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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.
Published in General
‘Thank you Mona may we have another!’
Our respective Venn Diagram circles might briefly overlap on election days.
Is that guy at all related to the drywall crews, landscapers, roofers, plumbers and framers hiring out of the corner of the Home Depot parking lot or the alley besides Lowes?
Is that guy perhaps selling some items off a truck stolen in Tucson?
I am a Cruz supporter, and not a Rubio opponent, but many of you just don’t get it.
What is so sacred about illegal aliens and visa overstayers that we needed to crack up this party on their altars.
You know, when the wall goes up the mouths of the professional Republican class will be no less agape than the mouths of East German apparachiks when their wall came down.
Sorry, Richard, I didn’t mean you personally, I was thinking of the critics in general.
I understand that we’re just trying to noodle this out here. I’m getting desperate about this myself. But I don’t think the base is ready to fall back into the old pattern.
Good grief – Mona’s still lamenting Jeb’s failure – the ‘natural choice’ apparently. Edit: Do you think she understands why Jeb is at 4%?
Mona’s post is extremely insulting. I am certainly an angry conservative, and for very good reasons: the GOP plays us for chumps every election cycle.
Which is the biggest single reason why I prefer Cruz to Rubio: anyone who has the chutzpah to stand on the Senate floor and call his own leadership out as liars and scoundrels is someone who might – just might – actually have the courage to do all that needs doing to save America as the Land of Liberty.
To all who ask the question: “Who is ‘The Republican Establishment?'”
You can include Mona Charen on the list.
I don’t think that Mona was lamenting Bush. She was just listing all of the candidates over whom Trump has triumphed and pointing out that, according to conventional wisdom, Bush should be the front runner. She’s just adding an exclamation point to what Trump has accomplished.
Mona was not insulting conservatives. The only person she actually insulted was Trump. Other than that, she scolded conservative pundits who have been aiming their guns at Republicans rather than at Obama.
Perhaps.
But I have a different take on your analogy. A guy selling stuff that “falls of a truck” is yet also a salesman.
Maybe the “falling off a truck” is a shtick, intended to generate sales. You reminded me of Jungle Jim, a talented salesman who (if I recall correctly) got his start selling produce from an empty lot.
His store is worth a visit, if you’re near enough.
Anyway, we’ll see what Trump turns out to be, but I have no desire to return to K-mart.
I think immigration is less of an issue for Iowa and New Hampshire because they have fewer immigrants.
Exactly.
I still recall Mike Murphy saying on one of the early ricochet podcasts that the base always shows up, so the establishment pays no attention to the base.
Perhaps they should have.
Oh, I disagree! She wrote:
This insults me because it assumes that I am a mere ruminant, incapable of thinking for myself.
We HAVE been betrayed. Republicans folded on Iran. On Obamacare. On taking on the Executive Orders. On prosecuting all the corruption and wrongdoing.
Cruz said it – but many people here were saying it beforehand. So was, in the main, the entire Tea Party movement.
We cannot stop Obama – our elected representatives can. And they have not done so. So our recourse is not to attack Obama, but to attack the wimpy spineless wonders who make it to DC and decide they would like to play patty-cake and settle in for the long haul.
Then you haven’t been reading very carefully. These responses are on this very thread!
We know how to read, and that’s not her point.
That’s the point I took from the piece.
Unless a miracle happens, we are going to end up with Bernie, Hillary, or Donald in the White House. This will be an epic disaster for the GOP and the country. Kyrie eleison.
Then maybe I don’t know how to read. What do you think her point was?
Another Mona piece where she again says Cruz is no better than Trump. This is once a week now. I don’t dare listen to her podcasts anymore. I don’t see how she can stand to talk to Jay, since he has some pro-Cruz stuff. Her contempt for those of us who support Cruz makes it sound like she would like to splash her drink in our faces.
I do not support Trump. I do not support the lying Rubio who was part of the Gang of 8. I do not support Jeb! or the Democrat in Republican clothing Kasich.
Guess who that leaves?
We have been betrayed by the American people and not the GOPe. The American people re-elected Obama and continue to support him at greater than 48% which is astonishingly high given where our country is. Outside of immigration, the GOP has opposed Obama to varying degrees of success. Democrats and the their followers blindly approve of his policies, even obviously flawed policies like his Iran policy. It is not GOPe guys, it is the limits of congressional power, the unified democrat party, and a successful demagogue which has led us to our current predicament.
I support Cruz. I guess that to you, supporting Cruz is the same as supporting Trump.
Believing that, I suggest you work fervently to elect Donald Trump as the next president of the United States, much as people who had similar doubts were once directed to work to elect Mitt “Mittens” Romney as preezy.
Trump will be the one on the Republican ticket.
Richard, this is an attack on Cruz supporters. Period. There is no other way to read it. She is blaming Cruz along with the “con$ervative” media and the Heritage Foundation for Trump.
I am tired of being lectured too my my “betters”.
Further, Ms. Charen is totally scared of us all. She makes a post, and does she “join the conversation”? Nope. Hit and run. Insult me for supporting Cruz, then run.
No, not at all. Where did I give that impression? My candidate was Jindal. He’s long gone, so now I’m trying to decide between Rubio and Cruz. Clearly, neither is perfect, but both are preferable to Trump.
My dilemma is that it’s not obvious to me that Trump any better than either Clinton or Sanders. It’s not clear that Trump’s actions would be much different from theirs. All three support big government. Trump and Clinton both support (and profit from) crony capitalism. Clinton at least seems to support international trade, while Trump’s proposed tariffs threaten to shut it down.
Charen mentioned Cruz almost in passing, and said nothing about his supporters. The shot she took at Cruz was true. He did go after fellow Republicans – that’s why they hate him so much.
She went after him after using negative slur (con$servatives). Ms. Charen is a professional. If she did not mean that slur to be attached, then she should not have put Cruz there. She is attacking Cruz, and until Ms. Charen herself comes back into this thread to clarify, I am going to assume she is attacking Cruz, and anyone who supports him.
Trump’s support has nothing to do with the conservative movement or principles of any kind. His base is reacting to the Democrats’ total lack of any principles other than the lust for power. The Democratic Party’s coalition is based on identity politics: they fight to win power for their constituents over those who are not their constituents. And when they won in 2012, they gloated about how their constituents were going to permanently outnumber Republican constituents.
The Republican base has had enough. Trying to fight fairly for conservative principles has given them zero victories, either moral or political. They just want to win something for themselves now.
This situation is awful, but this is a democracy, and there was no way to prevent the debate from degenerating into pure power politics.
If the Democrats hadn’t defected from the equilibrium by bringing in ringers to bolster their voter base, maybe Republicans would remain satisfied with whatever token wins they achieve by following the rules of honest debate (1 Reagan every 30 years is all we ask). But no, the Democrats had to flood the nation with 30 million Central Americans in order to rub our faces in diversity (and to swing every national election toward the coalition of the handouts). There was no incentive for the Democrats to play by the rules: they believe in universal human equality. There are no rules.
The base supports Trump, not because he is right, but because he is on our side.
I could not in good conscience “work fervently” for Trump’s election. Maybe someone could persuade me to vote for him in extremis, but it would not be easy. The situation is not remotely similar to Romney’s candidacy. He was a conservative and a decent man, so voting for him would not sully any Republican, however much they may prefer another. Not so with Trump.
Trump at the top of the Republican ticket would be the effective end of the party as a vehicle for conservatives on the national scene. It’s going to be interesting (in the Chinese curse sense).
Mona clearly sees only the elites as possessing agency. The rest of us are their clay. This is the beginning and end of the GOP’s problem. They take the base for granted, and having run out of support, now seek a new base.
Explaining how Trump will make everything worse is considered to be heaping contempt by his supporters. I know, I’ve tried.
I don’t believe that’s what Mona meant. Rather, I think she meant that if money were all that mattered Jeb would be the candidate, but it doesn’t matter that much, and he isn’t the candidate.