Is Donald Trump actually Jeb Bush's secret weapon?
On one level, Donald Trump鈥檚 had a rough start to the week. There is the threat he鈥檚 allegedly received from escaped Mexican drug lord Joaquin 鈥淓l Chapo鈥� Guzman. Then on Tuesday, he a patriotic image of his face superimposed on marching Nazi soldiers.
We鈥檙e not making that Nazi thing up. It was a graphic arts mistake and hardly noticeable. The tweet鈥檚 since been deleted. It鈥檚 not as if anybody actually thinks Mr. Trump supports Nazism in the United States.
Right?
But as we said, that鈥檚 one level. Then there鈥檚 his standing in the polls. Maybe you鈥檝e heard that he鈥檚 doing pretty well there. On Tuesday there's more evidence of that, as a new survey from finds him on top of the GOP field of contenders, with 17 percent of the vote. Jeb Bush is second with 14 percent. (Technically this is a tie, since the three-point differential is within the poll's margin of error.)
Look, it鈥檚 early yet. Just ask President Michele Bachmann. (No, we know she isn鈥檛 鈥� she had her own moment in the poll sun a year prior to the actual 2012 election, however.)
And one poll doesn鈥檛 make a front-runner. The still has Mr. Bush in front, with 17 percent of the vote to Trump鈥檚 10.8 percent.
Despite the ephemeral nature of polls at this point, we had a little fun with these numbers. We took the RCP rolling average from 30 days ago, and the latest figures, and then calculated the increase or decrease in standing. That shows an interesting phenomenon: Only two candidates have risen in that time. The rest have all fallen.
The two that have risen are Trump and Bush.
It鈥檚 true. RCP has Trump up a whopping 170 percent over 30 days. But Bush has gone up 50 percent. Meanwhile, Scott Walker鈥檚 dropped 12 percent. Marco Rubio鈥檚 dropped 32 percent. Ted Cruz is down 30 percent, Chris Christie is down 41 percent, and so forth.
The tentative conclusion from this is obvious: Trump鈥檚 stealing votes from everyone except Bush. This has the effect of shielding Bush from the other contenders. So Trump鈥檚 candidacy at this point is helping the rival that he (Trump) probably berates most on the stump.
As we said, the numbers are almost notional at this point, so we wouldn鈥檛 nail this analysis to the wall. But what if Trump turns out to be Bush鈥檚 secret weapon?
