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It's Time To Admit: Nobody Knows Anything About The 2016 Campaign
The old "rules" of presidential politics no longer seem to apply.
Headshot of Scott Conroy
Scott Conroy
Senior Political Reporter, The Huffington Post
Headshot of Sam Stein
Sam Stein
Senior Politics Editor, The Huffington Post
Headshot of Paul Blumenthal
Paul Blumenthal
Money in Politics Reporter, The Huffington Post
Posted: 10/18/2015 12:18 AM EDT
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Before he demeaned, guaranteed and taunted his way to the top of the polls -- in
deed, before the very first Make America Great hat even came off of the assembly l
ine -- the Republican Party got its first incontrovertible evidence of the exten
t of its problem with Donald Trump, via a report in The Washington Post.
It started harmlessly enough. In early July, The Post cited unnamed Republican d
onors and consultants in reporting on a phone conversation that Trump had with R
epublican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.
Trump had launched his candidacy three weeks earlier with a barrage of insults a
gainst illegal immigrants that had stopped just short of asking Congress to decl
are Mexican-American War II, so it wasn t exactly a surprise that the head of the
party whose nomination he was seeking might want to convey some concern.
According to the Post s account, the description of which the RNC confirmed at the
time, Priebus called Trump and urged him to tone it down."
In another time and with another candidate, that would have been the end of it.
The Republican Party s referee had stepped in to rein in one of its combatants for
doling out low blows. What the RNC didn t count on, however, was that Trump was f
ighting an entirely different kind of bout. Not only would Trump continue fighti
ng however he wanted, he was about to head-butt the referee for good measure.
Totally false reporting on my call with @Reince Priebus, Trump tweeted soon after
the Post published its story. He called me, ten minutes, said I hit a nerve , doing

well, end!
And what were the repercussions of Trump s direct rebuttal to the story being told
by GOP powerbrokers to official Washington s most venerated chronicler? Unbridled
success, as it turned out.
Trump promptly took over first place in a national poll of Republican primary vo
ters -- a position he has held in every public survey conducted since then, even
as he has continued to take on previously unassailable sacred cows in GOP polit
ics, ranging from John McCain s war heroism to George W. Bush s record on terrorism.
Republicans who believe the party will need to put forward a less-contemptuous n
ominee, in order to retake the White House next November, were caught flat-foote
d.
I don t think anybody thought he would take off the way he has, and there was never
a strategy meeting where people said, Donald Trump is going to be a serious forc
e, one GOP official in Washington told HuffPost in recalling the weeks after Trump
entered the race leading up to the exchange with Priebus. I think when Trump sla
pped Reince back and just dismissed him -- not even as the junior varsity, but t
he freshman squad -- that s when it sunk in. It was very clear then that the old r
ules didn t apply anymore.
Trump s rise and sustained competitiveness in the race has been a trick that just
about nobody -- perhaps not even the candidate himself -- thought that he could
pull off initially, when those old rules still seemed to be in place. The same g
oes for Ben Carson, a man who campaigns sporadically and never met a tenuous Naz
i analogy he didn t like, and is being rewarded handsomely in polls for his rhetor
ical shamelessness.
And it says as much about modern presidential politics as it does either GOP out
sider s political savvy. Put simply, the assumptions that govern campaigns are no
longer operable.
Trump and Carson are, in some respects, the symptom, not the cause. Everyone kne
w this election cycle could be a tough one for GOP insiders, but few realized in
itially just how tough. When Carly Fiorina is added to the mix -- another Republ
ican White House contender who has never held public office -- the anti-politici
ans in the GOP field continue to poll at more than 50 percent among likely GOP p
rimary voters.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The biggest victims of this newcomer-enamored dynamic have been the very politic
ians that the GOP has long viewed as its best 2016 weapon: governors.
After a first-term Democratic senator was launched into a two-term presidency in
2008, Republican leaders began the 2016 race with a collective agreement that i
t was time the party looked outside of Washington to find its standard-bearer.
In trying to channel this apparent sentiment, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry was f
ond of predicting that a governor would emerge from the vast crop of GOP candida
tes. This campaign, he declared confidently, would become a show me, don t tell me
lection -- the implication being that governors who have produced positive outco
mes in their states would be rewarded over senators and political newcomers more
gifted in rhetoric than results.
But Perry went nowhere fast and is now out of the race, as is onetime front-runn
er Scott Walker, another strong-on-paper contender from the party s gubernatorial
ranks.

Meanwhile, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is still treading water in single digits
, and other big-hitting statewide chief executives like Ohio s John Kasich, New Je
rsey s Chris Christie, Louisiana's Bobby Jindal and Arkansas Mike Huckabee continue
to struggle for political oxygen. Two other former GOP governors -- Jim Gilmore
and George Pataki -- barely register in polls.
"In this environment, being a politician is really bad, Dave Carney, a longtime R
epublican strategist who worked with Rick Perry during the 2012 election cycle,
told The Huffington Post last month. Not just a Washington politician -- even bei
ng a politician from 10 years ago is really bad.
Instead of the Washington outsiders, it is the proud novices who are getting the
majority of the support along with upstart first-term senators -- Florida s Marco
Rubio, who appears to be increasingly well-positioned to make a run as the voti
ng nears, and Texas'. Ted Cruz, who has had fundraising success to this point an
d appears poised to benefit if Trump or Carson does eventually implode.
JUSTIN SULLIVAN VIA GETTY IMAGES
This new Wild West dynamic in which the only constant is political chaos may wel
l change as the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary near. GOP haunchos like
former RNC Chairman Michael Steele still are holding tightly to the belief that
the governors still in the race will eventually benefit when voters start gettin
g serious.
"I think the process is ideally catered to someone like a governor
about executive leadership. It is harder for a legislator to talk
ng budgets," Steele said. "I think when looking at Perry and Scott
t so much an indictment on governors and more a matter of how they

who can speak

about balanci
Walker, it s no
performed."

But there is a more ominous indication that the old rules of success no longer a
pply in Republican presidential politics: The great advantage that establishment
-friendly candidates have long enjoyed -- the ability to generate and then have
their allies spend gobs of cash, especially on television -- has largely been fr
uitless to this point.
According to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, outside groups
-- super PACs and political nonprofits -- have already poured in more than $33 mil
lion to promote Republican candidates in the primary campaign through mass commu
nication like television, radio, online advertising, direct mail and phone-banki
ng.
The biggest spender so far has been Bush's Right to Rise super PAC, which has al
ready dropped $14.7 million, mostly on TV ads. The group has spent $8.2 million
in New Hampshire, $3.8 million in Iowa and $2.6 million in South Carolina, all t
o little discernible effect, as Bush s tepid poll numbers have scarcely budged.
America Leads, a super PAC supporting Christie, has spent $5.9 million, with $3.
8 million of that going to New Hampshire. Christie s highest share of the vote in
any poll conducted since July in the Granite State, meanwhile, has topped out at
7 percent.
Kasich's super PAC, New Day for America, spent $3 million total and $1.8 million
in New Hampshire -- an investment that appeared to have given him an initial bu
mp that has since worn off. Spending to support other candidates, like the $2 mi
llion for Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) in New Hampshire, or the $1.3 million promo
ting Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) in Iowa, has similarly done nothing for their slim for
tunes.

Meanwhile, two candidates whose most significant source of outside help has been
free media attention -- Trump and Carson -- have consistently remained the top
two candidates in both national and statewide polls.
Democrats, too
It s not just on the Republican side where the old rules of politics appear to be
just that: old.
Comb through the archives of just about any Democratic strategist s assessment or
data journalist s algorithm at the 2016 campaign s outset, and you ll find general agr
eement on one thing: Unlike in 2008, when her strength as a candidate was at tim
es overstated, Hillary Clinton s impending coronation as the party s standard-bearer
really was inevitable this time around.
But then a funny thing happened on the way to the genteel, surprise-free Democra
tic nominating contest that most people were expecting, even after Massachusetts
Sen. Elizabeth Warren decided not to run. Clinton turned out, once again, to be
a flawed candidate, hampered by her campaign s inability to defuse a slow-burning
scandal over her use of a personal email server while secretary of state.
Meanwhile, a 74-year-old socialist from Vermont with the personal touch of a hed
gehog stepped in to fill the void, regularly drawing the biggest crowds of the c
ampaign and building a lead in the nation s first primary state of New Hampshire,
where Clinton s strength only months earlier had appeared close to untouchable.
Summertime dalliances with anti-establishment candidates are nothing new in pres
idential campaigns. But now, with New Hampshire's fall foliage at its peak, it h
as become clear that Sen. Bernie Sanders has staying power. Of the 680,000 donor
s to his campaign, only 270 have contributed the maximum amount, giving his camp
aign a veritable ATM machine upon which to draw funds.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
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The trend lines of this election are clear: In the social media age -- a time i
n which authenticity appears to be the most prized commodity in a presidential c
andidate -- institutions like political parties and media arbiters of convention
al wisdom matter far less than they once did.
After so many supposed experts have been so wrong about so many facets of the ra
ce, there's just about one certainty left: It's safe to ignore anyone who purpor
ts to having a firm grasp on what s going to happen next.
Also on HuffPost:
MORE: Elections 2016, Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Polling, Reince Priebus, Republi
can Primary
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