Who is the “Republican” referred to in the clickbait headline above?
Is it Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, or Mitt Romney? Maybe George W. Bush or Adam Kinzinger? Or is it New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu or former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan? Surely, it has to be someone we’ve heard of. Right?
No.
The “Republican” whose opinion is so important that FoxNews.com gave it a front page story is some guy in Pennsylvania, who told NBC’s Meet The Press “if it’s a Biden and Trump race, then I would vote for Biden even if he was (sic) dead, and I’m a Republican.”
Meanwhile, not mentioned by Fox, polls conducted in the second half of September showed Trump favored by 57.4 percent of Republicans nationally.
Fox and the second GOP debate
A couple of weeks ago, during the second debate between Republican candidates for president, Fox News moderator Dana Perino seemed to make it clear that Fox doesn’t want Donald Trump on the GOP ticket in 2024.
Debate moderators are supposed to ask questions, not state their opinions. No one cares what a moderator thinks about anything. But Perino and Fox apparently had an agenda.
Perino told the seven candidates on-stage, “If you all stay in the race, former president Donald Trump wins the nomination.” She then instructed the group—which included a former vice-president, two state governors, two former state governors, and a U.S. senator—to write down the name of the one among them they would kick out of the race.
The seven refused. However, they proved that the only fighter in the race is the one who was not on the stage. They spared Perino the take-down she deserved, which Trump would have delivered without hesitation.
On top of that, Perino’s premise—that Trump would not get the nomination if one of the seven other candidates was out of the race—was foolish. As things stand, Trump will win the nomination regardless of who else is in the race.
Of the 26 Republican presidential nomination polls conducted in September (not only in the second half of the month, see above), Trump’s support ranged from 50% to 63%, and averaged 57.5%. And as some of the seven other candidates drop out of the race one by one, some of their supporters will switch to Trump, increasing his percentage.
Here’s who Fox apparently wants on the GOP ticket
The “Long-shot” is former Rep. Will Hurd, who quit because he was polling at less than 1%. The mathematically inclined can infer that with Hurd’s inconsequential endorsement, neocon-ambitious-as-Lucifer Haley—who in national polls of Republicans in September averaged 7.2%—may surge to . . . 7.2%.
Fox apparently wants Biden to win, because even if the 2024 election is honest, Haley would lose to Biden, because a lot of conservatives would not vote for her, just as they didn’t for John McCain and Mitt Romney, even though as awful as she would be, she would be less awful than Joe Biden.
And it’s not just Fox
Something similar has been going on between supposedly conservative WashingtonExaminer.com, Townhall.com, and AmGreatness.com.
In April, Washington Examiner reporter/columnist Salena Zito pretended there weren’t any Trump supporters in Pennsylvania at a time that Susquehanna Polling and Research found that Trump was supported by 32% of Pennsylvania’s 3.4 million registered Republican voters. (I wrote about it here.)
Zito’s claim was carried by WashingtonExaminer.com (which has editorialized against Trump), Townhall, and AmGreatness. And there are other Zito articles that have appeared in coordinated fashion on the three websites. Below, I’ll abbreviate the latter two as “TH” and “AG.”
In 2023 alone, in addition to those already mentioned, Zito has attacked Trump on WashingtonExaminer.com here (and TH) and here (TH), and has promoted Trump challengers Gov. Ron DeSantis here (TH, AG), here (TH), here (TH, AG), and here, and on AG here; former vice-president Mike Pence here, Sen. Tim Scott here, former governor Chris Christie here, Gov. Doug Burgum here, and—God forbid—Nikki Haley here and on TH here and here.
None of this is to disparage Gov. DeSantis or any of the other candiates, except Haley, who will say anything to win. (I wrote about Haley here, and included a link to a Haley expose that appeared on Politico.) It is instead to remind folks that some in the media who pretend to be on the side of conservatives may not be.
I’ll close with something that probably rings more true with conservatives than anything that Zito and the anti-Trump websites that publish her stuff have to say. After Hamas attacked Israel a few days ago, Kari Lake posted this:
© 2023 Mark Overstreet