On Super Tuesday the rumbling of the tectonic plates
underneath the Republican Party rocked political seismometers from
Massachusetts to Virginia and on through the south. When the quake was over and the Richter scales
measured, the political cognoscenti (among whom my brother is becoming the cognoscenti-est) announced that the game
was over. The math and the momentum were inexorable; Donald Trump would be the
Republican nominee.
Then, the aftershocks began. The explosions from Donald
Trump’s Super Tuesday sweep have concussed the Republican Party, leaving it
traumatized by Post-Trumpatic Stress Disorder.
This particular form of PTSD can cause irrational behavior,
lashing out in sudden fits of rage, nightmarish flashbacks, and an inability to
cope with reality.
Irrational behavior? That
would be the Republican establishment’s astonishingly frank acknowledgement
that the only hope is to actively thwart
the will of their voters by taking calculated steps to deny Trump the
delegates he needs to sew up the necessary majority before the convention
begins. Literally, this means consolidating establishment resources to help
Rubio and Kasich win their respective delegate-rich home states. But publicly announcing that you intend to
circumvent the apparent will of the party faithful? Not even the fascist pigs in Animal Farm exhibited that level of
Machiavellian manipulation.
Lashing out in fits of rage? How
about the acknowledgment that the Super PACs were lining up to fund scorched
earth anti-Trump ad campaigns in Florida and Ohio. Just think about the implications
of this for a moment. These two states – along with Pennsylvania – are consistently
viewed as the most vital swing states in the November presidential election. So
Republican Party PACs are about to spend millions and millions of dollars in an
attempt to annihilate their front-running candidate in two states that the
Republicans will be desperate to win just months from now.
Inability to cope with reality?
Well, that brings me to my coverage of Republican Debate
#11.
The truth of it is that the debates are no longer all that
relevant. They have morphed from the most exciting reality show on television
into tired re-runs of Real Housewives of
the Tea Party. Yes, there was a bit of new news coming out of the Michigan
debate, but generally speaking, the combatants are now a traveling road show.
There are now only four candidates, each are now intimately familiar with the others’
debating techniques; each can anticipate the attack strategies, and each is now
schooled with ready rhetorical come-backs and guaranteed “applause” lines.
The net effect of this is that the primary function the
debates serve is to reinforce the belief systems of adherents rather than
change opinion or shift votes.
The most notable change in the debate was the
ever-increasing shrillness – arguably, desperation -- with which Marco Rubio
attacks Donald Trump. Marco Rubio is staring his campaign’s very mortality in
the eyeball: in less than two weeks, he must overcome a double-digit deficit in
Florida or face the oxygen-starving humiliation of losing to Trump in his home
state. He must accomplish this in the
face of a decidedly milquetoast showing on Super Tuesday; emerging third in
most states, failing to win his best shot in Virginia, and left to make what
little can be made of a caucus victory in Minnesota.
Marco Rubio’s candidacy may have ended in this debate. He
did his best to take the challenge to Trump; repeatedly scolded the Donald for
a lack of specifics in his answers and lack of substance in his policy. He
called Trump a con man, and attempted to make the class action law suit filed
against “Trump University” a broader metaphor for an electorate that will have
buyer’s remorse when it discovers that the man makes unsupportable and
undeliverable promises simply to seal a deal. Rubio tried in vain to elevate
his critique of Trump’s questionable hotel labor practices into a holy war on
hypocrisy.
Trump dealt with Rubio in much the manner that an
eighteen-wheeler announces to a Mini Cooper that it is about to change lanes on
the interstate. Tapping into his seeming
bottomless pool of contempt and disdain, Trump dismissed the United States
Senator from Florida as “little Marco,”
thereby adding all adults who may be sensitive about their physical stature to
the list of population segments that Trump has flagrantly insulted. Trump repeatedly interrupted Rubio and talked
over him, stamping out his words with greater volume, rendering the stage
momentarily indistinguishable from a nursery school squabble about a favored
plush toy. Under the pretense of “fighting back,” Marco had made a calculated
decision to join Barnum & Bailey, and his reward was to be labeled a circus
midget.
In contrast, Ted Cruz has proven more effective in fighting
Trump mano a mano than Rubio or any
of the establishment governors. Cruz
shows up with a prosecutor’s game plan, and he picks fights that matter. Cruz went after Trump for his Swiss cheese
conservatism, his record of donating funds to liberal politicians, and the risk
of allowing a man who lives to make “deals” (read: “compromises”) to decide the
fate of the Supreme Court.
Beyond the substantive content, Cruz put on a clinic in how
to deal with Trump’s overbearing bullying tactics. He would theatrically pause
during a Trump interruption, turn, and urge Trump to “take a deep breath,” the
time-honored patronizing advice to six-year-olds having a temper tantrum. It
was effective.
The evening also held the long-awaited rendezvous of Fox’s
Megyn Kelly and Donald Trump, and it was apparent that Fox wanted to score a
knock-down or two. Chris Wallace
challenged Trump on the math of his spending proposals and had obviously
anticipated Trump’s standard answers, enabling Fox to immediately pounce with
graphics designed to supposedly shame Trump into acknowledging the flagrant misrepresentations
of his budget proposals. Later, Kelly
played three paired video clips that showed Trump taking diametrically opposing
opinions on the same issue, in one case within 24 hours.
Trump, however, saw absolutely no reason to suddenly change
what has been a stunningly successful approach to these debates. He did not
allow himself to be lured into a substantive policy debate; rather, he blew off
his Fox inquisitors with a nominal amount of bland banter and an imperial wave. Trump seems to understand that Fox moderators
will give up after a point, aware that appearing to be waging a vendetta would
damage Fox more than Trump.
Trump has adopted one debating tactic which is effectively
inoculating him from the charge that Republicans fear most: flip-flopper. Aware
that network news services are filled to the rafters of clips showing Trump
advocating contrary positions, Trump pre-emptively asserts that being flexible is actually the earmark of a
successful business person. In Trump
Universe, abrupt reversals on policy issues are not “flip-flops,” they are
evidence of the mature and wise leader’s ability to constantly absorb ever-changing
nuances of data and market shifts, and appropriately update one’s world view.
He disarmed Megyn Kelly’s video clip bombs with this reasoning; actually
invoking this logic to explain the clip in which he changed his position within 24 hours. So much for wisdom and
maturation “over time.”
Trump, in short, had a routine but very effective night,
and he knows how these things work: In the face of no shocking revelations,
meltdowns, or gaffes, the status quo not only endures but it is
reinforced. Muhammad Ali was widely
applauded for his rope-a-dope
take-down of George Foreman; in Detroit, Trump stood back and watched Rubio and
Cruz expend all their energy flailing away without ever landing a solid punch.
If there was one single moment that hinted at a landmine
for Trump, it was the topic of his allegedly “off the record” interview with The New York Times editorial board in
which he supposedly acknowledged that his hard line on deportation would
inevitably soften as he transitioned into a general election battle. Cruz and
Rubio both furiously demanded that Trump authorize The New York Times to release the transcript, essentially asserting
that it would be the smoking gun that would reveal his marriage of convenience
to party orthodoxy. Trump took this moment to assert the sacred journalistic
integrity of off-the-record conversations with The New York Times. Irony is
a dish best served in the “Dining Out” section.
All of this, however, merely provided evidence of an
emerging broader narrative that the Trump candidacy is not a revolutionary
insurgency at all, but merely a post-social media incarnation of the most tried
and true path to the presidency: win the nomination by tacking to the base, win
the election by tacking to the center. If the allegations about Trump’s
conversation with the Times were to be true, they would simply indicate that
Trump knows that the way to win the nomination is to be the most ardent
extremist, and the way to win the election is to moderate those positions to
become more palatable to the centrists.
As I have been saying for some time now: America, please
stop underestimating this guy.
Please, too, begin to give John Kasich an enormous amount
of credit. He has not changed his message, he has not given into the popular
notion that candidates must all change into pit bulls ripping into Trump. He
decided long ago that his best long term strategy was to not be the flavor du
jour, but to be John Kasich. You might
say that he is the only player in the Republican Party who is not allowing his
brain to be jarred by Post-Trumpatic Stress Disorder. And, here he is, still on
the stage, as the race is whittled to four.
There is the fascinating likelihood that Rubio will lose
Florida, ending his candidacy, but Kasich wins Ohio. And yes, that would leave
Kasich alone in the establishment lane, with Trump and Cruz still in a battle
for the role of “outsider.”
Wouldn’t that be
interesting?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Leave a comment