Presidential politics in post-Rod Dreher America
'Twas the week before Christmas and all through the house
Every zephyr was stirring, more than one could espouse...
So of course I was going to use my definitive Dreher illustration:
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| Rod Dreher creating a synergistic blog post |
I've been waiting for something to stimulate a focused and chewy analysis of our favorite foil, but, face it, as the tags (the inspiration for my little rhyme) to this post reveal, he's basically been reduced to juggling found objects on the street corner, hoping something will draw someone's attention:
Posted in Christianity, Dante, Politics, Presidential politics, Religion, Republicans. Tagged art, church, Commedia, Dante, Eugene Vodolazkin, Gregory Wolfe, Image Journal, Laurus, mystery, Orthodoxy, politics, religion, Republican, The Operation of Grace, Walker Percy.
True, both the Benedict Option and the kitchen sink are missing, but you get the point of Our Working Boy's lunge at
So let's talk politics instead.
First axiom: neither Republicans nor Democrats elect the President. The President is elected by the unaffiliated marginal votes in the middle which flip one way or another at the last minute.
And right now, things are scarier than you might think.
Both the Democrats' debate strategy and the recent DNC data gotcha hit on Bernie Sanders point convincingly to the DNC being all in the tank for Hillary Clinton, preventing even the slightest attack points from Democrat opponents from escaping into the wild. Her Benghazi and email lies have melted away into obscurity for all but Republicans, which, remembering our first axiom, is not enough.
This cycle, the deciding votes in the middle will decide on the basis of which candidate which they despise least makes them feel most secure domestically and internationally.
Right now, love him or hate him, on the Republicans' side, at least according to Republicans polled Donald Trump is exciting twice as many ostensible Republican voters as his nearest rivals; it would be foolish to assume that at least a proportional number of those in the marginal middle don't feel similarly.
Whether polls can translate into caucus and then later actual voters remains to be seen, but it is the inspiration gap itself that is disturbing: while the Democrats' nominee is being served to them like a rubber chicken at a bad luncheon, currently the most measurably inspiring, frontrunning Republican is essentially an alien from another planet.
Behind Trump, all the way around on the other side of the track, Cruz and Rubio are whacking at each other with their batons for second place. At the moment, I tend to view them as two halves of a separated brain, one (Cruz) stronger on immigration - meaning national integrity and national sovereignty itself - the other (Rubio) stronger on international national defense. And even Cruz's immigration stance seems to carry some unsightly weasel hair and dander.
To my mind, and simply dismissing Trump for the moment - which simply cannot be done any longer in real life - neither Rubio nor Cruz can run as the other's Vice President: to land those crucial independents and sufficiently Hillary-disgusted Democrats in the deciding middle, the Republicans have to put a woman on the ticket - Carly Fiorina.
So, to sum up my thoughts and let the rest of you throw your thoughts into the pot:
If your choice gets Hillary elected, your choice is moot.
Rubio, to my mind, is most electable by the largest spectrum of voters not voting for Hillary, but he will essentially be Paul Ryan running for President: you can expect sellout compromises of the sort Ryan just delivered in the recent Omnibus bill.
Cruz is the most fiery conservative and, next to Trump (as presently polled), will most galvanize the Trumpists and the base, but, by that same token, is less likely to land those in the marginal middle.
My bottom line: Rubio + Fiorina still make the best and broadest anti-Hillary package, but Rubio will need a strong, non-Ryan Republican Congress to take back their rightful, constitutionally separate power and force him to execute their will, not, like Obama, legislate from the White House.
And you noticed: I just blew off the Trump problem. Still unsolved.
Yeah, Dreher has been scrambling for a topic and relevance lately. That's what a terrorist attack on US soil will do to an "American" "conservative" these days, I guess.
ReplyDeleteOn the politics, the last debate did to me what it apparently did to no one else in the country: change my mind on whom to support. I found myself agreeing with Rubio on just about everything, and disagreeing with Cruz on the NSA/defense/immigration things.
Having said that, Cruz is landing some blows on Rubio, but I think that Rubio's Gang of 8 folly is already "priced in". OTOH, Cruz's parsing of what his amendment meant is news, and has become more of a topic. IMO neither presents any risk of actually ushering in amnesty, so this is mostly a McGuffin.
If Rubio does win, he'll need someone to bolster his cred with the purists. I think Fiorina would do that, and also defuse the gender politics issue, so your ticket is a good one.
P.S. The recent omnibus package is a non-issue except to those in the business of yelling about it. The populace has very low expectations of Congress in the first place, and the presidential race is dominating attention.
P.P.S. I still have faith that Trump will fade rapidly when the one remaining non-Jeb challenger starts taking aim.
As an unaffiliated marginal voter, I think it would be foolish to assume Trump would get more than a margin of error's worth of unaffiliated marginal votes, and that's assuming the drunken college students remember to mail their absentee ballots.
ReplyDeleteIf the tore-up-my-GOP-card-in-disgust voters aren't already included in Trump's poll numbers, though, I suppose they'd be worth a few percentage points on Election Day, which would narrow Clinton's popular vote victory.
Eventually enough of these Trump statements will do him in. Or so I hope -- after all, this is a nation that re-elected Obama.
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