Rand Paul and Marco Rubio’s worst nightmare: Trapped between crazy GOP base and actual reality

[DonViejo]

Two front-runners have a bad week on voter ID and climate change. It's hard to keep Tea Party happy, and be honest

PAUL ROSENBERG

Last week, 2016 speculation/news was dominated by Karl Rove’s possibly botched smear attack on Hillary Clinton. But the real 2016 news was just how badly three prominent Republican aspirants were doing: the once dominant Chris Christie, who’s arguably just seen the last three nails in his coffin; Marco Rubio, whose high-profile global warming denialism seems to have come at just the wrong time; and Rand Paul, with his one-step-forward, two-steps-back move on voter ID laws.

Tuesday, I wrote about Chris Christie’s doomed campaign prospects, beset by woes on three fronts: damning evidence from the mouth of his own press secretary at ongoing legislative hearings that he tried to cover up the Bridgegate scandal; the sixth bond downgrade of his administration (and third of the year) signaling his failure on the economic front; and the fresh, still-unfolding pay-to-play scandal first broken by David Sirota. But just because Christie’s prospects are so dire doesn’t mean that anyone else’s look that good, either, over on the GOP side.

Christie’s plummeting fortunes are widely seen as indications that the GOP establishment is in trouble, and it clearly lacks any obvious candidate to rally around. But it’s not as if any GOP candidate has really promising prospects — even to get the nomination, much less win the general election. No candidate in Real Clear Politics poll tracking has cracked 20 percent since Chris Christie did it twice back in November, just after his reelection. No candidate is currently above 13 percent in RCP’s polling average (Paul and Huckabee are tied for the lead, trailed by Jeb Bush at 12.3 percent).

The travails of Rubio and Paul this past week or so are illustrative of a much more general problem: The GOP base’s increasing political isolation makes it virtually impossible for anyone who wins the primary to have a chance at winning the White House. And yet, even the slightest awareness of the general electorate can trip up candidates in their primary run. Rubio (who once supported cap-and-trade, before flip-flopping in his Senate race against Charlie Crist) showed his stuff on climate change denial last week, and the results were not pretty. Nor were things much better with Paul’s modest criticism of the GOP “going crazy” with voter ID laws. Rubio was trying to tack hard right, while still seeming reasonable — but he didn’t. Paul was trying to seem reasonable, which he sort of did, until it became clear he had no intention of challenging the laws themselves.

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/22/rand_paul_and_marco_rubios_worst_nightmare_trapped_between_crazy_gop_base_and_actual_reality/

[ladjf]

1. Sooner or later reality will debunk fanasy. nt

[AlinPA]

2. It looks like a mix of Paul/Cruz/Santorum/Bachmann/Palin/Limbaugh/Perry/Perkins/Gohmert

would suit the base of the GOP. Crazy rules the GOP now.

[yellowcanine]

3. It is hard to say they are "trapped" when both are clearly where they want to be.....

trying to have it both ways. Who can tell what either one clearly believes based on their conflicted rhetoric? The evidence seems to be mainly on the side of the teabaggers for both of them, imo.

[marble falls]

4. Its not a nightmare, its reality. The Teabillies will bite the hand that fed it.McConnell will go...

down in Nov.