Percolating Under The Surface

++This past week there appeared several articles that the Donald's ground operation was insufficient and may cost him primaries. The National Memo wrote a piece comparing all the candidates campaign appearances and found that the Donald had not appeared in Iowa and New Hampshire as many times as his competitors.

++On Christmas Eve, Josh Marshall dissected this and concluded that when you have such a massive lead in the polls, ground games only affect you at the margins--perhaps 1 to 2% of the vote. In a general election, this can have enormous ramifications but not so in small state primaries. 

++It seems to me that the "establishment" is trying out anything before it confronts the real prospect of Trump actually having a shot at the crown.

++On of John Kasich's co-chairs, the former chairman of the Republican Party in Illinois,said "The only way you can take out Trump is with a head shot."

++George Will exclaimed that if Donald should take the nomination, then the conservative movement would collapse and there would not be a conservative party left.

++The Jeb! has taken to giving long interview with anyone. His latest was with Business Insider. I can't see they do much for him but he is warning about the Donald.

++Republicans are drifting to short-pants Rubio but it is still unclear ,as Ed Kilgore pointed out months ago,where he intends to win a primary.

++This leaves a person that is universally disliked--Ted Cruz. If the Right protests that no one knew Obama at Colombia,no one has found anyone at Princeton or Harvard that didn't hate Ted Cruz, not just disliked him, hated him. His roomate's tweets still have a following after years of taunting Cruz as a "creepy" guy because there are so many people who had the same experience. He is reviled in the Senate by his own party. 

++So we will start the New Year off with all the GOP candidates having wasted all their millions not even getting close to the Donald.

++The interesting thing is that we have no idea whether the Donald's support is less or more than his polls. There is some suggestion that  he actually has more of a lead than suggested. And we will not know the answer to this until the process is finished because polls have been dodgy since 2012.