Trump, Bush feud presses forward on Twitter

Donald Trump, the national front-runner, keeps his big lead in two of the three early states of New Hampshire and SC, but now Texas Sen. For months now, Republicans have waited for his campaign to implode. It’s just never happened.

It’s time for the Republican Party to get serious about saving themselves from an unmitigated disaster. In the general, he is signaling that he will employ a strategy like that of past election winners: Like Cruz, he will seek to mobilize the base; more than Cruz, he will attempt to persuade non-ideological voters that his agenda will make a positive difference in their lives. That has become abundantly clear as he’s continued to alienate several voting blocs which are crucial to a viable campaign. The pollster, though, warns the “race is still young” and “there is still much room for movement for virtually all of the candidates”. “Trump’s voters are characterised by their decisiveness, & furthermore, nationally, greater than half of Trump voters” minds are already made up, in accordance to probably the most current CBS News source/ New York NY Times poll. The news gets worse and worse, as Trump polls over 50% with Republicans on his handling of nearly every issue (he gets 47% on handling ISIS; his next competitor, Ted Cruz, gets 21%), which refutes popularly-held notions of a Trump “ceiling” in the low forties. Fiorina polled at 8 percent, putting her fifth behind Trump, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie. It has also been reported that many Iowans and Republican insiders seriously question Rubio’s campaign infrastructure in Iowa.

However, the six point difference was not seen in other candidates. They consume different media and admire different heroes than the press that writes gaffe-of-the-day stories or lists of winners and losers. That’s the total support for Trump.

More to the point, other focus-group surveys suggest Trump “may have hit his ceiling”. A CBS/YouGov poll released on Sunday has Cruz over Trump in Iowa by nine points and a Loras College poll released earlier in December has the senator defeating Trump by seven points in Iowa. And who knows – maybe some candidates will even drop out by then. Marco Rubio of Florida followed the top two candidates, each grabbing 10% of the Republican vote. Donald Trump continues to lead among the pack of Republican Presidential candidates, but he only leads Sen. Trump’s margin of victory was not almost as wide as past polling has indicated, though.

As always, the first contests in Iowa and New Hampshire will shape the remainder of the primary season.

Still, the Morning Consult study proves that the psychological effect known as “social desirability” is at work in the Republican electorate, polling analyst Ken Goldstein notes, meaning that people are too “embarrassed” to admit they would vote for Trump.

There’s a lot of loose talk in Republican politics about the battle that’s supposedly raging between outsiders and the mainstream establishment.