Posted on 11/28/2015 1:51:19 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
America’s short-term Trump problem will end in Iowa.
As I wrote yesterday, I think America is facing a two-fold Trump problem. The proximate problem is that Donald Trump has been the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination since this summer, and the durability of his support suggests that he could in fact be the party’s nominee. The underlying problem is that America has a two-party political system, and one of the parties is receptive to a candidate such as Trump.
I don’t have a solution to the latter problem. But the former problem, the proximate Trump problem, is going to be resolved soon enough, as follows: Ted Cruz is now tied with Trump in Iowa. On February 1st, if not before, Trump’s dreams of winning the White House will be destroyed. To unpack that, let me review what we know about Trump and Cruz.
Trump is a candidate whose entire pitch, such as it is, rests on the illusion that he is a winner. He claims to be a successful businessman; in reality, he would have been better off investing the money he inherited in an index fund forty years ago. He claims to know more about ISIS “than the generals doâ€; in reality, the little he knows about the armed services is drawn from his experience at a military-themed boarding school. He thinks that he has “better†hair than Marco Rubio; I mean, can a sentient adult offer a straight-faced response to that?
We already know how Trump responds when his braggadocio is exposed for the posturing it is: he lashes out. He’s still brooding about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, who committed the cardinal sin of asking him questions during a debate. When Ben Carson challenged his status as frontrunner in the polls, Trump responded by flapping his belt around and comparing Carson to a child molester.
Cruz, meanwhile, is a student of Sun Tzu: “Every battle is won before it is fought. It is won by choosing the terrain on which the battle is fought.†He has won unwinnable arguments before. He has won unwinnable elections before. Cruz does not pick fights he doesn’t think he can win, with the asterisk that sometimes he picks fights with an eye to winning the battle rather than the war. His fight to defund Obamacare, for example, was a fight he picked with an eye to winning the Republican nomination in 2016. And Cruz is now in a position to win the Iowa caucus, which is the kind of fight that he is optimally equipped to win: like Rick Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008, his support in the polls is an indicator of the passion of the grassroots conservatives, particularly evangelicals, he has carefully cultivated throughout this campaign.
Trump has two choices. He can withdraw from the race for the Republican nomination prior to Iowa’s vote, on February 1st. If so, he sacrifices the prospect of running as an independent candidate. He pledged not to do so back in September, and has recently suggested (entirely predictably) that he might renege on that pledge. Trump’s stated reason for thinking about breaking his own pledge, however, was as follows: “GOP getting ready to treat me unfairly.†That would be a piteous situation. But for the voters of Iowa to select Cruz over Trump would hardly qualify as unfair treatment on the part of the establishment.
Alternatively Trump can take his chances against Cruz. If so he will come to grief, and he will have no one to blame but himself. Though Trump has more than a dozen rivals for the Republican nomination, none have come so close to earning his approval as Cruz has. Trump has even floated the idea of picking Cruz as his running mate. “Well, I like him,†Trump said last week, and that may be the case. Cruz is nonetheless running for the nomination, not to be Trump’s running mate, and Trump has no chance of dissuading the cold, careful Cruz from that goal.
He voted for TPA, which allowed fast tracking, but not TPP, which was the final version.
So you’d rather keep the bloated government bloated? What kind of conservative are you? Of course some government employees will have to lose jobs if you reduce the size of government. Welcome to the real world.
Detachment from reality syndrome. :-)
I don't buy that...The majority of voters don't buy that...
The jobs have to come first...Thousands upon thousands would lose their homes and cars...The illegals have to go first since we are already burdened with far more labor than we have jobs...And that's not even part of Cruz's plan...As long as there are more jobs than people, wages will be held to poverty level or less...But that's the Republican way of life...
No, Cruz may make it in Iowa but there's no way he can climb any higher than he is right now after Iowa...
The real world is when Cruz gets up there and tells a couple hundred thousand people they will be out of work with no new job in sight and they will cast their vote for someone else...
And here's the real world...I know quite a few people who don't pay a dime in taxes yet receive a bonus from the gov't at tax time from 7 to 9 thousand bucks...Who do you think they are going to vote for??? I'll give you a hint who they are not going to vote for...
She’s a left-wing hack....with a blog called Burka blog.
Tells ya everything you need to know :)
(Drug induced drivel)
Many thanks for that info !
It's NOT going to work; thankfully.
Rather, imagine the bile and vitriol, here, when he wins the nomination.
You need help; go to the nearest psychiatric clinic.
The italicized language you cite certainly points out flaws in Cruz. We are fallen men, including Ted Cruz, and we ALL fall short of the glory o God. DewWorst would NOT have been a better senator. Cruz destroyed him when everyone said it was impossible.
I favor Cruz now that Scott Walker is out of the race. Walker has been a miraculous chief executive of Wisconsin about 6 miles to my north. If Trump is nominated, I will vote for him which is coming a long way since the start of this race. If he were to name Cruz as VPOTUS nominee and vow to use him as a chief of staff, particularly on social issues and judicial nominations, I will vote for him early and often in the venerable Illinois tradition.
Trump and Cruz seem to be getting along fine despite eing rivals for the POTUS nomination. Let their respective supporters act accordingly. We hopefully have an election to win in 2016 and, right now, it looks like it might be an historic victory. Let's keep unnecessary bitterness at bay and unite behind Trump and/or Cruz or both.
The field is winnowing itself down nicely as the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire and other early primaries approach. Soon Pataki, Gilmore, Fiorina, Grahamnesty, Huckabee and many others will get the message and withdraw. Maybe El Jebbe as well. I don't see Dr. Carson lasting a lot longer, good man that he is, since he is not rally ready for prime time. Rubio will last as a candidate because of his back story and because of the stars in his eyes as he describes the future of the USA. He will likely lose because of the Gang of Eight Amnesty blunder.
I find it friggin hilarious that now people who doubted that Cruz could ever win anything in the primary are now coming to grips that he may win Iowa. And now they’re saying that Iowa doesn’t matter and that Cruz won’t win any more primaries after Iowa because Trump will be an automatic lock for all the other states. LOL
OTOH, yes, imagine the gnashing of teeth at Bush Central if the final choice is between Trump and Cruz.
The Shakespearean way of saying this is "Get thee to a headshrinkery."
LOL.....there wasn’t any such think back then; old Willie the Shake would say : “hie thee to an apothecary”, perhaps. :-)
Shakespeare would’ve been a great FReeper!
Perhaps....but maybe he’d be making movies. :-)
“Cutting regulations on business is not going to be nearly enough to brings jobs back..”
Tax policy can also help. Small business is historically the source of most new jobs in the US. Regulatory, tax and trade policies are killing small business. Obamacare (a tax and redistribution scheme) is a huge boat anchor around the neck of growing small businesses. The biggest issue for a growing small business is securing cash to fund growth. Every dollar the US government takes from a small business through taxes or regulations that increase costs restricts growth and hiring.
Most small businesses fail within five years. To keep the economy growing we need many more small business startups each year than failures. Under Obama the number of small business startups has dropped below number of annual failures. This statistic has received almost no attention from the press and our political class but it is a huge canary in the coal mine warning.
Cruz has proposed a 10% flat tax for individuals and 16% on business. This will lower the effective tax rate on small business, plus eliminate the complexity that forces small businesses to waste precious cash hiring accountants and tax lawyers to file taxes and stay out of trouble with the IRS. The 16% business tax will also be applied to imports which will help level the economic playing field for small business. The tax on exports will be removed making US goods more competitive overseas. Plus the death tax (inheritance tax) will be eliminated removing the problem of business continuity when the owner dies. Under today’s tax system, some family businesses must be sold when the owner dies to obtain the cash to pay high death taxes.
Cruz’s tax plan is actually a good start toward reigniting the job growth engine of the economy — small businesses. Regulatory relief will also benefit small business. Small business would also benefit from anti-trust enforcement and decentralization of the banking system (i.e. break up the “too big to fail” banks). It isn’t clear where Cruz stands on anti-trust policy but he did once work for the FTC so he has some knowledge of anti-trust law. As to the big banks, his wife is a Goldman Sachs executive so he may not look favorably on breaking up the New York banking cartel headed by Goldman.
Elimination of Obamacare, another part of Cruz’s platform, will also help small business, particularly those whose growth is causing them to hit the 50 employee threshold where providing employer paid health insurance is a requirement. Hiring the 51st employee results in a business having to provide health insurance to all of its employees. The average cost to an employer in 2014 in the US for employer paid health insurance was $5832. This results in an incremental annual cost to a small business of $297,432 when it hires the 51st employee.
Cruz’s support of TPP may be problematic for small business. Government negotiated trade deals requiring thousands of pages of details are not free trade. Such agreements define advantages given to some economic players and penalties assessed on others. A real “free trade” agreement would require a simple paragraph, not reams of legalese. Any preferences in a trade deal benefiting foreign companies will be harmful to all US businesses, large and small. Our trade deals of the past 25 years have been more harmful to US job creation than helpful. Why would the TPP be any different?
Obviously you haven’t read Cruz’s immigration plan. Deportation is a big part of his plan. Illegal who have broken other laws and illegals on public assistance go first.
We don't need more small businesses...All they provide are part time jobs with minimum wages...We need big business jobs...Manufacturing...That's one of the differences between Trump and Cruz...Cruz is pushing the party line which has been pushed for years and years...And look where that has got us...
Cruz’s tax plan is actually a good start toward reigniting the job growth engine of the economy — small businesses.
It's no start at all...He plans on putting hundreds of thousands of gov't workers out of jobs not the mention the private sector jobs that support these gov't jobs...They will have no need of more small businesses...
It isn’t clear where Cruz stands on anti-trust policy
It's clear to me...He hasn't even mentioned it...Besides that's a Republican issue...Elimination of the anti-trust laws fall right in line with the GOP position of maximum profits for business...It's going to be pretty tough to put the water back into the hose...
Cruz’s support of TPP may be problematic for small business.
It's problematic for all business...Cruz and every other candidate is for unfair trade...Trump is against unfair trade...Anyone who honestly looks at the issue realizes that all this unfair trade scheme is the engine that removes sovereignty of the Unites States as well as other Countries...
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