The Rod Martin Report: September 11, 2015
Trump won. Also, why more debates are better, Hillary is down 29 points among women, and the most important political fact of the millennium.
by Rod D. Martin
September 11, 2015
Most important political fact of the week: Hunger Games politics.
Politics, like the blockbuster movie franchise, is a zero sum game: somebody has to win, everybody else has to lose. But how you go about winning is very different when there are 17 candidates rather than 2 or 5 or 10.
Successful Hunger Games contestants – each facing 23 murderous opponents – figured this out quickly (partly by watching 10 of the 24 die in the first 2 minutes, sort of the big screen equivalents of Lindsey Graham and Rick Perry). Their strategy? Make alliances: obtain strength in numbers – for a while – while keeping future enemies focused elsewhere.
The current campaign has provided plenty of such opportunities and will continue to do so. This week, for example, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump co-hosted an immigration rally in Washington. They are not agreed on every point, but in showing a united front they each gained significantly: they drew more media attention, they drew a …