This courtship started like all the others. Back in March, two months before Donald Trump declared his candidacy and his war on Mexican “rapists,” he went to see Joe McQuaid, the publisher of the New Hampshire Union Leader. The hallowed institution is the only statewide newspaper in New Hampshire. For six decades, ever since the Granite State began to host the first-in-the-nation primary, McQuaid’s paper has been the loudest conservative voice in state politics. In every presidential cycle, local campaign directors send their candidates there, hoping to win the Union Leader’s endorsement. Trump, too, made the pilgrimage, took selfies with staffers and, in the fall, had lunch with McQuaid at the Derryfield Country Club here.
But the paper’s conservatism is of a traditional sort, and Trump is hardly Barry Goldwater (recipient of the Union Leader’s 1964 endorsement). In the end, McQuaid passed over Trump and endorsed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the Republican race. Then, in December, he compared Trump to Biff, the cartoonishly evil tycoon from “Back to the Future Part II,” in a front-page editorial. Trump shot back, calling McQuaid a “lowlife” and a “loser.” McQuaid parried, running a photo of Trump visiting his office in March and noting that, not long afterward, Trump called the paper “terrific.” Another McQuaid editorial said that if Trump called him for campaign guidance again — something he seemed to do quite often, according to McQuaid — he’d give the billionaire advice that is “definitely not for printing in a family newspaper.”
In a state primary that’s self-consciously a throwback to older traditions, McQuaid’s paper once represented immense political power. The Union Leader could make a candidate, and it has broken quite a few. Its founding publisher, William Loeb III, was less an operator than a political wrecking ball: He used his newspaper to demolish his enemies and build up his pets. Presidential candidates wooed him lest they fall into the former category and suffer the fate of Democrat Edmund Muskie, who, in 1972, appeared to cry in public while responding to particularly sharp Union Leader attacks on himself and his wife. The alleged tears — Muskie later said his face was wet from snow — effectively ended his presidential campaign.
A half-century later, things work differently. Here was Loeb’s successor, the supposed kingmaker, at war with the man leading New Hampshire by nearly 20 points. And though it’s exactly the kind of spat Loeb might have organized, the tolerance for venom from a self-professed institution has dissipated. The quarrel was so unseemly that ABC News announced this month that it wouldboot the Union Leader as a co-sponsor of the Feb. 6 Republican debate at St. Anselm College here — a revered event just three days before the primary. The Union Leader has hosted it many times before, despite its candidate endorsements; it was a potent reminder of its political influence. Yet it had gotten so carried away this time that ABC saw the paper more as a liability than an asset.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...8bf2d8-bf2e-11e5-bcda-62a36b394160_story.html
LOL, everyone who goes after Trump walks away with a bloody nose.
But the paper’s conservatism is of a traditional sort, and Trump is hardly Barry Goldwater (recipient of the Union Leader’s 1964 endorsement). In the end, McQuaid passed over Trump and endorsed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the Republican race. Then, in December, he compared Trump to Biff, the cartoonishly evil tycoon from “Back to the Future Part II,” in a front-page editorial. Trump shot back, calling McQuaid a “lowlife” and a “loser.” McQuaid parried, running a photo of Trump visiting his office in March and noting that, not long afterward, Trump called the paper “terrific.” Another McQuaid editorial said that if Trump called him for campaign guidance again — something he seemed to do quite often, according to McQuaid — he’d give the billionaire advice that is “definitely not for printing in a family newspaper.”
In a state primary that’s self-consciously a throwback to older traditions, McQuaid’s paper once represented immense political power. The Union Leader could make a candidate, and it has broken quite a few. Its founding publisher, William Loeb III, was less an operator than a political wrecking ball: He used his newspaper to demolish his enemies and build up his pets. Presidential candidates wooed him lest they fall into the former category and suffer the fate of Democrat Edmund Muskie, who, in 1972, appeared to cry in public while responding to particularly sharp Union Leader attacks on himself and his wife. The alleged tears — Muskie later said his face was wet from snow — effectively ended his presidential campaign.
A half-century later, things work differently. Here was Loeb’s successor, the supposed kingmaker, at war with the man leading New Hampshire by nearly 20 points. And though it’s exactly the kind of spat Loeb might have organized, the tolerance for venom from a self-professed institution has dissipated. The quarrel was so unseemly that ABC News announced this month that it wouldboot the Union Leader as a co-sponsor of the Feb. 6 Republican debate at St. Anselm College here — a revered event just three days before the primary. The Union Leader has hosted it many times before, despite its candidate endorsements; it was a potent reminder of its political influence. Yet it had gotten so carried away this time that ABC saw the paper more as a liability than an asset.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...8bf2d8-bf2e-11e5-bcda-62a36b394160_story.html
LOL, everyone who goes after Trump walks away with a bloody nose.
