31 thoughts on “Is Ted Cruz “Our Last, Best Hope”?”
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Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
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Yes. But maybe in 2020 after Hildabeast has demonstrated the alternative.
Mightn’t it depend on his alleged mistresses?
Anyway, is he in GS’s pocket? If so he’s no hope at all.
The only connection to Goldman that I know of is that his wife Heidi works as a regional manager in private wealth management for the company. Does that really mean that he would bend over backwards to serve Goldman’s interests?
Speaking as a man who has voted fpr Cruz multiple times, I just don’t see him as American savior material.
Trump has shown sides of Cruz that makes him n”ot presidential material.”
“Does that really mean that he would bend over backwards to serve Goldman’s interests?”
Bill Clinton did and George Bush did for reasons that seem even less than Cruz’s.
Just because you are paranoid, doesn’t mean you do not have enemies.
I think a good argument is that Trump seems hostile, or at least un allied, to the financial people. I can’t recall where I saw that point made but it seemed reasonable.
Strange enough, I can’t get through to PJMedia. I haven’t had access for days.
There is reason to be concerned about the excessive size and government connections of the financial industry….there is equal reason, IMO, to be concerned about the excessive role played in this country by the legal profession, and most especially, there is reason to be concerned about the behavior and privileges of the academic industry.
Too much focus on the Wrongs of Wall Street can detract from attention to these other critical topics.
No argument about lawyers. Two my children are lawyers. Neither agree with me on politics.
My youngest graduated form U of Arizona three years ago. I complained about some of the left wing propaganda in her courses and was advised maybe I should send her elsewhere.
First, let me exclude the whole “The Thing” [the reference used by the media inner circles since before Super Tuesday to discuss what the National Inquirer published] that is the major subject of debate now. That will be proved true or false soon enough.
We have to deal with the situation on the ground as it exists, not as we want it to exist. There is no combination of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln waiting in the wings to come forth if we chant the right incantations.
1) There are three and only three people left in the primary race, the others having been beaten or dropped out.
a) Donald Trump, who has over half of the delegate votes for a first ballot nomination and who has a very strong probability of getting the rest. He is not part of the GOPe, is hated and feared by them, and their first priority above all is to remove him, even if it means electing Hillary.
b) Ted Cruz, who is a couple of hundred delegates behind Trump and still has a mathematical path to getting to 1237, but it is not a good one. He is hated by the GOPe but not as feared by the GOPe, but they would be willing to lose to Hillary rather than have him win either the nomination or the presidency.
c) Kasich, who has less delegates than Trump minus Cruz, has no mathematical path to winning 1237 delegates, whose positions fit better in the Democrat primary, and who announced that he would consider taking a Democrat running mate. He remains as comic relief and as a spoiler, probably paid for by someone.
That is it. That is all there is, unless the whole primary process is overturned and the process of voting is made a sham.
2) The GOPe has, as their primary motivation above all, the elimination of their own, legal frontrunner for the nomination. They are willing to lose the presidency and both Houses of Congress if necessary to achieve that goal. That is how much they hate and fear him. Republican officials, pundits, and donors have indicated that they will work for Hillary rather than support their own nominee selected by their own voters.
3) To that end, their first goal is to prevent, by any means, Donald Trump achieving the 1237 delegate goal for a first round nomination. To the point where they have openly embraced Ted Cruz, who they have spent years insulting, attacking, and avoiding. Cruz has been endorsed by the GOPe, by Mitt Romney, by JEB! Bush, and Cruz has taken on Neil Bush to run his campaign finances. The same Neil Bush who was part of the Savings and Loan scandals of the 1990’s and whose Silverado Savings and Loan had $1.3 billion disappear and had to be covered by the taxpayers.
In passing, personally, Cruz was my fallback position. Now I am . . . dubious. The GOPe siding with Cruz is being posited as the GOP unifying. But I am wondering where the boundary between unifying and assimilation by the GOPe lies.
4) One absolute certainty, and admitted by the GOPe, is that if no one has 1237 on the first ballot; there will be a brokered convention naming a candidate acceptable to the GOPe. On the second ballot, delegates will be subject to bribes and threats by the party. That candidate will be neither Trump nor Cruz [who together have about 80% of the allocated delegates so far]. It will be someone who will continue the GOPe pattern of collaboration with the Democrats. And it will make the entire primary election process a sham.
5) The candidate named will almost assuredly be someone who has NOT presented themselves to the Republican primary voters, or who has been rejected by them. Spitting in the faces of the Republican base once again. It may be “legal” in the Supreme Soviet sense, but it will not be legitimate in the sense of consent of the Republican voters.
6) There is another fallback that the GOPe has, and has been mentioned. The Rules Committee meets before the Convention. If either Trump or Cruz has 1237 delegates, the rules can be changed or modified after the fact of the primaries. Throwing the convention into being brokered as above.
7) We are, in theory, a Republic with a democratic form of government where consent of the governed is crucial to legitimacy. Our institutions, including political institutions, are supposed to reflect that. If they fail to, they are not legitimate.
It may be confirmation bias, but I and those circles I move in are more than willing to accept a loss of an honest vote, or a series of elections. If, however, the rules are changed to get the results those in power want, or the votes of the people are deliberately ignored or circumvented; that is a different game. The Republican party may have the power to install whatever Vichy lop-earred dud that they want as a candidate. But if they do so, then they can try to get him [and all their candidates up and down the ticket] elected by themselves.
For the record, the circles I move in include the County Republican Central Committee, and the County TEA Party. Who do ALL the work in a campaign.
8) From my admittedly not unbiased point of view, the only course to follow the way things stand is to work to get a first ballot win by Trump, and be ready to fight in the general election against the combined forces of the Democrats, the Democrat controlled media, and the GOPe. Anything else gives a Democrat victory automatically.
YMMV
About a week ago PJM came under a DoS attack from multiple points that had them limiting access from various places as they sorted it out. What governmental or ideological group was behind the attack has not been revealed as far as I know, but I believe things are back to what passes for normal. If you are still blocked, you might want to contact them to see why.
Subotai, I wondered why I hadn’t seen your comments for a while on Richard Fernandez’s Belmont Club articles. You comment regularly on those. I guess the DoS attack was the answer. I was worried that you might have been ill and unable to post.
Abraham Lincoln was not much of a candidate and not a great war leader. But he persisted, wrote well and was assassinated. That was enough to get him a place on Mt. Rushmore. I’m not saying he wasn’t ultimately one of our greatest presidents, only that he held little promise of that as a candidate before great events tested him. I know little of what any of the candidates will do when tested by events, I only have my suspicions.
Thanks for the concern, but I found out about the DoS attack after I got back. There was a major family festivity, and I spent a little more than a week in the wilds of Louisiana enjoying the festivities and trying to reduce the fresh seafood supply of the Gulf Coast. I did my best, but they can catch it faster than I can eat it. During that time, I was off line completely, and in fact the only news I saw was the weather reports, on purpose.
First break in a lot of years.
saboteur,
I am in complete agreement with your appraisal: “the only course to follow the way things stand is to work to get a first ballot win by Trump.”
After a week of no PJM here in Korea, I email Reynolds. Their IT guy filled me in and asked for IP address so they could whitelist me.
Looks like the UAE is the number two target this morning, after the USA.
Source: Norse Attack Map norsecorp.com
“This Man Can Save Us From Trump””and Clinton: He’s retired Marine General James Mattis. He’s an extraordinary American. Yes, it’s a longshot. But he is exactly what we need.” by John Noonan
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/26/this-man-can-save-us-from-trump-and-clinton.html
I would love to see General Mattis as Trump’s VP, or his SecDef. But the idea of him running 3rd Party, is being pushed by Bill Krystol who is a GOPe #StopTrump leader. Krystol has called for supporting Hillary if Trump gets the nomination, and deliberately throwing the election. The end game is to keep the GOPe in power.
Is anyone here really up to speed on the arcana of delegates? If Trump falls short can another candidate bargain all, or part, of his delegates to Trump before the first ballot or do those delegates have to cast their vote for the candidate that they’ve been pledged to even if the candidate wants them to support Trump?
In other words are the candidate passive vessels that are taken along for a ride by their delegates or can they be active players and bargain with those delegates?
As for Trump’s VP I still favor Kris Kobach. I don’t see why someone like Kobach couldn’t quell the nerves of the many who Trump riles, he’s a good churchgoing man, he homeschools his kids, no scandals, Harvard followed by Yale Law, he’s been a trooper on the immigration fight but otherwise seems to play nice with the Republican establishment. He’s low enough in the national scene that he shouldn’t set one faction off against another. The reason I like Kobach is that he was for Trump’s immigration plan before Trump was for it, so if, as VP, he has to take over we can be assured that action will come on the immigration front. Any other VP and Trump isn’t buying insurance, he’s creating incentive to be removed from office in order to elevate the VP who would reverse Trumpism.
Mattis would be good for SecDef but that’s assuming that he can support a changed course for the US. There’s no point in putting a secretary into office if he simply wants to continue on with the failed policies he’s been immersed within, and helped implement, over his entire career.
Kristol should just go back to being a Democrat. The neocon hijacking of the Republican Party and the resultant purges are exactly what put the Party into this situation and brought Trump to the fore.
Subotai Bahadur (4:15pm):
It seems to me there’s one other possibility, that I find more attractive, though it may be wishful thinking.
If neither Trump nor Cruz has a first-ballot majority, the GOPe can and will try to steal the nomination for some third candidate. It seems to me that they will fail if Trump and Cruz join forces: 80% of the delegates should be enough to withstand even a flood of bribery and rule-changing chicanery. Do Trump and Cruz love the idea of destroying the GOPe more than they hate each other? Quite likely. Do they love the idea of one or the other of the outsider candidates (themselves) winning the election, and keeping Hillary out of the White House, more than they hate each other, even if it’s the other one who wins? I would hope so. I think the country would be far better off if Trump threw his support to Cruz than vice versa, and that’s not the most likely, given the balance of power. However, either action would foil the GOPe and provide a possible path to victory in November. Whether either would be a great or even a good president, I do not know, but even Trump would probably be far better (well, less horrible) than Hillary, or Bernie, or (God help us) Joe B.
Finally, does Trump really want to put all his businesses in a blind trust and do only politics for four years, or would he rather be a GOPe-slaying kingmaker than the king himself? Probably not, but we can hope. (There’s that wishful thinking again.)
The idea that the GOPe is so against a Trump nomination that they would willingly give up the house and senate by defeating his nomination is exactly backwards. They oppose his nomination partly out of fear that his candidacy would cause the loss of the two houses. I share that fear.
The Trumpeteers from all sources are insufficient to elect Trump in the general, but seem more likely than not to get him the nomination. The latest polls show him losing to the Hildebeast by double digits. Give the amount of news coverage he has gotten, the electorate have a pretty good idea about the choice they are being asked to make. That spread as well as his well documented negatives among the electorate at large and even within the GOP do not bode well for his general results and the effect on other GOP candidates. Cruz polls ahead of the Hildebeast. So who is really willing to sacrifice GOP congressional control? In my opinion Trump’s support from many of his fans is more about their middle finger than about results they expect from his presidency.
I do have concerns about Cruz’s lack of executive experience (being limited to Texas AG), but less than I have about Trumpster’s “leadership” style and “flexibility”. I also have reservations about a Cruz general campaign effect on the balance in congress. I believe that could prove less damaging for either Trump or Cruz than it might be otherwise given there will be a Hilldebeast effect on both Democrat and independent voters. I give the edge to Cruz because his negatives are so much less than Trump’s among the electorate at large.
Either Cruz or Trump will need solid advice and support in office to be effective in dealing with their responsibilities. I think Cruz will be better at picking those advisors/administrators and most importantly in heeding this input while testing against a well formulated set of first principles.
Immigration is not my single or even my most important issue in this campaign. It is my second. My first is the pending composition of the Supreme Court. I believe that Cruz clearly has the edge in both of these issues over Trump. Trump may have riled up and focused popular concern on immigration for it to rise significantly in the public’s eye, but he has little to offer in the way of remedy. Trump’s lack of an understanding of political ideologies applied to judicial action makes him incapable of vetting and selecting court nominee who will support the required reforms needed to get us moving in the right direction. Even fixing the immigration mess we’ve built over the past 50 years will require court concurrence.
I agree that push come to shove, the GOPe would acquiesce to Cruz over Trump. Most likely because they feel his potential to adversely influence the congressional balance is less and because in Cruz they know what they are getting, no matter that they don’t agree with him. Trump is likely to continue the increase in executive power and even lawlessness. That might get a wall built and initiate a global trade war, but it is likely to also set the stage for more strong men and women presidents, ending any hope for meaningful restoration of liberty and shrinking government thus reducing corruption and public power.
I disagree that the GOPe will change the rules so that a candidate with the 1237 will be denied the nomination. I also would be very, very surprised if they write the rules so that all delegates were unbound on the first ballot. A partial exception to that might be that candidates who have suspended their campaigns prior to the convention could release them on the first ballot. Trump would reach critical mass (as in his head would explode) if that happens and he wasn’t already north of 1237. Other relatively small, but potentially consequential changes could happen as well (such as releasing at-large delegates from being bound by the primary/caucus results in their state. These pre-convention rules setting have a long history and are provided for in the process. The difference this time is that there may not be a majority winner after the pre-convention state processes are completed.
I seriously doubt that the ultimate nominee will be other than Trump or Cruz based on GOPe brokering behind the scenes. If neither Trump or Cruz is at 1237 coming into the convention, but the pledged delegate count is reasonably close (couple hundred apart), the advantage goes to Cruz because he has shown far superior organization throughout this process. Additionally, the GOPe regard him (I believe mistakenly) as the less threatening to their agenda. The recent support Cruz has received from the GOPe I see as their to little too late recognition that Cruz is in fact the only viable alternative to Trump. If they had been quicker on the uptake, the primary results probably be reversed in Cruz’s favor. Their reluctance to see this is evidence of how much they view Cruz as a staunch opponent.
Death6
Great comment, Death6.
>> Their reluctance to see this is evidence of how much they view Cruz as a staunch opponent.
He’s a threat to the feeding trough.
It isn’t going to be Cruz.
His flipping “Cuban Mistress Crisis” now includes accusations of a love child with a married woman.
>Face Palm<
Trump is winning by staying quiet and out of the way while Cruz self-destructs.
As for Trump losing to Hillary in the General election and taking down Republicans in Congress…Hillary had to do the following —
1. Survive under pressure with bad health and
2. Avoid FBI indictment.
Neither is a given.
All things considered, Trump is in the catbird seat.
Give the amount of news coverage he has gotten, the electorate have a pretty good idea about the choice they are being asked to make. . . . . . Cruz polls ahead of the Hildebeast.
Cruz polling ahead of Hillary, he’s not, but that’s not my point, my point is that much of the public doesn’t yet know much about Cruz because Cruz isn’t getting much coverage. Arguendo, if Cruz wins the nomination, then the media coverage of Cruz explodes and his negatives get exposed to a large audience. The same lack of coverage applies to Hillary. Trump’s negatives are on people’s minds right now because the news puts those negatives right in front of people, while Hillary’s negatives are kind of background noise for people, like tuning out the TV while you’re taking a nap, you know that the TV is on but you can still fall off to sleep. Wait until Trump turns up the volume on the TV and you’ll find that you cannot nod off, meaning that Hillary’s negatives will be front and center when she’s facing off against Trump.
I’d call be a traitor and a crook to be worse than being a boor and a loudmouth.
I also have reservations about a Cruz general campaign effect on the balance in congress.
Trump and Cruz have divergent voting effects in the general election. Trump’s appeal is wide and expands the base and Cruz’s appeal is narrow and restricts the base. Cruz is appealing to true-believers and I get the appeal of his message if you’re a true believer, but his message actually turns off a lot of people who are not true believers.
Cruz’s campaign personifies one of the glaring problems with modern conservative movements, the urge to purge those who do not follow party scripture religiously. This works in both directions, those like the RINOS and those who subscribe to a paleo-conservative vision at a time when the neo-conservatives have taken over the party. The process of narrowing down what it means to be conservative means that the movement is kicking people out of the big tent. This is exactly the opposite of what needs to be done in order to win elections.
Immigration is not my single or even my most important issue in this campaign. It is my second. My first is the pending composition of the Supreme Court. I believe that Cruz clearly has the edge in both of these issues over Trump.
What would the Democratic coalition look like today if we excised Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, and blacks who are immigrants? They’d have single women, blacks, homosexuals, transsexuals, welfare dependents, university professors and other lifestyle liberals, but what they wouldn’t have is the sheer numbers needed to make them a major force in American politics.
If you get the Supreme Court all you buy yourself is some time but that demographic deluge that you’re not preventing from arriving is going to translate into future power which will undo all that you’ve bought for yourself.
Conversely, if you lose the Supreme Court but can fix the demographics, then you are positioned to undo the damage done by a bad SC choice.
Trump is going to need judges who are reliable on anchor babies, on streamlined deportations, on Muslim banning, and those judges are not liberals, in fact they may not even be traditional conservatives but the judges who are reliable on these issues will be very likeable to be pretty good on the issues that matter to most Republicans.
That might get a wall built and initiate a global trade war,
Why aren’t we in a global trade war right now considering the trade policies of both China and Japan?
ending any hope for meaningful restoration of liberty and shrinking government thus reducing corruption and public power.
There is no hope of this ever coming to pass without us first suffering through a collapse of civilization. No one has the appetite and will power to bring this about and the public won’t accept it. Look at the core believers in small government – almost entirely composed of whites, most of whom are male. Women tend to love big government because they see it as a protector, a husband of sorts, and minorities depend on big government to be the enforcer of equal outcomes that they so favor. For your vision to come to reality we need the America of 1900, before women’s suffrage and before multiculturalism. Post-collapse, if we play our cards right we might be able to create such a society but in the matter of present-day political strategies voting with this vision in mind makes as much sense as voting with John Lennon’s “Imagine” in mind.
Trump and Cruz have divergent voting effects in the general election. Trump’s appeal is wide and expands the base and Cruz’s appeal is narrow and restricts the base. Cruz is appealing to true-believers and I get the appeal of his message if you’re a true believer, but his message actually turns off a lot of people who are not true believers.
I agree with that. Cruz’s religious belief system doesn’t bother me, but it should not be a centerpiece of his campaign. We are hiring an executive, not a pastor. If he had made more of his platform and governing goals and less of his Christian beliefs I think he’d have done much better. On the other hand, he’s won a senate seat and I’ve never won any office, so what the hell do I know? Easy to sit on the sidelines and criticize, I guess.
They claim that is the reason. Yet, we see party “opinion leaders” openly calling for Republicans to support Hillary if Trump is the nominee and openly calling for an “independent” Republican run to specifically throw the election. And an open movement to create a brokered convention specifically to exclude Trump [and everybody knows that Cruz will be eliminated in the brokerage too] means that the elimination of Trump and any outsider is their absolute priority. And they are willing to throw the presidential election to do it.
Let me offer what has happened here in Colorado. In 2010 the TEA Party arose. Fair and square, winning caucuses, county assemblies, the state convention, and the statewide primary election; there were TEA Party candidates for both Governor and US Senate. They won the ballot slots the hard way, door to door and delegate by delegate.
The response of the Colorado Republican Party was to literally throw the elections to the Democrats. The Party sent former Congressman Tom Tancredo to the Constitution Party and cut a deal. If the Constitution Party would name him their governor candidate in place of their already named candidate [they, being a minor party could name their candidates any way they want, but had to petition them onto the ballot]; they would handle the petitions, fund their campaigns, and send their donors to the Constitution Party. And they did. They refused to campaign for their own duly nominated governor candidate, saying that the party had no responsibility for campaigns. It deliberately split the vote and gave the Governorship to the Democrats. Similarly, they refused to campaign at all for the Senate candidate and gave it to the Democrat. Already previously, the other Colorado Senate seat was given to the Democrats because the state party had a highly questionable vote count at the convention so they could nominate a party insider, Pete Coors [heir to the brewing empire] instead of who the Republican voters wanted. Coors went down ignominiously.
They will give up Senate seats and other elected offices to preserve their own power.
Incidentally, in 2014, we elected Representative Cory Gardner to the Senate. There originally were 12 candidates, mostly members of our legislature, running for the nomination. Cory Gardner was NOT one of them. A couple of weeks before the state convention, the Party called in all the candidates. All of them were told that if they did not drop out, the party would oppose them for any further political efforts, forever. And they were told that Cory Gardner was the candidate. And so it happened. He beat Democrat Udall. I did the report card on his Senate votes for our TEA Party chapter. For every issue we were interested in, he voted identically to Democrat Michael Bennet. But that was the candidate the Party anointed.
The odds are against the Republicans holding the Senate from the beginning, just because of the number of seats at risk. The odds are better for the Republicans in the House, but consider.
Trump and Cruz have about 80% of the allocated delegates so far. If the party deliberately screws them out of the nomination, with rule changes or other deliberate actions; that is a large part of the voter base that is going to be terminally hacked off. Speaking for my very conservative county, the party machinery may well collapse completely as people leave the party. No party machinery, no campaign
If only 10% of voters leave, the Democrats win, pretty much everywhere. We have not had a Democrat congressman here for a generation or more. And right now, our over a decade incumbent is hated for being a Boehner/Ryan collaborationist. It does not take voting for the Democrat. Just not voting for him. And it may happen.
Right now, Republican voters are furious at the repeated betrayals by the Republicans in both Houses of Congress. Even if the convention is not viewed as being rigged, Republicans in Congress are going to have a harder time than normal. With a significant number of hacked off people who give up on them, they are going to lose their gluteus maximus, minimus, and medialis. The Party knows that, and apparently maintaining control over the machinery of what will remain of the party is worth it to them to block Trump.
You are less cynical about the Republican Party than I am. We’ll see who is right shortly.
Right from the outset I was a Ted guy, but this mistress thing is going to destroy him, win or lose. How did he or his people not plan for it? Even if he wasn’t a Christian with that as demographic, I think he’ll still be toast. With Clinton, it was cool, he was, after all, the first black president. Saxophone, office on 125th St., sheeet, all power brokers get a ton o’ tail. But not Republicans, and not Republicans from the Bible belt. And despite his being characterized as an outsider, he carries all the baggage of the ineffectual GOP from the previous eight years. People have been screaming at Congress and the Senate. Crickets.
Herod Jr. has been running roughshod over the country and the globe. Eight years ago I told my wife, that:”something is wrong, people of this sort don’t ascend to the office of President, not in the U.S.” Looking back now at the past years, Boehner as a stumbling block, Justice Roberts, et al it’s far more sinister and complex than I previously imagined. Had someone proposed Trump fifteen years ago I’d have laughed. I still have no idea what he is, but I’m getting the feeling he’s a guy that doesn’t like to lose, and there’s a whole lot of people who feel like they’ve got a whole lot to lose, but not by voting for him.
“Trump is winning by staying quiet and out of the way while Cruz self-destructs.” Fascinating: copying one of Napoleon’s merits. By contrast Hellary copies his vices.
“Trump’s appeal is wide and expands the base and Cruz’s appeal is narrow and restricts the base. ”
I agree with this and think the polls are seeing a “Bradley Effect” that is hiding the Trump numbers.
Of course, I thought the polls were wrong about Romney but that did not take into account the total collapse of his GOTV campaign which probably threw the election to Obama.
Trent
“Trump is winning by staying quiet and out of the way while Cruz self-destructs.”
When has Trumpeteer ever been silent or out of the way? Did the media black him out?
The polls do not show Cruz self-destruction, at least not yet. They do show Trump losing ground in Wisconsin, California and nationally.
My only source for the Cruz alleged infidelity is the National Inquirer. Is there something a little more reliable or factual? On the other hand, Trump has bragged about his infidelity including with married women. The long relationship between the leadership of the National Inquirer and Trump may have some baring on the report.
Given the efforts to beat Cruz in his senate race first against the establishment Lt. Governor in the primary as well as in a the highly funded general, I would find substantiation of this very surprising.
SB
Thanks for the inside info on Colorado. I knew some of it, but not the details. Sad.
Apparently on the national level, the GOPe has not been as effective in picking their winners, witness Jeb, Christy, Kasich, etc. Apparently they have lost 80% of their voter base given Trump and Cruz results. I also agree that they have suppressed the Tea Party and are now reaping the whirl wind.
I don’t completely discount the desperation of some leading to hyperbolic statements about third party or voting for the Hildebreast. Some may migrate to where the corruption is greener. i agree the GOPe will certainly consider manipulating the convention, but any wholesale theft resulting in neither of the front runners getting the nod will destroy the goose that lays their golden eggs, permanently. The party could not be fixed given what the resulting monopoly of Democrat power in all three branches will do. At that point a violent collapse is significantly hastened. Surely we are about to see just how self-destructive they might be.
Once all corruption is concentrated in a single party, the monopoly price will prevail and those with preexisting customer status will have the frequent flyer discount, at least initially. The GOPe donors may have a tough time competing for a place at the trough with positive cost-benefit. Most have to be thinking along the lines of preserving some viable ex post ante of the current structure they are milking. Destruction is not in their interest. The smart ones will get most of the stupid ones in line. Would be a hoot to know what is transpiring among them.
Tango
“There is no hope of this ever coming to pass without us first suffering through a collapse of civilization.”
If you are correct about the demographic source of all of our troubles (and I’m not going to take that on with you), then I’d say that the collapse you see as imminent has no chance of resulting in any form of restoration of a limited republic government. There is no historical precedent I know. On the other hand there are abundant examples where such a collapse results in totalitarian oppression. In today’s world, this could be rapidly imposed from without. My optimistic view (where I seldom dwell) is that the demographic and power concentrations can be dealt with systematically under our current situation without a general collapse. Possible, but unlikely. If not, I am as prepared as I can be for whatever results. That doesn’t imply I or those I love will survive for long.
My study of the judiciary history gives me great concern that if the supreme court is packed with progressives for the next 10-20 years (it isn’t just one appointment we are likely facing), it won’t be possible to win the immigration or any of the other important battles that are necessary in order to reach a liberty-based culture and governance. I don’t discount that the virtually complete collapse may be unavoidable, but I don’t see a Trump presidency as likely to make much positive deference and more likely to be a net negative.
Since all of this is uncharted waters, it will play out as it will and we will all probably be surprised at the outcome. Today I’m in optimistic frame, tomorrow who knows.
Death6
The Republican establishment and MSM pundits don’t realize the degree to which the average American is sick to death of political extremes. They’ve just had 8 alarming years of the hard Left, and anyone who believes they’re ready to suddenly fly to into the arms of 4 years of rule by the right is hallucinating—it ain’t happenin’. No rigid doctrinaire from the right has a chance, and Trump’s arrival at this time is a godsend. He’s pro-America, pro-American, and conservative in all the places that really count. Plus, he’s a man of action and a success in the practical world.
Trump has flipped over the mossy rock that is Washington DC, and we are shocked to discover that lots of bloodsucking parasites live beneath. In Trump’s popularity, we are also discovering, to our delight, that most Americans are not political purists: they identify as neither ideologically left or right; they identify as somewhere in between. A ‘Silent Majority’, sharing certain fundamental cultural attitudes about America, is real, alive and kicking, and it believes in joining forces across the political spectrum to preserve America. That is, most Americans are much larger than the weaselly narcissists who lead them.
A purist will never win the election, and Trump is your only hope if you want to preserve your right to a meaningful vote in the future. If the Left wins in 2016, you can kiss your vote goodbye.