CNN Poll: Trump Still Leads, Christie Out of Top Ten
A new poll from CNN this morning: The survey finds Trump with the support of 24% of Republican registered voters. His nearest competitor, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, stands 11 points behind at 13%. Just behind Bush, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has 9%, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker 8%, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul 6%, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former tech CEO Carly Fiorina and Ohio Gov. John Kasich all land at 5%, with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee rounding out the top 10 at 4%. Notice who's not in the top ten. 
Jim Gilmore remains an asterisk, making it increasingly likely he will not be invited to the debate at the Reagan Library. The threshold is one percent. Ominously for Bobby Jindal, he's at asterisk status right now, too. Logan Dobson points out that "independents that lean Republican" aren't the same as "registered Republicans", and that CNN's article mixes the two. Deep in the CNN poll, we find Donald Trump has a 31 percent favorable rating among all women, and a 65 percent unfavorable rating. And Now, an Argument for Trump . . . Okay. I have to give credit where it's due, and this letter-writer to The Atlantic offers the most compelling argument for Trump that I've encountered: Many would probably question why, of all people, a decadent, rude, and pompous billionaire should be trusted to meddle with American culture? I think it comes down to a perception that America has already drowned in a post-modernist nightmare of moral relativism, from which extreme political correctness and protest culture stem. Trump, on the other hand, is all absolutes. Everything he says, accurate or not, is stated in absolute, definitive terms. His personal morality is clear: He respects people who work hard, are loyal, innovate, and "win," and he shuns those who don't meet the criteria. Cruel as it may sound, I think America needs to reenergize these fundamental cultural values before we can ever hope to create a better society. Why Is Donald Trump Uniquely Credible on Promises of Border Security? The other day, debating Charlie Cooke, Donald Trump–fan Ann Coulter said this: A much more appalling flip-flop -- except it isn't a flip-flop, it's a lie -- that almost every one of the other Republicans running keeps insisting that yes, they want to do something about illegal immigration, and "Oh boy, we are going to secure the border first," and [Marco] Rubio promised for, you know, three years that he would not vote for an amnesty bill until the border was secure and ha-ha! We read the bill and first step, everyone's amnestied. Second step, they all get to bring their relatives! When do we get to the wall? Well, never, because you can build a tunnel under the wall. These are flip-flops that aren't flip-flops, they're direct lies to the American people! The idea is that because Republicans have promised border security in the past and not delivered, everybody who shows up in the 2016 primary is not believable on this issue. Scott Walker's suspect. Bobby Jindal's suspect. Rick Perry's suspect. Rand Paul's suspect. Somehow Donald Trump's promise to secure the border is believable because he's good at building hotels, office towers, and casinos. Did you know that hundreds of miles of border fence have been built? In October 2014, DHS indicated that it had constructed a total of 352.7 miles of pedestrian fence (in addition 36.3 miles of secondary fencing), and 299 miles of vehicle fencing along the southwest border. Read this entire post from Taylor Millard about how much of the border fence has been constructed and which portions of the border don't have a fence. The portions without fences are the mountains and the hottest, driest, most dangerous desert territory. The Border Patrol says they find about 200 dead bodies per year, illegal immigrants dying of dehydration and occasionally due to flash floods. Separately, it's hard not to notice that Coulter got a few things in her defense of Trump just flat wrong. After Charlie scoffed that Trump "decided a few minutes ago he wanted to be a Republican," Coulter responded, "He's been a Republican since 1988! He was at the Republican National Convention!" That statement requires us to ignore his periods as a registered member of the Independence Party (1999), a registered Democrat (2001), a Republican (2009), no party affiliation (2011) and finally back to the GOP (2012). "He's never been anti-gun." That's hard to square with his past support for the Assault Weapons Ban and longer waiting periods. The Sudden Taint of Experience Leon Wolf makes the key point at RedState that if you're voting for a candidate because they've never been tainted by the compromise and deal-making that constitutes governing, then you really have no idea how they'll respond to the environment of compromise and deal-making. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) -- at one point, these guys were all outsiders. Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) himself was at one time not too long ago a guy with a compelling story of having risen through poverty as one of 12 kids to become President of the company he had worked for for 13 years. He ran successfully as an outsider and won. The problem is, almost none of them actually were, after they got to office. Easily 95% of these political neophytes, once they got to office, were lured by the trappings of power and corrupted. And then they became the people you hated and the reason to send new political neophytes to power. Here is the salient fact that many people are missing in this particular logical chain. It's easy to say and do all the right things and to be non-corrupted when you are a political neophyte. Literally everyone who has ever run for office their first time has done it. What's hard (apparently, at least based on the evidence) is to remain true to your principles after you win your election and actually get to power. So what we ought to be looking for isn't really someone who's never been tested by the allure of power. History tells us that almost all people fail that test. What we ought to instead be looking for is people who have already been tested, to determine which ones have passed the test with the most success. The best way to tell whether someone will remain true to their principles is not to listen to their campaign speeches during their first run for office. History shows us those are almost entirely lies (or, more charitably, they are well-meant platitudes that wilt under the harsh glare of reality). Rather, the best way to tell is to look at the actual records they compile after running for office and winning. I realize it's quite stylish for aspiring presidents to run against "Washington" right now. I'd just ask everyone to notice that Barack Obama, having been in the Senate two years before running for president, actually surrounded himself with veterans of Capitol Hill once he was in office. Sure, he ran against "the same old faces in the same old places," but he picked Joe Biden and his decades of friendships and connections on Capitol Hill as his veep, and once he was elected, he had Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff. He put Hillary Clinton, top Democrat in Washington since 1993, at State; he kept on Robert Gates at the Pentagon. He wanted Tom Daschle -- former Senate Majority Leader -- running the health-care push. In other words, when Democrats want to get their agenda enacted, they go to the crusty veterans who have been there forever, have connections and relationships and favors to call in and who know where all the bodies are buried. I notice that we on the right are adamantly rejecting this approach. ADDENDA: Death toll from the Iraq War, according to Iraq Body Count: 219,000. Death toll from the Syrian Civil War as of June 9, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights: 230,618. | 
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