okay. i agree it could happen. but for sure at the moment, it looks stacked up for trump. he floats upwards in spite of saying a million things that ought to make him unelectable. even to republicans.
i think rubio has blown it by saying isisish things about divine law being above human law. good grief, that is revealing of a twittish thinker unfit for the presidency. let's run things like leviticus says we should. for gawd's sake, "do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material." right? or, let's wait for rubio to channel god himself - god hates obamacare etc. he either gets divine law from the bible or he gets rubio's authorised version direct.
it explains the smug self-righteousness. it explains the surplus self-assurance. too much exposure, via a general election, would make him annoying.
and the fact that sentences emit from a face fluently doesn't mean that said sentences say something sensible.
he falls within the establishment lane. but cannot get the endorsement of george will who says he has a "recurring penchant for ill-considered undertakings." basically he lacks what folks call judgement.
my own critique. i suspect that as a man without any apparent doubts, he'd be almost as dreadful as trump as president. he's another cookie cutter republican who thinks not one jot about whether conservative theories work as advertised. and once things move towards a general election, tea party control of the debate diminishes some and a person's brutal ideas of how life ought to work are exposed. republicans simply do not learn from experience. they are slaves to a set of theories.
dubya already ran the "compassionate conservatism" angle. we know how that turned out. it implied torturing your enemies, tax reductions for the wealthiest americans and gross inequality etc. rubio wants all of that stuff the same way again.
normally you think a younger candidate will win a younger slice of the electorate. this generates a certain energy. but rubio doesn't have it. i don't see him winning anything but elderly voters. snow birds in florida etc. he's recycling the same crap the last guy did, and the guy before him and the one before that.
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