I have to admit that I don’t pay much attention to the Drudge Report. But apparently Ted Cruz thinks that they’ve become a mouthpiece for the Trump campaign.
“In about the past month the Drudge Report has basically become the attack site for the Donald Trump campaign. And so every day they have the latest Trump attack. They’re directed at me,” Cruz said. “By all appearances, Roger Stone now decides what’s on Drudge, and most days they have a six-month-old article that is some attack on me, and it’s — whatever the Trump campaign is pushing that day will be the banner headline on Drudge.”
Cruz also lamented the website’s lack of primary and caucus coverage.
“By the way, they no longer cover news,” Cruz said. “When we win a state, suddenly the state doesn’t matter. You know Colorado — there was no red siren on Drudge when we won all 34 delegates in Colorado. That wasn’t news, because — I mean listen, that’s fine. If people want to get on the ‘Trump train,’ they can.”
James Hohmann thinks he knows what’s up with that.
The Drudge Report has aggressively portrayed Ted Cruz’s sweep of all the delegates from Colorado’s Republican convention as a corrupt power grab…
If it was just Trump complaining about the “crooked” system, it would seem like sour grapes from a guy who got out-hustled. But The Donald’s allies in the right-wing media, including Drudge and Breitbart, are trying to make Cruz’s wins seem illegitimate in the eyes of the conservative base. If Cruz wins the nomination at a contested convention in Cleveland, he will need these grass-roots activists to rally around him. If regular Drudge readers believe he did not win fair and square, they will be less inclined to do so.
The word that jumped out at me in all that was “illegitimate.” The right wing seems to have perfected their chops in challenging a politician’s legitimacy with all the practice they’ve had in doing so over the last eight years with President Obama. Perhaps this is simply another way in which the GOP’s various institutions have turned into Frankenstein-like monsters.
To tell you the truth, I haven’t kept up with what right-wing site/personality is supporting each of the GOP contenders. But what we’ve learned from these folks in the past is that they’re deeply committed to “you’re either with us or against us.” As we watch various factions take hold, it seems pretty clear to me that – no matter the outcome in Cleveland – this is not going to end well for Republicans.
