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In Which Mark Krikorian Asks an Intentionally Provocative, But Darned Good, Question
It’s really getting to you that Rubio is gonna be the next president isn’t it. :)
I hope you are right but I think that the Bushies and the rest of the GOPe have no interest in advancing movement conservatism, and in fact despise it. If they aren’t successful in capturing the only available major party apparatus they will not support, and may well damage, the choice of the party. They will be off to “do cool things” – as corporate board members and rain-makers on Wall Street.
Name me one Republican candidate that that accusation won’t be used on?
And people are going to warm up to this:
That’s what I fear. It’s only a guess. I think many people would vote for Hillary regardless of the cackle, the lying, the scary face. I don’t expect a lot from American voters after they re-elected Obama.
And, I like Ted Cruz, but there’s something about his presentation that rubs me the wrong way.
Maybe he thought that since his name is Murphy, he could hit some home runs.
Old-time radio comedians Bob and Ray used to refer to acerbic New York Magazine critic, John Simon, as the most hated man in the world, presumably for giving them a bad review. Simon is now 90. I suggest Mike Murphy as his successor. But as you say, he should be fired first.
Rubio. They will go after him because he is too poor, so he can’t handle money. The rest have a net worth in the millions- Fiorina, Trump, Kasich, Bush, etc.- and will be portrayed as unfeeling plutocrats who had everything handed to them, silver spoons, etc. (even Carson, who started with nothing, is now worth millions). The fact that Hillary and Obama grew up in at least as comfortable circumstances is meaningless to Legacy Media.
That’s why, in this emotional-response-driven world where the optics for our side simply are not fair, our best candidate in 2012 would have been Pawlenty, who came from a good sized family of Democrat truck drivers and stockyard workers. That’s why Reagan was able to win the support of Reagan Democrats- it was clear that he had had to work his way up from hardscrabble beginnings and they trusted him not to be in thrall to bankers and big bidness managers.
If Carson was qualified to be president, he would also be able to sell himself that way.
I agree with Owen and Mustangman. I like Ted Cruz but don’t think he could win the general. I think Rubio can sail to the presidency (his one downfall is his babyface, maybe the campaign will put some grey in his hair), but I like Carey J. am worried about his immigration stance. Rubio could maybe help himself there by warming up to Jeff Sessions (maybe promising a cabinet post at DHS).
I think Trump is more electable than Ted Cruz, but they are two different kind of candidates. Ted Cruz is the ladder climber that nobody likes because he is talented, smart, and arrogant (at least he isn’t good looking to go along with it). Donald Trump is the boss’s son that everybody likes because he is brash, entertaining, but also loyal and generous with his friends.
BWAHAHAHAAHAHA!!!!!!!!! You serious think that Rubio won’t be smeared with the same crap that they smear on every Republican? Oh man, I can’t stop laughing. I have tears in my eyes!! BWAHAHAHA!!!!!
Or he could co-sponsor a bill with Sessions that deals only with border security and then wait until his final year in his second term to do anything with the rest of the immigration equation. He wants to earn trust on immigration? Then he needs to show folks like me that he isn’t about to amnestitize 40 million new Democrat voters that will utterly ruin this country.
Wait a minute, arrogant? Can we have an example please? If anything, he is a little gruff in his willingness to fight, but arrogant? Oh by the way that thing he is fighting for is called the Constitution, so I am inclined to forgive his gruffness when he fights for that.
That’d be great. And, thanks for the new verb!
Peter,
If Jeb! is going to use his war chest to attack Republicans letting the dems off the hook for the Obama debacle then he needs to go as soon as possible. Do not get sentimental, do not try to triangulate, just let him go.
Regards,
Jim
You answered more fully my own mind than I could have done. lol
Arrogance has just as much to do with tone and posture as it does with words. I think that’s how he comes across. I have a hard time believing, too, that the left and independents will support him. He’s all people are saying–fearless, smart, articulate. And I can’t imagine his being able to work successfully with Congress.
These guys are all part of the same donor class tribe. This is just an intrafamily squabble.
As GWB said, the only guy they reserve hatred for is Cruz. He’s worse than Hillary to them.
I agree that Cruz has not demonstrated actual arrogance. Unfortunately, he seems arrogant. It’s not fair or just, but I think for reasons entirely unrelated to substance, he’s not electable. If I could pick one person from that stage Wednesday night and unilaterally make him president, it would be Cruz. If I have to nominate someone to win a general election, though, it’s Rubio.
We just have to extract a commitment on immigration somehow first.
Cruz is the only established (but not establishment) politician they hate in the race. They hate him because he refuses to go along with their script. But they hate the outsiders too, the non-politicians. They hate Trump, and they’ll hate Carson if he continues to do well. If Carson stays in the top two or three, don’t be surprised when the first nasty oppo research on him comes not from Democrats but from the eGOP. Trump, they haven’t done oppo on because they didn’t think they’d have to. They thought he was a joke, and when it was apparent he was a real threat, they expected the media to do their work for them. But Trump has been The Teflon Donald, and nothing sticks to him. So they’re not quite sure what to do about him yet. But you can bet that people at the Chamber of Commerce are talking to people in K Street about how best to take care of the Trump problem for the eGOP.
Two months ago I would have agreed with you. I’m a Cruz supporter, but I thought that he seemed stiff and scripted in the first two debates. Unfortunately, the same was true of every candidate, but every one of them seems to be learning. To me, with the exception of Bush, they all seemed a lot more natural in the last debate, and I can see the improved style spilling over into Cruz’s television interviews. I am not a Trump supporter, but I think that I have to credit Trump with the development. He has been a positive force in the race if for no other reason than that he has shown the field that being natural and being willing to cross swords with a biased media works.
I think that a lot of the Republicans have hired image consultants who advise them to be as bland as possible to avoid being caricatured. (Think of Scott Walker.) In the last election, excessive attention to maintaining a soft image killed Romney, and in this election, I think that we’re seeing the death of the image consultants’ conventional wisdom. As an aside, have you noticed who isn’t getting more natural? The Democrats. I think that the trend bodes well for the future.
I have a low word limit, so I just wanted to add a quick observation to my last post. The politics of crafting a superficial image and obsessing over style is a politics natural to Democrats—Democrats are the party of memes and narrative, essentially fact-free and even content-free talk—and Republicans should have abandoned trying to compete on those terms twenty years ago. People hate the style. (Even Democrats don’t like the style. The new style that Obama brought to politics wasn’t what Democrats described, one of hope, compromise, or pragmatism. In retrospect, the style was obviously an appealing sincerity. As much as I detest Obama, he’s affable in a way that even Bill Clinton wasn’t affable.) Thanks to Trump’s influence, whoever is the eventual nominee will have learned a new style of sincere, devil-may-care campaigning and be well positioned by habit to bury Clinton in terms of style. At this point, I believe that non-partisan moderates will respond to sincerity more than plastic compassion.
I never see people discuss how being yourself affects a candidacy. Consider the last several presidential contests.
1. Obama versus Romney
2. McCain versus Obama
3. Bush versus Kerry
4. Gore versus Bush
5. Clinton versus Dole
6. Bush versus Clinton
7. Bush versus Dukakis
8. Reagan versus Mondale
9. Carter versus Reagan
Didn’t the most natural, sincere candidate win each of these races? (I remember all of these races, and when comparing the manifest sincerity and naturalness of the candidates, the only races that were close were Bush versus Clinton and Reagan versus Carter. In those two cases, the candidates might have been equally personable in public, and the election came down to fundamental issues instead of personalities.) Obviously, without a rigorous way to measure naturalness, I cannot prove a claim, but I think that the ability to shed an image and be yourself is a better predictor of success than political alignment with the public. I’m curious what others think.
It may happen, but first he’s gotta get out of single digits in the GOP Primary polls. Both Trump and Carson are beating him like the proverbial rented mule. Here’s the current RealClearPolitics averages:
If every one of ¡Jeb!’s supporters switched to Rubio, Carson and Trump would still be ahead of him. This is not the establishment’s year. All the amnestymongers are in for a disappointment this time around. Once ¡Jeb! is out of the race, we can shift our fire to Rubio. And once people figure out he’s as bad as ¡Jeb! on border security, he’s done.
Rubio+Ryan = 0*borders
.
Winning an election makes you sincere and natural. Losing makes you a loser.
I am going with the one I think can best preserve the country. not the one who I am told can best win. If they aren’t going to preserve the country, there is no point in winning. If too many people go for style rather than substance, we may not be worthy of a free, prosperous country anyway.
What are you saying? If you have a serious point, I apologize because I don’t see it.
I’ve commented on other threads that the alleged intelligence and civility of discussions on Ricochet can be highly overrated. Ricochet appears to have its share of trolls and drive-by comments. I have a mission to engage trolling or drive-by comments, and I think that this falls into the category. If you disagree with my assessment of the relative affability of the candidates in past elections, I’m eager to hear your serious response. I’m not too terribly interested in a Soviet-style redefinition of common words in an attempt to beg the question.
Let me try to succinctly describe the problem with your quip. I speculated that in an election, being sincere and natural makes you a winner, and I invited discussion on the subject. You responded that being a winner makes you sincere and natural, the exact opposite of the way that the relationship appears to run. You either believe that the relationship runs the other way and maybe accidentally, condescendingly wrote as though the relationship is so clear as to require no justification—do you have an example of a president whose personality appeared to change substantially after election?—or you really are just redefining sincerity and naturalness to evade the question.
I didn’t watch the last debate; this gives me some hope.
I hope you’re right. We’ll see.
Velly intellestink. Sounds worthy of consideration as an explanation.
More the former. Our opinions on this and similar subjects are greatly colored by the fact of who won. It’s something like the bandwagon effect we all learned about when studying propaganda techniques in English class in high school.