Some Guy ?!
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-economy-trumps-everything-1454542846" The Economy Trumps Everything
Trump and Cruz have defaulted the economy and jobs to Rubio. "
By
Daniel Henninger
" Donald Trump, it may truly be said, drove to the surface of our politics heretofore unrecognized degrees of voter anger. It may be Mr. Trump’s misfortune that he has wrongly calculated the core reason for that anger.
He believed the big revelation of his June presidential announcement speech was support for his criticism of U.S. immigration policy. And so he rode it.
Elections are won or lost at the margin, and the margin is where Mr. Trump lost Iowa to Ted Cruz by three points.
The Iowa entrance polls reveal that Mr. Trump got 44% of the vote from people who believe immigration is the campaign’s top issue. Unfortunately, at least in Iowa, only 13% think that. Ted Cruz got 34% of their vote. Immigration matters, but Messrs. Cruz and Trump may be overweighting its importance in election outcomes.
On the central conservative issue of government spending—Iowa Republicans’ top concern at 32%—Mr. Cruz led with 27% to Mr. Trump’s meager 19%. Mr. Trump also trailed Marco Rubio here.
Sophists might argue that spending is Republican code for suppressing outlays on Social Security and Medicare, which Mr. Trump, with an eye toward the general election, has said he won’t do. Then let’s move on to the less partisan subject of jobs and the economy, which Iowa Republicans’ identified as their second most-pressing issue. Marco Rubio won them with 30% of the vote.
At the margin, Mr. Trump lost votes to Messrs. Cruz and Rubio on spending and to Mr. Rubio on the economy.
For the purposes of my argument—that the U.S.’s economy should be dominating the 2016 primaries—I combine government spending and economy/jobs into one issue. For Iowa Republicans, that puts economic concerns at nearly 60%.
Meet the Democrats. The economy and jobs are the top concern for 33% of Iowa Democrats. As an ideological obsession, they substitute “income inequality” for spending, at 27%. Toss in “health care” at 30% and the economy is the only issue for Democrats.
What makes Iowans’ elevated economic worries intriguing as a proxy for the primaries is that their state isn’t doing badly. Iowa’s nominal unemployment rate is 3.4%. New Hampshire’s is 3.1%.
But in South Carolina, which votes on Feb. 20, unemployment is 5.5% Three days later come the caucuses in Nevada, whose jobless rate is 6.4%. At least three states in the March 1 Super Tuesday primary are hurting—Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama.
Conventional wisdom holds that Hillary Clinton will sink Bernie Sanders once she gets to the family’s automatic black votes in the South. Don’t be shocked, though, if Bernie’s economic populism finds an ear there, too.
The unemployment rate for black men in South Carolina was 12.2% when last measured in the first quarter of 2015. In Arkansas it was 13.2% and over 9% in Texas. Mrs. Clinton better hope young black males are still mooning over a Clinton presidency that ended 15 years ago.
“It’s the economy, stupid” is a famous phrase about the importance of political messaging in a presidential campaign. Most Americans, who aren’t stupid, know that in the eighth year of Barack Obama’s presidency, the U.S. economy is simply not normal.
U.S. economic growth in last year’s final quarter was 0.7%. The stock market has taken up cliff-diving. That’s tough on the former savers who decided they couldn’t survive two presidential terms with the Federal Reserve’s microscopic interest rates, and moved into stocks.
This newspaper reported days ago that the number of initial public offerings from young companies in January was . . . zero. The reason is “a broad retreat from risk by investors.”
Let us not forget China, which permits us not to forget Donald Trump’s role in all this.
Last year China’s economy grew at its slowest rate in more than 20 years. The International Monetary Fund has lowered its 2016 growth estimates for the world economy.
Amid nearly every arrow out there pointing downward, Mr. Trump floated the idea of imposing a 45% tariff on Chinese goods imported into the U.S.
Another Republican TV debate bubbles up this Saturday. The Trump tariff came up the last time he participated, and one wonders if this time someone will push the argument further—to the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff and the Great Depression. He may win New Hampshire, but if the others close the gap, doubts about his economic statements will be the reason.
Ted Cruz also tanked on the economy and jobs in Iowa, receiving a surprisingly small 18% of that vote. He’s doing all right on the two issues he has politicized—immigration and Washington spending—but has little voter resonance on the economy itself.
The details of Iowa’s voting suggest Mr. Cruz is self-defining himself out of the economic-growth issue. For now, Marco Rubio has taken control of the one subject with the biggest base in American politics—the economy and jobs. "