"CPAC did two straw polls: One with former President Donald Trump included and one without him."

"In the first, Trump crushed with 70%, which, if you've followed politics over the past, say, five years, will not surprise you. DeSantis came in second with 21%, the ONLY candidate not named Trump who got more than 1% in the straw poll. In the second straw poll -- without Trump -- DeSantis took 68%(!) of the vote. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo came in second with 5% followed by Donald Trump Jr. and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 4% and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem at 3%."

From "The leader of the Republican Party *not* named Donald Trump" from Chris Cillizza (CNN). 

Meanwhile, about that "Don't Fauci My Florida" campaign merchandise — which we talked about yesterday — there's "Ron DeSantis' Anti-Fauci Florida Merchandise Prompts Outrage: 'This Is Madness'" (from Newsweek): 

The [former] governor of Vermont, Howard Dean, was among those to criticize his Florida counterpart over the sale of such items. He tweeted: "DeSantis is a well educated crackpot with no allegiance to our country, his constituency or the truth."...

MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid was similarly scathing, sharing a link to The Washington Post's report on the merchandise alongside the quip: "Siri: show me an ignorant ghoul..."

They really are helping him sell more merchandise.

"MSNBC Does Not Merely Permit Fabrications Against Democratic Party Critics. It Encourages and Rewards Them."

Writes Glenn Greenwald:

During the 2016 primary and general election campaigns, various MSNBC hosts were openly campaigning for Hillary Clinton. One of the network’s programs featured Malcolm Nance (pictured, above), whose background is quite sketchy but who is presented by the cable network (and now by NBC News) as an “intelligence expert” and former intelligence officer for the U.S. Navy.

On August 20, 2016, weekend host Joy Reid asked Nance about the supposed “affinity” for Russia harbored by Jill Stein supporters. In response, Nance told MSNBC viewers: “Jill Stein has a show on Russia Today."...

Jill Stein did not have a show on RT, nor did she ever host a show on RT. What Nance said was made up out of whole cloth – fabricated – in order to encourage MSNBC viewers to believe that Stein, one of the candidates running against Clinton, was a paid agent of the Kremlin and was an employee of RT....

To date – almost two years later – neither NBC News nor MSNBC, nor a single journalist who works for either one of those media outlets – has corrected this significant falsehood, despite obviously knowing that it was broadcast to their viewers....

Worse, not only was Nance never sanctioned in any way for the lie he told, but he was rewarded: he has since gone from “MSNBC Contributor” to “MSNBC intelligence analyst,” is far more pervasive on that network, and its hosts have spent the month aggressively promoting his new book on how Putin is destroying U.S. democracy.

"I think Joy Reid has inadvertently made an important point. The crazed hatred of Donald Trump that we see on the left is based on a fantasy..."

"... a fantasy that liberals attribute to Trump and his supporters, but that in fact exists only on the left. In the minds of liberals."

Concludes John Hinderaker, reading that article Laurence Tribe declared a “brilliant take on the politics of the space-time continuum" (and that we were talking about yesterday, here).

Hillary's new slogan: We Are Stronger Together.

In an interview on "Meet the Press" this morning, Chuck Todd seemed to needle Hillary Clinton about her lack of a big campaign theme:

Bernie Sanders has been talking about a political revolution. A future you can believe in. Obviously, Donald Trump with the Make America Great Again, is one of these slogans that has taken off, for better or for worse. If you could sum up, what is the big idea of your candidacy?

She was so ready with a new slogan that I can't believe there wasn't an understanding between Todd and the campaign that he'd give her an opportunity to unveil a new slogan. She said:

Look, we are stronger together. We are stronger together, in facing our internal challenges and our external ones. We are stronger together if we work to improve the economy. And that's going to mean trying to get the Republicans to do what will actually help produce more jobs, like we saw in the 1990s. We are stronger together when we have a bipartisan, even nonpartisan foreign policy that protects our country. And that provides a kind of steady, strong, smart leadership that the rest of the world expects from us. And I know that, you know, slogans come and go, and all the rest of it. But when I look at where we are in our country together, we need to unify the country. We are stronger together, when we act on a set of plans and priorities that will redound to the benefit of the American people.

What do you think? Bland and generic? Or: a heartfelt reaching out to the Americans who feel that the other candidates are tearing us apart?

Later, a panel discussion addressed the slogan. Alex Castellanos — the "veteran Republican strategist" — said it "sounds a little defensive" and makes us think about the "tremendous amount of political weakness" she's shown — "dragged" around by a "near-octogenarian socialist who honeymooned in Russia" and looking to "her husband... to bail her out on the economy."

MSNBC commentator Joy-Ann Reid was next, and she said she didn't really know what "We Are Stronger Together" means or "how it unites voters." She paused to sneer at Trump's slogan: it evokes "nostalgia that a certain kind of white, particularly white voter, has for a bygone era." And then she revealed her disappointment:

I think that it's good that the Clinton campaign are strategizing. But it's interesting that, in your interview, she seemed so much like a strategist. And so many of her answers felt like this is Hillary, the smart political strategist telling you what she intends to do, and it's still not giving her campaign sort of a driving dream, I think.

Chuck swooped in with a slogan of his own: "Change versus steadiness."

But I want to go back to Reid's disappointment: Hillary is "not giving her campaign sort of a driving dream."

Driving dream... To me, that calls up the spirit of Richard Nixon. From his 1970 State of the Union:

But let us, above all, recognize a fundamental truth. We can be the best clothed, best fed, best housed people in the world, enjoying clean air, clean water, beautiful parks, but we could still be the unhappiest people in the world without an indefinable spirit — the lift of a driving dream which has made America, from its beginning, the hope of the world.