Month: January 2016

Earlier I acknowledged Nate Silver turning me on to fingerspitzengefuhl.  Danke schoen, Herr Silver.  A very useful concept, though a bit of a mouthful.

The German General Staff had more than fingerspitzengefuhl up their sleeves, and some of their thinking can be applied to politics, and 2016.

Take auftragstaktik, or the ability to execute a plan without supervision, based upon your einheit, or unity of purpose.  The relationship between a campaign and super-pacs which are supporting it must be arms length.  There can be no coordination.  How can they work effectively together?   How can they achieve auftragstaktik?  By first establishing their einheit.

Once einheit has been established, and auftragstktik fully operational, it’s time to decide on a schwerpunkt, or point of decision. At what point in the campaign is it time for the kill?

Cruz and his campaign can’t talk to his super-pacs, so they must intuit his thinking.  Let me give them a hand.  The schwerpunkt is in New Hampshire, from Wednesday, February 3rd to Monday, February 8th.  Buy as much TV and radio time as you can.

But do it quietly.  We’d like to get inside our opponents’ OODA Loop.

Nate Silver and the betting markets give Hillary a 55% chance of winning.  That’s hard for me to believe.  I just can’t see what they’re seeing.  Surely it’s not based on polls.  Polls for the general election this far out are as useless as the polls were a year ago on the Republican primary.

Those numbers are going down, at least in the betting markets, and probably Silver’s as well.  There’s just nothing to support them.  If I were a gambling man I’d short Hillary right now.

And speaking of polls, who answers these pollsters? Who puts up with half an hour of stupid questions about who you’d vote for if X was running against Y?  Who are these people?  Are they normal?  There’s a difference between the people who hang up on pollsters and the people who take the time to talk to a pollster.  Maybe the people who hang up are all pissed off Republicans.

It’s official.  The Democrats are a socialist party.  We’ve never had one of our major parties adopt socialism before.  Up until now, the connotations were very negative.   No more.  Hillary and her party chair agree   — Democrats, socialism, whatever.  At this point what difference does it make?

My fingerspitzengefuhl says that’s a mistake.

I foolishly chided the guys at 538.com for excessive reliance on numbers, and inattention to the zeitgeist.  I have been put in my place by Nate Silver, and his reference to a key feature of war gaming by the German General Staff  — fingerspitzengefuhl, or a feel, an awareness, for the field of conflict.  Touche.

My blog post on winning Nevada is up at American Thinker.  There are still supposedly twelve candidates in the race.  You’d think one of them would take a fling with this idea.

Speaking of fingerspitzengefuhl (I know we’re supposed to take Germans seriously, but with words like that it’s hard),  here’s my feel for the field of play at the moment.  Cruz has got Iowa in the palm  of his hand.  Iowa evangelicals, quite understandably, prefer one of their own.  Jimmy Carter got the ball rolling in 1976, campaigning as a born again Southern Baptist.  Pat Robertson did the same in 1988, Huckabee in 2008, Santorum in 2012, first Carson, now Cruz in 2016.  These guys relate to evangelical voters viscerally, the way only one of their own can.  And winning all three of the most important evangelical endorsements is icing on the cake.  When you add voters from the Tea Party and Libertarian rings of the party, you’ve got a winner, especially since New Netherlander Trump is such a poor fit in Midlands Iowa.  Cruz is working harder than anyone, is superbly organized, and doesn’t make mistakes.  Big Corn will try to take him down, but if they don’t kill him they’ll only make him stronger  —

— in New Hampshire, where anyone with any fingerspitzengefuhl can see what’s happening.  Rubio has been sucked in to a four way free for all with Christie, Kasich and Bush 3.  Rubio is ceding the conservative lane to Trump and Cruz, and will fight the other three “establishment” candidates for the ticket out of New Hampshire.  It’s already turning into a circular food fight, with burritos and mashed potato pancakes flying through the air.  Not fun at all; demeaning and petty.  It’s a crowded lane.

Rubio must beat all three, and there’s no reason he can’t.  Bush 3 is nothing but a sad nuisance, Kasich is ornery and arrogant, and Christie is an obnoxious loud mouth.  If Don Juan of Florida can’t beat this crew, he’s not the man I thought he was.

So, for the moment, Cruz floats above the fray in New Hampshire, while in Iowa he effortlessly bats away low blows from the Donald on his citizenship.  For Cruz, it’s a very good sign that Trump is challenging him on this.  That’s all he’s got, at least for the moment.

After winning Iowa, Cruz will have one week to make his move in New Hampshire, and clinch the nomination.  He will have defeated Big Corn, the embodiment of corrupt, crony capitalism, Iowa style.  Trump’s balloon will have deflated, and voters hungry for someone to take on Washington corruption will give Cruz a hard look.  Carson evangelicals and Paul libertarians will naturally trend his way as their candidates fade.

McCain skipped Iowa in 2000, and beat Bush 2 in New Hampshire 49-30.  He competed in 2008, but maintained his opposition to Big Corn by opposing ethanol’s Renewable Fuels Standard.  His resulting fourth place finish was not a problem in New Hampshire, where he beat Romney 37-31.

My fingerspitzengefuhl tells me opposition to ethanol can be a big winner in New Hampshire.  The narrative, as it stands today, will allow Cruz to test that hypothesis between the third and ninth of February.

Come on, Felito, give it a try.

 

It’s spelled Keep It Simple, Stupid.  People have a limited amount of time and attention, and if you get all complicated you lose them.  I make a political proposal in what will hopefully be a blog entry at American Thinker tomorrow.  The reason it makes sense, politically, is its simplicity.

From Montana down to New Mexico, and points west, the federal ownership of land is a festering issue.  What we’re seeing in Oregon with the Hammonds  and the takeover at Burns, Oregon is an extreme example, but throughout the west there is an undercurrent of resentment at the absentee landlord in Washington.

There have been a variety of political solutions offered.  One of them, very watered down and insubstantial, even passed the Senate last year, sponsored, I believe, by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.  Ken Ivory of the American Lands Council has been trying for years to build some steam behind some reform legislation, largely to no avail.

The problem is, it’s complicated.  You’re talking about land in a dozen states, with a number of different federal agencies holding land under a variety of circumstances, for different purposes.  Hundreds of millions of acres are on the table, of all types and descriptions and values.  It’s really complicated.

So I say let’s take one slice off the hog at a time, and let’s make the first slice a big one — the Bureau of Land Management.  Nobody knows why it exists, or what purpose it serves.  Why, precisely, is 67% of Nevada owned and administered by the BLM?

Listen very carefully.  You’ll hear the sound of silence.   There is no reason on God’s green earth why the BLM should own and administer that land, rather than of the State of Nevada.  It’s basically a waste land, if you’ve ever driven across it.  Why the hell should the feds own it?  I’m waiting.  I’m not hearing anything.

The thing is, if one of the Presidential candidates picked up on this idea they could win Nevada.  And Wyoming.  And Idaho, and Utah, and Montana, and New Mexico.  Not a lot of delegates, but they do add up.

Abolish the BLM!  It fits on a bumper sticker.  Everybody gets it.  And everybody would love to see some damn federal agency abolished.

I suppose some people back east might not think it was fair, giving the western states their land.  What do they get out of it?  Money, that’s what. Reduced federal spending, and higher federal revenues from resource development on land that has hitherto been locked up.  Half of something is better than all of nothing.

At last I’m starting to see the widespread use of the term “sexual predator”  with reference to Billy Jeff, and “enabler” for his wife.

What a lovely couple.  Want to bet how many times, from here on,  we hear Hillary talk about the war on women?  I don’t think she wants to go there.

But we shouldn’t let her off the hook.  Now’s the time to move in and do some serious damage.  Trump only plays defense, and she won’t give him a reason to come after her.  So we can’t rely on Trump to carry this torch alone.  Come on, he’s a trail blazer, we can’t expect him to do it all.  Every conservative media outlet, blog, columnist and talk show host should start piling on.  There’s a ton of material to work with.  Roger Stone, bless his heart, has a book out on it, I believe.

If we don’t exploit this opening, now, we may not get it again.  Next time it will be old news.

I’ve never met the man, but it’s personal with me and B.J.  I really don’t like him.

Since my article in AT went up explaining how Cruz wins New Hampshire, I’ve been waiting for the Cruz campaign to call and ask about Nevada.  They’ve dropped the ball, so here’s how you win Nevada  — not just the caucuses, but the electoral votes.

Cruz, along with co-sponsors like Lee of Utah, Heller of Nevada, and Enzi of Wyoming, introduces a bill to abolish the Bureau of Land Management.  The 248 million acres managed in twelve western states by the BLM would be transferred to the states in which they are located.  The states would own clear title to this land, but the federal government would retain a beneficial interest in 50% of the proceeds which may be derived from development of resources on the land.

On the merits, this is a great bill.  As shown in “Divided Lands, State vs. Federal Management in the West” by Fretwell and Regan of the Property and Environment Research Center, the federal government is an awful administrator of public lands.  The states outperform them, by huge margins, in every possible way, including protecting the environment.

Many of these lands have resource potential that the states would be eager to tap.  The estimates of the potential wealth tied up in these lands is staggering.

67% of Nevada is owned and administered by the BLM.  Some people think I overestimate the hatred for ethanol.  You ought to see how the people of Nevada feel about the BLM.  You have no idea.  It’s not just Clive Bundy.  He’s the tip of the iceberg.

If Cruz introduces this bill, and campaigns on it, and promises to fight for it if he’s elected, he’ll  not only win the Nevada caucuses, he’ll win their electoral votes, and he’ll win New Mexico’s and Colorado’s as well.  From the coast in, the West would be solid red.

The next five weeks will be the most interesting of my life.  If I’m right, and Cruz wins in New Hampshire based on his opposition to ethanol, I’ll be the happiest guy around.  Because that means he’s going to seal the deal in early March, which gives us time to convince him to help us get to our 34 states.  All he’d have to do is make a few phone calls.  It would very much be in his interest if we succeeded.

Big Corn is stalking Cruz in Iowa.  At some point this is going to be a big story.  And it’s one which makes Cruz look good.

He’s in a delicate situation, to say the least.  So far, he’s playing it cool.  Intellectually, his position on ethanol is unassailable.  But he doesn’t want to rub it in.  Not until Iowa votes.

I saw a clip of Billy Jeff on Special Report.  He’s talking about restoring this, and rebuilding that, and bringing things back — and I’m thinking, isn’t that language a little backwards looking?  Of course, but that’s all B.J.’s got.  That’s all any of them have got.  They have nothing new to offer.   They’ve got nothing.

Which means they’ve got nothing to lose.   They’ll unleash hell on the Republican.  But it won’t work.  There’s nothing there.  These guys are clean.  The American people won’t fall for it this time.  It will be too obvious, too transparent, too contrived.

And unless Hillary somehow disqualifies the Republican, she can’t win.

I need an editor.  I got Kansas and its Jayhawks mixed up with Iowa.

Anyway, here’s the link to my article on Cruz, ethanol, and New Hampshire in the American Thinker.

Some of the commenters doubt that ethanol is that big a deal.  I think it is in New Hampshire, because it’s widely understood to exist only  because Iowa selfishly uses its caucuses to force it on every one else.  It’s not only a text book example of crony capitalism, it’s a direct result of Iowa horning in on New Hampshire’s traditional role as the first-in-the-nation primary.

So there the Ethanol Gambit sits, atop the AT flagpole.  Someone at a Super-pac supporting Cruz will see it.  They might blow it off, or they might salute.

We’ll just wait and see.

Trump, God love him, is not letting up on Billy Jeff.  It’s odd, isn’t it, that this very unusual man has elevated himself to the highest tier of American politics, and uses his position to do and say things that have been undone and unsaid for far too long?  He’s unique.

He’s a national treasure.