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It Isn’t Just the Presidency at Stake
I’ve seen it posted in various places that establishment GOP types are more afraid of Cruz than Trump. Having spent the last several days at meetings that were nothing but establishment GOP, I can report that is absolutely backwards. They don’t fear Trump because they think he will win; they fear him as the GOP nominee because they don’t see how can possibly avoid losing.
Of the remaining candidates, the establishment likes Rubio best, because they believe he has the greatest chance of winning, as he is personally likeable and has a positive message that could appeal beyond the base. Cruz is not liked by the establishment, but all recognize that he is smart and conservative. They believe they would have a tough time winning the general election were he the nominee – they worry that his appeal is now narrowed to only the most conservative/evangelical voters and so won’t have broad enough support — but they think they could win.
Why the focus on winning? Because whichever party prevails in the presidency will likely control of the Senate and, by extension, the balance on the Supreme Court.
Thus, Trump inspires despair. At a personal level, a lot of people in that world tell me they have done business with him, know him, and don’t like or trust him. Several say they think about writing about their experiences, but expect that if they do there will immediately be a harassing letter from his attorneys initiating a lawsuit, and so stay quiet. But they are deeply concerned about what the Democrats’ attack ads will say, and worry that many of Trump’s current enthusiasts will think — too late — “Oh, I didn’t know that. I don’t like that”.
Worse, they don’t believe Trump means what he says, and believe he will say one thing one day, the opposite the next — whatever suits the moment — so they don’t trust that his conservative pronouncements will stick when no longer expedient, and worry that he may start a trade war (think Smoot-Hawley tariffs and the resulting Great Depression).
But their greatest concern is that if Trump is the GOP nominee, they don’t see how he can win; his negatives are higher even than Hillary’s. If the top of the GOP presidential ticket loses, they know that almost certainly means senators running in states the GOP nominee loses will also lose, and the Democrats will take the Senate. And if the Democrats take the Senate (and there are more than enough vulnerable GOP senators to do so), that means Obama’s disastrous and debilitating policies like Obamacare and Dodd-Frank become permanent, a culture of dependency grows, the debt continues to spiral, and we’re looking at a court that for a generation won’t follow the constitution or the law but what it “reasonably knows” ought to be the law.
So here is their calculus: If you are eager enough to kick the SOB’s out of DC that you’ll vote for Trump, then you ought to be prepared come January to live with a Democrat in the White House, Sen. Chuck Schumer as majority leader, and Scalia’s conservative seat filled with someone far to the left, tipping the Court’s balance for a generation.
Published in Politics
I don’t believe they are looking into anti-capitalists policies (they’d be with Bernie or Hilary if they were). Some are unreasonable ‘fans’ of his – unwilling to listen, others see that their big issues being scoffed at and disregarded. Think of the party as a power sharing arrangement – what are they getting out of the current arrangement? You need them, you aren’t currently getting them but you refuse to reassure/address their anxieties?
How did Republicans ‘roll over’? Did they really just accept Obama’s unilateral actions? What were they supposed to do? What would a strong GOP congress have looked like?
I now know how to respond if Ricochet ever gets a member that goes by Song-righter.
Unassailable logic there. I guess I stand corrected.
Someone else mentioned anarcho-capitalist. Does that fit or are you just trolling? (Nothing wrong with a little bit of fun trolling, btw. Just wondered)
Mmmm. Seems a bit cynical to me. But then, I don’t see immigration as the one and only issue ala Coulter, et al. Rubio is tarnished a bit but is not a former blue-state Governor who invented Obomneycare or a self-proclaimed cross-aisle-reaching maverick.
Again with the unassailable logic.
You think I’m naïve and I think you’re cynical. C’est la vie.
Perhaps the main difference between us is that I think that this cycle was the last chance for the party to get it right and show lessons learned. If Jeb! got the nomination somehow (or Kasich/Christie) then I would consider the matter settled as you already do. But I saw almost all of the other candidates notably different from the past two cycles and thought that we could finally get it right and start moving things in the right direction. I guess you just think that it was already too late.
It always seemed to me that the biggest issue to conservative Republicans was abortion. Then in 2012 it was healthcare, and that was why Romney was so bad. Now it’s immigration, and that’s why Rubio is so bad. It seems like Republicans get totally fired up over one issue, and it’s a different one every time. Is that because times change? Or is there a tendency on the right to get tripped up over one issue?
I always feel like I’m late to the party, in the sense that none of these issues are initially at the top of my list. I listen to conservatives, they usually make a whole lot of sense, and I adjust my thinking (i.e. abortion and healthcare really are important, symbolic issues that deserve attention). I can also now see why immigration is so important, I just get this sense of deja vu.
Not sure about others, but my priorities definitely change over time, usually as a result of what’s impacting me at the moment. I agree with the primary issues you identified in 2012 and 2016, including the disconnect between the establishment candidate and those issues. I don’t think it’s a question of the voters being contrarian to the candidate, but rather a demonstration of the establishment candidate not being responsive to the voters.
I think your identification of abortion as a major issue is true for social conservatives, and is typically their number one, until something like traditional marriage pops up.
At a minimum, and I do mean bare minimum, to have prioritized and fought for concession(s) – for example, at least 2 of the 10 items listed in this article regarding the $1.1 Trillion Omnibus Budget Bill – and especially refraining from including the language which “locks-in” so much of this spending.
IF they think putting a 35% tariff is going to solve anything, then no we don’t need them. We need to push his core supporters, who are promoting this nonsense out of the movement. Let’s call them the antithesis to us, the people who call believers in conservatism “cuckservatives”. We need to fight and destroy them, by pushing them out of polite society once again.
The everyday Trump voter is looking for strength and nothing more, that’s much easier to appeal to, after we’ve reclaimed the polices that actually work in the real world. Right now though we have to destroy the ideological roots of his movement. The people promoting the issues I listed above. That is what this fight is over.
Politics is all about smaller dedicated groups getting large groups to move in their direction. The quickest away to end a challenger, is to destroy that core base. That is our goal from now until we have pushed them back out of the mainstream again.
Is this not the “WOLF” which the party has been crying for so long?
I think a strong Congress would have shut down the government. I think also, that while they lamented the Iran deal they would have passed a resolution declaring the Senate’s purview over the deal. Maybe a strong congress would have refused to fund the unconstitutional daca, and dapa.
A strong Congress would check an overreaching executive, instead of funding every last penny of it.
Something like that. But, then again, I don’t understand how this actually works. I’m just one of the guys who believed that McConnell would use the power of the purse like he promised.
My bad.
Look, I’m not a Trump guy but they obviously don’t see existing policies of unfettered trade and immigration working for them. You will most likely lose both the primary and the general without them. For all the talk about us Cruz fans as demanding ideological purity and being uncompromising, the party grandees refuse to share power (compromise/not demanding the entire loaf) – you are going to lose without making a pitch to them.
That’s what I thought. Interesting, maybe that would have been better. As I saw it, that was their only card to play.
Did they really fund every last penny of Obama’s programs? That’s not what I understood.
In the case of daca, My understanding is that the House passed a bill to defund daca, but it didn’t pass in the Senate.
Excellent Column!!!! Look on the bright side. If Trump gets the nomination members of the party who are closer to being liberals than conservatives can change the party’s symbol to a Burro. The Burro represents Democrat Lite and is not an editorial comment about Donald Trump.
Surely there’s more blame than that to spread around. It’s also Trump‘s fault and the Democrats’ fault.