Even the GOP’s ‘Serious’ Candidates Are Way Out of Step With Mainstream Americans

Even the GOP’s ‘Serious’ Candidates Are Way Out of Step With Mainstream Americans

Even the GOP’s ‘Serious’ Candidates Are Way Out of Step With Mainstream Americans

Republicans are advocating a future that will drag us back to the failed policies of the past.

Katrina vanden Heuvel
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Donald Trump continues to bring comic relief and mean-spirited bombast to the Republican campaign trail. But while Trump is a continuing spectacle, he also makes (a tiny bit) more sense than his rivals when he indicts US trade policies or scorns the influence of big money that turns politicians into puppets.

Nevertheless Trump, despite his current lead in the polls, isn’t likely to be the Republican presidential nominee. William Galston, the Wall Street Journal’s designated Democratic pundit, last week suggested that there were five “plausible” Republican candidates—Senators Marco Rubio (Florida) and Ted Cruz (Texas), Governors Scott Walker (Wisconsin) and John Kasich (Ohio), and dynast Jeb Bush. In the most recent edition of his 2016 candidate rankings, conservative Charles Krauthammer, while not dismissing Trump, suggests that Walker, Rubio, and Bush stand in the first tier of the Republican run-off.

But these “plausible” Republican candidates hold views that are dramatically at odds with interests and values of the vast majority of Americans.

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

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Katrina vanden Heuvel Katrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture. She served as editor of the magazine from 1995 to 2019.


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