Every other headline will read: Gowdy supports Rubio, but the reality is more apropos when considering that Gowdy doesn’t support Ted Cruz.

This endorsement “event” should not come as a surprise to long-time readers, simply go back to the 2014 pre-mid-term assignment by Speaker Boehner of Represenative Gowdy as chairperson for the Benghazi committee, read the reams of cautionary discussion, and you’ll find the origin of this latest development.

We shall refrain from the I-told-you-so’s, instead relying more succinctly on the ‘watch what they do, not what they say’ constructs (insert picture of Mark O’Mara here if needed).

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Many people have discussed the risks of putting all your viable candidacy eggs in the evangelical basket. An article via CNN outlines a group of Super-PACs and donor interests who are now setting Ted Cruz in the cross hairs.

This CNN article highlights one of the biggest challenges for any candidate who is unable to build a broad and diverse base of support. Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee are all relying heavily on Iowa voters. Similarly, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and again, Marco Rubio (firewall) are dependent on success with New Hampshire voters.

Meanwhile the breakaway frontrunner, Donald Trump, targets America-first voters, the biggest, strongest and most broad base of them all.

Washington (CNN) – Ted Cruz, staring at hundreds of thousands of dollars in negative advertisements against him in Iowa that show only signs of growing, is battling to keep pace there with his most aggressive push yet to maintain his momentum in the Hawkeye State. (more…)

When the Frontrunner holds more support than the next three candidates combined you have reached the inevitability threshold !

Everything about this CNN poll (full pdf below), and the internals showing Donald Trump as most favored/best candidate on every issue, is terrific for Team Trump.  This poll, in combination with the Reuters poll, also shows how false the agenda-driven Quinnipiac Poll was earlier in the week.

In addition to absolute dominance by candidate Trump, is the aspect of Jeb Bush dropping to seventh place.  If other national polls affirm a similar position for Bush, he could be dropped from the main-stage debate and replaced by Rand Paul.

[…]  Trump’s standing in the race for the nomination is bolstered by widely held trust that he can best handle the top issues facing the nation. Trump holds massive advantages over the rest of the field as the candidate best able to handle the: ♦ economy (57% Trump, his next closest competitors are Cruz at 8%, Rubio at 7%, Carson at 6% and Bush at 5%), ♦ illegal immigration (55% trust Trump, followed by Cruz at 15%, Rubio at 10%), and ♦ ISIS (47% prefer Trump, 21% Cruz, 7% Bush and 6% Christie).

Here’s the historical trend for this specific poll: (more…)

A national poll from Emerson College (full pdf below) shows essentially the same results from recent polling organizations.  Donald Trump with a significant lead at 36%, followed by Ted Cruz at 21% and Marco Rubio in third at 13%.

The sample sizes are small, but the results are consistent with larger poll samples (field narrowed to top nine polled results – and graphic adjusted accordingly):

(Methodology Extracted) The Emerson College Polling Society poll was conducted from Thursday, December 17 through Sunday, December 20, 2015. (more…)

Facing the reality of diminished usefulness as a South Carolina splitter, Senator Lindsey Graham has announced he is “suspending” (ie. dropping out) his campaign to run for President.  He is the fourth candidate to exit the race. (Perry, Walker and Jindal prior)

Unfortunately this disrupts our previously unblemished record of successfully naming the drop-outs before they occur, RATTS!! (We thought Rand Paul was going to be next). Here’s Senator Grahams’ announcement:

With Donald Trump and Ted Cruz/Marco Rubio holding such severe polling majority positions in South Carolina the usefulness of Lindsey was essentially nil. Lindsey quitting now allows candidates Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush a little more space to gobble up some South Carolina voters. (more…)

CBS coordinated with YouGov to present three “battleground state” panel polls today.  The polling methodology is rather peculiar because it’s not random sample polling, but rather targeted specifically to prior respondents of same, albeit earlier, YouGov polling.  They fill in the non-repeat respondents from other prior contacted buckets.

The downside to this panel-approach is it’s essentially like taking a focus group and tracking their trend over-time, filling in those who don’t show up for the next interview by reaching out to other focus groups to fill the void.  This type of on-line polling is not scientific and prone to flaws and/or manipulation by the interpreter of the data.

The pollster is reaching out to a specific data-set, and in order to achieve the needed total number they need to reach out to ‘known sub-sets‘ within their data-base.  In order for this approach to be useful – the integrity of the people gathering the data has to be beyond reproach.  (more…)

Not Accidental: NOTE all the Republicans who voted for the Omnibus/Tax usurpation today are endorsing / supporting @JebBush or @marcorubio

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) December 19, 2015

Have you noticed Chris Christie being elevated by the same corporate media machine previously elevating Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio ?  This is not coincidental.

The problem for the GOPe Road Map has been the dominance of Donald Trump in disrupting their initial goals to nominate Jeb Bush with 10-20% of the primary vote.

Trump, as a populist “America First” frontrunner nominee was just never anticipated in their construct.

As soon as Trump eliminated the “splitter strategy” benefit – various GOPe approaches were deployed to overcome The Donald.   However, almost all of the subsequent maneuvers failed as Trump gained a more broad coalition of support.

The GOPe campaign road map has now evolved into a concerted effort to group a non-Trump coalition, this is why no “splitter” candidate is being urged to withdraw.

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Post Debate Poll

Fox will be forced to present this poll result (full pdf below) but you can be guaranteed they will downplay it as much as possible.   The fact remains the visible support of Donald Trump with tens-of-thousands of supporters at rallies forces the corporate media into an uncomfortable position: They don’t want to admit the obvious, yet they have no choice.

Donald Trump with 39% support gains an additional 11 points since last Fox National polling and now holds more than double the next closest competitor, Cruz (18).

Here’s the “historical results” of this poll: (more…)

A new national poll from PPP released today (full pdf below) contains a significant amount of highly interesting internal data including head-to-head match ups showing Donald Trump beating each of the other GOP candidates and holding the most broad base of total electorate support.

Two key takeaways from the “top line” data are Trump gaining (w/ this polling) his largest amount of support in a single poll change (gaining 8%); and simultaneously Ben Carson in complete free-fall out of the top tier (dropping 13%), both in less than a month.

The internals also show Ted Cruz beating Marco Rubio in head-to-head matchups.  However, Donald Trump beats them both head-to-head, and in three or four-way splits.

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Fox News and Brett Baier go on offense to protect/assist Senator Marco Rubio and diminish Senator Ted Cruz – the transparency of the GOPe media agenda in this interview is obvious.

Fox has a well documented vested interest in both Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. Tonight Brett Baier calls out Cruz on several issues.  Here’s a short version (longer version below):

Full Interview Below – There you can better see the set up and the framework: (more…)