Super Tuesday is now in the rear view mirror, we have a
debate this evening, and chaos reigns supreme.
As the stunned Brady said in “Jaws” after getting a first glimpse “you’re
gonna need a bigger boat.”
The Republicans have brought out Mitt Romney.
This is not a knock on Romney, who would make a far better
President than any candidate, current or in deep freeze, in this cycle. The problem is that he’s the wrong
weapon. I doubt that there’s a single
Trump voter who cares in the least about what Mitt Romney has to say, and I would
hazard a guess that there are few Cruz voters who would care either.
But the choice of Romney to carry this particular message
tells you that the GOP still doesn’t understand that the nature of the Trump challenge
is more visceral than it is ideological. Trump supporters show some
commonalities, but aren’t easily pigeonholed—he can actually claim some level
of support across the spectrum. That is why, in part, that appeals from conservative writers and talk show hosts, as
well as the candidates themselves, who claim Trump isn’t a conservative are probably
missing the point. The voters choosing
Trump don’t care whether he has a perfect rating from the American Conservative
Union—because they probably don’t either. They don’t want some bloodless apparatchik
offering a sermon. And, they aren’t looking for Romney-style Six Sigma
governance. They are tired of process
arguments. They don’t care if the
factory floor is messy. They can live with manufacturing defects.
Trump voters are looking for a little muscle, at home and
abroad. They are tired of waiting and of
coddling people who they don’t think deserve it. The “don’t deserve it” groups are
far-ranging, but idiosyncratic. Trump voters aren’t Paul Ryan entitlement reform
folk. They aren’t looking for position
papers written by conservative think-tanks.
Donald Trump, in the words of MASH’S Colonel Potter, is “meatball
surgery”, and that’s the kind they want done to the political system. In their minds, you don’t worry about how the
scar might look when the patient is bleeding to death.
If the appeal to intellect doesn’t work, what does that
leave you? Perhaps Trump will go too
far, even by Trump standards. The KKK
flap didn’t help—it might very well have cost him some “late decider” votes on
Super Tuesday. Perhaps tonight’s debate
will move the needle—Trump is going to be attacked from all sides—including by
the moderators—and he really does lack any sophisticated knowledge of domestic
or foreign policy. Perhaps one of the
three remaining candidates, Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich, can emerge as a credible
one-on-one threat. Perhaps all this institutional
rejection by prominent Republicans will actually begin to have an impact. Perhaps the enormous amount of money about to
be spent on anti-Trump ads will have an effect.
Perhaps, as some Republicans have been pushing for the last few days,
Cruz and Rubio will form a fusion ticket.
And if all else fails, perhaps Rubio and Kasich will win their own
states, and between the three of them they will amass enough delegates to block
Trump in the first round of the convention.
That is a lot of perhapses. But the dynamic may not be
right—in large part because not only does the GOP not have the right message to
reach Trump voters, but they don’t have the right candidates. Rubio is regressing towards childhood. Kasich just isn’t competitive in a sufficient
number of states and clearly not part of the Trump vibe. Cruz is a very effective regional candidate—but
his “SEC’ strategy fell somewhat short on Super Tuesday—he should be dominating
in the South. And the three of them are
still squabbling amongst themselves, with Rubio complaining Kasich cost him
Virginia and Cruz still the same snide, disagreeable person he’s always been.
There are a lot of smart people who have done this math far
better than I can. Some are mentally preparing to hold their ears and tepidly
support Trump (there’s a school of thought among Congressional Republicans that
Donald is so lacking in basic knowledge that he can be led to sign on to
anything they propose) or to hold their noses and back Cruz, on the theory that
he’s least a down-the-line conservative that will deliver policy victories for
them. Capitulation rather than resistance.
But, there is real fear as well. Go too far with the anti-Donald trope, and
you may alienate too much of his constituency. Grab the nomination at the
convention through tricks and rules, and he could run as a third party. And, should he survive those, send him into
the General Election after splattering him with mud, and you could kill off
multiple wrong birds with one stone: You might permanently alienate a great
many voters with the manifest ugliness of some of the worst of his rhetoric, cause
a tremendous amount of down-ballot damage, and blow an opportunity to pick off
an incredibly vulnerable Democratic candidate.
Fun times. Next up, tonight’s debate.
Then, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Maine on Saturday. Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan, and Mississippi on
March 8th, and, on Judgment Day, May 15th, Florida, Ohio, Illinois,
North Carolina, and Missouri.
Those, round-the-clock criticism, and hundreds of millions
of dollars in advertisements will be enough to bring down the Great White?
Maybe—or maybe we need an even bigger boat.
Michael
Liss (Moderate Moderator)
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