What do candidates’ plans actually mean?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “JuliB” remarks:

Trump offers a poorly thought out idea [on how to make Mexico pay], then people analyze it and discuss it. Other people call it like they see it ”“ ”˜he’s just mouthing off, and it means nothing’. This smaller group knows for sure that it would just be a starting point, and would evolve into something completely different if elected. Or even next week ”“ who knows.

But the same thing happens with the serious candidates. They make these promises/stated intentions, put up policy opinions on their website, then get elected and things evolve into something different.

Trump’s campaign is an entertaining parody of our system.

If I were conspiracy minded, I would say that the global elite is bringing bread and circuses to our election and governing.

Interesting idea. However, although it is certainly true that candidates “get elected and things evolve into something different,” that doesn’t make it worthless to try to analyze the proposals they make as candidates. That’s because—unless candidates are flat-out lying, and lying knowingly, about their intentions—their proposals are indicators of their frame of mind, their political philosophy, and also of how the candidates (and/or their advisors) think.

For example, if the proposal is unworkable and preposterous in its face, or something you don’t even think is desirable if it could be implemented, then that tells you that you don’t want to vote for that candidate if there’s a better alternative. Policy statements are indications of what a candidate would like to do in an ideal world, whether he or she could actually accomplish these goals or not.

And even if the stated plans of a candidate are a flat-out lie on the part of that candidate, they also tell us who the candidate thinks is his/her constituency—what type of person the candidate is trying to appeal to, and what the candidate thinks that voter would like to hear.

I don’t think there’s a monolithic “global elite” conspiratorially plotting all of this. I do think there are people in power who want to keep power and who sometimes work together to do so. I think this is inevitable; it’s part of the nature of power and of human beings, and it’s one of the reasons I consider small government conservatism the best way to temper the tendency. A lot of people in power are corrupt, and whether they start out that way or not, being in power for any length of time encourages corruption by putting more temptations their way. A certain amount of cynicism about government and government leaders is most definitely appropriate, but not so much that we lose sight of the need to evaluate what they say and do and mean to do, as well as that all-important thing called character.

Last leaves

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t usually write about my dreams, but last night I had one that was so vivid I feel the need to do so.

And no, it wasn’t about politics.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve either dreamed less or remembered fewer of my dreams. It’s disconcerting to me because I used to have such vivid, interesting, plentiful dreams. They were interesting to me, anyway, and often I used them for guidance.

Last night’s dream was vivid, too, which is much more unusual for me these days. It was very long and involved, and much of it I really don’t remember except as a vague impression of dealings with a bunch of people, a man, an apartment. Someone was getting married (not me!) and dressing up in her finery, then going off with some of the people for the wedding. In the meantime, other people had arrived (perhaps for a party)?

When I finally moseyed out into the living room—in a bathrobe, all bedraggled—I found that the people who had arrived included my mother. She’s been gone for over three years, and I’ve hardly ever dreamed about her, but there she was, along with a group of people I slowly realized were her friends and contemporaries. Since my mother was nearly 100 when she died, all of the people in that room were the adults I’d known when I was growing up, a tight community the members of which have died, one by one by one, until there is virtually not one of them left on this earth.

But there they sat, at a party in a strange apartment, and when I tried to speak to them they were in various states of dementia and illness. They didn’t look very good, either, although in the dream they were most definitely alive and not dead at all. But they answered strangely (if at all) when I asked them questions. They didn’t make sense. They looked off into the distance. My mother in particular appeared as she had in the last months of her life, when she was fading terribly, and not as she had even a couple of years before.

When I awoke it occurred to me, and not for the first time, that one of the strange and unexpected things about growing older is the disappearance of the generation above you, the ones who in your youth you took for granted would always be there. It’s a clean sweep. Although it happens gradually, by the time you’re my age they’re almost all gone or going very fast.

When I write that this was unexpected, that may sound odd, because after all it’s one of the surest things on earth that this will occur if you live long enough. But it’s something I never ever thought about in advance—or rather, if I did think about it, it was in a distant, abstract way. Now it’s much more up-close and personal, as my own generation starts being picked off with increasing rapidity—and not just the extreme outliers, either.

I had a great-grandfather who lived until well into his 90s. I never met him, because he died before I was born, but my mother used to say that in his final years he would repeatedly lament “I’m the last leaf on the tree.” He was referring, I believe, to this poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, entitled “The Last Leaf” and written in the early 1830s (my great-grandfather was born around 1850):

I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o’er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.

But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
“They are gone!”

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said–
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago–
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow;

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

ADDENDUM:

Here is my great-grandfather, holding my mother on his knee. He is in his 60s here, and he lived for about thirty more years, looking not all that different. He was a handsome man.

Ma and grandpa-001

While we’re at it, here is his brother, who died towards the end of WWI. I believe it may have been in the flu pandemic. He has the family “look,” particularly in the eyes, a look that is strangely similar on both sides of the family:
uncle.jpg

New York polls

The New Neo Posted on by

Polls of New York Republicans (not an oxymoron) say that Donald Trump should be getting slightly over 50% of the vote in the April 19 primary there. That wouldn’t be surprising; after all, it’s his home state. But let’s take a closer look at those polls.

A recent one (4/3-4/5) was done by Monmouth. Since New York is a closed primary state, it sampled registered Republicans only. However, it has what I would consider a small sample for a poll: 302. What’s more, although it’s weighted for age and gender it’s random in terms of geography, and I very much doubt that New York’s Republicans are evenly distributed throughout the state. The margin of error is 5.6, which is somewhat high but certainly not astronomical, but for subgroups it’s higher (for example, for males it’s 8.1 and for “very conservative” voters it’s 11). That has to do with the fact that once you get into subgroups the already-small n becomes much smaller.

For example (and I find this interesting in terms of the makeup of the Republicans of New York state), of the 302 subjects, only 80 described themselves as “very conservative,” 98 as “somewhat conservative,” and a whopping 117 as liberal or moderate. Liberal Republicans? There’s a long tradition of that sort in New York, actually; think of the term “Rockefeller Republicans.”

Then we have the curious fact that 9% of the registered Republicans in that poll say they will vote for Hillary Clinton against Trump, and if Cruz were the nominee 10% would vote for Hillary Clinton. Again, who are these people? Kasich does best of all with them against Hillary; I guess those liberals and moderates among them figure he meets their needs as well or better than Hillary does.

In addition, the repondents’ votes are not set in stone. Although 2% have already voted, and 38% have decided for sure, 34% have only a strong preference, 12% a slight preference and a full 14% are undecided. That’s quite a bit of wiggle room; if you add those last two categories you get 26%.

Another recent poll is this one, taken by CBS News just a few days earlier (3/29-4/1), with somewhat similar results. In it, 20% of Republican respondents (the number of Republicans was 545, significantly more than in the other poll) seemed willing to change their minds.

Another interesting question is how often these respondents have voted for the GOP candidates in the past. 34% said “almost always” and 40% said “usually,” which leaves 19% split about evenly and the remaining 7% usually or always have voted for Democrats. And only 81% of respondents in the poll said they probably or definitely will vote in the primaries.

In that CBS poll, however, the subjects were registered voters and there seems to have been no attempt to make sure that the respondents who answered about the Republican primaries actually are registered Republicans who can vote in the primary (New York’s is closed)—or it there was such an effort, the poll results don’t mention it. They also don’t mention whether the sample was weighted and if so in what way. In general, although there are a lot more questions in that particular poll, the pollsters offer a lot less information about its methodology.

One of the most recent NY polls of all was by Emerson (4/6-4/7). Unfortunately, I can’t access the full results (they say it can be found here, but when I try to download the file I get something that looks like impenetrable gibberish) so it’s hard to tell as much about it. But it involves “321 likely [GOP] primary voters, with a margin of error of +/5.4%,” which again seems like a very small n. And I have no idea how they define “likely voters” (are they, for example, registered Republicans? Because if they’re not they can’t vote in the GOP primary in NY). They were weighted for gender, but not for anything else, which makes me wonder once again how the geographical distribution goes, which is important because the majority of NY’s delegates are awarded by winning districts. The rules on that last point are so complex that it’s hard to summarize them (the Emerson link doesn’t do a very good job, either), so if you’re really interested I suggest you go here, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Trump’s Emerson score is good (56 to Cruz’s 22 and Kasich’s 17). But interestingly enough, it represents a drop from his score from just three weeks earlier in a poll by the same group. In an Emerson poll taken March 14-16, Trump had received a hefty 61% of the vote, with Kasich only at 1 and Cruz 12. You can see what’s happening here, and the difference does not reflect the previous presence of Rubio, who had only polled at 4% in that mid-March poll before dropping out.

So the real question—aside from whether any of these polls are correct, which is always the question with polls—is whether the current trend of Trump falling and Cruz/Kasich rising will continue in the next week or so, and if so how far it will go. The margin of error in that recent Emerson poll is already 5+ percent, which means that Trump is within the margin of error for achieveing the 50% level he would need in New York to trigger certain winner-take-all provisions for the state delegates (not the district delegates). Again, it’s so complex I suggest you go to that website if you’re interested in the details.

I am nearly positive that Trump will win the NY GOP primary; all indicates suggest that very strongly. But by how much, and how many delegates will it mean he actually receives?

Plus, the delegates are chosen by the state GOP—even the Trump ones—which could create another problem for Trump, because they may not be particularly loyal to him. That, of course, would probably anger his supporters very much, and understandably so. But as many people have pointed out, if Trump the smart dealmaker didn’t know this and prepare for it, maybe he’s not such a smart dealmaker after all.

By the way, that most recent Emerson poll indicates that in a general election, all of the GOP candidates would be toast and the Democrat would win the state.

One other curiosity I noticed in the same poll:

Among New York’s 27 Congressional districts, each worth 3 delegates, [Trump] appears to dominate in five (the First, Second, Third, Fourth and Eleventh) and stands a good chance of passing the crucial 50% threshold in 11 other districts which would give him a winner-take-all victory [that is, in terms of the three delegates in each of the districts where he might get 50% of the vote]. In contrast, Cruz is competitive in only seven Congressional districts.

But recall that there were only 321 likely GOP voters in that entire poll. You’ll note that there are 27 districts in NY. That means that there was an average of about 12 poll respondents per district. How could any valid conclusions possibly be drawn on a such a basis?

A poll with almost double the number of respondents was the most recent one by Fox, taken March 4-7, and featuring 602 likely Republican primary voters. That’s almost double. Trump’s score was 54, Kasich’s 22, and Cruz’s 15, so this one was the lowest of them all for Cruz. 23% of respondents say they could change their minds, however.

Here’s the description of how the respondents were chosen:

…[They] were randomly selected from a statewide voter file of registered New York voters using a probability proportionate to size method. This simply means phone numbers are proportionally representative to the number of voters in all regions across the state of New York.

I don’t know quite what that means. We know that only registered Republicans are allowed to vote in the GOP primary in NY, so were only registered Republicans asked about the Republican primary? It’s not at all clear from the way that is worded. As for the geographic proportionality of the sample, districts in NY vary greatly in their composition—some districts are overwhelmingly Democratic and some are majority Republican, and New York’s delegates are selected on a district-by-district basis, so in some districts each single voter has far more selective power in a primary than in other districts with more Republicans. Was that reflected in the geographic distribution of poll respondents, or are the samples merely assumed to be proportionate because the list is of all registered voters in a region and they were randomly selected within each region? It’s very confusing, I must say, but it’s important to know the answer in order to understand how valid the poll is.

As I already indicated, my guess is that Trump’s support in New York is very very strong. But since the majority of New York’s delegates are not selected on a statewide basis (only 14 out of 95 are), it’s hard to know what to make of any of these polls, because they don’t seem to take the importance of districts into account.

You may ask why on earth I’m paying so much attention to them, then. Good question. Well, they’re the only evidence we have. Plus, when I read headlines about the results of polls, it usually piques my curiosity. How was the poll done? Is it really valid? It’s a weird little peccadillo I have, but I happen to be interested in polls.

The Vikings got around

The New Neo Posted on by

For absolutely no reason except curiosity I was looking up the Vikings the other day, and came across this:

Spices were obtained [by the Vikings] from Chinese and Persian traders, who met with the Viking traders in Russia.

I already knew that the Vikings got around, but that impressed me. In fact, though, there was a a tremendous amount of world trade back then—“back then” being the 8th to 11th centuries.

And in case you wondered—no, Viking warriors did not wear horned helmets.

Viking helmets were conical, made from hard leather with wood and metallic reinforcement for regular troops. The iron helmet with mask and mail was for the chieftains, based on the previous Vendel-age helmets from central Sweden.

Viking art was highly stylized and ornate, as well as extremely skilled. For example, here’s one of their wood carvings:

vikingart

And the detail on this Viking ship that now resides in a museum in Oslo just blew me away:

Oseburgship800s

I’ve noticed before that our distant ancestors, even the ones often thought to be brutish and boorish, seemed very intent on creating things of beauty even on utilitarian objects.

Trump the dealmaker: hiring the best people

The New Neo Posted on by

Donald Trump learned the real estate development business at his father’s knee, serving a long apprenticeship that taught him every aspect of the business from the ground up. He also seems to have had a natural aptitude for it and interest in it, and has been quite successful at it although he has admittedly (at least, I’ll admit it) made some mistakes.

But like a lot of people who are successful in one arena, Trump thinks that translates into being successful in areas he knows much less about. Right now, for example, he seems to be running into some unaccustomed roadblocks in his campaign—with his organization, tactics, and the personnel he’s hired to be in charge.

Trump’s hype is that he’s a dealmaker extraordinaire, but the skills involved in real estate deals are not necessarily the same as those needed for political deals, nor is the knowledge base. Trump is fond of calling many other people stupid and himself smart, but is he smart enough to know what he doesn’t know? Trump says he hires “the best people”—but he doesn’t seem to have done so during his campaign, and it’s really starting to show. The long apprenticeship his father put him through taught him a lot about the real estate development business he’s been immersed in for his entire adult life, but he hasn’t served an apprenticeship in politics except as influence-buyer and observer of others.

For example, why did Trump choose Corey Lewandowski to manage his campaign? Lewandowski is a relative novice, and what experience he has had doesn’t seem to have involved being all that successful at campaigning, either as a candidate or behind the scenes:

In 1994, while an undergraduate student, Lewandowski ran for a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, losing to Thomas A. Golden Jr., a Democrat…

After graduating from college, Lewandowski worked on Capitol Hill in Washington while earning a master’s degree in political science at American University. In 1999, Lewandowski was arrested for bringing a handgun and ammunition into Longworth House Office Building…

Lewandowski worked on Ohio Republican Bob Ney’s campaign, and after the election became Ney’s congressional chief of staff. In 2007, before Ney was sentenced on federal corruption charges arising from the Abramoff scandal, Lewandowski wrote a letter to the presiding judge, Ellen Segal Huvelle, saying that Ney was a mentor and “surrogate father” to him and asking for leniency in sentencing…

Lewandowski served as campaign manager for the 2002 re-election campaign for U.S. Senator Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire. Smith was defeated in the Republican primary by John E. Sununu. During the campaign, Lewandowski generated controversy by publicly suggesting that Sununu, who is of Lebanese descent, had divided loyalties in fighting terrorism.

Lewandowski then worked in the private sector for a while, as well as being a lobbyist, and trained as a NH police officer. His stint with an advocacy group called “Americans for Prosperity” was marked by “fiery confrontations” with fellow employees. After that:

In 2012, while still working for Americans for Prosperity, Lewandowski unsuccessfully ran for town treasurer of Windham, New Hampshire. NPR reported that during the campaign, Lewandowski “upended the town’s politics, using public records laws to probe local government and launching robocalls targeted at voters to stoke outrage over a visit to the town by President Obama.”

In 2014 Lewandowski met Trump, “at a political event in New Hampshire,” and six months before Trump made his announcement as a 2016 candidate, Trump hired Lewandowski as his campaign manager.

Is this an impressive resume? Would it impress you? However, it—or something about Lewandowski—appears to have impressed Trump mightily. Perhaps he sensed a kindred spirit in Lewandowski: pugnacious, confident, cocky, unafraid to make waves. At any rate, Lewandowski became his indispensable right-hand man. This Politico article quotes Lewandowski as having said that Trump has, “the most cohesive, loyal staff, the most loving staff I have ever had the privilege of working with on a campaign.” Perhaps that’s true, considering the previous campaigns he’s worked on, and his role in them.

If Lewandowski is an example of hiring the best people, I really wouldn’t want to see the worst.

[NOTE: There’s also this Keystone cops situation for the Trump campaign in Washington state.]

Andrew C. McCarthy eviscerates Trump’s plan to make Mexico pay for the wall

The New Neo Posted on by

What’s wrong with Trump’s plan to make Mexico pay for the wall?

Just about everything.

Here are a few excerpts, but I suggest you read the whole thing:

Trump first brays that he “will build the wall” (which, incidentally, would have no bearing on visa overstays, who account for nearly half of the illegal-alien population)…

[But] Trump is actually proposing amnesty of the “touch-back” variety occasionally championed by open-borders advocates…

Trump boosters are apparently content to have their man issue Obama-esque executive decrees under the guise of this erstwhile bane of their existence ”” as opposed to, oh, I don’t know, maybe asking Congress to pass a law addressing remittances to Mexico. Perhaps Trump has opted against approaching lawmakers because his idea, even if we dubiously assume its legality, is pointless…

Section 326 of the Patriot Act ”” which expressly targets “international money laundering” and “terrorist financing” ”” empowers the Treasury Secretary to prescribe rules that financial institutions must follow in identifying people who open accounts and use them to move money. Trump figures all he needs to do is rewrite the relevant regulation. Our would-be chief executive’s memo explaining this to the Post features his signature attention to detail: It twice cites the regulation in question, but misidentifies it both times ”” it is actually 31 CFR 103.121, not 31 CFR 130.121. The latter provision does not exist in the Code of Federal Regulations…

Not only would Trump adopt Obama’s practice of unilaterally decreeing federal law; he would continue Obama’s habit of deploying government legal processes as a weapon against political foes. Brazenly, Trump’s memo crows that he does not intend his proposed regulation to be like, you know, a real regulation. It is instead meant to be a scare tactic [to intimidate Mexico into paying]…

…[A] large chunk of [the money sent to Mexico by people here] comes from legal Mexican aliens and American citizens of Mexican descent. They would have no trouble complying with Trump’s threatened regulation. Nor would illegal aliens be much deterred: There are many alternatives to wire transfer for remitting funds…

Mexico would continue to get its money. Trump’s regulation would succeed only in imposing heavy burdens on American financial institutions, which would pass the resulting costs on to American citizens. Meanwhile, by driving remittance practices underground, Trump’s regulation would deprive American law enforcement of a useful avenue for tracking money transfers made by the very criminal element that he routinely decries in speaking about illegal immigration.

What could possibly go wrong?

Trumpbots on the web

The New Neo Posted on by

Here is an example of how the Trump campaign appears to have been profiting from Twitter accounts purchased in bulk (it’s not clear by whom) to game the internet and to spam comments sections and online polls.

One of the commenters here (I can’t remember who it was, and can’t locate the comments right now) has been pointing out something similarly suspicious about the Twitter accounts of many supposed Trump supporters. I don’t know whether the Trump campaign pays for this sort of thing, or whether it’s instead a function of the alt-right activists doing it themselves. I suspect it may be more of the latter, but either or both are possible.

I’m not on Twitter, and don’t really know that much about how it works. But I have noticed that many of the pro-Trump trolls who arrive here have proxy IP numbers, mostly originating from Australia, Hong Kong, and the like.

From two sneezes to one

The New Neo Posted on by

For as long as I can remember, when I’ve sneezed it’s always been at least twice. I’m not alone in that, not by a longshot:

Sneezes never seem to be lonely. As soon as you expel your first mighty “achoo,” there’s usually another sneeze lurking right behind to follow it up. For some people, there may be two, three, or even 10 that come after that original sneeze, making for an awful lot of “bless yous” from well-wishers nearby. So why is it that our sneezes seem to adhere to the buddy system?

It all has to do with the power behind your nose’s blows. Usually, sneezes are initiated when a foreign particle or external stimulant enters your snout, reaching the nasal mucosa. “This triggers a release of histamines, which irritate nerve cells in the nose,” Dawn Zacharias, an allergist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, tells Popular Science. “This activates and results in the sneeze. It’s a powerful release of air, expelling what’s in the nose that’s causing the irritation.”

However, if the irritant is still lingering in your nostrils after a sneeze, your nose is going to give it another go. So typically, a second sneeze means that your first sneeze didn’t really do its job. It explains why people with allergies seem to constantly be reaching for a handkerchief.

I’ve always been a two-sneeze kind of gal, and I also have allergies.

But a couple of days ago I sneezed once, waited for the followup, and it didn’t come. This was so extraordinary that I remarked on it to my companion and said it was the first time in my life that I could ever recall it happening.

But the next time I sneezed, a few hours or maybe a day later, it happened again.

And it just happened again. One lone lorn sneeze. Is my nose suddenly becoming more efficient? Might this be one of the few benefits of growing older?

How Ted Cruz might get elected despite his personality

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s one plausible scenario. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt:

…[T]he assumption is that Cruz cannot improve his image among the broader electorate, but that’s hard to know for sure, because he’s never had to do it. While opinions on Clinton are deeply entrenched after her decades in the public spotlight, Cruz isn’t as universally known and has more of an opening to get a second look.

Cruz would enter the general election campaign with a reputation as an extremist, which the Clinton campaign would do everything to play up. But the risk of such a strategy comes if Cruz is able to defy such a caricature during the election among voters getting to know him for the first time.

To quote Shakespeare’s Prince Hal: “By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes/And like bright metal on a sullen ground/My reformation, glittering o’er my fault/Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes/Than that which hath no foil to set it off.”

In other words, Cruz is less of a known commodity to most voters, and he is therefore more likely to be able to improve his image if he can just soften up just a bit.

First, of course, the nomination would have to happen.

Here’s a sample from Salon of the sort of thing you’ll see from the left if Cruz is the nominee. The left will attack any GOP nominee, of course, but there are different approaches for different people. One of the main approaches his opponents will take against Cruz will be that he’s hated by all as well as being way to the right of practically everyone on earth. But the author of that Salon article also seems worried that Cruz will somehow manage to sustain the pretense of being a normal human being, or some approximation of one, long enough to fool the public into voting for him. That fits in more or less with the quote I gave from the first (pro-Cruz) article, as well—the idea that all Cruz needs to do is to prove he’s more or less human and some of the attacks could be blunted.

I also noticed today that in this Powerline post by Paul Mirengoff a quote from a NY Times article on Cruz:

The Times says that some big donors are put off by Cruz’s personality. They complain that even in private, he comes of as sanctimonious and unable to present a persona that’s appreciably warmer than what one sees on television.

I’ve heard the latter point raised by in Washington who are no less conservative than Cruz. It may be a valid insight. But at this juncture, it’s not a good reason to withhold support from the man who stands between the abominable Donald Trump and the Republican nomination.

As Mica Mosbacher, a Cruz fund-raiser and wife of the late Robert Mosbacher, Secretary of Commerce under George H.W. Bush, puts it, “[Cruz] might not be the most fun to have a drink at the bar with, but America needs a designated driver.”

Putting aside the fact that it’s Trump who actually doesn’t drink, and that Cruz does, the metaphor is so apt that Cruz himself made it at a debate last October:

“If you want someone to grab a beer with, I may not be that guy,” he said, when asked to name a weakness. “But if you want someone to drive you home, I will get the job done and I will get you home.”

So, what does America need—a fun beer companion, or a designated driver? I’ve always been immune to this idea of electing someone based on “likeability,” but I concede that all else being equal it’s a wonderful and very appealing trait for a candidate to have, and it can make up for a multitude of sins. Personally, however, I find Cruz not only more likeable than Donald Trump but more likeable than Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and Kasich as well (Rubio was the generally “likeable” one, but he’s gone). So we have a parade of unlikeables this year, which would seem to put whatever it is that people don’t like about Cruz in some perspective.

What is it that they don’t like? I think it’s that he never really seems spontaneous (not to mention the face). He’s always measured and studied and under strict control. I happen to think those are great traits in a president, but I may not be the least bit typical of most voters.

That Times article quoted by Mirengoff also mentions the word “sanctimonious” being applied to Cruz, and that may be a key as well. This is what the word actually means:

1 : hypocritically pious or devout…

2 obsolete : possessing sanctity

So the word “sanctimonious” has, over time, taken on a suggestion of insincerity and even hypocrisy, but originally it merely meant religious or holy. It’s actually not clear whether those being quoted in the Times article as having said it about Cruz meant that found him overly religious–or hypocritical about his religiosity (there’s no indication in the article of the latter; what it seems to be saying is that he won’t compromise his core beliefs, which is the opposite of hypocrisy). For many people, particularly on the left, either one—actual religiousness or religious hypocrisy—would be bad. But my guess is that sincere belief would be worse to them.

It’s of interest to me that criticisms of Cruz and his religiosity often take the form of contradictory pleadings: he’s way way too religions—and besides, he’s a hypocrite and doesn’t really believe all that stuff. Which is it? The attempts to smear Cruz with accusations of sexual affairs with multiple women was and is an effort to prove that he’s a hypocrite. But the charge that he’s not a hypocrite but is in fact sincerely very religious also works well for those predisposed to not like him. For me, the extent of his religiousness would only be an issue if he were not a small government conservative. But since he’s the latter and I don’t see him as trying to impose his religious beliefs on others through government compulsion, I see no problem whatsoever, and whether I share or don’t share his religious beliefs is irrelevant. Hypocrisy is another question; it could matter. But I have seen no evidence that he’s a hypocrite about his religion.

Would Cruz’s personality hold him back from working well with other people in government were he to win an election? I don’t know, but one thing I’ve noticed is that we haven’t heard about a lot of turmoil among those who are working for him in this campaign. That’s not just true lately, now that he’s doing better, but it seems to have been true even earlier in the game, when he was low in the polls. And the Times article says that he’s well-liked by people in Texas who know him:

He is regarded warmly among Republicans in his home state, Texas, where he has deeper personal relations with a wider portion of the donor class…

When Mr. Cruz appeared recently on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” the late-night host took note of his patience in winning new friends.

“What you did is, you kind of held out until they found someone that they liked less than you,” Mr. Kimmel said.

“There you go,” Mr. Cruz replied. “Listen, it is a powerful strategy.”

I wish Cruz were a more instantly affable-seeming fellow. Having observed him in person, though, I will say that he came across as quite likeable (“likeable enough”) in a casual venue. Would he wear well over time in a general election? I don’t know, but he’s improved his standing over the course of the campaign so far.

Maybe it’s time for me to start a “Ted Cruz” category on this blog.

[NOTE: In that Salon piece, I found the following rather amusing:

Throughout the interview, this wily Ivy League educated lawyer presents himself as the champion of the working class, the guy whose only concerns lie with the single mom who works as a waitress and the dad who lost his job down to the plant and can’t get ahead.

With a change of pronouns, would that not be a good description of Hillary Clinton as well?]

Spambot of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

I seldom leave remarks, however i did a few searching and wound up here. And I do have a few questions for you if it’s allright. Could it be simply me or does it look like a few of the remarks appear like written by brain dead individuals? 🙂 And, if you are writing at other sites, I’d lie to follow everything new you have to post.

I think it could be simply you.

And you don’t have to lie to follow me. Just set up a feed or Google alert.

America united

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s not easy to get 70% of Americans to agree on anything, much less across such disparate groups as “men and women; young and old; conservatives, moderates and liberals; and whites, Hispanics and blacks.” But someone has finally done it, and his name is—Donald Trump:

Seven in 10 people, including close to half of Republican voters, have an unfavorable view of Trump, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll…

Even in the South, a region where Trump has won GOP primaries decisively, close to 70 percent view him unfavorably. And among whites without a college education, one of Trump’s most loyal voting blocs, 55 percent have a negative opinion.

More here:

Here is the reality: it will probably be impossible to make the 35% of the Republican party who are behind Donald Trump to ever stop supporting him. That means, he is probably going to go into the convention with the most delegates, even if he does not have 1,237.

Here’s the other reality: We are already at the point where absolutely no one outside of that 35% of the Republican party is an even potentially persuadable voter to Donald Trump. Either within the Republican party or without.

And I promise, no more Trump posts today…I think.