Miscellaneous

Everybody gets their kicks in their own way.  The most fun I had in 2012 was watching the first Obama-Romney debate.  It was like a UFC fight  — brutal, as Romney put Obama on the ground and kept pounding him.

Recalling that sunny moment leads me to what I’m quite sure will be one of the highlights of 2016, as Hillary squares off with one of the Cubans.  It really doesn’t matter which one.  Rubio’s got that youthful rock star charisma.  Hillary will struggle to avoid looking like a washed out old woman pushing 70.  Cruz will fence with her, fending off her attacks effortlessly, and methodically cutting her to shreds.

Never in her life has Hillary had to undergo the one on one, no holds barred, in your face kind of treatment she”ll get from the Cuban.  Hell, I don’t think she’s ever conducted an actual trial, much less a jury trial.  She’s only debated Democrats, and it’s kid’s glove stuff.  These Democratic debates are a joke.  Sanders and O’Malley are such cowards they won’t even throw a punch.  I don’t think Obama ever really went at her in ’08.

I think she’s got a glass jaw, just like Obama did against Romney.  Until that moment, for his entire life,  I don’t think Obama had been subjected to that sort of assault. He had no idea how to handle it.  And neither will Hillary.

One thing I wonder about is the millennials.   Who’s President when you’re growing up has a big impact on your politics.   I think the kids who came of age under Reagan trended Republican a bit  If you came of age under Bush 2 you trended Democrat.  There are signs that people who came of age under Obama aren’t trending in either direction.  Hillary needs to duplicate Obama’s youth vote.  The tide’s not with her.

Another bright thought for the day is the contrast between First Spouses.  On the one hand, the beautiful, accomplished young mothers, with their beautiful families.  And then there’s Bill.

Who really wants to see that smug punk in the White House again?

Oh, there’s the blacks. They love Bill.  Do they really?  After South Carolina in ’08?  Even if they do, it’s nothing like the way they feel about Obama.  And that is not transferable.

Heidi Cruz is an interesting woman.  The daughter of Seventh Day Adventist missionaries.  She used to go to Africa with them as a kid.  This is Ben Carson’s faith.  She got some fancy business degree in Belgium, then a Harvard M.B.A.  She’s a conservative, taking time off from a budding business career to work on the Bush 2 campaign.

That tells me all I need to know about this woman.  She’s one of us.  And it has nothing to do with her husband.  To do what she did in 2000 is the act of a true believer.  As was her cheerful agreement to spend their entire life savings on Ted’s improbable Senate run.

This is a true power couple.  A woman as smart, and politically involved, as Heidi Cruz could do any number of things as first lady.  Right now she’s spending ten hours a day calling donors, trying to get them to max out.  This is one of the worst things to do in politics.  Everybody hates it.  And she just wades in.  What a gal.

Ted’s a very lucky guy.

 

If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, get an ugly girl to marry you.  That’s what the song said, back when I was a kid.  Nobody paid it any attention of course.  But it reminds me of the Dance of the Two Cubans.  Do  we choose the sly dog, the hunk, the Lothario?  Or do we go with the guy who can’t dance, but actually knows what he’s doing?

It’s 1960 all over again, with Rubio playing the dashing, elegant John F. Kennedy, and Cruz stuck with the part of the dour, humorless Tricky Dick Nixon.

I’m going with Nixon, just like I did 55 years ago.  But I certainly see why others choose differently.  For me, the best case scenario is a Cruz/Rubio ticket.  We absolutely have to get Florida, and if you’re pursuing a turn-out-the-base strategy, as Cruz is, Florida is harder to get than the other must win, Ohio.  (Hispanics).  If Rubio loses, I want it done with dignity, and that’s what I expect.  Marco, to his credit, is leaving the Senate.  He needs a gig.  He claims to be Cruz’s friend, and for all we know it could be true.  If Cruz has won fair and square I bet Marco accepts.  He can deliver Florida.  And John Kasich, despite his faults, is a loyal party man.  He’ll do all he can in Ohio, and he’s got a very good organization there.  If Ohio and Florida come around, the next big prize is Virginia, a state that is evolving politically.  It is possible to win without Virginia, but it’s a narrow path.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Rubio or Cruz is probably going to win this thing by the middle of April.  (Discussions of brokered conventions are a way to kill time).  They immediately pivot to the general.  This what we at the BBA Task Force hope to offer them.  We will have, Lord willing, picked up West Virginia, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Idaho, for a total of 32 states.  We only need two more, South Carolina and Arizona.  The Republican nominee will have enough juice to get both of them for us.  These are both solid red states, with strong Republican legislative majorities.  If the next President makes clear he wants it done, it could get done.  We’re at 34, Congress sets the time and place of the Amendment Convention , and off we go.

This is an optimistic take, but within the realm of reason.  The main point is that if we get to 32 we have to be taken seriously.  And, for a Republican Presidential nominee, we are pure gold.  We’re about balancing the  budget, which is supported by supermajorities in both parties.  And we’re about taking power away from the federal government and returning it to the states, and the people.  If that message doesn’t ring true today, then I’m a complete moron and you should stop wasting your time reading this blog.

Speaking of which, my AT article of today, on Cruz’s electability, was posted over at Lucianne.com by a guy named, I believe, B. J. O’Sullivan, aka Kerryman.  Lucianne has about the same number of viewers as AT, so when I get posted there my readership probably doubles.  So, thanks much, B. J.  I owe you a beer.

So, so few people have really made up their minds for sure.  Harry Enten at 538.com says Trump will get somewhere between 8% and 64% of the vote.  The point he’s trying to make is that the race hasn’t really started.  Trump has the pole, but Cruz is within striking distance, and Rubio’s right there too.  Anything can happen.  You think you know, but you don’t.

The Lord gave us free will. What happens is up to us.

For political veterans, much of what we’re starting to hear about Ted Cruz has an eerily familiar ring.  Too extreme.  Unelectable.  Scares people. A radical, not a conservative.

The American people will hear a lot about Cruz’s extremism in the year ahead, just as they were told about Reagan’s.  It may cause them to hesitate before supporting him.  But over the course of the campaign they’ll be able to make that determination for themselves.  In fact, Ted Cruz represents the mainstream of conservative thought in this country, just as Reagan did two score years ago.  Reagan’s victory vindicated everything we’d been saying for twenty years.  A Cruz win next year would do so again.

Precisely 36 years ago Reagan was on his way to the Republican nomination.  George Will and  the church ladies of the party were concerned, even trying to lure former President Ford into the race.  Reagan was just too conservative to get elected.    A few years earlier Will had described Reagan’s support as “. . . kamikaze conservatives who thought the 1964 Goldwater campaign was jolly fun.”  The reasonable, establishment Republicans settled on Bush 1 as their candidate, and it was game on.  Marco Rubio is, or will be, their choice this time.  Same song, same singers.

Even those of us in the Reagan campaign had concerns.  In January of 1980 Reagan trailed Carter 62-33.   This in spite of the fact that our embassy in Iran had been overrun, and hostages taken, a couple months before.  Carter had earlier been openly humiliated by Brezhnev in Afghanistan.  A weak economy, and soaring inflation, combined to give us the worst of both worlds, stagflation.  The previous summer  Carter had complained to the American people about their malaise.  He seemed to be over his head.  In the face of all these troubles, Carter still had a 2-1 lead.  Reagan was too extreme.

 

The rest is up at American Thinker.  Here’s the link.

With three successive polls propelling him into the RCP polling average lead in Iowa, Ted Cruz has gotten to the Donald.   When Dr. Carson had the lead, Trump started making cracks about his religion.  Iowans value niceness, and this cost Trump.  Now he says Cruz is a bit of a maniac in the Senate, lacking the needed temperament.  It hardly needs stating, but for irreligious Donald Trump to impugn Ben Carson’s religion, and now the Wild Man of American Politics to talk of another’s instability   — this is beyond parody.

It will represent an opportunity cost to Trump.  Don’t look for him to slip much in the polls.  He’s got a bit of a cult going.  The gold plate DMR poll by Iowa wizard Ann Selzer didn’t show him going down.  He went up a couple.  But he is in the process of destroying any opportunity to go up any further.  He’s putting in a ceiling.  If you’re not on board the Trump Train, you probably never will be.

I never for one minute thought Trump would win the nomination, and the events of the last few days have fortified my conviction.  The peak in Trump enthusiasm among the press has just occurred.   There’s always that one guy who buys at the very top of the market.

The one guy Cruz needs to watch out for is Mitch McConnell.  Mitch is in a position to mess with him, and he will.  He already has.  He finds out when Cruz is scheduled for a big appearance, and then schedules a vote that Cruz can’t miss.  And any vote that McConnell might think would hurt Cruz will be scheduled.  Anything that hurts Rubio won’t be voted on.

Cruz needs to be very careful with the budget omnibus bill that’s being worked out.  McConnnell and Ryan will try to set him up somehow.  In fact, I’m sure one of the considerations of what goes into the omnibus, and what stays out, is based on whether it would hurt or help Cruz.  That’s how these guys think.  Virtually the entire Congressional Republican leadership, House and Senate, will try to come up with some legislative maneuver which puts Cruz in a pickle.  It may be a vote on NSA spying.  Who knows?  Cruz has proven to me is that he’s a brilliant guy.  He wouldn’t have a chance if he wasn’t.

I’ve got Cruz’s book, A Time for Truth, to read over the holidays.  I’ll learn a few things.  If he pulls this off, it will be the political master stroke of my lifetime.  Not that he’s a first term Senator.  Rather, this is all part of a plan that he conceived when he ran for the Senate in 2012.  He figured the whole thing out.  How to get the notoriety, and the money, and the organization, and put a top notch national campaign in place, and all the while put himself in a position, politically, to win.  I can’t think of anybody that’s pulled that off.   Even if you don’t like him, you have to be impressed.

This bodes well for his administration.  He knows what he’s doing.  He doesn’t make mistakes.  The lack of executive experience shouldn’t be too much of a problem for him.  You can hire people to do that stuff.  He”ll have bigger fish to fry.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  I’m a buyer on Selzer’s poll.  Cruz has got some momentum going.  I doubt anything changes much between now and the new year, when the race really begins.  Cruz has the lead.  Who can catch him, and how?

Rubio’s got the best shot, calling him out as a neoisolationist.  Two bright, articulate guys, having a substantive discussion about serious issues of national security?

I wish.

You don’t have to be that smart to be a good or even great politician.  For some reason I haven’t quite figured out, really smart people  can be astonishly bad at politics.  On the  IQ scale, the disastrous Herbert Hoover, one of the great engineers of the 20th century, is probably right up there with Jefferson.  Lyndon Johnson was a great politician (in the same sense that Hitler was a great orator) with a mediocre mind, at best.

So when I heard about how smart Ted Cruz is, and what a great lawyer, I was not impressed.  Politics requires a separate, though related, skill set.  When he precipitated the government shutdown in October of 2013 I thought he’d screwed up badly.  It may have cost us an outstanding Governor in Ken Cuccinelli, and elected the odious Terry McCauliffe.  It distracted attention from the unfolding Obamacare website fiasco.  It temporarily hurt the Republican brand.  And it ended in ignominious failure.

And it worked out just fine for Ted Cruz.  In just his first year in the Senate he established himself as the leading insurgent in the United States Congress, willing to take on the entire, thoroughly corrupt, Washington ruling elite.  In that venture, disaster that it was, Ted Cruz made his bones.

And now, on the campaign trail, I continue to be impressed.  I like Cruz, and I don’t mean this disparagingly  —  he reminds me of Nixon.  Now we all know about Nixon’s flaws, but he was a brilliant politician.

How good is Cruz?  He solved the Iowa Republican Riddle, by straddling effortlessly the three rings of Evangelical, Tea Party and Libertarian voters.  That takes some skill.   He’s rewarded tonight by the deservedly prestigious Des Moines Register poll  — Cruz 31, Trump 21.  I’ll bet that’s a very accurate snapshot of Iowa right now.  A lot can change in the next six weeks, but the timing of this is absolutely perfect for Cruz.  Not too early, just right.  Things wind down soon for Christmas, and over the holidays this is where he stands.  The favorite to win Iowa.  Nice.

The debate on Tuesday could change things, but I’m pretty confident it will only reinforce them.  Syrian refugees has got to be a big topic, and Cruz has placed himself in the best possible position, politically.  It’s like, if I’m Ted Cruz things could not possibly be set up more perfectly.

I’m a big fan of Rubio, but he’s in the process of blowing it on this Syrian refugee thing.  He’s taking way too soft a line.  This can hurt him, especially.  His Gang of Eight Bill may have been forgiven, but it’s not forgotten.  He needs to be strong on all things immigration.   He’s playing to the establishment on this one, and it’s being noticed.

It’s pretty apparent where this is heading.  Everybody’s lining up behind Rubio  — Fox News, the neocons, and the establishment.  Cruz is on his own, with talk radio as his media outlet.

I’m with Cruz on this, but then I’m pretty hard core.  I really don’t dislike Rubio  –I’d take him in a heartbeat.

And I think Cruz wins it.  He’s really thought this through.  And he’s executing.  He’s out on the trail, busting his ass, doing something that doesn’t come naturally to him.

I admire him for  this.  Most people don’t have any political skill, and seem awkward when they try.  He’s one of them, but he doesn’t care.  He’s good enough.

I think that’s a sign of character.