when... there’s no clear establishment choice and the insurgent candidates have qualities the establishment ones lack.... The almost touching faith of Jeb!’s backers... reminds me that the Romney campiagn didn’t cynically exploit the UNSKEW THE POLLS! crowd to try to create enthusiasm among supporters; it genuinely believed that the polls were SKEWED and were shocked when Romney got soundly defeated.
Getting high on your own supply is central to what it means to be a Republican these days, and in this context it’s harder to see sensible elites guiding the party to its senses in the primary.
