A new electoral map projection from Morning Consult shows Hillary Clinton crushing Ted Cruz and Donald Trump but getting crushed by John Kasich.
Here’s her versus Trump:
Cruz:
Kasich:
The logic behind this is that Kasich is supposed to be a stand-in for the “generic Republican” candidate, which makes some sense. He’s barely known and Hillary Clinton has several Air Force Ones filled with baggage.
Still, I have a hard time believing that a guy who got trounced in the Michigan and Wisconsin primaries will end up winning the state, especially after essentially stealing the nomination from both Trump and Cruz in a convention that would likely resemble the end of Reservoir Dogs.
And then there’s the prospect of introducing Kasich to America. Forget that he’s the most anti-reproductive rights Republican governor in the nation — which is like being messiest porta potty at The Gathering of the Juggalos. He’s also one of the most unlikable human beings on Earth who isn’t Ted Cruz.
Watch him lecturing actual Yeshiva students about the Bible:
Yes, he would do better in Ohio than any living Republican, but that’s because he has ridden the coattails of the Obama administration’s auto rescue and Medicaid expansion.
But the media and even some Democrats like him because he’s reminiscent of a less ostentatiously aggressive GOP that recognized you shouldn’t intentionally alienate large swaths of the population with rhetoric when you can do that with policy.
That Republican base doesn’t exist anymore. There’s a reason that Ted Cruz is sweeping up delegates anywhere where party activists congregate and it isn’t just because he isn’t Donald Trump. They judge a candidate by his willingness to infuriate Democrats and engage in rank sabotage to pursue policy goals that abandon workers to the whims of illness, employers and acts of nature.
Kasich’s policies pursue the same ends, just not as obviously. And this GOP wants someone who celebrates his inflexibility. That doesn’t mean Cruz will be easy to beat, even though Morning Consult finds him doing worse than even Trump.
Cruz has proven to be a genius at inside Republican politics, mostly by pretending that he’s somehow above inside Republican politics. His “data-driven” ruthlessness may prove effective even in the general election and his rhetorical felicity will allow him to appeal to voters, despite the creeping sort of nausea his speaking voice often engenders.
But at least with Ted Cruz we’ll be having a debate about what Republicans actually believe, which includes banning abortion to the point where you have to have your rapist’s baby, increasing taxes on the poor so you can cut them for the rich and bombing sand.
Let’s not have an election about Trump’s distractions and name-calling or Kasich’s pretentious pretenses. Let’s have an election that’s about Ted Cruz because with his small-government, dildo-banning ways, he represents this party perfectly.
[CC image credit: jbouie | Flickr]
