DeSantis Falling

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The early stages of the 2024 race have begun.

DeSantis is doing very very poorly.

 Ed Kilgore at New York:

Ron DeSantis remains the most formidable rival to Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. But it’s been a long, long time since he’s gotten any particularly good news in the polls. A new Emerson College survey shows him dropping into single digits and third place in New Hampshire, behind Chris Christie. In the RealClearPolitics averages of national GOP polls, he’s dropped from 30.1 percent at the end of March to 14.8 percent now. He looks relatively strong in Iowa, where it appears he is making a desperate all-or-nothing stand, but mostly just by comparison. Trump only leads him by 27 points in the first-in-the-nation caucus state, though sparse Iowa polling may disguise a less positive environment for DeSantis.

Polling aside, recent news emanating from the DeSantis campaign has been generally quite bad. He’s had three campaign leadership shakeups, a big round of staff layoffs, and at least one major “reboot” of his message and strategy. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is still building steam, and its main problem is that too much of his vast financial resources are going into legal costs in connection with indictments that aren’t hurting him at all among Republican voters. Another bad development for DeSantis is that a large field of rivals has remained in the race, spoiling his hopes for a one-on-one battle with the front-runner.

...

The trajectory of DeSantis 2024 should remind political observers of another recent Republican presidential bid that at this point in 2015 was about to enter a dramatic plunge into premature defeat well before voters voted: Scott Walker.

There are similarities:  Walker was a youngish governor who took on a formidable foe (the public employee unions).  But there are differences:  Walker was a college dropout with limited knowledge of national and international issues.  DeSantis has degrees from Yale and Harvard Law, served in the military and the House.  For all his problems, he knows his stuff.

Anti-Intellectualism on the Right

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties.

The state of the GOP is not good.

Bruce Bartlett last year at TNR:

Although Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan also adopted anti-intellectualism as a political strategy, for them it was just a cynical way to cater to widespread distrust of expertise and learning as a brand of elitism. As president, they routinely deferred to experts, scientists, and other intellectuals in developing and implementing their policies. Nixon famously reached out to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a professor of government at Harvard and well-known Democrat, to work for him in the White House. According to Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, he used the columnist George Will, who studied at Oxford and holds a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton, as a sort of emissary to the intellectual community. And George W. Bush had as his vice president Dick Cheney, a man who had pursued a doctorate in political science at the University of Wisconsin, where his wife, Lynne, got a Ph.D. in British literature.

...
The problem is that adopting faux populism and anti-intellectualism for purely political purposes eventually leads practitioners to take their own rhetoric literally and denigrate expertise as something to be distrusted per se. This is why the great conservative philosopher Russell Kirk rejected populist rhetoric as a path for conservative victory, even though the populist message might overlap with the conservative program to some extent. As he explained in a 1988 lecture at the Heritage Foundation:

Populism is a revolt against the Smart Guys. I am very ready to confess that the present Smart Guys, as represented by the dominant mentality of the Academy and of what [sociologists Peter and Brigitte Berger] call the Knowledge Class today, are insufficiently endowed with right reason and moral imagination. But it would not be an improvement to supplant them by persons of thoroughgoing ignorance and incompetence.

In a forthcoming article in Public Opinion Quarterly, political scientist Eric Merkley explains how populism and anti-intellectualism lend themselves naturally to the rejection of scientific expertise. As Republicans have tied themselves to the pseudo-populist Tea Party movement over the last decade, as well as to evangelicals and other fundamentalist Christians, their trust in scientific expertise has fallen. According to a 2019 article in Public Opinion Quarterly, in 1973 more Republicans had a great deal of trust in scientists than did Democrats (41 percent of the former, 35 percent of the latter). But by 2016, those percentages had reversed. The latest data from Pew show that 43 percent of Democrats have a great deal confidence in scientists to act in the best interests of the public, while only 27 percent of Republicans do. 

 

a depressingly accurate account of the deterioration if not eradication of intellectualism on the right. It truly is the know-nothing party. https://t.co/xmiDlFwq5t

— Jennifer 'pro-voting' Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) March 24, 2021

Blue Wave Update, Early April

In Defying the Odds, we discuss congressional elections as well as the presidential race.

Harry Enten at CNN:

In another major pre-midterm election, the left has won again -- this time in a race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Although the elections are officially nonpartisan, that's really in name only. Liberal candidate Rebecca Dallet won by 12 percentage points over conservative Michael Screnock, who was backed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker. It was the first time Democrats won an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court since 1995.

This Wisconsin result is merely the latest sign that it's not 2016 anymore and Democrats have momentum heading into the congressional midterms this fall.

One of the most interesting trends in the previous special elections in 2017 and 2018 is how the results correlated with the 2016 and 2012 presidential results. What we might expect is that the more recent election (2016) would be more predictive of the race to race correlation than the one before it (2012). That is, the areas that President Donald Trump did worse in relative to Mitt Romney would continue to trend that way, while Democrats would continue to lose ground in the areas where Trump did better than Romney.

Tonight’s results show we are at risk of a #BlueWave in WI. The Far Left is driven by anger & hatred -- we must counter it with optimism & organization. Let’s share our positive story with voters & win in November.

— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) April 4, 2018

Trump Voters

At National Review Online, Henry Olsen writes of Trump voters:

It’s common to view their concerns through a purely economic lens and call them protectionist. That is largely true as far as it goes: These people have been buffeted by globalization more than most Americans and see restrictions on trade and immigration as ways to boost the number of good-paying jobs open to American workers. But that’s far from all that they want, nor does a purely economic lens capture the way they view their votes.

They are best viewed through the lens of active citizenship. They take national identity seriously and imbue Americanism with an implicit bargain that flies in the face of liberal or libertarian cosmopolitanism. They believe that being American means more than voting and paying taxes. To them it means that if you work hard and play by the rules, the people who run the country owe it to you that you will live with dignity and respect.

...

I’m sure many people reading this are thinking, “Adding these voters to the conservative coalition can’t be done.” But in fact it can be done, as Wisconsin governor Scott Walker showed. Walker cut taxes and reduced the rate of spending growth while taking on public-employee labor unions. He also expanded government-funded health-insurance coverage by taking advantage of his state’s very generous Medicaid program to cover more poor people publicly and push working-class people into Obamacare’s exchanges. All factions in his coalition got something they valued.

Walker rode this balanced approach to two important political victories, winning a recall battle and then reelection despite being targeted by national progressive groups. In his three elections, Walker won virtually all of the historically Democratic white counties that Trump won, often running only a couple of percentage points behind Walker. Trump Democrats could also be called Walker Democrats.

Walker’s subsequent political missteps also show how one can lose these voters’ support by becoming too conventional a Republican. Walker veered to the right as he prepared his presidential campaign, catering to tea-party and Christian-conservative groups in nationally covered speeches in Iowa. He also tried to reduce funding for the University of Wisconsin system. His approval ratings dropped sharply and remain mired around 42 percent.

"It's a Bleeping Bitch"

Politico's Alex Isenstadt and Mike Allen speak with Rick Wiley, late of the Walker campaign:

“We built the machine that we needed to get a governor in just phenomenal shape to take a stage in a presidential debate,” Wiley said. “I think sometimes it's lost on people the largeness of the job. I think people just look at it and say, ‘Wow! Yeah, you know, it's like he's a governor and he was in a recall’ and blah, blah, blah — he’s ready.
“It's just not like that. It is really, really difficult. ... I'm just saying, you know, like it's a f---ing bitch, man. It really is.”
...
But Walker had a Walker problem: He just wasn’t ready for the national stage. It was often overlooked that just five years ago, he was the Milwaukee County executive. As he began the presidential campaign, according to advisers, he knew little about issues like immigration, the Export-Import Bank and foreign policy. Walker’s campaign brought in experts to brief him on those subjects. Aides said he enjoyed the briefings and worked hard to become fluent in policy issues.

But his lack of knowledge showed — like when he said that Ronald Reagan’s decision to fire striking air traffic controllers was the most significant foreign policy decision of his lifetime. Yet expectations were sky-high for the governor, and his early appearances did little to lower them.

Wiley blamed the size of the campaign partly on Walker’s newness to the national spotlight. “It takes a lot to build a campaign to run for president, especially around someone who is introduced to a new set of issues,” Wiley said. “Foreign policy — brand new. And just the dynamics of the federal issues are different, obviously. I mean, my God, this guy is a machine — I mean he really, truly is. But that takes staff, it takes time to do that. And we built the campaign that we needed to get him ready.”

“Everything was rolling, and then we just a hit a wall,” Wiley continued. “So, you know, I'm not sure there's anything we could have done differently. I can go back and say, ‘OK, you know, could I have done without like three of the research kids who are continuing to fill in the Walker record?' Maybe. Sure. But then maybe Walker research suffers.”

Walker Walks

Byron York writes at The Washington Examiner:

The hard lesson for Walker is that campaigns expose a candidate's weaknesses and gaps in knowledge. While it is possible for candidates to improve as performers -- they do it all the time -- it is really hard for them to learn much new during the campaign. The action is simply too frantic, too non-stop for a candidate to really delve into anything.

What that means is a good candidate had better bring a pretty strong store of knowledge to a campaign. Walker brought a lot of knowledge about Wisconsin, but not a lot about presidential-level issues.

His deficiencies were brutally exposed once the GOP debates began. At the Fox News debate in August, Walker went in too cautiously -- the idea was to hit a single, avoid any big mistakes, and move on -- and underperformed even those expectations.

Going into the CNN Reagan Library debate last Wednesday, Walker's team had done a lot of coaching, but mostly, it seemed, on style. He talked too fast in the first debate, so they wanted him to write two words on a pad of paper when he arrived at his podium at the Reagan Library: "Slow Down."

It didn't matter. The moderators virtually ignored Walker, and he failed to effectively jump into the stream of debate on his own. Then, after the debate, came a shocking poll, from CNN, that showed Walker's support, already weakening, had cratered.

Four years ago, York made the same point about Rick Perry.

Nicholas Confessore writes at The New York Times:

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin was among the most successful fund-raisers in his party, with a clutch of billionaires in his corner and tens of millions of dollars behind his presidential ambitions. But his swift decline and exit from the presidential race on Monday was a stark reminder that even unlimited money has its limits.

While a super PAC supporting him, Unintimidated, was relatively flush with cash — on track to raise as much as $40 million through the end of the year, according to people involved with the group — Mr. Walker’s campaign committee was running dry, contemplating layoffs and unable to find enough money to mount a last stand in Iowa, a state that once favored him.

Super PACs, Mr. Walker learned, cannot pay rent, phone bills, salaries, airfares or ballot access fees. They are not entitled to the preferential rates on advertising that federal law grants candidates, forcing them to pay far more money than candidates must for the same television and radio time.

Now, in a campaign that has already upended assumptions about the power of dynasties and the limits of celebrity candidates, Mr. Walker’s decline and fall hint at the systemic dangers of the super PAC-driven financial model on which virtually the entire Republican field has staked its chances.

And in the category of "if only they'd listened to me," Eric Bradner reports at CNN:

A former Scott Walker aide offered her take on what went wrong with his campaign, minutes after it was reported that he was dropping out of the 2016 Republican race.

Liz Mair is a digital media strategist who was forced out of Walker's campaign the day after it announced her hiring because of her tweets blasting Iowa's role in the nominating process. On Monday, she offered a long list of Walker's mistakes via Twitter.

Among those listed in her series of tweets: "Misunderstanding the GOP base, its priorities and stances. Pandering. Flip-flopping. Hiring staff who did not know him well and did not understand his record or his reputation across all segments in Wisconsin. Allowing certain staff (ahem) to marginalize and cut off people in Walker's orbit who had got him to the governorship and kept him there."

The Outsiders: Fiorina, Carson, and Trump

At The New York Times, Ross Douthat writes:

But the growing evangelical embrace of Carson is arguably a greater folly than Trumpmania. That’s because the Donald, for all his proud ignorance about policy detail, is actually running an ideologically distinctive campaign: He’s a populist and nationalist, a critic of open immigration and free trade and a backer of Social Security and progressive taxation, and he’s drawing support from working-class Republicans who tend to share those views.

In fact, Trump's positions are similar to those of Pat Buchanan, who is a fan.  In 1992 and 1996, Buchanan ran for the GOP nomination, and in 1996, he won the Reform Party nomination, which Trump seriously considered seeking.  Donald Trump = Pat Buchanan plus four billion dollars and minus forty IQ points.

Carson also resembles also-rans of the past:

And unfortunately evangelical voters have a weakness for this kind of pitch. From Pat Robertson in 1988 through thin-on-policy figures like Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, even Michele Bachmann briefly in 2012, the evangelical tendency has been to look for a kind of godly hero, a Christian leader who could win the White House and undo every culture-war defeat. (The resilience of evangelical support for George W. Bush as his presidency went sour reflected a persistent hope that Bush might be this hero in the flesh.)

Such unrealistic ideas are hardly unique to the religious right. But evangelical culture, as James Davison Hunter notes in “To Change the World,” his magisterial account of recent Christian engagement with American politics, has a particular fondness for the idea of the history-altering individual, the hope that “one person can stand at the crossroads and change things for good.”

CNN reports that the outsiders are currently leading:

Carly Fiorina shot into second place in the Republican presidential field on the heels of another strong debate performance, and Donald Trump has lost some support, a new national CNN/ORC poll shows.

The survey, conducted in the three days after 23 million people tuned in to Wednesday night's GOP debate on CNN, shows that Trump is still the party's front-runner with 24% support. That, though, is an 8 percentage point decrease from earlier in the month when a similar poll had him at 32%.

Fiorina ranks second with 15% support -- up from 3% in early September. She's just ahead of Ben Carson's 14%, though Carson's support has also declined from 19% in the previous poll.

Driving Trump's drop and Fiorina's rise: a debate in which 31% of Republicans who watched said Trump was the loser, and 52% identified Fiorina as the winner.

READ: The complete CNN/ORC poll results
...
But one established politician has seen his standing rise after flashing foreign policy chops on the debate stage. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida -- identified as Wednesday's winner by 14% of Republicans, putting him second behind Fiorina -- is now in fourth place with 11% support, up from 3% in a previous poll.

Astonishingly, Walker is in danger of being sent down to the minors:

Five other candidates received less than one-half of 1 percentage point support: former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former New York Gov. George Pataki and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
Walker's collapse is especially stark.

No Recall, No Scott Walker Presidential Campaign

Patrick O'Connor reports at The Wall Street Journal:

Three days after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker formally entered the 2016 White House race, the state’s Supreme Court cleared a dark legal cloud hanging over his bid by siding with the Republican in a long-running investigation into his 2012 recall election.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Mr. Walker’s campaign and a coalition of conservative groups supporting him didn’t violate campaign-finance laws in the run-up to the 2012 recall vote, a race that thrust the Wisconsin governor into the national spotlight.

The court, in a split decision, ordered the prosecutors investigating Mr. Walker and his advisers to “cease all activities related to the investigation, return all property seized in the investigation from any individual or organization and permanently destroy all copies of information and other materials obtained through the investigation.”

Chris Cillizza writes:

Looking back, it's clear that without the recall, there is no Scott Walker presidential announcement today. What the recall did was turn Walker into a conservative hero/martyr -- the symbol of everything base GOPers hate about unions and, more broadly, the Democratic party. He went from someone no one knew to someone every conservative talk radio host (and their massive audiences) viewed as the tip of the spear in the fight against the creep of misguided Democratic priorities. He became someone who had the phone numbers of every major conservative donor at his fingertips. He became what he is today: The political David who threw a pebble and slew the mighty liberal Goliath.

Former top Obama adviser David Axelrod agrees.

 David Axelrod ‏@davidaxelrod  Jul 13In airport watching @ScottWalker rally with no sound. Did he offer tnx to authors of ill-conceived '12 recall that set him up as GOP hero?76 retweets76 favorites

Walker, Strategist

Jonathan Martin writes at The New York Times:

When Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin met privately here at the Capitol Hill Club recently with a group of congressional Republicans, he did not just seek their support for his presidential candidacy. He also laid out a state-by-state assessment of how the 2016 race would unfold.

He pointed to his family roots in Iowa and said he would be able to appeal to moderates and conservatives there. He noted that he was already doing well in New Hampshire polls. And he predicted that when the campaign moved to Florida next March, either Senator Marco Rubio or former Gov. Jeb Bush would be forced from the race.

“It was a pretty good analysis,” said Jim Talent, an adviser to Mr. Walker and a former senator from Missouri, who attended the meeting. “He’s up on the strategy.”

To say the least.

As Mr. Walker, 47, prepares for his formal entry into the presidential contest, he has brought on a campaign manager, a pollster and a group of press aides. But he has not hired a strategist — because it might be needlessly duplicative: Those who know him well say that Mr. Walker has always been his own.

...
To think like an operative, after all, is to find a way to appeal to the political marketplace at a given moment, to devise a way to win. But a fixation on salesmanship can also lead to shifting on issues, something Mr. Walker did this year when he moved to a harder line on immigration to align himself with conservative primary voters. And by embracing the language of the abortion rights movement in his re-election commercial last year, he opened himself up to complaints from abortion opponents that he had changed his tone, if not his tune.

Walker Flip-Flops

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin report at the New York Times:

After Mr. Walker moved to support Iowa’s prized ethanol subsidies, abandoned his support for an immigration overhaul and spoke out against the Common Core national education standards, his pointed tone on marriage caused some Republicans to ask publicly whether he is too willing to modify his views to aid his ambitions.

“It seems like pollsters gone wild,” said Scott Reed, a longtime Republican strategist and top adviser to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, discussing Mr. Walker’s call for a constitutional amendment.

To Republicans like Mr. Reed, Mr. Walker appears increasingly willing to lose the general election to win the primary.

Mr. Walker’s shifts on issues this year have created friction with a variety of people open to supporting him. He used to oppose what he called government mandates on the use of ethanol in gasoline, for example, but told Iowans this year that he was willing to continue one, the Renewable Fuel Standard. The reversal was not well received in the political network led by the industrialists David H. and Charles G. Koch, according to a Republican aware of the reaction who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of sensitivities over the group’s deliberations.

But his stance on marriage is what has disquieted people who had counted on Mr. Walker taking a more restrained approach to the culture wars.

For several months, according to four people briefed on the discussions who were not authorized to describe an off-the-record meeting, Republican donors who were advocates for legalizing same-sex marriage had worked quietly to try to build bridges to Mr. Walker, whose wife has a lesbian cousin whose wedding reception Mr. Walker attended.

Early Bumps

Jonathan Easley reports at The Hill:

Republicans in New Hampshire are shrugging their shoulders and rolling their eyes at Donald Trump’s surge in the polls in the first-in-the-nation primary state.

 

They believe the Trump bump is nothing more than name recognition at an early stage in the cycle, and argue “The Apprentice” host is merely benefitting from wire-to-wire media coverage of his presidential launch.

 

“If they listed [Red Sox slugger] David Ortiz as a choice, a percentage would say they would vote for him too,” said former New Hampshire GOP Chairman Fergus Cullen.



Philip Klein and Ariel Cohen report at The Washington Examiner:

 Ben Carson, the famed surgeon turned presidential candidate, rode his outsider message to victory on Sunday at the Western Conservative Summit straw poll sponsored by the Washington Examiner, edging out former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. 

Taken together, the results point to the resonance of the anti-Washington message among conservative audiences, as all three candidates argued in different ways that they would shake up the D.C. status quo. 

Focus on the Fundamentals

Charles Cook wisely urges observers to focus on the fundamentals of the presidential race:

• The political environment (especially the economy): "The candidate that presents a compelling, optimistic economic narrative that answers the question of "how are you going to help make MY life better" is the candidate who will win the debate."
• The debates: "Elections are about contrasts. One of the most effective ways for candidates to distinguish themselves - for good and bad - is through debates."
• The Super PACS: "Elections are about money. Raising money for a campaign with $2,700 checks and bundlers is so yesterday. I used to pore over FEC reports and count down the days until filing deadlines. No longer. Nowadays, the real action is with the SuperPACs."
• The Marathon: "Elections are won by the best long-distance runner, not the best sprinter. Pay. No. Attention. To. Horse. Race. Polls. They are stupid and meaningless at this point. Pay more attention to each candidate's core vulnerability."

At the end of the day, when you put all the assets and liabilities on the table, it's hard to see anyone but Rubio, Bush or Walker as the ultimate nominee. Sure, one of them could stumble or come up short in a key early state. It's also highly likely that someone like Huckabee, Paul, Cruz and even Perry could win in Iowa. But, when you look at the candidate vulnerabilities instead of just their assets, these are the three who are the most likely to win over the largest share of the GOP electorate. Winning the "Evangelical" or the "Establishment" or the "Tea Party" lane isn't how you win the nomination. Cobbling together the broadest coalition is the key.

Rubio Had a Good Week

Russ Choma reports at Open Secrets:

The nascent presidential campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio has its hurdles — not the least of which is trying to emerge from the shadow of a more senior fellow Floridian and White House hopeful. But the latest Federal Election Commission filings show that some big donors seem to want him in the game. Last week, the report of the Rubio Victory Fund, a committee that raises money for both his Senate campaign committee and his leadership PAC, showcased donations from Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, who combined to be the biggest campaign donors of the 2012 cycle. And numerous other donors with serious credibility in the fundraising world have chipped into Rubio’s nonpresidential efforts. While those who contribute to a candidate’s existing committees won’t necessarily shell out for a presidential effort, the most recent Rubio Victory Fund filings are a warning to anyone still underestimating the senator’s appeal to big dollar donors.

The biggest name was Adelson — who, according to a new report, indeed may be close to a decision to throw, at a minimum, tens of millions behind Rubio’s White House bid. In 2012, he and his wife, Miriam, donated more than $92 million to conservative super PACs, making them the largest donors in a single cycle in history. Last fall, Adelson’s daughter, Shelly Adelson, and son-in-law Patrick Dumont both donated to Rubio’s leadership PAC. On Jan. 19, just days before Rubio first signaled he would likely run for president, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson each contributed $10,200 to the Rubio Victory Fund.

Quinnipiac reports:

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida wins the support of 15 percent of Republican primary voters and runs best against Democrat Hillary Clinton, according to a Quinnipiac University National poll released today.

The former secretary of state tops the Democratic field with 60 percent and leads top Republican contenders, except Sen. Rubio, in head-to-head matchups, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University Poll finds.

The Republican primary field shows Rubio with 15 percent, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush with 13 percent and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker with 11 percent. No other candidate tops 9 percent and 14 percent remain undecided.

Bush tops the "no way" list as 17 percent of Republican voters say they would definitely not support him. New Jersey Gov. Christopher Christie is next with 16 percent who give him a definite thumbs down, with 10 percent for U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

...

"The youngest member of the GOP presidential posse moves to the front of the pack to challenge Hillary Clinton whose position in her own party appears rock solid," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

"This is the kind of survey that shoots adrenalin into a campaign. Marco Rubio gets strong enough numbers and favorability ratings to look like a legit threat to Hillary Clinton."

Dana Blanton reports at Fox:

The Bush dynasty is a negative for voters and Marco Rubio is seen as a leader of the future, as the Florida senator jumps to the head of the GOP pack. The Clinton dynasty is a plus -- and even though Hillary could have an honesty problem, she dominates the Democratic side. And both the Republican faithful (with their crowded field) and the Democratic faithful (with their sole favorite) are happy with their range of 2016 choices.

These are some of the findings from the latest Fox News poll on the 2016 presidential election. Here are some more:

Announcing your candidacy helps your poll numbers. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio receives a five percentage-point bump after his April 13 announcement and has the backing of 13 percent in the race for the Republican nomination -- just a touch over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker who gets 12 percent among self-identified GOP primary voters. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul comes in at 10 percent, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee earn 9 percent each and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz gets 8 percent.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE POLL RESULTS

Trenton, We Have a Problem

A new Pew poll shows a big problem for Christie: 39 percent of Republicans say that there is no chance that they would support him.  By contrast...

Walker and Carson, in particular, are relatively unfamiliar potential candidates in the GOP race, but they fare well among the subset of Republican voters who have heard of them.

Just 57% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters have heard of Wisconsin Gov. Walker, yet 23% say there is a good chance they would vote for him and just 7% say there is no chance. And Carson has name recognition only among 48% of GOP voters, but 21% say there is a good chance he would get their vote while just 5% say there is no chance of this.

Staffers as Oppo Targets

At Politico, Jonathan Topaz and Katie Glueck note that Scott Walker's online media coordinator had to quit over over some old tweets.

“The danger level has risen,” said Tad Devine, a veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns and an informal adviser to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is considering a 2016 bid. “There’s more awareness of the fact that if you’re going to hire somebody on a payroll of a campaign, that person needs to be subjected to some kind of scrutiny.”

Devine noted that in the late 1970s and 1980s, when a fax machine qualified as cutting-edge technology, opposition research meant hiring a private detective — an expensive expenditure. There were fewer media outlets to pitch the material to at the time, and fewer still that were interested in reporting on campaign aides. Now, Devine says, anyone can dig up dirt online quickly and inexpensively, and can easily find a home for it in some corner of the Internet.

Terry Giles, a top adviser to prospective presidential candidate Ben Carson, said it’s close to impossible to avoid stepping on staff-related land mines given the pressures facing campaigns.

“It is each [campaign’s] job to hire the best people you can and [vet] them properly,” said Giles, in an email to POLITICO. “But unless you have been involved in organizing a national presidential campaign, you cannot imagine how hard it is to make as many decisions as you need to, as fast as you need to, while everyone else are competing for the same people, and not make some mistakes regarding personnel.”

Giles knows it better than most: The Carson campaign itself is currently dealing with revelations that one of its operatives made crude remarks about President Barack Obama and called Ferguson protesters “thugs.” Giles called the statements “disappointing.”

Like Giles, Devine pointed to the challenging logistics involved in vetting midlevel staffers, noting that campaigns just don’t have the time or resources to use a team of lawyers to comb through records. “I do not think staffers are going to be vetted the way candidates for vice president are vetted,” he said.

Rich Galen writes:

• How does this stuff come out? The professional opposition research firms that have sprung up over the past few years put the NSA to shame when it comes to following digital breadcrumbs.
• And, while a candidate's allies will go to great lengths to protect the principal (see, also Sec. Clinton's emails), no donor or major player will lift a finger to help a staffer caught with their fingers on the SEND key.
• One of the issues with Twitter, etc. is to write something that will get other people to make it a "Favorite" and/or to "ReTweet" it to their followers. The game is to get as many "Followers" of your own as you can.
• There's an old saying at the Galen School of Political Press: "Anyone can make news if they say something stupid enough."
• Here are some guiding principals for young people who want to be professional political operatives:
• Don't Tweet stupid stuff.
• If you've been drinking, don't Tweet at all. It will be stupid stuff
• If you pause for even a nano-second before hitting the "Tweet" key, erase it. Your internal governor is trying to tell you something.
• You can't generate context in 140 characters
• Irony doesn't render properly on Twitter. And, it has never worked in Iowa

Why New Hampshire Matters

At The New York Times, Jonathan Martin explains the significance of he 2016 GOP primary in New Hampshire:

“Not only is there not an heir apparent, there’s not even a whiff of an heir apparent,” said Stephen Duprey, a Concord businessman and the state’s Republican national committeeman.

Unlike the last two Republican primaries here, and many before, this one will not feature a candidate who has previously won significant votes in the state.

Beyond the sheer uncertainty, the other factor increasing New Hampshire’s importance is that it offers a tantalizing opportunity for some of the establishment-oriented Republican candidates, who will almost certainly need to notch at least one victory to survive the initial contests. If there is no truly contested Democratic primary here, the unaffiliated voters who are allowed to participate in either party’s balloting could flood into the Republican race and bolster one of the more moderate candidates.

“The more independents you get in a potential Republican electorate, the more unpredictable the electorate becomes,” said Thomas D. Rath, a former state attorney general and longtime Republican strategist.

Sandwiched between the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary, in which the Republican electorate is heavier on religious conservatives, the New Hampshire primary is the early contest where Mr. Bush, a former Florida governor, and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey will compete aggressively for a clear win.

With a large number of conservative candidates vying to capture the Iowa caucuses, potentially splintering the vote, and with the prospect of Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina competing in his home state, New Hampshire could prove clarifying.
“Everyone has to compete in New Hampshire, which means a win here is going to mean something,” said Fergus Cullen, a former state party chairman.

Rubio Rises Again

Eliana Johnson reports at NRO

Jeb Bush’s announcement in December launched both a fundraising juggernaut and an aggressive hiring spree, and Scott Walker’s speech in Iowa the following month lifted Walker to the top of national polls. But a little more than a month later, says the operative, “The Jeb boom is over and people are having second thoughts about Walker.” The beneficiary in terms of buzz is Marco Rubio, who now has many of the party’s top donors looking at him in a way they weren’t even a month ago. 

Though Rubio hasn’t made as much noise as his competitors as the 2016 campaign has gotten underway in earnest, his knowledgeable presentations and obvious political talent are nonetheless turning heads or, at least, enough of them. Rubio hasn’t made a big splash, neither building a “shock and awe” campaign like Bush nor delivering a marquee speech like Walker (who afterward seemed almost to be caught off guard by his rapid ascent). Instead, Rubio appears to be gambling on the idea that, in what is sure to be a long primary with a crowded field, a slow-and-steady approach will prevail.

Romney and Rubio

Each campaign sets the table for the next.  At The Washington Post, Robert Costa and Philip Rucker report:

Sen. Marco Rubio has been cultivating a relationship with Mitt Romney and his intimates, landing some of the 2012 Republican nominee’s top advisers and donors and persistently courting others as he readies an expected 2016 presidential campaign.
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Some Romney loyalists harbor bad feelings about several candidates. Privately, they say Bush was not as active in his support as they expected in 2012 and that they think he tried to muscle Romney out of the 2016 race in January.

They hold a grudge against Walker for sharply criticizing Romney in his 2013 book, “Unintimidated,” for doing “a lousy job” connecting with voters. And many Romney insiders were steamed at Christie for his high-profile embrace of President Obama, after Hurricane Sandy devastated the Jersey Shore in the final week of the campaign.

By contrast, Romney’s allies almost universally praise Rubio, who was vetted as a possible vice-presidential pick and worked on Romney’s behalf during the campaign. They singled out his prime-time speech — introducing Romney — at the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa.

Rubio and Walker

Michael Warren writes at The Weekly Standard:

A new poll from the Wall Street Journal and NBC News shows Florida senator Marco Rubio and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker have the most goodwill among Republican primary voters ahead of both men's possible bids for the presidency.

Rubio, however, received a higher percentage of those saying they could not see themselves supporting him for president (26 percent) compared to Walker (17 percent).The wide-ranging poll surveyed registered GOP presidential primary voters about the long list of potential candidates, asking if they could see themselves supporting each one. Of those polled, 56 percent said they could see themselves supporting Rubio, with 53 percent saying the same about Walker.

The other candidates register significantly worse ratings on one or both questions. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, for instance, has 53 percent of voters who say they could see themselves supporting him—but 40 percent who say they could not. There are similar numbers for former Florida governor Jeb Bush (49 percent who could support, 42 percent who could not), Kentucky senator Rand Paul (49 percent and 40 percent), and former Texas governor Rick Perry (45 percent and 40 percent).

Walker U

In an episode of The West Wing, President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) said:  "When I was running as a governor, I didn't know anything. I made them start Bartlet College in my dining room. Two hours every morning on foreign affairs and the military."

Philip Rucker and Robert Costa report at The Washington Post:

On a recent Monday at Washington’s Willard InterContinental hotel, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was schooled on the world by some of the GOP’s leading foreign-policy lights. In a two-hour tutorial, seated around a table in the Taft Room sipping sodas and coffee, they used detailed regional maps to lead the likely presidential candidate on a tour of the globe’s hot spots: Israel and the Middle East, Latin America, Russia and Ukraine.​

The reason for Walker’s crash course was urgent: He has not impressed many leading Republicans with his grasp of foreign affairs. He drew mockery from members of both parties last month for refusing to talk about foreign policy on a trip to London and then for comparing his experience battling labor protesters to taking on Islamic State terrorists.

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Walker, who has surged into the top tier of Republican presidential contenders, has been packing his calendar with foreign-policy sessions like the one at the Willard — a visit with a former Navy secretary one day, a tête-à-tête with a former secretary of state on another. He has trips planned to five countries this spring, including Israel. This weekend, he has booked four sit-downs with foreign-policy scholars at the American Enterprise Institute’s summit in Sea Island, Ga.

At the close of each meeting, Walker solicits reading recommendations and has told tutors he has already digested the 9/11 commission report and Henry Kissinger’s “World Order.”