Your friend Jim George thinks you'd be a great addition to Ricochet, so we'd like to offer you a special deal: You can become a member for no initial charge for one month!
Ricochet is a community of like-minded people who enjoy writing about and discussing politics (usually of the center-right nature), culture, sports, history, and just about every other topic under the sun in a fully moderated environment. We’re so sure you’ll like Ricochet, we’ll let you join and get your first month for free. Kick the tires: read the always eclectic member feed, write some posts, join discussions, participate in a live chat or two, and listen to a few of our over 50 (free) podcasts on every conceivable topic, hosted by some of the biggest names on the right, for 30 days on us. We’re confident you’re gonna love it.
This morning, I voted in Michigan’s Republican presidential primary, and I returned home to read in Erasmus’ Adages in preparation for tomorrow’s class. But before I settled down with book in hand, my mind began a-wandering, and I realized that I had seen this movie — or something very much like it — before.
Very well put.
Despite being a nationalist and thinking that we do need to get more serious about immigration enforcement, the issue only marginally informs my voting. But it does inform a lot of other people’s and it’s one of the few issues where Republicans and blue-dog like Democrats) are willing to blow things up over. Ask George W. Bush and Harry Reid. It’s professionally negligent on the part of party leaders.
It is, moreover, worries me the most about Rubio, who I voted for just last week (though I should include Cruz as well, who’s involvement in the Gang of Eight bill Frank Soto covered admirably this morning). Someone of Rubio’s intelligence and experience should have known that the issue is radioactive. Cruz, whatever else one might say, at least had the foresight to dissemble.
Probably true. But the voter should know better, too. I mean really, Trump over Rubio, Cruz, Walker, Jindal, etc.? I want a golden egg, daddy!
Great post. Thanks.
Thank you for taking a longer look at the current times. I’ve struggled to comprehend the attraction to Trump even though I have several coworkers (who qualify as less educated, working class whites) who advocate for him. The best I can tell from my talks with these men is that Trump is riding a wave of emotion masquerading as reason. They say they want a fighter, but I think they want one from the UFC, not a student of the sweet science. They want someone willing to throw elbows and knees, unrestrained by the rules of conventional fighting. If there is no blood on the mat and no teeth are left laying about after the fight they will be disappointed.
But the left is fighting by street rules. They are doing so in the schools, the work place, the churches, and the government.
Fact.
Great post Dr. Rahe.
Agreed. And I think Jonah is wholly correct that if Trump gets the nomination and wins, there’s going to be a lot of people looking like LTC Nicholson at the end of Bridge Over the River Kwai asking what in God’s name they’ve has done.
Regarding Rubio, though, if he burns out next week, then his candidacy should serve as a lessen of just how dumb it is to get on the wrong side of the American people on immigration: that is, even if you’re an incredibly conservative and attractive candidate, this issue can still sink you.
I pray that the costs aren’t that high and that Frank is wrong about Cruz.
I think this is overblown. Machiavellian implementation of whiny, narcissistic, girly-man policy is an oxymoron.
Thank you for this perspective. I appreciate it.
Meh. I don’t think it was immigration that did it. I think it was the fact that he’s a conventional politician in a year when people want to riot. They’re looking for a person to throw the first bricks, not a president.
I think we can specify the phenomenon somewhat more by noting that in ’68 & ’92 the president’s party was thrown out of the White House in both cases, but not out of Congress–nor the opposition party into Congress. That ties up with something else: In neither case was the political accomplishment of the outgoing administration overruled. The Great Society is still around to burden & to haunt America; & the Reagan’s tax reform & changes to the rhetoric on the economy are both still extant & determining thinking & policy.
This time, however, I am nowhere near as sure that Dems will lose the White House & the GOP will win, with whatever candidate. The big difference is, this time it’s the GOP, though it does not have the presidency, that’s threatening to collapse…
The ’68 Dems & ’92 GOP were not only thrown out of the White House, but they only regained it within a decade by luck–Watergate, in one case, the strange 2000 elections in the other case.–I don’t see reason to foresee anything like that for the 2016 Dems.
So I think things have changed in the direction of the administrative state, so that the political beneficiary of this vote-the-revolt election will be the Dems, both short- & long-term.
Maybe it’s not that unreasonable: Maybe the Sunshine Senator has done too much to embrace his party, Mr. W. Bush, & too little to explain what great changes to the party he will make. Possibly, the primary electorate does not like that. The fantasy-by-poll electorate for the general election is not much more more in love with him either…
I think you have things assbackwards: It is the few who go asking for the votes of the many, not the many going to the few to ask them to lead. That may be ideal, but it is not seriously to be expected. I would not say any of the candidates killed in the media-primary, money-primary or the first actual primary elections really worried about persuading the electorate… Gov. Walker above all was applauded by money-men & political men as much as by activists & was looking great to all of them & in all polls after CPAC’15. Then he turned out to have nothing to say to the people who would really be voting. That was probably a bad idea-
That’s part of it too, but immigration is the spark that set this off. You don’t have to — and I don’t — buy Trump’s line on this that nobody would be talking about the issue were it not for him, but the fact that the most popular (Rubio) and best-funded (Bush) candidates were the most out of line on the issue were real fuel for that fire.
That is not, however, to forgive Trump for being Trump, nor to let his supporter’s off the hook.
2016: Not the year of tradition, status quo, or conventional wisdom.
I am not asking to be let off the hook.
And we are to ignore the racism?
I don’t think so.
Suppose Cruz is able to battle Trump to a draw, or even have a slight lead in a contested convention. After the first ballot aren’t these people party professionals that know Cruz would be worse than Goldwater? I know Trump would cause a riot if the nomination was taken away from him, but if we take it away from both of these jokers won’t that lessen the sting? Kasich, Romney, Ryan – anybody has a better chance against Hillary than these two guys.
Cornell, 1968.
How did the later armed seizure of the administration building by black students, with their non-negotiable demands for amnesty and Afro-centric curriculum changes at Cornell, affect your attitudes about racism, white guilt and Western self-abnegation?
It seems like those demands have had a much greater impact on higher education and the culture than little old George Wallace.
& another question, Prof. Rahe: Did you know Allan Bloom at Cornell?
The crucial events took place in April, 1969. I was associate editor of The Cornell Daily Sun at the time and wrote extensively in the paper about developments, and I helped mount a successful campaign to oust the school’s president.. Witnessing those events taught me that I was a conservative. In the aftermath, as I thought through the implications of my dislike of what had happened and my contempt for the faculty members and the administrators who had backed down, I moved right.
I was one of the students in the year-long seminar he taught in 1968-69 on Plato’s Republic. It is described in The Closing of the American Mind.
Ryan is a fine man, but he favors open borders. Kasich is a liberal, and Romney would not be acceptable to the supporters of Trump or Cruz. For what it is worth, in the polls Cruz beats Hillary. I do not think him worse than Goldwater (nor better than Reagan).
“When you step on ordinary folks and they get spitting-mad, you had better watch out.”
Beautiful!
No, it isn’t.
Me neither.
Let me be blunt. George Bush murdered the Republican party, after his dad seriously wounded it.
It takes serious political incompetence to start with a 90% approval rating and then lose to the draft-dodging ethically challenged governor of Arkansas- But H. W. Bush met that bar. People read his lips, and voted accordingly.
Later, George Bush managed to preside over the 9/11 attack- but then did the absolute wrong thing about it, by refusing to fix the immigration system and secure the border, but deciding to ramp up domestic spying to such an extent that it has become a festering wound on the body politic today.
Invading Iraq, he made no response to the endless idiotic charge that he lied about WMD, but also astonishingly refused to tell the public that WMD were in fact found in Iraq, which would have rebutted the charge.
Then, when a storm hit New Orleans, he stepped up to accept all blame, letting the local Democrats completely off the hook. We were told family values didn’t stop at the Rio Grande, signaling that he had abandoned the Rule of Law in favor of cheap labor for his wealthy friends. The economy collapsed- this had nothing to do with him. It was Barney Frank and the community reinvestment act that Bush had done nothing about.
The buck stopped with them.
The GOP had not one but two chances to become the majority party of this country, but it wasted both of them. The party was and remains completely unwilling to represent most of the people who vote for it, instead giving us nothing but platitudes and excuses.
With better leadership- if the Bushes hadn’t been failures- maybe it would have been different.
Too late now. Hence, Trump.
Thanks for writing 2 consecutive comments, Xennady, it permitted me to “like” you twice.
The Republican Party has never come to terms with the legacy of George W. Bush and squared itself with the great majority of the American people that saw Bush as a disaster.
In 2008 McCain offered no substantive difference to the stagnation, debt, war, regulation and government of W. He would have been the 3rd Bush term.
In 2012 Romney offered the same policy prescriptions, tax cuts and sabre rattling as W, so people preferred to stick with the alternative.
Then in 2016 came Jeb. Same BS. Nuf sed.
Rubio is refried Bush – is there anything he wants to do that George W. wouldn’t have wanted too, right down to amnesty and more war in the Middle East?
No more Bushism and no more Bushes – and that goes for you too, George P.
But it’s not too late for the GOP to recover. Trump has demonstrated that the Beltway consultants were always wrong and Steve Sailer was always right.
Not “Outreach.”
“Inreach.”
End Immigration Now!
Excellent essay.
Arguably, the campaigns of Wallace in ’68, Perot in ’92, and now Trump in ’16 could be classified as expressions of what Samuel Francis called Middle American Radicalism. And it is a grave error to dismiss the concerns of such people as “racism,” as leftists regularly do and many on the right have been wont to do this election season.