Am I Really Voting For Hillary?

Like, numbers unknown, I am a long time conservative who is not planning to vote for Donald Trump in November. And of course I’ve seen many times the Trump supporter claims that not voting for Donald is tantamount to a vote for Hillary [hereafter NVT=VFHRC]. While I think this argument is seriously flawed, I don’t deny that it has some merit.

Besides math, I take the NVT=VFHRC argument to rest on two propositions; 1) an understood initial position, and 2) the view that turnabout is fair play.

On the first, it seems reasonable to say that before things get started it is quite valid to take it as given that long time conservatives will vote for the Republican nominee. If your team’s quarterback, who started as a sophomore and junior, decides sometime during the preseason that he’s no longer going to play it’s understandable that team, coaches, fans are going to feel let down. They had proceeded on the reasonable assumption that the team was set at quarterback. A key point in the primaries is to find a candidate that can appeal to independents—electability—it being taken as given that conservatives will fall in line.

On the second, I think the argument would go as look we hated McCain and Romney with a passion. Didn’t you notice how desperate we were to find an alternative to Romney in 2012? But we voted for them anyway because we were told to be practical and understood it to be our duty to support the eventual nominee. And now when OUR candidate is the nominee, you put your nose up and declare he’s too declasse to support [insert your favorite image of blind rage here]?

What I believe is being lost sight of in a history of normalcy is the element of contingency in both of these propositions. The conservative starts the election cycle with a presumption of voting for the Republican nominee. As your QB I WAS planning to play my senior year, but then you hired as coach a man who poisoned my dog. I too--perhaps for very different reasons—wasn’t keen on either McCain or Romney but like you sucked it up and voted for them. But this nominee, this Trump [because of my overly exquisite sensibilities?] is too much. Better in the long run to lose to someone, even Hillary (and of course here, a critical variable is just how bad do you believe Hillary to be), than to put Trump in charge and to be associated with him.

Awhile back, in a context I can’t recall, Jonah Goldberg observed that “it’s all in the dosage.” That covers a great deal of ground. I’m long past the expectation that my votes are going to be tasty and delicious, but I’m not inclined to cast a vote that will kill my sense of self however mistaken that sense may be.

A Player Program for the Republican Nomination Race

On Special Report last night Charles Krauthammer spoke of “two lanes” that define the Republican race. It seems odd to be continually disagreeing with him, but again I think this far too reductive analytic scheme and thereby misses too much. From my perspective, the Republican field can be placed into the following five lanes:

Establishment/Old-Guard Republicans – Bush, Kasich, Pataki

Young Guns/Reformers – Christie, Fiorina, Jindal, Perry, Rubio, Walker

Social Conservative/Populists – Huckabee, Santorum

Purists/Reform Radicals – Cruz, Paul

Outsiders-Outsiders – Carson, Trump

Doubtless there is room for disagreement as to the lines drawn and the placement but I think this is reasonably accurate looking at the candidates as a whole rather than one particular issue.

I would define the Establishment/Old Guard as the line of the party that can be most easily and comfortably traced to the Rockefeller-Ford wing and in its more recent aspect is the Bush-Bush-McCain-Romney succession. The other lanes are defined in a large sense in relation to their distinctiveness from the Establishment/Old Guard. Something of a continuum can be drawn from that starting point to Young Guns/Reformers > Purists/Reform Radicals > Outsiders with the Social Conservatives being out of place both in my schematic and to a large extent this election cycle. The weakness of the Young Guns is that they can be perceived as being part of the Establishment, while the weakness of the Purists and Outsiders is the possible/probable(?) reluctance on the part of the voters to completely throw caution aside.

Now if I’ve got this mostly right, then it is telling that of the consensus currently viable—Christie, Fiorina, Rubio, Cruz, Carson, and Trump--half occupy a position far from the Establishment/Old Guard. And the others are viable in large part because their time served isn't so extensive as to confirm that they've crossed the shadow-line. And this is why I think the emphasis on Bush’s campaign foibles, real as they are, miss the much larger point that there is almost no voter interest in picking someone from this lane except as a last resort in this election cycle.

Finally, I should note that of the above candidates Fiorina is the most difficult to place. She could be considered an outsider, but I think her running for office in California and evident policy chops exclude her. But there is probably no one in the field who has more positional flexibility in terms of which lane to conduct her campaign from than Fiorina, and that's an advantage in this race. 

 

The Republican Race to Date

On this week’s Candidate Casino Charles Krauthammer put fewer chips on Jeb Bush and fingered a woeful campaign as the problem. In prior weeks, Jeb has either been picked as the Republican favorite or near favorite. This tells me the pros are looking at this election through the wrong prism.

The key to understanding the current race is 2012 in combination with 2008. By the end of his term conservatives were ambivalent about George W. They liked him in many ways, defending him against Democratic attacks but they were not at all happy with the increase in spending (pretty much across the board) and ambitious use of the military (the sizable isolationist win) that had occurred under his leadership. They wanted a ‘real’ conservative, but accepted McCain as the only viable choice in the ’08 field.

By the 2012 cycle it was clear to conservatives, that Obama was a terrible president. Pick someone decent and they’d win. The ‘establishment’ choice was clearly Romney. The primaries consisted of the base frantically searching for an alternative. Not finding one, they reluctantly listened to the party elders and accepted Romney. They didn’t trust him as far as actually being a conservative, but they were persuaded that he would win. And then Romney ran a tepid, squishy general election campaign and lost.

Twice the base set aside its reservations, ignored its instincts, and followed the party establishment and twice the resulting nominee had lost. The last, in what conservatives perceived—correctly or incorrectly doesn’t matter here—as a crucial and very winnable election. In November of 2012 it was clear that the race in 2015 – 16 was going to be a very bumpy ride indeed.

Thus, Jeb is carrying a duel legacy. He’s third in the Bush line and third in the McCain-Romney-Establishment Choice line. If you’re wondering why Bush has struggled, and you’re looking to how he’s conducted his campaign, pause, put on the Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again at top volume and consider what happened in 2012.

Santorum

It is way, way too early to my mind to start deciding on candidates.  Before the Ames Iowa debate I dismissed Rick Santorum, as what little I knew of him centered on social issues.  Now, I can understand the passion of social conservatives as I think no group has taken more of a sustained beating over the last 40 - 50 years.  But I don't think government can do much about it (the London riots have the potential to do far more for social conservatives than anything a president is likely to do), and in any event it's way down my list on what I want to see from the Republican nominee.

That notwithstanding, I thought he was by far the most impressive of the candidates in the Ames debate.  I'm now intrigued rather than dismissive.  And on that note, thought this brief interview on J Rubin's Right Turns was interesting: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/path-to-the-nomination-rick-santorum/2011/03/29/gIQAacu5JJ_blog.html