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Thursday, March 31, 2016

LBJ Knew He Had Lost Vietnam When He Lost Walter Cronkite. The Donald Is Losing Ann Coulter

Abortion gaffe underscores why Trump would not put Wisconsin in play during a general election
James Hohmann, WAPO

THE BIG IDEA:
-- Lyndon Johnson knew, when he lost Walter Cronkite, he had lost Vietnam. Well, Donald Trump is losing Ann Coulter. And he’s almost certain to lose the Wisconsin primary next week.
Coulter became rich by courting controversy, being intentionally provocative and insensitive to build a fan base on the far right. She’s been one of The Donald’s staunchest defenders for months. But even Coulter couldn’t bite her tongue after the Republican front-runner retweeted an unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz juxtaposed against one of his own model-turned-trophy wife.
Compendium Of Pax Posts About Donald Trump


“I’m a little testy with our man right now,” Coulter told Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos in a podcast that posted earlier this week. “Our candidate is mental. Do you realize our candidate is mental? It’s like constantly having to bail out your 16-year-old son from prison!”
“Everything else I could defend,” she added. “He has been more a victim than victimizer. … This is the worst thing he’s done.”

-- Trump, whom a significant majority of American females already disliked, managed to make himself more toxic yesterday when he said “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who undergo illegal abortions. Facing an onslaught of criticism from pro-life and pro-choice groups, he walked back that comment a few hours later. He sought to clarify that he wants doctors to face punishment for terminating pregnancies. But the damage is done. It’s yet another data point in a “war on women” narrative that could prove fatal should he secure the Republican nomination in Cleveland this July.
A Washington Post-ABC poll conducted earlier this month found that just 23 percent of U.S. women viewed Trump favorably. In the intervening weeks, even before the abortion gaffe, he’s disparaged Mrs. Cruz and gone after a female reporter who was allegedly grabbed by his campaign manager. He’s also continued sniping at Fox News host Megyn Kelly with deeply gendered language.
It should go without saying, but let’s be clear: Women are not just some demographic. They constitute the majority of the population, and they vote at higher rates than men.
-- Wisconsin could be Trump’s Waterloo. Ted Cruz leads him in the Badger State by 10 points in a poll released yesterday by Marquette University law school. The survey, looking at next Tuesday’s primary, shows Cruz has gained 21 points since last month while Trump held steady. Trump gets 35 percent among men and 24 percent among Republican women.
There have been dozens of stories over the past few weeks about how Trump changes the electoral map in a general election. Some experts and strategists speculate that he might be able to compete in the industrial Midwest – states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that have seen their industrial cores hollowed out as manufacturing jobs went overseas. The idea is that Trump would activate some reservoir of blue-collar folks who have either stayed home in the past several presidential elections or voted for Democrats.
What this misses is how many Republican base voters are deeply uncomfortable with Trump and becoming more so. An unknown but not insignificant number of Republican-leaning women in the suburbs of places like Milwaukee will never cast a ballot for Trump, even if they do not like Hillary Clinton. They will either not vote or choose the candidate they perceive to be the lesser of two evils. I picked up on this anecdotally during more than a dozen interviews with conservative women in southeastern Wisconsin last week.
The new Marquette poll backs it up. Overall, 7 in 10 Wisconsinites view Trump unfavorably. In head-to-head matchups of Wisconsin voters, John Kasich led Clinton by nine points (49 percent to 38 percent) and Cruz tied her (44-44). But the Democratic front-runner beat Trump by 10 points (47-34). Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist without Clinton’s high negatives, beat Trump by 19 points (54-35) when those polled were forced to choose.

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