Trump Wins New Hampshire GOP Primary with 35.1%, Sanders Wins Dem Primary with 60%; Kasich is a Shocking Second in GOP, with 15.9%, While Rubio Finishes Fifth, with Only 10.6%; Christie, with a Mere 7.5%, is Probably Out; Carly Who? Dr. Who? The crowded GOP field served Donald Trump well, as John Kasich, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie peeled away votes from Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio without hurting Trump, thereby expanding Trump's margin of victory.
According to the AP, Trump won 10 delegates, and Kasich took 3. Ted Cruz came in third (2 delegates), with 11.6%. Trump owes much of his margin of victory to his nemesis Jeb Bush, who got 11.1% of the vote (and also 2 delegates); and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who came in sixth, with 7.5%; both of whom took away votes from Cruz and Rubio (who, with 10.6%, won no delegates).
Christie badly wounded Rubio during the last debate by pointing out that the latter was robotically repeating himself. Rubio took the blame last night for hurting himself in the debate. CNN’s Jake Tapper drew the wrong moral to the story, saying that when you hurt an opponent “you may also hurt yourself,” but Christie didn’t hurt himself at all. Without his debate attack on Rubio, he might not have broken 5%.
Christie has been dead in the water since before the get-go, and announced that he is cancelling all of his scheduled engagements in South Carolina, while he goes home to New Jersey to take a break, and catch his breath. In other words, to plan his bowing-out party. But he really was done before he ever announced. The Democratic dirty tricks operation of “Bridgegate” had been designed to put the kibosh on Christie’s presidential plans, and it worked splendidly.
Trump was gracious in victory, thanking all of his rivals, and CNN’s talking heads praised his “presidential” manner, but getting praised by CNN is a red flag. As analyst Margaret Hoover noted the other day, whenever Trump gets “presidential,” his popularity falls. He also muffled his tone, politically. He mentioned “the wall,” but only spoke of “ISIS,” rather than Islam. Someone has been whispering “self-censor” in his ear, and he has been listening. Self-censorship will not help Trump.
The MSM had claimed that Rubio was a great debater; so much for that line. They were desperately hoping that the young senator from Florida would take Trump down, so the media were the biggest losers last night. As with Jeb Bush, if Rubio remains in the race, he will only help Trump by taking votes from Ted Cruz.
Carly Fiorina (4.2%) and Dr. Ben Carson (2.3%), on both of whom at various times the MSM pinned their hopes of toppling Trump, are finished. Look for both to bow out of the race before South Carolina. If Carson doesn’t, it’s because he’s trying to squeeze a few million dollars more in fundraising money out of Evangelicals.
In this “losing is winning” primary season, the GOP runner-up, Ohio Gov. John Kasich gave a long, weird speech, as if he had won. He talked and talked and talked, and said nothing. He said we need an America where people care about each other, and where everyone has a job. Call him, the Rev. Kasich.
Keep in mind that John Kasich plans on enacting an amnesty for all illegal aliens on American soil. The MSM, the Open Borders Lobby, and some other observers claim that this number is now only 11 million. In late 2014, veteran financial analyst Robert Justich estimated to me that it was then 21-25 million (which would have increased by over two million since then). I then estimated that the number was around 50 million. But whichever number you believe, it is impossible to improve the job prospects for Americans, if you are amnestying millions of foreign job-thieves, and rolling out the welcome mat for millions more. Thus, Gov. Kasich is running on misleading, feel-good homilies. Still, that religious shtick may serve him well in South Carolina. It’s hard to tell in this wildest of elections since 1992.
Meanwhile, as CNN’s talking heads observed, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders gave such a tired speech that his followers were finishing his sentences. Sanders (13 delegates) beat Hillary Clinton (9 delegates), 60% to 38.4%, with help from independents and New Englanders supporting one of their own. However, if Sanders refuses to start attacking Clinton over Benghazi and her illegal use of a private email server to receive classified, “above top secret” emails, he doesn’t have a Chinaman’s chance of winning.
Award-winning, New York-based freelancer Nicholas Stix founded A Different Drummer magazine (1989-93). Stix has written for Die Suedwest Presse, New York Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, Middle American News, Toogood Reports, Insight, Chronicles, the American Enterprise, Campus Reports, VDARE, the Weekly Standard, Front Page Magazine, Ideas on Liberty, National Review Online and the Illinois Leader. His column also appears at Men's News Daily, MichNews, Intellectual Conservative, Enter Stage Right and OpinioNet. Stix has studied at colleges and universities on two continents, and earned a couple of sheepskins, but he asks that the reader not hold that against him. His day jobs have included washing pots, building Daimler-Benzes on the assembly-line, tackling shoplifters and teaching college, but his favorite job was changing his son's diapers.
Cover
•
Commentary
•
Books & Reviews
•
Climate Change
•
Site Links
•
Feedback
