Fox is MSM. There is nothing special about them in any regard.

Cruz terrifies me, which is why I support him.

He is a true believer; the first powerful politician in my adult life (since about Carter’s time) to take me out of my comfort zone. Might he actually make some beneficial and lasting changes; reverse our trajectory even for a short time? Hopefully, we’ll find out.

Rubio at best would go to ground.

I agree that all the media hasn’t been kind to Cruz. They just don’t like him (and I believe I said that in a comment recently, on this thread or some other). Nothing special about Fox in that regard.

Otherwise, nothing much has changed at Fox. And I don’t think the Cruz animus is actually a change. He isn’t just conservative, he’s considered both extreme and personally off-putting, by the entire MSM as far as I can see.

If Levin really thought as you say, then he’s a very poor judge of character, and apparently forgetful as well.

I do not give him a pass on this at all. It’s one of the first things I noticed when Trump’s campaign took off—Levin’s complete hypocrisy. I think it’s because it was good for ratings—his listeners liked Trump, and Levin didn’t want to rile them. Until his principles finally took over when Trump went ballistic on Cruz.

If the establishment were such kingmakers as people say (I’ve been reading for many many years that the establishment FORCED this or that candidate on the people, which I think is garbage, and I’ve written about that) they would have thrown their weight behind Rubio long ago. He was doing quite well in the polls for the last few months—although Cruz was doing a bit better, it’s been clear for quite some time that it would probably come down to a Trump, Cruz, and Rubio race. I’ve seen that said everywhere. The “establishment” certainly has known it.

No, they are reacting to Iowa and to Rubio’s recent surge, not creating it. They are happy to jump on board, though. And that’s even though Rubio is actually far more conservative than what they wanted.

RE Jeb/Rubio: I think the establishment jumped in too quickly and deeply for Jeb. It’s been obvious that he’d been underperforming for months, though maybe the establishment was more reluctant to withdraw support than you or I would’ve been. After getting burned by their initial eagerness, I think they wanted to see who could plausibly win before shifitng. Rubio needed to have the good performance you mention, but the establishment had their eye on him before that.
Of course, I can’t prove any of that. They don’t circulate opinion polls from the GOP illuminati.

RE Fox News: it’s not that the anchors have changed (i.e. become different people), it’s that their stated opinions have changed. There’s a coloration or bias to what they say and don’t say.
E.g. Cruz wins Iowa, but isn’t given as much on-air discussion time as Trump or Rubio. It seems like the media is just going to ignore him. Including Fox.
This predates the presidential race, and I put the change around the time of Murdoch’s problems in Britain. Maybe before. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but Fox just hasn’t felt “right” for a while.

RE Levin: I’ll admit that I stopped listening religiously about 2 years ago, but at that time I believe Levin started undergoing a change.
I actually got thru to Levin’s program right after the 2012 election, when everyone was down. I told him that our defeat was due to the fecklessness of the GOPe leadership (I then went a bit too far, and Levin kinda brushed me off…mea culpa). I told him that Boehner and McConnell needed to go, at all costs.

I think in 2012 Levin wasn’t ready to go all antiestablishment, but since then he’s seen the betrayal of the base by the establishment and has slowly been shifting. I think he let his anger get the better of him (like so many other Trump supporters), and mentally dismissed his previous Trump criticisms because he thought Trump might bring the change needed.
I think Levin woke up when Trump started attacking Cruz, whom Levin had nearly absolute faith in.
Yes, this was hypocritical but all too human.

I’ll take your word about Levin back in 2011. I just started listening to him a couple years ago. Ratings is the name of the game in radio, so it’s possible he wanted to get a bump from Trump. (Look I made a poem.)

You are also correct that he hasn’t been rehashing Trump’s past.

Jeff Sessions, who has had a closer look at Rubio on immigration than any of us outsiders, says:
“Sessions said that he does not think Rubio has had a change of heart on immigration since the Gang of 8 fight.”

Levin was a hypocrite, covering up what he knew about Trump and what he should have known Trump would inevitably do. It wasn’t rocket science. In 2011 Levin made it clear that Trump was completely unqualified and lacked the temperament AND the political positions to be a valid conservative or even GOP candidate. Nothing had changed in 2015 except some blah-blah-blah about immigrants. And yet not a single word from Levin about all the things that had so incensed him in 2011-2012.

Follow those links of mine to what Levin said four years ago.

No, Levin was just wanting to have some Trump action, and a lot of his listeners liked Trump and he was pandering to them. Only when Trump attacked Levin’s real candidate, Cruz, did Levin turn on Trump. Otherwise he wouldn’t have said a word.

And even after Trump attacked Cruz and Levin turned on Trump, I don’t think Levin ever brought up that older stuff Trump has done, things Levin knows full well he did, because Levin discussed it all (and played the tapes) four years ago.

Maybe Levin was just reveling in what Trump was saying and how he was saying it in the beginning of this campaign. Positions on immigration Levin himself was down with for a long time, anti-radical Islam, pro-cop and pro-veteran, utter contempt for the media, and a total disregard for PC.

What was not to like? Hell, he was even saying nothing but nice things about Cruz. Could it be the leopard rearranging his spots?

Not really, it turned out, but it took a while to become apparent. The big hints for me were the lack of direct criticism of Hillary, Sanders, Obama or the Democrats in general, and the lack of any defining principles.

And the claws really came out when Carson, then Cruz started to make up ground on him and he reverted back to the real Donald Trump, the liberal, take-no-prisoners opportunist.