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And Then There Was…A Problem for the Parties

A picture of America’s modern presidential campaign model. Candidates seek to:

    • Segment the electorate into as many groups as practical, particularly at the state level,
    • Empathize with sympathetic groups to create the illusion of a supportive coalition,
    • Ignore conflicting interests within their coalition, speaking only of common goals,
    • Hurry to the primary/caucus before tensions in the coalition become unmanageable,
    • Repeat, in each state, adding/deleting groups as necessary to secure enough delegates,
    • Discard nationally unappealing or “extreme” groups at the convention, and
    • Craft a party message that:

      – Slights true believers,
      – Dupes fence-sitters,
      – Placates the disaffected, and
      – Appeals to voters not in the party.

Call it a “Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” strategy, a key feature of which is, no matter the general election result, the nominee has a reasonable answer for those offended by his campaign positions: “Compromise”.

Winners laud compromise positions, even dishonest ones, as a key to victory, reminding tweaked supporters that winning is more important than “getting everything our way”. Victory soothes wounded supporters with ignored interests, and winning serves to keep all party supporters in line for the next run.

Losers curse compromise positions for their defeat. Instead of cooling supporter anger, they flagellate themselves for not listening to their “base”, and pledge greater ideological purity in future campaigns if supporters will “hang in there” with them.

And, no matter which “compromise” justification they receive, voters return to their places and further segment themselves, with each group seeking golden tickets – which do not exist – for their political concerns at the next quadrennial kabuki dance.

Rinse and repeat…every four years.

“Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” trails only the National Football League in popularity, and is now so lucrative that partisan “journalists” enjoy a celebrity that eluded the Walter Cronkites and David Brinkleys, who earned respect by their unbiased – or at least less biased – reporting. It created television networks of highly paid talking heads, possessed of little to no journalistic ability or integrity, building their following and influence through with bias and air time. They, along with officeholders, candidates, and party officials work together to keep the nation divided and controlled by “conventional political wisdom”.

Consequently, parties and voters never quite align, making for increasingly dysfunctional federal governance. This creates greater political volatility, giving the talking heads more items about which to craft and apply their (in-) famous “talking points”. Government grows, individual liberties shrink, and almost everyone who helps Divide the nation, Destroy the nation, and then Cobble Together enough of the nation for an another round of division and destruction, manages to get paid.

Then the ground shifted. It began after the 2008 election.

A nation at war saw too little return on more than 7 years of blood and treasure invested abroad. Fiscal responsibility gave way to deficits, the resumption of unsustainable debt growth, and an economy in acute distress. Jobs were lost, homes foreclosed upon, and moneyed institutions that mismanaged funds received billions from the federal treasury. The nation needed a change.

And “Change” was promised, using the “Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” strategy. An unknown candidate told voters what they wanted to hear and, protectively cloaked in the historical significance of skin color, rode into the White House. Yet, this time, this president could not Cobble Together enough goodwill to compensate for the lies he did, and would, tell an already divided nation.

In its first midterm electoral opportunity, voters removed the president’s party from the majority in the House of Representatives, seeking balance. But the new majority were no more truthful than the president voters elected them to oppose; they failed to do the voters’ will. Then, in the next presidential election, “Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” gave voters a presidential challenger who varied from the distrusted president in little more than complexion; it failed to produce a distinction between presidential candidates that voters saw as a difference.

In the 2014 midterm election, despite the president successfully blaming his opposition for a government shutdown a year earlier, voters gave his opposition its largest House majority since the 1920’s and a Senate majority. Still, federal governance did not change. In fact, the more numerous the voters made the president’s opposition, the less they actually opposed the president. Another “change” was needed; GOP voters had exposed, and begun to reject, the “Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” strategy.

So, enter a man who fancied himself presidential material for decades and who, in 2011, polled ahead of the eventual 2012 GOP nominee, to seek a major party nomination. The practitioners and protectors of “Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” were incredulous. Among their assertions:

    Trump won’t run,
    Trump will drop out,
    Trump can only get 35% of the vote, and
    Trump can’t win the GOP nomination.

They were incorrect, and not just about the GOP race.

Before the Democrat primaries started, most gave socialist Bernie Sanders no chance to win Democrat nomination. Yet he’s won 19 of 45 primary contests, including 9 of the last 14. Now, the pundits appear befuddled about Sanders, as many Democrats reject Hillary Clinton; Democrat voters also exposed and rejected the “Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” strategy.

So, what took the finger of parties and pundits off the electorate’s pulse? Simply put, voters have a different heartbeat now, and stopped accepting the candidates that parties and pundits pushed upon them. So, a longtime Democrat party member cannot easily defeat a non-Democrat, and GOP voters reject GOP 8 governors (3 current), and GOP 5 Senators (4 current) to favor a real estate developer who’s never held public office. And the change impacts more than the current nominating campaign.

Since 2009, Democrats have hemorrhaged officeholders, at the federal (net 69 House, and 13 Senate, seats lost) and state (net 9 governor’s mansions lost, net 900+ state legislative seats, and 28 legislative majorities lost) levels. The nation is purging Democrats from power, and the party’s national footprint is shrinking.

Republicans undergo a different purge – a forced leadership change. Eric Cantor became the first sitting House Majority leader to lose a primary election; John Boehner the first House Speaker to resign because his party preferred him gone. Now Boehner’s successor wears the “sellout” label for his stances on immigration, trade, and the recent budget. He opposes voters, and an increasing number of party officeholders, by not supporting Trump, even as he faces a primary challenge at home. Ryan could go the way of Cantor.

Voter rejection of “Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” challenges both parties. Democrats face an existential threat; they must stop the bleeding. In addition to the Obama era losses, Democrats are switching parties during the primaries: 20,000 in Massachusetts, 60,000 in Virginia, smaller numbers in other states, and 1 in 5 Democrats say they would vote Trump in November. If they cannot revise their message, and especially if they fail in November, they risk marginalization and political insignificance.

The Republican challenge is simpler: they must either find the courage to complete their ideological purge, or yield to being a right-leaning national party with left-leaning D.C. leaders. If the leadership purge fails, the party will splinter, with each faction having less influence during the turmoil of transition.

However, should voters recognize how supportive the current major political parties are of the corruption that is the current federal government, they may decide not to take on party challenges, and instead #AlterOrAbolish the monster that resides on the Potomac River.

It’s Not About Trump; Their Issue is with YOU!

My “pen” is largely silent during the 2016 presidential campaign and I would prefer it remain so; few things distract more from, while doing less to meet, this nation’s challenges than the two-year kabuki dance of those seeking the presidency. However, something so brazenly foul now occurs that it compels me to comment.

Donald Trump’s tour de force, seeking a major presidential party nomination, is shocking…to everyone except Trump. When he opted out of the 2012 campaign, Trump declared:

    This decision does not come easily or without regret; especially when my potential candidacy continues to be validated by ranking at the top of the Republican contenders in polls across the country.

    I maintain the strong conviction that if I were to run, I would be able to win the primary and, ultimately, the general election. I have spent the past several months unofficially campaigning and recognize that running for public office cannot be done half-heartedly. Ultimately, however, business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector.

Five years later, Trump looks prophetic, as he closes on the Republican Party Presidential Nomination. He also looks every bit the target, as the number, and intensity, of his critics mount, even as he succeeds.

This is no reference to Trump’s critics within the electorate; every presidential candidate has “enemy” voters. But Trump’s most ardent enemies are neither Republican voters nor Democrat…anyone. Rather, they are Republican elected officials and operatives who attack him publicly, personally, relentlessly, and almost as a matter of party honor. Some declare that a Trump presidency would destroy the party, and one of Trump’s rivals (at least temporarily) abandoned his effort either to win the nomination or to have a national political future by transforming his campaign into a kamikaze mission against the Donald.

However, even as some GOP’ers call for “All Hands on Deck” against Trump”, he is likely not their target at all…

For this differs from earlier “stop the outsider” efforts. Democrats acquiesced and welcomed “outsider” Jimmy Carter into their national fold – after determining no one could beat him – in 1976; Republicans similarly warmed to Ronald Reagan’s “inevitability”, four years later. However, resistance to Trump increases the closer he comes to the nomination, with major players openly declaring non-support of the party should Trump prevail.

The GOP has used their vaunted “deep bench” of “establishment-friendly” candidates, not as attackers of the opposition party, but as damsels tied to the tracks, hoping to derail the Trump Train. One should wonder why the GOP spends more time trying to change the mind of its base, than it spends countering the Democrat message.

And wonder also whose drug-induced state concocted this…

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IVbBoFVWms[/youtube]

Romney’s curious “address” – neither to announce his own candidacy nor supporting another’s – is part of an anti-Trump effort that includes plans to block any Trump nomination at the party’s convention. Interestingly, John McCain is in on the plot, declaring Trump unfit for the presidency… And those who doubt the GOP establishment’s hand in this likely still believe they can keep their preferred health plan and doctor. Again, one should wonder why.

Those willing to consider more than the current election cycle may recognize that these recent antics are part of Republican Party behavior that, for (at least) the last 7 years, demonstrates, strikingly, the party’s disdainful view of, and resultant estrangement from, those who support its stated principles. Consider the following:

    • Why are the men who lost the last two general elections now experts on picking the party nominee; can anyone identify the national constituencies of either Romney or McCain? Romney lost a winnable election in 2012, and McCain was so battered in 2008 that Obama took care to rub McCain’s face in the dung of that defeat two years later:

    [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXudI0ibo-k[/youtube]

    Romney’s Trump attack echoes Democrat Party attacks on Romney from four years ago, and Romney’s 2016 Trump condemnation is a 180° departure from his praise of the Donald in 2012:

    [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlD4hwzGhdY[/youtube]

    Though the nation rejected these men, who kept the GOP from occupying the White House, the GOP welcomes, even encourages, their denigration of their current front-runner. Curious indeed.

    • Marco Rubio’s only primary win occurred in liberal Minnesota; he appears unlikely to win the March 15 primary in his home state of Florida. Yet, the party supports him, though voters snubbed him in 24 of 25 contests. Again, curious indeed.

    • And when Super Tuesday exit polling showed Trump the victor but not the desired nominee, the party did not challenge that cognitive dissonance by reminding the press, and others, that 9 of the 11 Super Tuesday states held open primaries in which non-Republicans could vote, that Democrats encouraged their members to take part in Republican primaries?

    The party did not challenge characterizations of those exit polls as voter discontent, even as Republican voter turnout hit record levels, with high enthusiasm, as even more disrespectful of their voters than of their candidate field…because they are not willing to defend their voters…

Because the party is unhappy with them.

They are unhappy that voters, beginning with the 2010 election and in response to the Obama agenda, sent conservatives to Congress; that these conservatives are not “go along to get along” people and proved so unwilling to put party before principle that it drove John Boehner into retirement. They are unhappy that Virginia voters made Eric Cantor the first sitting House Majority Leader to ever lose a primary election. Unhappy that Kevin McCarthy’s tacit admission that establishment Republicans valued the Benghazi hearings more as a way to damage Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers than to show the truth about why four Americans died, ostensibly cost him the Speakership.

Washington, D.C. establishment Republicans are losing control of their voters, and they are unhappy about that. Unhappy about a trend, since the 2010 midterm elections, that sees voters increasingly imposing their will upon the politicians’ best-laid plans. Against this backdrop, Trump is not a problem for the GOP as much as he is symptomatic of the voter problem they already have.

Consequently, stopping Trump is not about Trump at all; it is about regaining control of their constituency – YOU. A constituency at odds with them over Obamacare, joblessness, illegal immigration, the homosexual agenda, taxes, and deficits/debt; a constituency that is close to recalling that D.C. has no power save that which they authorize. A constituency that has already felled trees within the establishment, and which must be corralled before they clear more dead wood from the nation’s capitol.

D.C. Republicans cannot regain voter control without a presidential candidate that the party establishment can control (this is why they find Rubio appealing). Trump owes them nothing and needs nothing from them; he is, inarguably, not a man given to another’s control. Should he partner with an increasingly uncontrolled voter base, then everything establishment Republicans have built for themselves, via the federal government, is at risk.

By the way, Democrats do not rest easy about the GOP turmoil. Non D.C. Republicans currently occupy 31 of the nation’s 50 governor’s mansions, and control 67 of its 99 state legislative bodies, both significant increases since Obama’s 2009 inauguration. If the D.C. Republicans cannot get their constituents back in line, and Democrat voters tire of seeing neither their party nor their views represented, then the elephants trumpeting against left-leaning D.C. Republicans will seem mild, compared to the mule kick the left could receive from disgruntled Democrats.

Romney Made A Good VP Pick…..And?

Categories: ... 'bout Politics
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Published on: August 11, 2012

Romney and VP Pick Paul Ryan

He did not choose the inexperienced rockstar from Florida, Marco Rubio. He did not go for the “ruffle-no-one’s-feathers” pick from Ohio, Rob Portman. He did not select the NJ firebrand, Chris Cristie. Nor did he select the former Bush Administration official, Condoleeza Rice. To be fair, most of them are on record as saying they did not want the job.

What he did do was select someone who unabashedly addresses the most pressing domestic problem in the United States, one that even surpasses the lack of jobs in importance – federal overspending and the deficits and debt it creates. Unfortunately, few seem to have yet understood the link between a government that spends like a drunken sailor and an economy that cannot produce enough jobs. Paul Ryan seems to understand both the problem at hand, and the link to the problem of unemployment.

With this selection, the focus of the presidential campaign, at least on the Republican side, becomes the role of the federal government and how much it spends in carrying out that role. Most believe the federal government spends too much money, and most people also believe that it is doing too much.

It therefore appears that Ryan’s selection takes dead aim at a clear Obama weakness: the national view that his policies call for too much spending. If the GOP turns a laser focus on that topic, it could easily burn a hole through all the personal attacks and fix the nation, as a whole, on the discussion of “how much is too much,” and how do we get it all under control.

I see the Obama campaign as desperate, doing all it can to avoid discussion of the president’s record on federal finances and the economy. The Romney campaign reminds me of the “Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight”, fumbling one opportunity after another to counter false narratives from the White House and then hammer the president on what the country already sees as his obvious failings.

However, this could be a game-changer. Mr. Ryan may seem a one-trick pony to some as the House Budget Committee Chairman but, in this election cycle, it’s a pretty good trick. He understands the numbers better than either Romney or Obama, and would easily expose Joe “The Human Gaffe Machine” Biden as, well, a Human Gaffe Machine, when it comes to matters financial. Check this out:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYsOet9ynS0[/youtube]

Now, Joe Biden is not as quick on his feet as Chris Matthews and, if Ryan can respectfully carve up Matthew like a Thanksgiving Turkey, Biden will not fare much better.

It is a good VP pick, because it gives voice to one of the government’s leading experts on government spending and how to control it. Not to mention, it is likely that Ryan will have a better response to the Obama campaign’s personal attacks, given that he has been slighted by the president before. He has shown a fair amount more backbone in response to an Obama attack than has Romney.

If this choice helps to focus on an important issue facing the country, and it should, then it is an excellent selection, no matter the outcome of the election in November. However, if the GOP fails to maintain focus on issues and continue to respond poorly to things like phantom tax evasion charges and thinly-veiled murder accusations, then this pick is a wasted opportunity.

Copyright 2012. blackmanthinkin.com

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