Miscellaneous

You better not pout, you better not cry, but Texas Ted Cruz is the odds on favorite to be our next President.

When Ted Cruz talks the conservative talk I hear a man who is saying what is in his heart.  He’s not telling us what we want to hear.  He believes it all just as much as we do.  And when he’s elected he’ll take the hard and unavoidable fights head on.  He won’t back down.

He’s smart as a whip.  He can do the job.  A lot will depend on who he surrounds himself with.  He’ll want a bunch of very smart, tough minded men and women.  They’re available.  Will he have the skill to be their leader?  He can’t do it all himself.

I guess my personal problem with Cruz has always been just that, personal.  I like to think of myself as an easy going, Marco Rubio kind of guy.  I have trouble liking uptight guys like Cruz.  It’s not that his intelligence is any kind of turnoff.  I guess it’s because he seems so cocksure of himself.  He comes across as a little arrogant.  Has he ever admitted to a fault, or misjudgement?

That’s a problem, politically.  But in 2016 it’s one we can overcome.  As a libertarian conservative, his politics fit nicely with mine.  What finally brought me around is his refusal to reenter the Mideast quagmire.  Carpet bomb the bastards back to the stone age  — not much of a distance, really.  But don’t send an American army to fight in Arab civil wars, for God’s sake!  Insanity, refined.

His reaction to Trump’s ban on Muslims was the only one that made sense, politically.  Maybe a third of this country agrees with Trump.  These are voters.  You don’t want to piss them off.  So you politely disagree with Trump and offer a reasonable, but very tough, plan of your own.  Was that so hard to do?

For just about every other candidate, it was.  There’s something about politicians that gets them up on their high horse, preaching self righteousness.  It satisfies their emotional needs, somehow.  It’s a status thing.  Look at me, and see how much better a person I am.

While Cruz has never been, personally, my cup of tea, Trump is a guy I just don’t like at all.  So I underestimate him, like everyone else.  This ban the Muslims idea was, tactically, brilliant.  Once again, Trump is all anyone is talking about.   A week from tonight they debate in Vegas.   People will once again tune in to see Trump.  We’ll be looking for fireworks.   Some of these guys were very harsh in their criticism.  Will they repeat it to his face?  How will he react?

Reality TV, baby.  It gets the ratings.

Just don’t confuse ratings with votes.

I’ll admit to having a bit of of a man crush on Marco Rubio.  But that’s not why I’ve been rooting for him.  If he’s our nominee we’d have the best natural politician since Jack Kennedy.  He’s just so good with the ladies  — compare his support from women with Cruz’s.

Which got me thinking back to 1960.  I shook hands and looked in the eyes of both Kennedy and Nixon.*  Kennedy was just a cool guy.  You couldn’t help but like him.   Nixon was, well, Nixon.  He had no interpersonal skills.  Not very many people actually liked Nixon, and if you met him you knew why.

In a close race, such as 1960, the likability factor will make the difference.  So, go with Rubio, right?  Except I am completely convinced, barring black swans, that 2016 isn’t going to be close at all.  It’s going to be a blowout.  We could nominate Christie or Kasich and still win.

Cruz just doesn’t have the natural people skills that really good politicians have.  He’s no Nixon, but he comes across as kind of phony.  Because he’s not really being himself.  This guy’s a brainiac who enjoys the company and conversation of equally intelligent people.  He didn’t marry a hottie, like Rubio did.  He married a woman who may be as smart as he is.

It’s not that he doesn’t like people.  He does.  But he’d rather not be pretending to be palsy walsy with every hog farmer he runs across in Iowa.  And it shows.  What also shows is that he is a tightly disciplined man, uptight, as we used to say.  His mannerisms seem to be copied from someone else.

This is a flaw in a candidate, but not necessarily in a man.  Most men can’t go around kissing babies all day and pretend they’re having a gay old time.  I’ve known some outstanding men, who would have done a tremendous job in office, if they could get elected.  Lacking strong political skills is not a disqualifier, in my opinion.

And to hear his Senate colleagues tell it, he’s an arrogant asshole.  Well, so are most of them.

I’m a lawyer, and let me give you a tip.  Don’t hire a nice guy to be your lawyer.  Hire an asshole.  Maybe the same thing goes as President.

And here’s another thing about the 1960 election between Mr. Charming and the Rat.  We’d have been a hell of a lot better off if Nixon had won.  Kennedy, with all the good intentions in the world,  stumbled and fumbled so badly in foreign policy that he wound up getting us into Vietnam.  There is no way Nixon would have let that happen.  So much for pretty boys in the Presidency.

So Rep. McCaul, Chair of House Intelligence, reports that ISIS has been trying to use the refugee program to infiltrate us. So Trump puts out a statement calling for the prevention of any Muslim from getting into the country.   Kasich and Bush and Christie are horrified.

Advantage, Trump.  He’s a little overboard, but at least he’s headed in the right direction.  If Cruz or Rubio are smart, they would respond not by condemning Trump but by coming up with their own, more realistic ways to restrict travel from certain Muslim countries.  Sen. Paul’s amendment in the Senate last week is a good example.

I don’t envy Paul Ryan.  He is in a very delicate situation.  This will be a real test of his political skills. I don’t think he’s operated at this level before.  If there is one thing I think he should insist on including in the budget omnibus it’s a temporary halt to the Syrian refugee program.  If Obama refuses to accept that, and promises a veto, take him up on it.  If he wants to shut down the government rather than restrict Syrian immigration, let him do it.

That is a fight he would lose, and would be the effective end of his Presidency.

 

*Well, actually I didn’t see Nixon until 1966.

A new CNN poll shows Rubio beating Hillary 49-48.  The internals show him beating her 60-37 among whites.  This is very much in line with the scenario I outlined yesterday, using 538.com’s election do-hickey, where the Republican wins with a 2% increase in support of whites, and a small decrease in black support.  This is unpredictive, but useful.  It’s a sign that the 538.com tool works as advertised.

 

 

One of the most important jobs in a national campaign is targeting — where do you allocate your resources?  This is where 538.com’s nifty election tool really comes in handy.  Once you start playing with it one thing becomes clear:  the Electoral College Blue Wall of the Democrats isn’t a wall at all.  Even with their creeping demographic advantage, in 2016 it’s a facade.

Yesterday I ran a simulation adjusting only the black and non-college white (NCW) demographic groups from the 2012 results, adjusted for demographic change.  Evening out both of their turnout percentages back to historical averages, 60%, lowering the black Democrat vote to 90% and increasing the NCW Republican vote from 62%  to 66% gives you IA, OH, FL, and VA  — 272 Electoral Votes.

Maybe a four point jump in the NCW Republican vote is too ambitious.  How about just a two point increase in the total white vote, college and non-college?  If you also decrease the black Democrat vote from the absurdly high 93% down to a realistic 89% you also pick up Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, for a total of 296 Electoral Votes.

So if I’m plotting my general election strategy, I want to hold on to my percentages in the Hispanic and Asian/other categories and concentrate on the white voters of, first, IA, OH, FL and VA.  Second tier targets are Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

Read the rest at American Thinker.  Here’s the link.

 

Obama’s giving a speech this evening.  More mush from the wimp.  I’m hoping he talks a lot about gun control.  This one issue could easily win the election next year.  The states that are the key in 2016 all have a lot of NCW’s who are either members or sympathizers of the NRA.  Depending on where you live, and who you socialize with, you may not realize how big this issue can be.

When I moved to Alaska in 1974 I didn’t have any idea how strong the gun rights movement is.  I was a urban California boy, who’d done a little hunting and target shooting, but it wasn’t a big thing to me.  When I ran for the legislature my friend Rick Halford told me to become a life member of the NRA.  If you were a Republican politician in Alaska, that’s what you did.  Babbie and I didn’t have a lot of money at the time, and $500 was a big deal.  But I did it, and it was the best political money I ever spent.

There are a whole lot of guys, and not just in Alaska, who take gun ownership very, very seriously.  I’ve become one myself.  These are, or can be, single issue voters.  I’ll even bet there will be more Second Amendment single issue voters than there are on abortion.  Politically, it’s a very big deal.

O’Hillary has declared war on the NRA.  The NRA is at war with her.  If you don’t think this issue can deliver Pennsylvania and the other target states I think you’re uninformed.

Roger Simon at PJ Media has even joined up.  Welcome aboard, Roger.  When you get an old Jewish Hollywood screenwriter on board, you’re on to something.

This is how most American men react to something like San Bernadino.  We think of defending ourselves and our families.  We don’t think about how calling 911 might help.  I decided today to get the Glock I’ve always wanted.  Gun sales are going to jump.  NRA membership will get a boost.

How do you think guys like that feel when they see Hillary raving on about gun control?  What are you, woman, nuts?

For me, the attitudes of the coastal elites are something of a mystery.  Maybe it’s part of being a metrosexual.

There will never be real gun control in this country.  If such a law was passed, it would be ignored, and if attempts were made to enforce it there would either be secession or civil war.

What, specifically, were the Minutemen of 1775 defending?  Their armament.  The British attempt at gun control sparked the Revolutionary War.  Let’s not let that happen again.

This made a big impression on me, that the young Moslem woman in San Bernadino was given a baby shower by her husband’s co-workers, none of whom she actually knew.  They were strangers welcoming her into their community.  They gave her gifts for her new baby.  Six months later she walks in to his workplace and guns down these self same women.

In the name of Allah.

There are other young Muslim women out there just like her, who will be inspired by her.  There’s no way to tell which ones they are.

Explain to me, once more, why we want to let these people into our country?

 

 

It was only a few months ago when we had seventeen candidates.  And for some time now it’s been clear that the final would be an all Cuban face off.  Trump may still be standing this spring when it gets down to either Rubio or Cruz.  If so, either one will dispatch him with relative ease.  Trump’s not a serious candidate; he’s a joke  — a vulgar showman, and a crude bully.

Rubio is the finest natural politician on the national stage since John F. Kennedy.  Cruz is an arrogant and off putting man.  He’s got that tinge of fundamentalism about him.  He’s a hard man to like.  Because Rubio is by far the superior candidate, he’s been my choice all along.  A Rubio/Hillary election would be a mismatch.

But Cruz could win as well.  Maybe not by quite the margin that Rubio would win by, but a clear and convincing win.  He’s not that great a candidate, but Hillary’s a disaster.

I have to admit that, on substance, Cruz is a stronger and more consistent conservative.  Yesterday he voted for a  Rand Paul amendment that would have suspended visas and green cards from 30 Muslim countries with jihadi connections.  Rubio voted no, and it failed 10-89.  I think that was a mistake, though I’ll await his explanation.

I haven’t researched it myself, but Cruz says Rubio supported the coup in Libya against Khaddafi.  Major screw up.  Poor judgment.

Rubio is also apparently committed to taking out Assad in Syria.  This is also unwise.  We took out Hussein in Iraq, and Khadadafi in Libya.  How much good did that do us?  What makes us think that Assad’s replacement will be any better?  Are you sure of that?  How can you be?

Rubio is looking like a neoconservative lap dog.  He got fooled into sponsoring the Gang of Eight immigration bill, and it blew up in his face, and that error is the main obstacle to his winning the nomination.   Now he’s toeing the neoconservative line in Syria, another major mistake that he’s somehow been talked into.  This could be a problem in the general.  If the voters think Rubio is too eager to get back into the Mideast quagmire, it could cost him.  And if he’s elected and gets into another messy war, we’ll all suffer.

But I like Rubio, and I can’t bring myself to like Cruz.  He has no humility, a big liability for a politician.  He’s always got to be the smartest guy in the room.  He’s a self righteous, goody two shoe kind of guy who was undoubtedly the number one chalk board monitor in grammar school, a teacher’s pet kind of guy.  Something’s wrong with any guy that Alan Dershowitz likes.  He seems like a kiss ass, to be crude.

But you don’t have to be a nice guy to be a great President.  James K. Polk was one of the most successful Presidents in our history, and when you read his diaries you realize he’s an insecure,  paranoid little man.  Other examples abound.

It reminds me of when I was trying to talk my neighbor Norm out of voting for Wally Hickel for Governor.  I knew Hickel.  He was an a-hole, as I was able to demonstrate.  I’ll never forget Norm’s response.

So?