12/26/15
Concerned Republicans of a more mainstream bent are
apoplectic at the idea of Donald Trump’s
getting their Party’s nomination and thus forcing the Party to do a 52 years later
redux of 1964. The professional Republicans are urging
marginal candidates to withdraw so that the mainstreamers can unite behind one
candidate to topple Trump. Before
people continue their backroom plotting to “save the Party,” they ought to get
a clearer understanding of the numbers involved, a tighter handle on what keeps
campaigns alive, a more acute sense of the mind of a politician, and, most of
all, a calendar. This being the time of
the year that it is, hopes are strong that at least the last will have been
achieved. The first three, though, remain
problematical.
Those thinking that a moderate champion could emerge from
the disparate GOP field surely can see that if one adds the poll numbers of
Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz, i.e., the “unconventional”
candidates, one can surely see that they add to more than 50% of the polled
electorate. So a “mainstream”
alternative would still not marshal the numbers needed to defenestrate Mr.
Trump if those pining for somebody different do the logical thing and support
Mr. Trump in a head-to-head contest with the usual milquetoast type of
candidate the GOP leadership mistakenly seems to think should inflame the
positive passions of the electorate.
Maybe those who support the self-winnowing of the field think Mr. Carson will stay in the race and split
what those middling types consider the whacko vote. Or maybe those singing odes to the banality
that is professional Republicanism are getting to the point at which they are
willing to consider Mr. Cruz one of
them, at least on a relative basis.
Even if the moderates think the numbers will change and
their moderation will prevail, they ought to consider what motivates a
politician to drop out of a presidential race:
money. One can bet that those
who have already left the race…Rick
Perry, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, and perhaps some other notable that I
have missed…left because their money dried up.
And one can also bet, perhaps only a bit less surely, that the “smart”
money’s having rallied early behind the increasingly pathetic Jeb Bush is what kept Mitt Romney from throwing his hat back
into the now familiar ring. As long as
the money is available, these guys are going to stay on the campaign
trail. Why go back to a real job when
one can make a living addressing adoring crowds in events staged in figurative,
and perhaps literal, echo chambers? Why
struggle away actually doing something that might benefit society, and one’s
own net worth, when one can spend one’s days basking in the sycophancy of those
who want to stay on the payroll and the “crowds” they fabricate? Yes,
the campaign trail is grueling, but it sure beats working for a living. As long as the money is available to bask in
unceasing adulation, with an occasional somewhat dull barb tossed in to keep one’s
name in the paper, why do anything else?
Surely, the concerned GOPers tell themselves, the walking
dead among the GOP candidates will leave the field for “the good of the party.” Right.
These people, whose most salient characteristic is an outsized ego, will
take one for the team. Uh-huh. And Jesse
Ventura is going to come out of retirement and join with yours truly to
take the WWE tag team title. No. As
long as the money is there, these professional
narcissists are going to make their livings basking in the faux adulation of the
hastily assembled.
Most of all, though, those who are wringing their hands in
certainty that a Trump nomination is inevitable ought to consult the calendar. It is still 2015 for at least a few
days. We are still six weeks away from
the first real contest of the campaign, the Iowa caucuses, which Mr. Trump will
probably lose. (See TRUMP, THE “REVERSE BRADLEY EFFECT,” AND THE MAN’S UPCOMING LOSS IN IOWA, 12/23/15). If history is any guide, that a particular
candidate is leading at this stage of the race means nothing; ask Presidents Rockefeller, Connelly, Muskie, Perry, and
Hillary Clinton. It’s way too early
to be making predictions, for anything transcending entertainment value, about
the ultimate outcome of the nomination fight.
The only exception, as my regular readers already know, is the now
months old prediction of yours truly that you should take to the bank: Carly
Fiorina is going to be on the GOP ticket.
See THEONE INESCAPABLE CONCLUSION FROM THE SEPTEMBER GOP DEBATE, 9/18/15. I
have already bet a beef sandwich on this proposition and, for yours truly,
those are pretty high stakes.
Those GOPers lamenting the fate of their Party with Mr.
Trump as its standard-bearer might also calm down for other reasons, but that
is grist for a later mill.
