Cromwell

1.  Obviously, the dynamics of this one were different, because Rubio came out swinging from the opening bell.
2.  The entire rationale for Trump’s campaign is that he is an alpha male, and his competitors (not to mention the President, his predecessors, the media, and everyone who disagrees with him) aren’t.  As a result, he has to behave like one during the debates, which means talking over his opponents and the moderators any time he likes.  Cruz and Rubio have figured out that the only way to address this kind of behavior is to respond in kind.  We consequently are treated to long stretches in which the candidates behave like dogs competing to pee the highest on a tree.
3.  The moderators look ineffectual when this happens, but they are actually wise to let it go.
4.  I think Trump lost a little ground, but not enough to matter.  It’s too late to completely change public perceptions unless the establishment is prepared to back it up with a huge media blitz over the next few weeks.  They should have done that months ago.
5.  The big winners last night were the Democrats.  Anyone who puts himself on the side of civilized behavior has to think that all of these people are jackasses.
6.  If Trump gets the nomination, I think he will have to rethink his tactics when he debates Hillary in front of a more neutral audience.  I don’t believe bullying will work under those conditions.
7.  From a policy perspective, the most interesting thing about the debate was Trump’s plan to replace Obamacare without eliminating its pre-existing conditions provisions.  Call it the one-legged stool;  it would work just about as well.

It would be perfectly reasonable for the GOP leaders in the Senate to refuse to consider a nomination that could not be processed prior to the election in the Senate’s normal course of business.   That is not the case today, however, which logically leads to a question–where is the new line?  Is it a year?  Two years? Have these nominations become so political that the line is now effectively four years?

Over to you for an answer, Mitch.

In 2010, at the height of the Tea Party wave, Rick Scott, a wealthy hospital mogul with few discernible political skills and some serious legal skeletons in his closet, decided to run for Governor of Florida.  He poured untold millions of his own money into the effort.  He beat a mediocre GOP establishment figure in a bloody primary, won the general election by a nose, and has been Governor ever since.

During the 2015-2016 GOP primary season, Jeb Bush raised and spent a ridiculously large amount of money, only to fall flat on his face, while Donald Trump primarily relied on free media time to build up a substantial lead in the delegate count.

What conclusions can we draw from these examples about the impact of money in American politics? The correct response, obviously, is that the answer is not simple:  it depends on how the money is used.

Here are my observations:

1.  Money is useful to create images and narratives when there is no previous political record to rebut.  Hence, the success of the Scott campaign.

2.  Money can be very helpful to reinforce existing negative impressions of a candidate.  Negative ads that attempt to destroy entrenched views of a candidate will be less successful unless it is clear that they are accurate and fair.

3.  Money can’t change facts.  Jeb Bush couldn’t escape the shadow of his brother’s administration, no matter how much money he spent.

4.  Free media time, if you can get it, is more valuable than paid time.  One of the unfortunate legacies of the Trump campaign is that it will encourage future candidates to say even more outrageous things in the hope of attracting free media attention.

5.  Campaign contributions are a small part of a much larger picture.  Money spent by wealthy individuals and corporations on lobbyists and education campaigns can, and frequently do, ultimately have more impact on legislation and rulemaking than campaign contributions.  That is why the Koch brothers use their money the way they do, and why it is a mistake for Sanders to focus so intensely on contributions in his “revolution.”

 

The GOP candidate Jeb.

His fortunes were at a low ebb.

He finally retired

Before he was fired

‘Cause Trump had him caught in his web.

 

And so a campaign that began with “shock and awe” expired in a whimper–the victim of the Trump steamroller, its own ineptitude, and the poisoned legacy of Bush 43.

Readers of this blog will remember that one of the best insights I ever had about politics came to me in a dream many years ago.  One of the characters in the dream told me that the voters didn’t really expect candidates to solve their problems, but they had to know that their hearts were in the right place.  It occurred to me a few days ago that this is the central concept of Trump’s campaign.

Trump is, above all things, a salesman.  His book apparently references “truthful hyperbole” as a useful sales technique.  My best guess is that the positions he has taken that make him the GOP frontrunner are a great example of that technique.

Trump isn’t stupid, so he can’t possibly believe that he can deport eleven million illegal immigrants, or that Mexico will pay for a border wall, or that the Chinese will sit idly by as he imposes a 45 percent tariff on their goods.  I don’t think his supporters actually believe that, either.  What matters to them is that he understands their grievances against the system, and expresses them in the most pungent way imaginable;  everything else is a detail.

In other words, he feels the pain of the white working class, and he wants everyone else to feel it, too, even if he has no plausible answers to their problems.

The GOP frontrunner Don

Is campaigning hither and yon.

March 1 should be super

Absent a blooper

The voters will likely be conned.

South Carolina was a disaster for Cruz.  He needed desperately to win there in order to establish himself as the frontrunner in the SEC primary; as it stands today, he is only favored to win two or three states on March 1, which won’t be nearly enough for him, given the limited appeal of his campaign outside of the South and the Plains states.

Cruz doesn’t have a Plan B, so the only thing he can do at this point is to double down on his previous tactic of slamming Trump for being an unreliable conservative and hope it works better than it did last week.  That doesn’t seem very likely.

As the field is currently constituted, it would appear that his ceiling is around 25 percent.  He could increase that to about 30 percent if he could get Carson out of the race, since he is the closest ideological match for disappointed Carson voters. Carson doesn’t seem to want to leave, however; perhaps Ted’s dirty tricks in Iowa are coming back to haunt him.

One thing is for certain:  Ted is in it for the long haul.  He has plenty of money, and his prospects in the Senate are worse than grim.  Anyone who bets on Rubio’s chances in a two-man race need to consider that.

There once was a Texan named Cruz.

Right-wing Christians he called on to choose.

He just wouldn’t deign

To go out of his lane.

So the contest he’s likely to lose.

The concept behind the Bush campaign had the following components:  (a) scare off all potential Romney Coalition rivals with overwhelming fundraising; (b) hope for competition among the Reagan Coalition candidates; and (c) outlast everyone with its organizational advantages.  It failed miserably, and he is now out of the race.

The Rubio plan, on the other hand, was to hope that Bush imploded, given his obvious drawbacks as a candidate, and to build bridges to all of the factions of the GOP with an eye to becoming a consensus candidate.  The first part of this has worked, due partly to his own strengths as a candidate, but more to Trump’s evisceration of Bush.  Now comes the hard part:  can he peel enough votes away from Trump and Cruz to win the nomination?

After the first three contests, you would have to say the answer is no.  His best hope at this point is to get Kasich out of the race as quickly as possible, to inherit the Bush and Kasich voters in the establishment lane, and to win enough states with about 40 percent of the vote to get a majority of the delegates.  It’s not impossible, but you wouldn’t want to bet the ranch on it.

The senator from my home state

Came on to be second quite late.

He called it a win.

In my eyes, that’s just spin.

Trump’s bubble he’s yet to deflate.

Marco Rubio has just finished addressing his supporters after the South Carolina primary.  He and his aide, Horatio, are looking for their rental car when they see a faded Jeb Bush campaign poster.  Marco stops to contemplate it.

M:  Alas, poor Jeb!  He was my mentor, Horatio.  Now he is as dead as Yorick.

H:  Politicians are like athletes–they die twice.  Sometimes more than twice.  Just ask Mike Huckabee.

M:  He gave me a sword, and I beheaded him.  It feels like patricide.

H:  Yes, I can see it now:  Rubio Rex!  Just leave out the part about sleeping with your mother.

M:  He’ll be humiliated at family gatherings.  And most of it is his brother’s fault.

H:  His brother poisoned the well, and he drank from it.

M:  He should never have run.

H:   He was a man of his times, and the times changed.

M:  Oh, well.  We need to move on.  There are battles ahead in foreign lands with Trump and Cruz, and we actually need to win this time.

H:  Woe be to all if we should lose

To Trump or that extremist, Cruz.

They find the rental car and head for the airport.

Sanders believes that all of the trade agreements signed within recent memory were the product of a rigged political system dominated by plutocrats, and are largely responsible for wage stagnation.  On that point, he more or less agrees with Trump; unlike Trump, however, he hasn’t told us what he plans to do about it. Are his plans to strengthen the welfare state his answer?  Or does he plan to disregard the agreements and start imposing tariffs?  If the latter, what is he going to do to deal with the inevitable consequences:  rising prices and the loss of jobs in exporting industries due to retaliation?

We need to know the answer to these questions ASAP.

When I was growing up, it was common for history textbooks to make the statement that Lincoln’s assassination was a national tragedy largely because he could have reconciled the North and the South.  The question for today is, is that really plausible?

Let me break that down into three more narrow questions, in descending order of importance:

1. Would Lincoln have found it easier to work with Congress to create a viable Reconstruction program than President Johnson?
2. Would Lincoln have been able to persuade Congress and the voters in the North to continue that program over the long haul?
3. Would Lincoln have succeeded in persuading the citizens of the Confederacy to accept Reconstruction?

These are not difficult questions to answer.  My responses are as follows:

1. Clearly, yes.  Given his responsibility for winning the war, Lincoln would have had far more credibility with the Radical Republicans than Johnson did.
2. Issues with Reconstruction persisted long after Lincoln would have left office.  It is implausible to suggest that the voters in the North would have supported a lengthy and expensive occupation, and contentious political change, for the indefinite future;  if you don’t believe that, look at Iraq and Afghanistan.  The answer to this question is no.
3. Are you kidding?  The South was being required to accept dramatic changes in its political and socio-economic systems after a bloody war of which Lincoln was, in their eyes, the personification.  A few fine words about reconciliation weren’t going to make much of a difference.

The bottom line is that the strife associated with Reconstruction, and its ultimate shortcomings, were both inevitable, and would have occurred with or without Lincoln as President.

Centuries of experience tell us that most revolutions fail, and those that “succeed” usually turn into fun house versions of the previous regime in the long run.  That said, our country embodies values that cannot be completely ignored when obviously ineffective, brutal, and corrupt regimes are challenged by their citizens.  What is the most appropriate response to revolutions, particularly when we have interests that are supported by the regime?

I think the best answer is to compartmentalize, and be honest.  We need to make two things clear:  first, we believe, based on our own national experience, that it is in the best interests of the people of the country in question to have a truly democratic government; and second, that the United States is not responsible for the outcome of the political struggle in that country, and will pursue its own interests.  By being honest about the conflict between our interests and values, and how it will be resolved, we can avoid some of the complaints about hypocrisy that inevitably arise in these situations and maintain some degree of credibility with all of the concerned parties.

 

Someone should disguise the Bible as a Koran and read him verses about Christian charity.  That way, he can rip Jesus, too;  it’s the only remaining frontier for him.