Us politics

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

What Donald Trump’s Super Tuesday triumph says about America

It was, in the end, the best possible night for Donald Trump. On Super Tuesday, 12 American states voted for Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. Trump won seven. That was enough to ensure he remains easily the frontrunner, but not enough to persuade his opponents to coalesce around one of his rivals. Had he won nine or ten, the Republican party might have fallen in behind the man in second place, Ted Cruz. As it turned out, Marco Rubio, the last establishment man standing, won one state, which has encouraged him to keep fighting. But Rubio’s reluctance to admit defeat means the anti-Trump vote will continue to fracture. His stubbornness

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Donald Trump’s secret is his Boris-style hair

It is recognised that the era of television has made it well-nigh impossible in Britain and the United States for a balding leader to win an election if pitted against one with more hair — Callaghan/Foot/Kinnock v. Thatcher, George H.W. Bush v. Clinton, Hague/Howard v. Blair, McCain v. Obama. (The only exceptions I can think of derive from the power of incumbency — George W. Bush v. Kerry, Obama v. Romney.) Now the voters’ jaded palate seems to be no longer content with a full head of hair alone, but wants it to be strikingly memorable as well, not to say strange. Hence the rise of Boris Johnson and Donald

Sunday

Charles Moore

Donald Trump’s secret weapon? Boris-style hair

It is recognised that the era of television has made it well-nigh impossible in Britain and the United States for a balding leader to win an election if pitted against one with more hair — Callaghan/Foot/Kinnock v. Thatcher, George H.W. Bush v. Clinton, Hague/Howard v. Blair, McCain v. Obama. (The only exceptions I can think of derive from the power of incumbency — George W. Bush v. Kerry, Obama v. Romney.) Now the voters’ jaded palate seems to be no longer content with a full head of hair alone, but wants it to be strikingly memorable as well, not to say strange. Hence the rise of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. Obviously Boris would beat Jeremy Corbyn on this account. If Mr

Friday

Freddy Gray

Chris Christie just endorsed Donald Trump. Now this election looks like The Sopranos

Badda Bing. Chris Christie has just endorsed Donald Trump for president, and suddenly Republican politics looks like a particularly nasty episode of the Sopranos. As he paid homage to the new capo di tutti capi, Chris Christie called Trump ‘the person who will do exactly what needs to be done to make America a leader around the world again’. He talked about his ‘long friendship’ with Donald Trump, and said that Trump was ‘the last person’ Hillary and Bill Clinton wanted to face in the presidential election. The scene had a certain gangster atmosphere. The endorsement might explain a few things. It explains why, to the surprise of many, Christie refused to go

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Finally, Marco Rubio attacks Donald Trump. But is it too little, too late? 

Ah, Marco Rubio sold the media a dummy yesterday. Ahead of the CNN debate last night, his press team briefed out that their man would go after Ted Cruz, the rival for second place, rather than the frontrunner Donald Trump. This seemed stupid. It turns out it was part of a cunning plan. We should have guessed. In the debate, Rubio turned on Trump quite viciously. He did what the Donald has been doing to him and other candidates for months. He mocked him and it worked. He said that, if Trump hadn’t inherited $200 million from his family, he would be “selling watches on the street in Manhattan.” Finally, somebody

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Is Marco Rubio still refusing to attack Donald Trump? Is he scared?

Tonight’s Republican CNN debate should be, to use the Donald Trump word, yuuge. I don’t mean to sound like a boxing promoter; I know that TV debates, especially Republican ones, are overhyped. They often turn out to be little more than soundbites and fury, signifying nothing. But anybody who thinks a bad debate can’t harm a political candidate should see what happened in New Hampshire, when Marco’s Rubio hilariously robotic performance in the Saturday night TV showdown helped push him down to fifth place. Since Donald Trump looks increasingly certain to be the Republican nominee, his rivals, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, desperately need to do something special to hurt him. The CNN

Tuesday

Brendan O’Neill

From Trumpmania to Euroscepticism: Revenge of the Plebs

The Third Wayists are quaking in their boots. The middle-class, middle-of-the-road technocrats who have dominated politics for the best part of three decades are freaking out. These people who bristle at anything ideological, are disdainful of heated debate, and have bizarrely turned the word ‘moderate’ into a compliment feel under siege. And no wonder they do, for on both sides of the Atlantic their very worst nightmare — a revenge of the plebs — is becoming flesh. You can see this sometimes clumsy but nonetheless forceful reassertion of pleb power in everything from Trumpmania to the staggering back to life of Euroscepticism — or what snooty moderates call ‘Europhobia’, because

Sunday

Freddy Gray

Can Marco Rubio now catch Donald Trump? It’s a big ask

It was obvious that Donald Trump would win the South Carolina Republican Primary tonight. Polls are never that far off. Still, it’s a shocking result. In the build-up to the vote, Trump did almost everything a Republican candidate is not meant to do: he blamed George W. Bush for 9/11, he spoke well of Planned Parenthood, he came out in support of a healthcare mandate, and picked a fight with the Pope. And he still barnstormed the Palmetto state. The news of the night is Marco Rubio, who scraped second place. He now looks like the only hope of stopping Trump. There will be a strong establishment and GOP donor

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

After Nevada, it’s hard to see how Hillary Clinton loses

Bernie Sanders’s quixotic tilt at the White House needed an upset in the Nevada Caucuses tonight. But Hillary Clinton won. Now the Former First Lady, after a wobbly few weeks, is very much back in what Americans call the catbird seat. Sanders’s populist success has been staggering, but he has never quite threatened to destroy the Democratic elite in the way that Donald Trump is trampling all over the moribund Republican establishment. It’s been well-documented that he is struggling to win over enough Black and Hispanic Democrats, who tend to be more loyal towards the party machine than their white contemporaries. The entrance and exit polls from Nevada suggested that

Thursday

Christopher Buckley

Dealing with The Donald

A few nights ago, my missus and I were walking along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, minding our own business while trying not to think about Donald Trump — or Ted Cruz, or Hillary Clinton, or Bernie Sanders. Presently we passed the Old Post Office Building, a venerable pile dating to 1899. It looks a bit like Big Ben atop a ten-storey Romanesque atrium. There in front was a billboard the size of Montana proclaiming ‘TRUMP’. It is to be — shudder — a hotel. Clutching my beloved’s arm, I gasped: ‘A drink — quickly. For the love of God, a drink.’ She rushed us to the restaurant, where a martini

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

The Pope vs The Donald. Who will win?

It’s pretty extraordinary that a leading contender for the American presidency has just effectively threatened the Pope with terrorism. But then, Donald J. Trump is no ordinary Republican frontrunner. Everything about his campaign is outrageous — and that’s why he is winning. Today, the Pope, returning home from Mexico, told reporters that he thought Trump’s intention to build a wall between America and Mexico was unChristian. Rather than doing what all politicians do, and paying due reverence to the Holy Father, the Donald’s press office decided to reply with the following (Italics mine, to emphasise how Trump would have said it) ‘If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

The Jeb Bush family nostalgia tour isn’t working

Remember when Tony Blair begged Labour supporters not to go for Jeremy Corbyn? Remember how well that turned out? Yesterday in South Carolina, USA, George W. Bush did something not too dissimilar. He didn’t copy Blair’s ‘even if you hate me’ line. Instead, Dubya urged his party, which is seemingly hellbent on destroying itself, to go back to the future. He encouraged them to pick another Bush, namely his brother Jeb. It seems like madness. Everybody knows that Jeb Bush’s candidacy has from the start been crippled by his name. Americans don’t want another Bush in the White House. Republicans may not be quite as hostile towards George W. as Labour grassroots

Sunday

Freddy Gray

Did Donald Trump go too far against Jeb Bush last night? Probably not

If Jeb Bush is to have any chance of winning the Republican nomination in 2016, he needs a ‘media moment’. He needs an exchange of arguments or insults with Donald J. Trump in which he indisputably comes out on top. If you listen to Team Bush’s boosters, that moment happened last night. But they would say that. Trump and Bush clashed fiercely over foreign policy and the legacy of Jeb’s brother, George W. Bush. And the crowd booed Trump. Trump said that the Bush II administration had lied over Iraq. ‘They said there were weapons of mass destruction,’ he said. ‘There were none and they knew there were none. There were no

Thursday

Chris Mullin

Diary – 11 February 2016

While browsing in Barter Books, the wonderful secondhand bookshop in Alnwick that is fast becoming a national institution, I came across a volume of Piers Morgan’s diaries, covering his two years in the United States, judging America’s Got Talent and taking part in Celebrity Apprentice (the Alan Sugar role being played by one Donald Trump). I cannot claim to have been all that keen on Morgan ever since I discovered that in the mid-1990s, when he was an agent of Murdoch, he penned a note to Tony Blair demanding that he silence ‘idiots like Mullin shouting their mouths off about “loathsome tabloids” and my owner’. As you might expect, the

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

The irony of Bernie Sanders: why American kids love the 74-year-old socialist

Manchester, New Hampshire ‘Anybody here got any student debt?’ asks Bernie Sanders halfway through his speech at a rally in a small university on Monday. He then starts conducting a fake auction. ‘What are some of the numbers you got? You? 35,000. You? 55,000? Who else? A young lady here… 100,000 dollars. You win! I don’t know what you win, but you win!’ The students all hoot and chant. ‘Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!’ Sanders cracks an avuncular smile, then starts talking again about how rich the rich are. It’s hard not to like Sanders. It’s hard not to ‘Feel the Bern’, as the mantra goes. He is 74 years old, and

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Populism rules: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump triumph in New Hampshire

Manchester, New Hampshire Populism won tonight in New Hampshire. Rage against the elite won tonight in New Hampshire. Class warfare came out on top. Bernie Sanders, who wants a ‘political revolution’ to tackle ‘the billionaire class’, thrashed the former First Lady, Hillary Clinton. Donald J. Trump, the billionaire who tells everyone that only he can stop the elite buying Washington, thumped all his rivals. The consolation for both party old guards is that New Hampshire is a strange old state. The Clinton campaign was expecting defeat tonight — even a heavy defeat. In fact, having spent the last few days here, I was unable to see much of a Clinton push. Hillary did some big events, but

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

US election 2016: New Hampshire primary – as it happened

New Hampshire The Spectator’s deputy editor Freddy Gray is currently in New Hampshire. Here’s his report from the evening as the results of the primary came in. 3.13am Things slowing down now, folks. Thanks for reading. Story of the night is Bernie Sanders, just, and the Donald’s mind-blowing win a close second. A goofy 74 year old socialist just destroyed Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, and is tearing the Democratic party apart. And a 69-year-old billionaire is eviscerating the Republican party. Trump looks invincible, but the Cruz campaign is not to be underrated. Hillary has had a bad night, but she may have just about saved her candidacy with a stronger than usual

Mark Gettleson

Will the New Hampshire primary see the return of ‘the crazy’?

As the first results of the Iowa caucus began to come through, a remarkable prospect dawned on US election analysts. There finally seemed to be a way out of ‘the crazy’ that had dominated the Republican race since early summer, following the launch of Donald Trump’s campaign. And what a nine months it has been: the Great Wall of Trump (which Mexico will pay for), his myriad of burn-book-worthy enemies, the rise and fall of Ben Carson, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a man even more loathed by the GOP establishment than the New York tycoon. But finally, the Iowa caucuses – that long-standing thorn in the side of both

Sunday

Freddy Gray

Oh dear. Marco Rubio had a shocker in Saturday’s debate

Poor Marco Rubio. At the vital moment, he seems to fluff his lines. In the final months of 2015, America’s lumpencommentariat kept predicting ‘Marco’s moment’. For months, such talk sounded like nothing but hype. Then the Iowa caucuses happened, and Rubio finished a much-stronger-expected third. Finally, his time seemed to have come. Rubio  emerged as the pragmatic choice; the man to prick the Trump bubble; the man to knock out Ted Cruz. The Republican establishment had their man. Phew! Then came last night’s big debate in New Hampshire — and Rubio was awful. As expected, Chris Christie — a failing candidate with nothing to lose — went after him in the early exchanges. Rubio seemed ill-prepared, even a bit scared. “You

Saturday

Charles Moore

Marco Rubio is the only candidate who understands America’s global role

Last week, I was in the United States, where the media are even more subject to groupthink than their British equivalents. Fox News, supposedly the conservative voice, is really much more conformist than it pretends, and specialises in noisy opinion more than real news. The only person I met who got the Republican caucuses absolutely right was Chris Ruddy, founder and CEO of Newsmax, the conservative cable channel which claims to be in ‘42 million US homes’. He told me he thought Cruz would beat Trump and the real winner would be Marco Rubio. So it proves. It is interesting that in a campaign in which all the candidates shout about