The Daily Beast boils the GOP race down to two men:
You know the story about Richard Nixon and Pauline Kael? Here’s the gist: Kael,The New Yorker’s film critic, is said to have expressed disbelief that Nixon had won the presidency because she didn’t know anyone who’d voted for him. It probably never happened but it sticks around, particularly in the minds of conservative pundits, because it’s a clear illustration of what the right thinks of as elite disconnect from the lives of everyday Americans. Worldly, affluent, well-educated urbanites like Kael live in a tiny, isolated social bubble, making them much less knowledgeable about American life and culture than they think they are.
That bubble may have something to do with why so few reporters and pundits saw Donald Trump sticking around. Things inside the bubble, where plenty of journalists reside, are comfortable; much of the rest of the rest of the country, meanwhile, seems to think America is dying. And so here we find ourselves, just a couple weeks from Iowa, with Trump still the runaway frontrunner. Far from watching his support dissolve as the first primary contests near, it’s actually solidifying, and he’s improving as a debater and a candidate.
The only other candidate making waves is Ted Cruz, another guy a lot of us sort of wrote off some months ago as too divisive and off-putting to win, and he had a very good night Thursday. I still hear people say that Marco Rubio is destined to have a big bounce, or that Jeb, with his resources, can somehow mount a comeback. And I guess they could. The only problem with these theories is that, right now, there’s approximately zero evidence to back them up.
Read the whole thing.
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