Cruz, the anti-establishment candidate

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a guy who actually has fought the GOP establishment [hat tip: commenter “DNW”]:

Do you care?

I’ve been somewhat surprised at the willingness of quite a few erstwhile Cruz supporters to abandon him for Trump based on memes like “Cruz can’t win” (when he does better than Trump in polls, and his unfavorables are lower), and “The establishment will never support Cruz” (so what? You’re a voter; support him).

If you hate the establishment, Cruz is the one who has walked the walk and talked the talk. He is conservative in almost every respect, as well as incredibly smart.

I said I was somewhat surprised at the willingness of some Cruz supporters to abandon him for Trump. But after the first surprise, I realized it made sense in emotional terms. Trump is a lot more fun, particularly if you’re really really angry and want to act that out. Trump is a blast, as they say. Trump gets attention. Cruz just works for you, and has worked for you for years.

On Romney’s anti-Trump speech and the establishment

The New Neo Posted on by

First of all, I don’t think Romney’s speech will do much either way. No one is going to decide one thing or another based on a speech that most people don’t even know about.

Political junkies are into it, and that’s about it, IMHO. But of course the blogosphere consists of a high percentage of political junkies (present company included), so here we are discussing it.

First thing I want to say is that ever since I’ve been immersed in the blogosphere and the internet in general, which would be roughly the last decade and a half, I’ve been more and more struck by how numerous are the false memes that circulate around and become commonly-accepted truth. I’ve spent a lot of time fighting them on this blog, mostly to a relatively small audience of people who are willing to spend some time listening. But I don’t kid myself that I am able to correct the record on much of anything in a way that matters, although I don’t give up trying to do so.

Sometimes I’m mostly motivated to correct the record for myself. After all, that’s what happened with my original political change experience—I did a lot more research, armed with the tools of an internet that did not exist when I was a young adult forming most of my political beliefs, and sometimes that research led me to some surprising revelations that ended up changing my point of view on certain facts and position I had thought I understood correctly. And so to this day I like to test out, not just the theories and beliefs of other people with whom I disagree, but my own theories and beliefs.

But enough about me. Perhaps too much about me.

Here’s the text of Romney’s speech today. In it, he explains why he thinks a Trump nomination would be a bad thing, and he summarizes pretty much the sorts of points I’ve been making on this blog, and which others who do not support Trump have often made. Romney also is not naive about the fact that he will be criticized for this, including of course by Trump himself in his usual signature fashion.

I question the wisdom of using a failed candidate like Romney to get out this message, and I would have preferred him to have also alluded to his own failings as a 2012 candidate, and his own responsibility for the situation we have faced in a second-term Obama presidency. In fact, there are plenty of things about Romney that were problematic in 2012. One of these problems was his Romneycare history, which I tried to explain on this blog many times (I think it looked worse than it actually was, but looks are important, too). Another was his failure to rebound from the Candy Crowley debate incident. But I’m not going to rehash that history in detail here, except to say that I thought and still think he would have actually made a pretty good president, and that—for a politician, anyway—he’s a decent man.

Trump supporters and even some others are mocking Romney today. Failure, coward, establishment shill, etc.. But I certainly don’t think Romney was attempting to convince any Trump supporters when he made that speech. He was speaking to others in the party who do not support Trump—some of whom are critical of the GOP establishment as well.

Many people who are against the GOP establishment act as though there is something exceedingly evil about it, whereas I see that establishment as typical of leaders of a party that’s been somewhat protected and grown ossified. It’s a process that often occurs. They are not a nimble group, as the fight against Obama and now against Trump has demonstrated very clearly, although we hardly needed more demonstration of it.

I’m not supporting nor have I ever supported during this election cycle one of their candidates. I was first for Scott Walker, next for Carly Fiorina, and after both were gone I settled on Cruz, where I remain today. But that doesn’t mean I think the GOP establishment is composed of demons. It is composed of people who think they are acting both in the interests of the country, a majority of GOP voters, and of course in their own self-interest. Why would they not act in their own self-interest as they see it? Self-sacrificing statesmen full of wisdom are few and far between and always have been, alas, although in certain historical times they were more plentiful than they are today. And if they are too self-sacrificing, they tend not to rise very high in the world of politics or business, or anything other than the world of sainthood.

But I digress; back to the text of Romney’s speech. The following passage, I believe, was the point of the speech in terms of Romney’s message towards the GOP voters and establishment leaders to whom it was actually addressed:

I am not going to endorse a candidate today. Instead, I would like to offer my perspective on the nominating process of my party. In 1964, days before the presidential election which, incidentally, we lost, Ronald Reagan went on national television and challenged America saying that it was a “Time for Choosing.” He saw two paths for America, one that embraced conservative principles dedicated to lifting people out of poverty and helping create opportunity for all, and the other, an oppressive government that would lead America down a darker, less free path. I’m no Ronald Reagan and this is a different moment but I believe with all my heart and soul that we face another time for choosing, one that will have profound consequences for the Republican Party and more importantly, for the country…

If the other candidates can find common ground, I believe we can nominate a person who can win the general election and who will represent the values and policies of conservatism. Given the current delegate selection process, this means that I would vote for Marco Rubio in Florida, for John Kasich in Ohio, and for Ted Cruz or whichever one of the other two contenders has the best chance of beating Mr. Trump in a given state.

Now for some of the more specific criticisms of Romney. One I’m seeing—other than the usual heat directed at the establishment himself—goes more or less like this: “Romney is giving Hillary Clinton talking points against Trump.” But the most common one seems to be: “Can anyone remember Mitt Romney being this forceful against Barack Obama?” (That latter sentence is a quote from DaTechGuy, a fellow New England blogger whom I’ve met and respect).

But to me the answers are easy. To the first: does anyone on earth think Hillary doesn’t have her own attack on Trump already planned, and that Romney’s will pale compared with hers? Let me assure you, of one thing I am certain, and that is that Hillary doesn’t need Romney to do her opposition research. The rest of that objection is merely the same objection that is always mounted towards intra-party criticism during any primary season, which of course gives the other side ammunition to use in the general but unavoidably occurs during all contested primary battles, which can and often are very vicious (sometimes more vicious than the general, because they are civil wars).

The second objection is easy to answer; all it takes is a little Googling and you find, for example, this from Romney in August of 2012:

Romney repeatedly and harshly criticized Team Obama for the remarks.

“[Obama’s] campaign and his surrogates have made wild and reckless accusations that disgrace the office of the presidency. Another outrageous charge came a few hours ago in Virginia. And the White House sinks a little bit lower,” Romney said.

“This is an election in which we should be talking about the path ahead, but you don’t hear any answers coming from President Obama’s reelection campaign. That’s because he’s intellectually exhausted, out of ideas and out of energy. And so his campaign has resorted to diversions and distractions, to demagoguing and defaming others. This is an old game in politics; what’s different this year is that the president is taking things to a new low.”…

Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul then released a second statement criticizing the Obama campaign.

“In case anyone was wondering just how low President Obama could go in his campaign for reelection, we now know he’s willing to say that Gov. Romney wants to put people back in chains,” Saul said. “Whether it’s accusing Mitt Romney of being a felon, having been responsible for a woman’s tragic death or now wanting to put people in chains, there’s no question that because of the president’s failed record he’s been reduced to a desperate campaign based on division and demonization.”

Romney denounced Obama right after the Benghazi attacks:

As soon as Mr. Romney landed [he’d been on a plane], he was updated on breaking developments. He personally read and approved his campaign’s statement before it was sent out at 10:10 p.m. Tuesday. “It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks,” it said.

More on Romney’s near-immediate response to Benghazi:

…Romney reiterated the charge at a hastily staged news conference here Wednesday morning.

“I think it’s a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values, that instead when our grounds are being attacked and being breached, that the first response of the United States must be outrage at the breach of the sovereignty of our nation,” Romney told reporters. “An apology for America’s values is never the right course.”

…Romney took a calculated gamble in admonishing the president before the full gravity of the situation was known.

But he was left hanging from a weak limb as many in his party ”” including his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) ”” appeared to undercut him with noticeably more conciliatory and somber responses. “This is a time for healing. It’s a time for resolve,” Ryan said Wednesday during a campaign stop in De Pere, Wis.

“It almost feels like Sarah Palin is his foreign policy adviser,” Matthew Dowd, who was a top strategist for president George W. Bush, said in an interview. “It’s just a huge mistake on the Romney campaign’s part ”” huge mistake.”

Now, those critics were the real GOP establishment, the ones who didn’t attack Obama right away, and it was the wrong approach. But that wasn’t Romney, who kept going until Crowley kneecapped him in the debate (at which point I though he should have challenged her more forcibly).

Romney is not an angel; he made mistakes. That makes him human, and I don’t think he was critical enough of Obama in 2012. But it’s not at all hard to find some very forceful anti-Obama statements by Romney (I did it in less than 30 seconds), and people have let them drop down the memory hole because in the end they were not effective enough. But you know what? I don’t think that more statements of that kind by Romney (or anyone else) in 2012 would have done a particle of good, because the American people weren’t willing to accept them at the time.

[ADDENDUM: By the way, here’s a good example of my efforts to try to correct the record. It was a response of mine which describes Romney’s actual positions on illegal immigration when he ran for president in 2012. Compare it, if you like, to your recollection of those positions. My comment also includes Trump’s position at the time on Romney’s position. The entire comment of mine was a response to this comment by “JurassiCon Rex.”]

Another piece from missing Malaysian plane may have been found

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing and dominated the new cycle for a while.

It was somewhat of a relief when a part later confirmed to have come from the missing airplane was found last July on Reunion Island east of Madagascar. But that was it since then. Now another possible piece has been found in very roughly the same area, on a sandbank on the eastern shore of the mainland in the Mozambique Channel, which separates Madagascar from the east African coast:

The object has the words “NO STEP” on it and could be from the plane’s horizontal stabilizer ”” the wing-like parts attached to the tail, sources say. It was discovered by an American who has been blogging about the search for MH370.

Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Center said it was aware of the discovery and arranging for a thorough examination. Malaysia Airlines said it was “too speculative at this point” to comment.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said on Twitter that there was a “high possibility debris found in Mozambique belongs to a” Boeing 777, but said that was “yet to be confirmed and verified.”

It could take about a month for definitive word on whether the part is indeed a piece of the plane. A search of a section of ocean floor as large as South Carolina has been ongoing and is due to be completed in midyear. So far, 75% of the area has been scrutinized, and nothing has been found.

[NOTE: I said “nothing has been found,” but that’s not strictly true. Nothing of the plane has been found on the ocean floor. But a 19th-century shipwreck has been located.]

Chris Christie…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is slipping on Trump’s coattails.

His already-low approval rating is even lower now:

…[T]he governor’s endorsement of presidential candidate Donald Trump did not help him at home, possibly even driving more supporters to turn against him.

The poll, which was conducted in the days before and after the Trump endorsement last week, found Christie’s approval rating fell from 33 percent before he announced his support to 27 percent after. Disapproval increased from 59 percent to 64.

Those numbers, however, have a margin of error of more than 5 percent ”” higher than the rest of the poll ”” because of the smaller sample size. Still, it’s clear the governor’s surprising decision to back a figure loathed by many establishment Republicans did him no favors in the Garden State.

“Christie’s return to his roots after suspending his White House run was an opportunity to re-establish some good will with voters,” Krista Jenkins, professor of political science and director of FDU’s PublicMind, said in a statement. “But joining forces with Donald Trump was hardly a vehicle for getting voters to reconsider their sour mood toward the Governor.”

If Trump is the GOP nominee, this will be a dilemma faced by all the Republican office-holders in the land. The GOP has been doing very well with governorships and state Congresses. And yet either support of Trump or lack of support of Trump could hurt GOP politicians, alienating those who disagree with their chosen stance in an election year in which feelings run very, very high.

[NOTE: This column is very, very funny (hat tip: CV).]

Further post-Super Tuesday thoughts

The New Neo Posted on by

My first thought is that this primary season has been a nightmare—but an interesting nightmare.

My second is that if one more person writes that I don’t understand the anger driving Trump voters, I will scream (virtually, of course). Because I’ve observed and dealt with, argued with and to a certain extent shared, that anger for many years. Any blogger unaware of that anger by the time these primaries began should really give up blogging; it was that obvious. In fact, in 2012 I predicted a party rift if Romney were to lose the presidency, and even before that my stomach predicted a Romney loss, which meant a rift was nearly inevitable.

I wouldn’t say my stomach never lies, but let’s just say it’s not feeling so well right now, either.

My third observation is that there’s a lot of angst on the liberal side of the fence, too. Having attended a series of family functions lately that involved being in the bosom of groups of liberals, I detect a fair amount of unhappiness with the choices they are being presented with, and of course with the possibility of a Trump presidency. One of the relatives who is quite politically aware and involved summed it up this way: “I feel as though for the first time in my life I have no candidate.” She has long detested Hillary Clinton, and is no socialist and therefore Sanders does not present an alternative for her.

I know you’re not going to weep bitter tears at her plight, but I get the impression she’s hardly alone. And she sounded quite bewildered.

My fourth observation is that Trump did worse than I expected last night (although still very very well), Cruz better, and Rubio worse. Unfortunately, that doesn’t translate to the clarity I’ve been seeking. If Cruz were to emerge unequivocally as the leading non-Trump candidate and Rubio to fade, I would be quite happy, and I happen to think that Cruz could win against Hillary. But the results were just even enough between them that neither is a clear enough second-placer to knock out the other.

At present, though, there are hints that the so-called “establishment” is starting to think that Cruz is a more acceptable face for the party than Trump. Witness one Lindsay Graham, RINO extraordinaire, who had recently joked about murdering Cruz on the Senate floor and no one being willing to convict, and who is now saying this:

“…[The GOP] may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Donald Trump. And I’m not so sure that would work.”

When interviewer Charlie Rose asked Graham to confirm that he thinks Cruz is the only candidate who could stop Trump’s march to the GOP nomination, Graham agreed. “I can’t believe I would say yes, but yes,” he said.

Graham said Hillary Clinton would beat Trump “like a drum” in November.

“I think we’re about ready to lose to the most dishonest politician in America, Hillary Clinton,” Graham said. “And how could you do that — nominate someone who’s crazy. I think dishonest beats crazy. That’s our problem.”

I think that the GOP must indeed unite around Cruz now. But if so, someone needs to get the message to Rubio and his backers, and good luck with that. There is, however, a scenario (not a likely one, but a possible one) in which both Rubio and Cruz stay in and it leads to a brokered convention. A brokered convention that shuns front runner Trump would be another sort of nightmare that would rend the party still further, but it might be worth it because there may not be that much rending left to be done.

If the GOP nominates Trump, the party will be utterly changed into something a lot of former Republicans will not be able to support. If a brokered convention denies Trump the nomination despite his lead, Trump and his supporters are likely to declare war and go third party in revenge. But even if Trump becomes the official GOP nominee, if he loses to Clinton I predict that a great many of the Trump supporters will blame the GOP establishment for it with a “stab in the back” narrative that will go on and on.

[ADDENDUM: Some interesting observations by Jonathan V. Last:

Why did [Trump] lose Oklahoma? Because it’s the only state where the vote was restricted to actual Republicans. Which further bolsters the case that Trump is not leading a revolt from within the party, but staging a hostile takeover of it.

What happened in Virginia? Trump looked to be 14 points up just a few days ago. Rubio closed very strongly.

And remember back when everyone said Trump had a ceiling of support around 35 percent? That was before he won three contests and got his first mainstream endorsements, from Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Jeff Sessions. There was that garbage poll from CNN on Monday claiming Trump was at 49 percent nationally. His total take of the popular vote on Super Tuesday was about . . . 36 percent. Which is enough to win, but shows that he hasn’t grown his coalition, even with his frontrunner status having been “normalized.”

It may be a myth that Trump has some sort of 1/3-or-slightly-above ceiling. But so far that figure is pretty much what has panned out.]

Reflections on Super Tuesday

The New Neo Posted on by

It certainly was clear even before today that Donald Trump was going to win a plurality in most of the states having primaries today, and that’s what has happened (even though all the results are not in yet). But my fervent hope was that one of the pair of either Cruz or Rubio would pull ahead of the other, and that the latter would then drop out prior to March 15. This is, quite literally, the only way that Trump could lose the nomination.

And that is my disappointment this evening: so far, each has gotten some encouragement to stay in. I’d say that so far it seems as though Cruz is doing somewhat better than Rubio. That’s fine with me, but if so, I want his dominance over Rubio to be unequivocal, and it’s not.

Of course, the presence of Kasich and Carson is still a factor. I have no idea why anyone is still voting for either of them, but there are just enough doing so to affect the results. Although it’s hard to say exactly what that effect is, my guess is that Kasich takes away mostly from Rubio (for example, it seems to have been quite a factor in Vermont), and Carson takes away from both Trump and Cruz.

So to reiterate, now I continue to hope that one of the two second-place candidates—and I assume it would be Rubio—drops out before March 15. But I don’t have much sense that it will actually happen. What do you think?

It’s Super Tuesday

The New Neo Posted on by

[BUMPED UP]

Not so very super in my book.

Here’s a thread for discussing it, including your experiences if you’re voting today.

I fully expect Donald Trump to do very very well. I fully expect his supporters to be ecstatic, vindictive, and mocking of others in their response. I fully expect the MSM to cover the results as though it means Trump is the inevitable nominee.

He’s not inevitable, of course. But all options open to the GOP to stop him are bad, and will create a backlash. The best option, in my opinion, remains the necessity for one of the current leaders (Cruz or Rubio) to swerve in the game of Chicken they are playing, and to do so well before March 15th. I am hoping that one of them does so much better today than the other in so many states that it becomes clear which one must drop out, but I don’t think that will happen. I’ve been wishing it for a long time, and they have continued to be very evenly matched.

If one or the other drops out, Trump still might win the whole thing and become the nominee. But at least we’d have a better gauge of the actual percentage of his support among GOP voters.

Here’s an article on how, although the fat lady is practicing her scales in the wings, she hasn’t started singing yet and won’t today. And here’s one on what the Democrats have in store for a Trump nomination (something I’ve written about many times here):

As Donald Trump seems poised for a huge night Tuesday, Democrats see his stunning ascent and controversial, celebrity-driven business empire as a golden opportunity.

“Those bankruptcies screwed a lot of people — and not just hedge fund yuppies,” said a top strategist aligned with a pro-Clinton super PAC. “His idea of ‘winning’ has involved a lot of bad behavior — and the victims are exactly the profile of Trump voters: blue-collar whites.”

For months, key campaign operatives inside the Republican Party establishment were supremely confident that Trump would implode long before this moment. Instead, the GOP is now facing an existential crisis not seen in more than a generation as much of the party leadership and many of its top figures are in open revolt against Trump’s candidacy heading into Super Tuesday.

The potential liabilities lurking in Trump’s background are hardly a secret. The real estate magnate’s occasional business failings and colorful personal life have filled the pages of New York tabloids for decades.

Storing its ammunition for the general election, one pro-Democratic super PAC, Priorities USA, has taken a few jabs at Trump, choosing instead to portray the businessman as a reflection of the Republican Party.

Indeed, they don’t call the GOP “the stupid party” for nothing.

I’ve been crying in the wilderness for many months, posting articles about it and writing to people trying to galvanize them into these sort of attacks on Trump (including the “Trump vs. blue collar people” that Democrats are said to be planning). But such attacks from the GOP candidates only started quite recently, and way too late IMHO.

I said as much very explicitly in this post from late January:

This information is all in the public domain, and so far his opposition isn’t using it. Perhaps his GOP opponents haven’t used it so far because they thought he’d fade on his own. Or each one of them didn’t want to become his special target. Or they thought they could attack him on his politics. That hasn’t seemed to work so far. But it seems to me that, if a guy is making a lot of promises to you, and telling you what a great negotiator and dealmaker he is, and that’s why you should elect him””he’s a doer who does great things””you’d do well to look at some of his deals that went bad, his behavior during them, and the consequences. If he’s a liar, he might just be lying to you.

One thing I think we can safely say is that the Democrats will use this stuff against Trump if he is the nominee. It makes him look terrible: liar, con man, rich elitist bullying the little guy.

Hey, they don’t read neo-neocon; what can I say?

So, here we are. Fasten your seat belts for Super Tuesday.

So, what is Trump saying here about deportation?

The New Neo Posted on by

“Things are negotiable.”

Read the whole thing, including the comments, which add a missing sentence to the quote (“and they are going to go out”).

Too much to summarize here, but my takeaway is the following: everything Trump says is conditional and mutable. It may or may not express his intent at any given moment, but that intent can change on a dime, and several times. Even more than most politicians he will say what he feels he needs to in order to woo votes.

On immigration specifically, he has long indicated his position is that he will deport people and let them back in an expedited process of some kind, in some way he decrees to be “fair.” And that a wall will be built. The net effect is very similar to just about all the other GOP candidates’ policies, only less detailed and less reliable.

But his supporters don’t see it that way, and won’t see it that way.

And this just emphasizes what he’s said before. As blogger “Fuzzy Slippers” said in the comments section of LI:

Do you not understand that for Trump everything is negotiable. He said it, it’s one of the few true things he’s said on the campaign trail.

Why do you cling to your fantasy about Trump while the real Trump smacks you about the head and shoulders with the fact that he is not only pandering but that he knows full well what he is proposing is the “out” deal? The first one the table, the one you know is total crap. You get that, right? You read his book? You know that this is all bluff and bluster designed to get what he really wants (again, read his book).

Fuzzy adds that Trump is a simpleton. With that, I disagree. I think he is very canny about the things he’s canny about. That doesn’t mean I want him as president or trust him as far as I can throw him.

Iranian elections, 2016: who are the moderates?

The New Neo Posted on by

Iranian voters have chosen a host of reform candidates in their recent election, and this would seem like good news. Many writers are treating it as such (see this, for example).

Others are not the least bit sure. Jonathan S. Tobin in Commentary is certainly one of them, and his take on it contains a few details I hadn’t been aware of before this election:

We already knew that in Iran’s faux democratic system, a Guardian Council controlled by Khamenei vetted all of the possible candidates for office and disqualified virtually all those who had any real inclination to transform the country from a theocratic tyranny into something less awful. So, no matter what Rouhani or anyone else might say, the election winners that are called “moderates” in accounts of the vote are not actually moderate by any reasonable definition.

Bloomberg’s Eli Lake explains the reality of the election in a piece in which he points out that one of the victors considered a reformer is the same person who has called for the execution of leaders of the Green Movement that led protests against the regime in 2009 that ended in bloodshed and repression. Two others are former intelligence ministers that murdered dissidents. Others on those lists of moderates have made it clear that they resist the label and consider themselves part of the Islamist mainstream that supports the status quo. What apparently has happened is that faced with the disqualification of all of their candidates, reformers have endorsed others that do not share their views. That gives them the opportunity to declare victory today but is meaningless in terms of the impact of the vote on the future of Iranian society.

Please read the whole thing. The question of what is an Iranian “moderate” and who actually controls the country—and who will control it in the foreseeable future—is an important one in understanding what might be happening there. One thing of which I’m fairly sure, though, is that the election expresses the will of many of Iran’s people to take the country in a more moderate direction, a desire they’ve had for years and one that’s been thwarted for a long time.

Is Trump the GOP’s Frankenstein’s monster?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “physicguy” has this to say:

Just released over at American Thinker: the article deals with the death of the GOP. I agree, and I think the last paragraph sums it all up very well:

“The real blame rests on the Republican leadership in Congress. They created the vacuum that made Donald Trump possible. Absent opposition to Obama, looking with disdain upon their voters, ignoring all of their campaign promises, and governing against the will of their voters is why Donald Trump is even in the race.

I disagree, at least partly—and my disagreement is almost sure to spark outrage. It’s an outrage and a resultant discussion I’ve had many times here already, long before the candidacy of Donald Trump brought it to a head.

So I would amend that quote that physicsguy offered in his comment to say that it was the perception of what the GOP in Congress was doing or not doing, and at least in part a misperception about what they actually could do to stop Obama, that is responsible for at least some of Donald Trump’s support.

Over the years, I have written on the general topic of the GOP in Congress so many times I cannot count them, both in posts and in the comments section (just a few of the many examples are this, this, and this). Because I am part of the blogosphere and check in with blogs and comments around the blogosphere regularly, and have done so for over a decade, I have long been hyper-aware of the growing and increasingly bitter anger and disdain on the part of what you might call the GOP base.

Don’t get me wrong. I actually share some of it; quite a bit of it. So I’m not saying that Congress has covered itself in glory or has done what it promised. No, most definitely not. But (as I argued in some of those linked posts and comments, and many others) it has done more—and more to stop Obama—than most people realize. I don’t have time right now to write a tome about this, especially since it’s a tome I have written before. Trump is a demagogue, but he has been following a path prepared by other demagogues in the blogosphere, on Twitter and other social media, and on talk shows, who have had their own reasons for whipping people up into a veritable frenzy of rage.

I’ve watched it happen. Trump is the fruit.

Part of the reason the anger is so widespread, however, is that the Obama administration’s success in getting what it wants, and doing that in spite of the GOP controlling Congress, has been almost overwhelmingly galling. I have certainly felt the impotent rage bubble up inside me many times. But I have also weighed the options, and although I think the GOP could and should have done more and are not blameless, the “more” was not always clear and probably would have pleased the base but probably alienated everyone else (shut down government; send bill after bill to Obama’s desk for him to merely veto and in order to pass those bills in the Senate the cloture/filibuster rule would have had to have been suspended for all of them). I think the GOP made the wrong calculation and should have done more of that (see this, for example), but it was hardly easy or simple to say that the results (an Obama veto, for example) would have been worth it, although it would have had its pluses (I’ve written in greater detail about this topic in those links above, and in other posts too).

One of those “other posts” was this one, and I’ll quote what I already said there about a year ago:

I am aware that the Republicans in Congress are split between the conservatives and the others, and so they are not going to unify on all things (especially the tough topics) any more than pundits on the right will or blog commenters on the right will. Perhaps even less. Why would anyone expect a sudden transformation into unity, and in particular unity in the direction you would like to see?

In addition, Republicans in Congress cannot do what is impossible, even if you’d like them to and even if they wanted to do exactly whatever you want. They cannot, for example, pass any law they wish, even though they have the majority, even if they were completely united, because of the lack of 60 votes in the Senate. Cloture and Senate rules mean that the Democrats can hold up a vote a long as the Democrats have 40 votes to do so.

Even if the Republicans boldly changed the rules about that (which would have its own dangers) and made it so that things could come to a vote in the Senate by simple majority, guess what? That wouldn’t lead to Republican success in getting a law in place because the president happens to be a Democrat and he has vowed to veto everything they pass that he doesn’t like. The GOP lacks the votes to get past the veto. Do you really think they should undo the filibuster (a very radical step) merely for the sake of putting bills before Obama that he would then veto? Or should the Republicans use the option of holding back government funding in a battle that would ultimately lead to a government shutdown (not just of a single function, but of many, because Obama would veto every single bill that cut funding of any of his pet projects) that the people””carefully guided to this point of view by the MSM””would almost certainly blame on the Republicans, causing a backlash?

As we know, the Republican Party is currently split between conservatives and RINOS or “establishment” types, so is it any surprise that the latter group would not be fond of the two options I just outlined? Even some conservatives don’t like them, and I can’t say I blame them. I am torn about what I would do myself if I were a member of Congress.

The above—as well as the post I’m writing now—is not some sort of apologia for the GOP in Congress, offered because I’m in their thrall or even especially fond of them. I’m not. In fact I’ve never been an admirer of politicians as a whole and only admire a relative few, and then with reservations. But I try not to expect the impossible just because I might want it, even if I want it a lot. Unfortunately, what I’ve observed over the years is a growing desire for the unreasonable and/or impossible and then a growing demand for the unreasonable and/or impossible. This, coupled with an ignorance on the part of too many people in the US today on both sides about how government actually works (not the readers here, of course)—that is, ignorance of things as basic as what it takes to override a veto and that sort of thing—has helped to feed this enormous rage. It is a rage so great that it is leading to the success of Donald Trump, something that would not be occurring without that rage.

[NOTE: I’m not naive enough to think that this post (even if people were to read and ponder every single link in it to all my previous pieces on the subject) will convince a single angry person who previously disagreed with me. But I’m writing it anyway because it describes what I have seen over the years, which has been dramatic.]

Jeff Sessions endorses Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Everyone’s making a fuss about Jeff Sessions’ endorsement of Trump.

Before I get into the details, I want to establish one thing at the outset: personally, endorsements mean zero to me and always have. Of course, I understand they matter in general, because they matter to many other people. But it seems to me they only should matter to someone who hasn’t got the time to do his/her own research and make up his/her own mind based on the candidate’s character and stand on the issues, and who would rather just adopt someone else’s pre-digested opinion.

It’s kind of like a movie critic’s review, which I find equally worthless except to give me an idea what a movie is about. I guess I’ve never been a big one for following the opinion of others. And with politics, I think I qualify as someone who does her own research.

Now, with Jeff Sessions and Trump it seems that a lot of people found it shocking that a man known and respected for his conservatism would come out for Trump. But I don’t find it the least bit shocking and not even at all surprising, because of special circumstances connected with Sessions. In fact, I would have considered it a shock had he not endorsed Trump. Here’s why.

Sessions has been the go-to conservative guy in the Senate for handling illegal immigration issues, a hardliner who advised Trump heavily almost from the start when Trump put out his policy paper, which was apparently either written by Sessions or written with heavy consultation with Sessions. I also would guess that for Sessions the immigration question trumps (sorry, could not even begin to resist) everything else. Everything.

Put yourself in Sessions’ place and imagine you’d been working for years and years in the Senate, casting your pearls of immigration wisdom before Senate swine and having them rejected. An intensely frustrating and wearisome task, like so many in the Senate. And then a black swan named Trump swims or flies into view. He not only says he’s tough on immigration, he says how much he respects you and to prove it he has you basically write his platform and plan his program for him.

Wow and double wow. So when Trump rises and rises in the polls, for you it is like a dream come true. Instead of spinning your wheels trying to convince your fellow senators to do things they aren’t ready to do, you can hitch your wagon to this star (yeah, mixed metaphor) and ride it all the way to the power to create your own system to your own specifications on an issue that has mattered to you for so very long. Trump’ll be the nominal head and have the final say, but he’ll give you free rein.

Or so Trump says.

I don’t think there’s a politician in the world who could resist that sort of enticement. My guess is that Trump also explicitly offered Sessions something, an “immigration czar” position or something of the sort.

Another reason the temptation could not be resisted is that if Sessions were to back Cruz—far more aligned with Sessions in background and general conservative philosophy—he would have to face the problem that Cruz isn’t doing very well and that the odds for his victory are not good. My guess is that Sessions delayed his Trump endorsement until that fact was fairly clear, and that if Cruz had been doing a lot better, Sessions would have jumped on his bandwagon instead and probably have been a lot more happier deep down inside about it than he is about backing Trump.

But that didn’t happen, and Sessions decided that, if he didn’t get aboard with Trump now, Trump might turn to someone else to help him design the program if elected. And that would shut Sessions out. He could not run that risk, because he thinks Trump has a much better chance of being elected.

Hence, the Session endorsement. Really, I couldn’t imagine that he would have done otherwise.

[NOTE: A very different attitude was expressed by a different conservative senator, Ben Sasse.]