What’s going on there?

Favorability: People in the News, Gallup, April 2, 2016

Source: AP

So, it looks like that the concerned Democrats – those who bothered to show up for the preliminaries, and specially the ‘super delegates’, are going to send Hilary Clinton to compete on the national stage, despite her constant ‘negative favorability’ and despite the fact that Sanders is constantly improving his chances – both favorability and ‘never heard of’ scores are slightly better now than they were at the start of the year. Furthermore, Sanders is the one who can ‘grow naturally’ – simply by making himself known – while Clinton needs to convince the voters that their erstwhile opinion about her was mistaken. An almost impossible feat, given the length of her public career…

Source: AP

On the Republican side things are even stranger.
Trump gathers more and more delegates while his ‘negative favorability score’ becomes slightly even ‘more negative’, Cruz gets a second lease on life despite his ‘unfavorable’ score increasing dramatically while Kasich, the least favored by the hard core Republicans, climbs nationally from +4% to + 18% in 4 short months. And if you look closely almost all new opinions on him, those that have been developed during the last 4 months, have been in his favor.

One of my Republican friends said “I can’t speak for the other candidates, but people support Cruz because they believe in what he believes, and feel that sometimes it’s more important to stand up for what’s right, rather than what’s popular.“.
OK, I can understand that. The despondent and/or exasperated use Trump as a banner for their state of mind while the hard core, value toting, Republicans hope that by backing Cruz they will somehow bolster those values.

But let’s see what some ‘significant Republicans’ have to say about the matter.

Scott Walker, Governor for Wisconsin and ex candidate, being interviewed on WTMJ’s Charlie Sykes Show:
““If you’re someone who is uneasy with the frontrunner, right now there’s really only one candidate—I think if you’re just looking at the numbers objectively, Ted Cruz, Sen. Cruz, is the only one who’s got a chance other than Donald Trump to win the nomination,” Walker said in the Wednesday interview on WTMJ’s Charlie Sykes Show. “Statistically, my friend Gov. Kasich can not.””

Then there is Lindsay Graham, Republican Senator for South Carolina and ex candidate who endorsed Jeb Bush when dropping from the race:
“Graham said there are other candidates he likes better, but he doesn’t think they can win. “I prefer John Kasich; Cruz is not my first pick by any choice,” the South Carolina senator explained. “But I don’t see how John Kasich can mount the opposition that Ted Cruz can to stop Donald Trump from getting 1,237” (the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination).
Graham has made it abundantly clear that he really doesn’t like Cruz at all. In January, he said Cruz has “exhibited behavior in his time in the Senate that make it impossible for me to believe that he could bring this country together,” adding that choosing between him and Trump is “like being shot or poisoned — what does it really matter?” Last month, he joked about Cruz’s general unpopularity among his colleagues, saying, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.””

The way I see it, these guys, the Republican ‘apparatchiks’, are more concerned about derailing Trump than with promoting the more suited candidate among the trio. Suited for Presidency, that is.

source: Huffpost Pollster

So, according to the polls compiled by Huffington Post, Sanders would lick the entire Republican field – if allowed to compete, while the Republican candidates are stacked, at least for now, according to the ‘who has the least chances on the national front’ criterion.

?!?

Does any of this make any sense? Any at all?

Here’s my Republican friend again: “In the case of Clinton, despite her unfavorability in the polls, there’s a sense in the Democratic Party that it’s her “turn.” ”
Some others think she is ‘in cahoots’ with the ‘big business’… “Family charities collected donations from companies she promoted as secretary of state“… Coming from Wall Street Journal this is a powerful allegation indeed…

But at least in this camp things are unfolding, lets say, ‘naturally’. The guys with vested interests (the super delegates, for example) are acting according to those interests while the rank and file Democrats are slowly (too slowly, maybe?) finding out what’s going on.

What really baffles me is what’s happening on the Republican side.

Some of the rank and file have adopted ‘the Donald’ as their mascot despite the obvious fact that he doesn’t belong, at all, in politics. He might have been a successful business man – read chock full of money, but the way he made that money disqualifies him from holding office. Does ‘eminent domain‘ ring any bells with you? Not to mention his antics on the public stage: “Excuse me”, ‘I’m the best thing that could happen to America!’
Are all these people delusional or are they so fed up with what’s currently going on in America that they can’t see the trees because of the forest (is on fire)?

Some others have gone ‘back to basics’ and try to revive what they consider to be the ‘sound Republican values’ – I’m speaking now about those who support Ted Cruz, if you didn’t figure that out by yourselves.
But what are these ‘hard core Republican values’?
How come some of Cruz’s followers are blaming Lincoln for being the first ‘statist’ in American history – not for abolishing slavery but for imposing that measure by force to the unwilling Southern States.
And how come those values have come to be embodied in someone so ‘popular’ among his Senatorial colleagues that “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.” ?

And isn’t it strange that so many Republicans are so mesmerized that they are willing to give up almost any chance of electing a Republican President?
OK, I can understand that way of thinking being used by ‘lay people’. But what is the real meaning of ‘pundits’ rallying behind the ‘value laden’ Cruz when it is obvious that Kasich is in a way better position on the national front?

Could it be that these pundits are more concerned about their own careers than with the fate of the Republican party? And even about the Republican values?
Farfetched?
Are you sure? Don’t you see that by energizing their constituencies into a frenzy they are simply building Republican (local) fortresses for their own use, leaving the rest of the (national) Republicans out to dry?

Well, I was under the impression that Conservatism was about maintaining a common way of life, not about conserving privileges.

I still believe that.