The Week Ahead
I’m off to Israel for the week, teaching in a couple of Tikvah programs, seeing some political and government types as well–and, I hope, doing some good old-fashioned sightseeing. I’ll report on the trip and what I learn in next week’s newsletter.
Meanwhile, I’ve got to say the timing of this trip is a mixed blessing, because it’s a busy week here in the States. On the one hand, I’ll miss President Obama’s Tuesday night State of the Union address, which will be good for my blood pressure and my general disposition. On the other hand, I’ll also miss tonight’s college football championship game (unless I wake up at 4:00 a.m., which is entirely possible, given jet lag–but even so I’m not sure the game will be televised over there). But that’s not so bad because I really have no strong feelings about Clemson-Alabama, except a general root-for-the-underdog disposition which leads me to hope Clemson wins. Also, since only one of you picked Clemson as the winner in our championship pool, while a couple of dozen chose Alabama, The Weekly Standard will save a lot by only having to send off one generous prize instead of many. Go Clemson!
Then on Thursday night there’s the GOP presidential debate. I think I’ll try to get up in Jerusalem to follow it live–and I sure hope the hotel has room service and can deliver a large pot of coffee to my room at 4:00 a.m. I trust that can be arranged–isn’t that the point (in part) of the Zionist enterprise that Israel will be a normal nation like any other, with 24-hour room service in the classier hotels if so? In any case, if you see my tweets during the debate (go to Twitter and search for @BillKristol), or if you see I have a blog post up soon after the debate at weeklystandard.com, please take into account that I’m reacting to what’s going on at an ungodly hour (if one can speak of such a thing in the Holy Land).
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TWS Straw Poll Results!
As you get ready for the GOP debate, you’ll want to know the results of last week’s TWS straw poll. Thousands of you participated, and there didn’t appear to be any ballot-stuffing that our crack staff could detect, so the results probably are somewhat representative of TWS readers. Who, as of now, aren’t quite in sync with GOP primary voters–because TWS readers have mostly resisted the allure of the Donald. Are TWS readers a leading indicator? Or out of touch? We’ll see soon.
In any case:
First we gave you a choice among the six candidates whom we viewed as having a reasonable shot at the nomination. A couple of you wrote in to express continued loyalty to and hopes for Ben Carson or Carly Fiorina (which is fine), but here’s how the rest of you came down:
Marco Rubio 37%
Ted Cruz 35%
Donald Trump 15%
Chris Christie 7%
John Kasich 3%
Jeb Bush 3%
Then we asked you to chose among the three most likely finalists, and the results were:
Rubio 48%
Cruz 37%
Trump 15%
What this shows is that virtually all the Christie/Kasich/Bush vote went to Rubio–which tends to confirm the judgment that Rubio would really benefit from the three governors getting knocked out sooner rather than later.
Then we substituted Christie for Rubio, and asked for your choices:
Cruz 51%
Christie 33%
Trump 16%.
This suggests that Rubio will prove a stronger competitor than Christie (and presumably the other governors as well) in what’s being called (somewhat inaccurately) the “establishment” lane.
And finally we asked for your choice between Rubio and Cruz:
Rubio 51%
Cruz 49%.
In other words, three-quarters of the Trump vote (see the second question) went to Cruz, a quarter to Rubio.
So no great surprises here. Absent Trump, we’d probably be having one heck of a race between Rubio and Cruz–two 40-something Cuban-American first-term senators competing for the GOP nomination, a total break from the Republican pattern of the last half century of Nixon/ Ford/ Reagan/ Bush/ Dole/
The one thing I am convinced of, as I’ve argued in the last two editorials, is that Hillary Clinton enters 2016 as an extraordinarily weak presumptive Democratic nominee, now trailing both Rubio and Cruz in the Real Clear Politics averages. I’ll even go out on a limb and say this: I still think there’s a chance she’ll hit some serious bumps on the way to the Democratic nomination. After all, she’s not that far ahead of Bernie Sanders in the polls in Iowa and is trailing him in New Hampshire. A Sanders upset in Iowa would create some real uncertainty on the Democratic side, at least for a while. That would be fun.
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Airplane Reading?
Well, I’m off to the airport with lots of serious and interesting reading in tow–including the latest National Affairs, the new National Review, the most recent Claremont Review of Books. Good stuff! And, I must admit, the new Michael Connelly mystery (did you, by the way, see the entertaining interview with Connelly, mostly on the topic of Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye,” in Friday’s Wall Street Journal?). I think I know what I’ll be pulling out of my carry-on when the flight takes off. And I’ll feel guilty about selecting Connelly for at least two minutes…
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Onward!
Bill Kristol
