Of the three, only the three-term former governor of New York has belatedly manifested a bare minimum of common sense:
George Pataki, the three-term governor who led New York through the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, on Tuesday quit the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
““While tonight is the end of my journey for the White House as I suspend my campaign for president, I’m confident we can elect the right person – someone who can bring us together,” the seventy-year-old former governor said in his campaign valedictory: a video announcement made on YouTube and in a prime-time TV advertisement in the three early voting states: Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
I'd guess Pataki's zero percent of the vote will probably go to Marco Rubio by default. Which I'm sure the soon-to-be ex-Florida Senator will appreciate.
In loopier Rubes-benefiting news, two other slightly less irrelevant windmill-tilters are, for reasons I can't begin to explain but since I'm already into this post now I suppose I have to try anyway, trying to sabotage the much more socon-ish Ted Cruz with all the influence that comes with a combined three percent standing in the polls:
“This is real. There exists this feeling that Senator Cruz is only the most recent Christian conservative presidential candidate, and that the two individuals who preceded him in the 2008 and 2012 caucuses have not been given the respect that they deserve as voices in the Christian conservative movement,” says Jamie Johnson, a former member of the Iowa GOP state central committee who supported Santorum in 2012 and has not thrown his weight behind a candidate after supporting former Texas governor Rick Perry earlier this cycle.
“It is absolutely clear to me that many Huckabee and Santorum supporters are going to swing toward Marco Rubio, because he is a Christian conservative who they feel embodies more of the character traits that Huckabee and Santorum embody,” Johnson says. “That’s what I’m hearing from both camps.”…
[A]n operative with one conservative campaign says he reached out to Rubio’s team to discuss forging an alliance against Cruz. On the ground at an event in Iowa, the operative says he approached Rubio press secretary Brooke Sammon and told her, “We have a common enemy, and I’m a firm believer that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” The Rubio campaign declined to comment on the exchange…
The anti-Cruz effort may not be limited to ad campaigns. Sources familiar with the discussions say there are proposals to pool resources that can be used for voter outreach and education as well. A primary target of such a campaign would be Iowa’s churches, where Cruz’s opponents believe parishioners have been misled about the Texas senator’s record on the issue of s[odo]marriage. [emphasis added]
What has Senator Cruz said about sodomarriage? Or abortion, for that matter? That they are State, not federal, issues. Constitutionally speaking, he's absolutely right. On the federal level, the only steps that could be taken would be Constitutional Amendments properly defining marriage and banning abortion, in neither of which the president has a direct role, and only indirectly via the "bully pulpit". And Ted Cruz, last I checked, is running for president, not national vicar. That's not the answer single-issue socons like Huckles and Santorum want to hear, but again, it's the right one under the U.S. Constitution.
Meanwhile, Marco Rubio, the "Christian conservative," has taken a stance of surrender on the Obergfell Supreme Court ruling imposing sodomarriage on the country that would be entirely portable to Roe v. Wade as well, which I would think would make the Floridian anathema to evangelical voters and candidates. And yet there are the last two Iowa caucus winners, all set to shiv the more socially conservative freshman senator right where it would hurt the most if they had a "weapon" more fearsome than a Nerf dagger. Neither Santorum nor Huck have the numbers to elevate Rubio, nor can they hurt Cruz in any way aside from possibly helping Donald Trump to overtake him - you know, the guy who has been married more times than he can remember,always keeps shacking up with what Kevin Williamson referred to as "plastic surgery disasters," and profanely and ignorantly acquitted himself so well with Iowa evangelical voters back in the summer.
To call this anti-Cruz/pro-Rubio drive on socon grounds incoherent is a rank understatement. "Insane" is more like it. But then these two never-weres even running in the first place was fruit-loopy enough, and it's unlikely that their profoundly un-Christian pride will permit them to exit the race anytime soon, no matter how sensible and merciful it would most definitely be.
But I guess they have managed to make themselves relevant in a way: as a reminder of just how aggravating I found both their candidacies eight and four years ago, respectively.
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