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Republican Self-Sabotage
The latest CBS poll suggests that the Trump juggernaut continues to roll, with 35 percent of Republicans supporting him. Ted Cruz, his nearest rival, garners 18 percent. Jeb Bush, the candidate who should have been the obvious choice if conventional wisdom about money and politics were even remotely true, is dead last with 4 percent. In vain does Ted Cruz protest that Donald Trump is not a conservative. Among those who describe themselves as “very conservative,” 35 percent favor Trump versus 30 percent for Cruz, and 12 percent for Rubio.
In South Carolina, Trump is ahead among the evangelical voters Ted Cruz targeted as his savior army that would rise up to carry a true conservative to victory. According to a Fox News poll (2/18), Trump leads Cruz 31 percent to 23 percent among evangelical Christians. And while Cruz leads among those who identify as “very conservative” it’s a razor-thin edge (well within the margin of error).
As in New Hampshire, Trump leads nationally among a broad swath of voters. Not only those with just a high school diploma (47 percent), but also those with some college (33 percent), and college graduates (25 percent). He is the preference of men and women, and among all income groups including those earning more than $100,000.
Any number of theories have been advanced about the Trump voters – that they represent the downscale whites who have been abandoned by the Republican Party, or that they are enraged by Republican failure to secure the border.
But as noted, Trump does well among upscale voters too. As for the great immigration rage, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Immigration was listed last among matters that were on voters’ minds in Iowa and New Hampshire. Besides, Trump did well even among voters who said they favored a path to citizenship for illegals living here.
No, there’s a better theory for why 35 percent of Republican primary voters are ready to hand the nomination to a bullying, loutish con man who accuses George W. Bush of war crimes while promising to commit some of his own (killing the wives and children of suspected terrorists, stealing the oil of Middle Eastern nations).
For the past several years, leading voices of what Matt Lewis has called “con$ervative” media, along with groups like Heritage Action, and politicians like Sen. Ted Cruz, have ceaselessly flogged the false narrative that the Republican “grassroots” have been betrayed by the Republican leadership in Washington.
Rather than aim their anger at President Obama and the Democrats, right wing websites, commentators like Ann Coulter and Mark Levin, and many others have instead repeated the libel that “Republicans gave Obama everything he wanted.” There has been a flavor of the “stab in the back” to these accusations. But for the treachery of the Republican Party, they claim, a party too timorous or too corrupt to stand up to Obama, we could have defunded Obamacare, balanced the budget, halted the Iran deal, you name it.
Aiming fire at your own side can be very satisfying for radio wranglers, et al. They have zero influence on Obama, but they can take down Eric Cantor. They can’t do much about Eric Holder, but they can dethrone John Boehner.
This is not to say that Republican leaders were perfect or that they couldn’t have done more in some instances to put bills on Obama’s desk – even if only to force vetoes and lay down markers for the next election. But the list of Obama initiatives Republicans thwarted is very long (universal pre-K, gun control, “paycheck fairness,” higher taxes). Moreover, the bloc of conservatives in the House that refused to vote for any budget made it that much more difficult for leadership to exert pressure on Democrats. Lastly, who believes it makes no difference that Republicans control the Senate in the wake of Justice Scalia’s death?
So congratulations to those conservatives who’ve been preaching the “betrayal” of the base by the establishment. You’ve won. You’ve convinced 70 percent of the Republican primary electorate (per the CBS poll) that the most important quality in a candidate is that he will “shake up the political system.”
With all its faults, the Republican Party is the only vehicle for conservative ideas in this country. Conservatives themselves, or at least those who styled themselves conservatives, may have sabotaged it, handing the reins not to a moderate, nor even to a liberal Republican, but to a lifelong Democrat.
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That’s pure silly talk. Jeb’s campaign was DOA; the consultants are just sucking the body dry.
Self-awareness level: 0
You’ve described me, but I want nothing to do with Trump. So don’t make the same mistake as Mona and assume it’s the base who’s jumped on board with Trump.
In other words, you’ve accurately described the issues of discontent, but there’s much disagreement on the solution. We can work this out without the sneering from Mona, though.
Exactly! You replace Eric Cantor with someone far, far, to his left and call that a victory for Conservatism? How so?
The left thought talk radio was bad for them. It wasn’t it is going to give them their biggest victory in history. Because it is giving the left a far better candidate than Hillary or Bernie for reaching Democrat goals, and completely demolishing Reagan’s conservative party.
“Aiming fire at your own side can be very satisfying for radio wranglers, et al. They have zero influence on Obama, but they can take down Eric Cantor. They can’t do much about Eric Holder, but they can dethrone John Boehner.”
No one wants to attack their own side without overwhelming provocation. This paragraph proves how utterly bankrupt the GOP elites are in understanding signals sent for decades.
Radio hosts can’t influence Democrats. Legislators elected as “representatives” are supposed to use their power and influence to do that job. They have refused to fight.
So blame whoever you want Mona. Anyone but yourself and your friends.
No one is happy about this. But it was YOUR choice. You all were warned. This is what it looks like.
Facts and logic don’t seem to work with Trump supporters. The reply is usually some variation of: So you’re for Jeb!, huh? / RINO! / You just don’t get it! / We’re angry, so your logic means nothing to us / The GOPe is getting what it deserves / We’re going to burn down the GOP and build a real conservative party on its ashes.
If you or anyone else knows some way to get through, please tell us.
Okay, fair enough, though I really don’t see this as “trashing.”
I do still agree with Mona that the focus on the betrayal narrative is both unwarranted and incorrect. And I still maintain that — for people who do believe in that narrative — the obvious and legitimate candidate is Cruz; I’m hardly Ted’s biggest fan, but we could do a whole lot worse and I’ll donate and doorbell for him if he’s the nominee. Instead, a great many of those who are angriest are have chosen Donald Trump. Unforced error.
As you have been programed to believe. The facts don’t show that at all. Up against the media/Democrat cabal they have done what they could.
Only if you believe the simplistic BS about the borders not being enforced that is retailed by the people Charen describes. Our problem is much less “amnesty” than it is the fact that the systems creates circumstances where amnesty of one kind or another is inevitable. The problems are non-enforcement of E-verify, no visa tracking, and legal means such as family unification, not “amnesty”, which exists already, like it or not.
Mona doesn’t listen to Mark Levin. I can tell.
If you can only convince 30% of your own voters that you are doing a good job, you are doing politics wrong.
Is the argument here really that 70% Republican voters are wrong and misguided? You think so low of that much of the parties voters that they could all be mislead?
These people have been lied to and betrayed so often, they’re just…..angry.
Excuse me? Programmed to believe? What’s happened is: I’ve been *paying attention*.
You’re still believing the lie.
QED
I’m one of the relatively few admitted Trump supporters here, so let me respond to your statement thusly: You vastly overestimate the amount of concern I have for the gop, its puerile, flailing establishment, and its hilarious attempts to herd people back into the gop corral.
The gop, like K-mart, still exists. Even though I once did business with both, I no longer have any reason to do so, because I have better alternatives.
I can shop at Walmart or Target, who don’t have run-down, crumbling stores in bad neighborhoods, and I can support Trump, who matches my viewpoint much better than the swarm of open-border globalists of the gop.
No anger is involved because I don’t need to shop at K-mart or support the gop anymore. I’ve just moved on. Shrug.
I’m sorry your brand is failing so badly, but it isn’t my problem. You should have served your customers better.
Another dispatch from the party of why nothing can be done.
Thank you.
Have you seen the latest blue light special?
I’ve been on many of the Trump threads on Ricochet and I don’t recognize most of these responses. Outsie of Ricochet? I can’t vouch for the outlanders.
Arrrrrrgh. The knife twisted with cordial, above-the-fray Trumpian pity.
Well done.
It seems to me that the republican ‘leadership’, over time, calculated that they could neglect the interests of own base to some degree in favor of other interests – and the base would still continue to support them – after all, where could they go? But they’ve pushed it too far – and have provoked their base to anger.
Can it be repaired? I don’t know. Is the leadership even willing to compromise?
Trump is doing well because he is the only voice / message on the GOP side being heard. The news is 24/7 Trump, Trump calling people names, Trump yelling at people, Trump saying everything they want to hear. Most people do not even know who else is running or if they do what those people positions are. The news tells everybody that Trump is winning and making everybody else look the fool. Well everybody likes to win and side with a winner and few like to be or side with fools. Thus Trump is picking up people because he is winning.
Trump is a master at trolling and at promoting himself. He knows how to own a news cycle and to spin so he always comes out a little ahead of the others. Trump is going to be the nominee unless they can steal the wind from his sails.
Recently Trump and Cruz bumped and Trump has threatened to sue over a commercial and over Cruz birth place. Cruz had a news conference and explain why Trump’s charges were frivolous. A real low key event. What Cruz should have done is walk in, laughed at Trumps charges and told the news folk that Trump is loser making stuff up survive and if he had any gonads he would stop whining like a little girl and sue already. Now that would be how to trump a Trump.
Ted Cruz has moved seemingly instantaneously from an army-of-one Senator with no influence to a mastermind capable of controlling, with Mark Levin’s help, the preferences of “70 percent of the Republican primary electorate.” Wow. Imagine what he could do as president.
Let’s try flipping the Charen hypothesis. Instead of poisoning the Republican primary electorate with slander, what if Levin and Cruz are instead describing the true state of affairs, thereby accurately expressing the shared disgust of many, including the millions of voters who don’t listen to either of them?
The point isn’t that Republicans in Congress haven’t won every fight with Obama and the Left, rather that they prefer to skip the fight entirely. Moving to end-game (i.e., surrender) without the intervening fight eliminates the politically vital argument over policy and priorities visible to voters who are not political junkies. In contrast, the Left always makes the argument, win-or-lose. And eventually, they tend to win, reaping the fruit of prior lost battles.
Senator Sessions the other day on the Mark Levin show credited the defeat of Eric Cantor with scuttling the Gang of Eight amnesty bill in the House. This bill serves as Exhibit A in my alternative Washington Cartel theory of modern bipartisan governance.
I like the analogy. But more accurately, what you’ve done isn’t move on from K-mart to Walmart or Target. You’ve decided to do your shopping with the guy in the alley that has a slew of items that happened to “fall off a truck”.
The only replies my the list that I didn’t see in one or more Ricochet threads is the last (burn down the GOP). That one I saw on NRO. Two of the replies (“we’re angry,” and “the GOPe is getting what it deserves”) were actually used in this very thread (see #42 and #24).
I don’t give a rat’s rear-end about what happens to the GOP; I care about what happens to the country. If Trump wins the nomination, we’ll get four more years of Obama – either because Trump will lose to the Democratic nominee or because Trump will win. Either way, a crony-capitalist, big-government candidate will be in the White House.
I don’t disagree with your concern. But you don’t defeat Trump by insulting his supporters and utterly discounting their complaints.
And, BTW, does the GOPe still prefer Trump to Cruz?
The point of Charen’s post is to describe the destruction caused by the Republican’s circular firing squad and to suggest that it should stop. The response is largely: “How dare you criticize us!” The irony is that this response is coming from supporters of the candidate that used the last GOP debate to re-launch the left’s “Bush lied, thousands died” campaign.
Thank you. I emphasize that I really do feel that way to you
K-martgop fans out there.Maybe
K-martthe gop will do better and win me back, but I’ve been waiting a long time, and I’m tired of driving around that giant pothole in your parking lot.Good luck.
Where did I insult anyone? I simply listed the arguments that Trump supporters have used on Ricochet and NRO. Since when is repeating people’s arguments an insult? All I’m asking is that people respond to logical arguments with fact and logic rather than with emotion.
I have no idea who the GOPe prefers. I’m just a computer jockey sitting here in Humble, Texas. I ain’t nobody’s idea of an elite anything.
On blue light special today: cow chips.