Posted on 05/31/2016 1:47:35 PM PDT by Beautiful_Gracious_Skies
A political party that allows 17 candidates to compete for its presidential nomination is not a serious political party. A political party that allows its would-be presidents to debate one another silly—and I mean that in every sense of the term—is failing in its job, too.....
Despite the Republican Party’s fatuous and grueling process, however, the voters learned some valuable things. The vast field contained many accomplished politicians, few truly distinguished ones; the senators (Cruz, Graham, Paul, Rubio, Santorum) were young or implausible, the governors (Bush, Christie, Jindal, Gilmore, Huckabee, Kasich, Pataki, Perry, Walker) successful but too numerous, stale, or busy for their own good. There was not the man of “continental character” that the framers had hoped would stand out. That left the “outsiders” or amateur politicians (Carson, Fiorina, Trump). The governors, with their records of domestic reform, dominated the early betting.
As foreign policy issues (Russia, China, and the Middle East) flared up,... the senators (except Rand Paul) enjoyed a surge. Only Kasich,.. Cruz and Rubio emerged... ; and the outsiders set the tone for the whole cycle. Dr. Ben Carson and businessman Donald J. Trump sat atop the polls for months. Carson’s support finally melted away, leaving Cruz and Rubio (ignoring Kasich, as non-Ohio voters tended to do) to battle for the honor of saving the party from Trump. Cruz outlasted Rubio, but in the end the man he had patronized for months as “my friend Donald” defeated him handily. Trump defeated them all handily.
Conservative Minds
What, if anything, can conservatives learn from Trump and from this episode? What, if anything, could he learn from us for the fights ahead…always assuming that he is willing to learn? To find out, conservatives will have to engage him. The Never Trump movement may be an understandable, even honorable reaction to the startling victory of a Johnny-come-lately Republican who never enjoyed a deep allegiance to the conservative movement.... Conservatives care too much about the party and the country to wash our hands of this election. A third-party bid would be quixotic. That leaves taking the measure of Trump, and offering advice and help, whether or not he has the sense to take it. Conservatives’ duty, in the last case, includes taking precautions, too, to the extent possible, against the possibilities of betrayal or failure that cannot be ruled out in any untested presidential office-holder and especially in this one.
To abstain in 2016, in hopes of stimulating a recovery of full-throated conservatism in 2020, is sheer desperation, ignoring the weaknesses in the multiple forms of doctrinaire conservatism on offer in this cycle: libertarianism (Paul), social conservatism (Huckabee, Santorum, Carson, Jindal), compassionate conservatism (Bush, Kasich), “reform” (Rubio), neoconservative foreign policy (Graham), self-styled “true” conservatism (Cruz). None succeeded in capturing the Republican imagination.
Trump helped to expose some of the problems latent in the current conservative movement and its agenda—without necessarily solving any of them. Aging baby-boomer conservatives are not that interested in sweeping reforms of Social Security; and the candidates’ evasiveness on how they would “replace” Obamacare, while hardly noble, is entirely understandable, given how difficult it will be just to keep the promises made by the pre-Obama welfare state, much less those added by a post-Obama one. (Trump finessed the problem by simply declaring Social Security and Medicare off limits to cuts, and pledging to unleash an American economy dynamic enough to grow us out of the problem.)
Ted Cruz’s proposal to abolish the Internal Revenue Service fit the pattern: face large and intractable problems like the cost of government and the national debt by proposing a large and utopian solution to a different problem. No one expected Cruz’s plan to be enacted, of course. It was a symbolic affirmation of “true” conservatism, just like the government shutdown. In general, many conservative “solutions” floated untethered from any political strategy that could have gathered sufficient popular and legislative support to enact them. It is always tempting for politicians to will the ends without willing the means.
Only in our age do we call this idealism, however, or, in Cruz’s favorite formulation, devotion to principle.... It was Cruz, more than any other Republican, who throughout 2014 and 2015 led the populist revolt against the party leadership, exhorting the conservative rank-and-file to distrust, despise, and depose the party’s grandees. It must be admitted that the leaders were of considerable help to him. Still, in 2014 the GOP won historic victories in the Senate, in the House, and especially in state governorships and legislative seats. These wins could have been interpreted, with a little moderation and a few tactical victories, as downpayment, as preparation for the coup de grâce to be administered to the Democrats in 2016. Instead, expectations soared and crashed, embittering relations within the party and leading to a kind of crisis of legitimacy. This, in turn, prepared the way for an outsider, who turned out to be not Cruz but Trump.
It is a fairly long article and a very comprehensive read on Trump, the election, the party, and where we are headed.
It will be followed by separate posts from Kesler's same article because these topics will generate different interests and discussion.
Debate and grass roots democracy is silly? Far better than the job the Dummies do, which is a coronation.
Like many others, they fancy their role as offering sage advice to the Vulgarian and his vulgarian followers. What's most helpful would be for the self-identified keepers of the conservative faith to stop talking and start listening.
He's correct that Trump is the next stage of the Tea Party.
By now, it should be obvious to the most narrow of views.
The current election is not about being or not being “conservative”
The election is about making America great again and petty parochial agendas are put aside for later. The primary agenda is saving America
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