"What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? "- James Madison
ALEXANDER WELCH, PH.D.
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It's A Wonderful Debate

1/29/2016

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Frank Capra’s classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, tells the story of George Bailey, a man who gets a chance to see what the world would be like if he had never been born. He sees, to his dismay, that the bland small town he lives in would have become a hedonistic dystopia under the rule of his nemesis, Mr. Potter and everyone is miserable all the time. Last night, we were treated to a form of this, except one that worked in reverse.  Although none of us were visited by our guardian angel, Clarence, we were given a chance to glimpse an alternative reality that can be causally linked to the presence of one individual, Donald Trump.  Mr. Trump, who has openly feuded with FOX News’ Megyn Kelly for months now (a feud that appears to be completely one-sided), elected to skip the debate and attend some charity event for veterans, instead. Because of his absence, viewers were treated to the most substantive and least petty GOP debate of the entire presidential cycle. Instead of sophomoric insults and endless discussion of poll numbers, we were able to watch and listen to a rather civil and informative debate.  Instead of getting me to appreciate the actual election cycle, this glimpse into an alternate reality made me yearn for the alternate reality.

Strong Performances
For Rand Paul, last night was far and away his strongest performance. Last night, the Rand Paul we expected to see in this election finally showed up.  Without having to waste time focusing on attacking Trump, he was able to present his visions for foreign policy, national security, and criminal justice reform that set him apart from the other candidates in the field. Unfortunately for Senator Paul, it was probably too little, too late, but his strong performance last night could pay dividends in a future run for president.

Last night was also Jeb Bush’s strongest performance. Without Trump bullying him, he seemed far more confident, relaxed, and presidential than he has at any point so far in the contest. His joke about Donald Trump being a teddy bear came off as awkward and forced, but he did well after that. As with Rand, however, I doubt it will be enough to resurrect his sunken campaign.

Solid Performances
As usual, Marco Rubio had a fairly good debate last night, even if it was not quite up to his usual standard of blowing the competition away. He had some rough patches last night, but if the focus group is any indication, he positioned himself to do well in the caucuses, come Monday. *Disclaimer*- Rubio is the candidate I have publicly endorsed. That said, I thought he had a good, but not spectacular, debate performance last night.

Chris Christie delivered the best line of the night last night when he denounced the “Washington bull.” After Rubio and Cruz argued endlessly about the technicalities of the “amnesty” bill of 2013, Christie rightly pointed out that executives cannot hide behind the ambiguities and nuances of bills the way legislators can (for instance, Ted Cruz trying to explain away plain statements of support for legalization of immigrations with a series of double negatives regarding clauses of bills and amendments).  Aside from that, however, it was more of the same from him. While attacking Hillary Clinton is a safe and advisable tactic for a Republican debate, he overused it and caused people to zone him out, at times.

Weak Performances
John Kasich did little last night that could change the opinions of conservative Republicans who are tuning him out and believe him to be the embodiment of the “establishment.” The “Kasich Lane” analogy fell flat, as did his attempts to make people believe he is not “establishment” by pointing out his credentials as a reformer. I still believe he would do well in a general election matchup against Clinton or Sanders, but I do not see him advancing to that stage given the current mood of the GOP base.

In Trump’s absence, Ted Cruz had the target on his back. He had some good moments, to be sure, but the tag-team of Rand, Rubio, and Christie effectively defeated him on the matter of his past support for amnesty. His best moment of the night came when he refused to bow to Terry Branstad on the matter of ethanol subsidies.  He may have cost himself some votes in Iowa for that, but it probably will help him in the long run by more firmly establishing a reputation for fearlessness. That said, he neutralized that great stance by pandering to Iowans by repeatedly name-dropping Steve King. Based on how many times Cruz invoked King, you would have thought King was the God of Iowa. He also repeatedly name-dropped Jeff Sessions, a senator who is appears likely to endorse Trump. Had he not name-dropped so much, I would have given him a “solid” rating for his performance.

Disastrous Performances
What was probably Ben Carson’s swan song was more like an uninspiring quack from a duck. I think most people were in agreement with him that he did not have the most polished policy speeches, and it went downhill from there. He had, by far, the least amount of speaking time and seemed to have no idea of what to do with it. He finished the night by reciting the Preamble to the Constitution, and he did not even get that right. I have to think that he will end his campaign shortly after the Caucuses on Monday.  Between his precipitous fall in the polls and his staffers abandoning ship, it is hard to see him staying in the race any longer.

The worst performance of all, however, had to be Donald Trump. As the old saying goes, “you can’t win, if you don’t play.” Although last night’s debate drew the second-lowest ratings for a GOP debate, so far, I think Trump expected the audience to be half of what it was last night. Now, while it may be true that Trump had nothing to gain by debating last night (as Charles Krauthammer argued last night), it is also true that he opened himself up to ridicule and charges of cowardice by not participating, especially in light of the interview he gave four years ago when he not only denounced candidates who would not participate in his debate, but also praised Megyn Kelly’s moderating skills. Moreover, the event he attended instead of the debate opened him up to charges of using vets as political props and possibly not even donating to vets (his foundation apparently has a checkered, if almost non-existent, record of donating to veterans.) As usual, though, none of this will matter to his supporters who, as Trump reminded us, would not stop supporting him even if he starting shooting people on 5th Avenue.

But thanks anyway, to Donald Trump for giving us one night where intelligent debate among some of the party’s sharpest minds could reign, rather than the circus of petty insults his campaign has inspired. For one night only, we had a wonderful debate.

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The Time Has Come: Dump. Trump. Now.

1/25/2016

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The impossible is becoming the quite possible- Donald Trump may well be the Republican Party nominee in 2016.  A man who has been the butt of jokes since the get-go is no longer a laughing matter.  As a political scientist, I can find no parallel in our nation’s history for this phenomenon, and I am flabbergasted, disturbed, and even fearful.

When Trump announced his campaign last summer, I assumed he would be out of the race by the time the Eagles played their first snap of the season.  I did not think that his brand of over-the-top statements, coupled with his extreme narcissism and checkered history on political issues would survive very long.  The man has publicly taken all sides on all issues his entire adult life and surely no conservative would trust him to keep his word on anything. I was wrong.

Every time that Trump has hurled insults at one group or another, I thought it would be a death blow to his campaign. He has insulted Mexicans and other foreigners, women, POW’s, the handicapped, Muslims, and everyone in between. He has recently re-Tweeted white supremacist and neo-Nazi accounts and it has not cost him one iota of support. He has trumpeted the support he received from Vladimir Putin and praised Kim Jong-un’s ability to “keep control” of North Korea by wiping out his rivals in brutal fashions that would make Michael Corleone blush. He has even insulted the intelligence of his own supporters! Yet he is immune to it all. I do not get it.

I also assumed from the beginning that Trump’s lack of policy chops would help to do him in. It has not. Instead, all we ever hear are vague promises of a “huge wall” that Mexico will, for some reason, finance. Unlike, say Governor Kasich, Trump has no understanding of the numerous political maneuvers it will take for the next president to accomplish anything. He just assumes that his business savvy will translate into political success.  The political world is not the business world- the boss (the president) can have his deals shot down by his underlings in the political world. He is not given carte blanche to do whatever he pleases. Even if he becomes president, Trump will soon be frustrated by the institutional inertia and Constitutional checks and balances that were created specifically to prevent an authoritarian from seizing total power.  Instead of all this counting against him, it seems to be a reason people are drawn to Trump- he is an “outsider” who does not know Washington’s politics.  While such sentiments are somewhat admirable, they also risk the demagoguery the Founders feared above all.

I also assumed that the party leaders and elder statesmen would never allow Trump to get anywhere near the nomination.  I figured that great statesmen like Bob Dole and Chuck Grassley would serve as the last line of defense in case the madness of the masses grew to unbearable proportions.  Now, it seems, they have succeeded in talking themselves into the idea of working with Trump, ostensibly to stave off another missile in Ted Cruz.  While I do not think either politician is good for the GOP, ultimately, I think the greater danger comes from Trump, not from Cruz.  Trump may be more open to making deals with Republicans in the Oval Office, but he could just as easily switch back to being a Democrat, or he might try to dispense with the legislative process, altogether, and go the “executive action” route. Trump is a wild card, and a dangerous one.  Moreover, nominating Trump would doom the GOP for generations as his reckless immigration rhetoric and demonizing of Hispanics drives them away from the GOP (not to mention other racial minorities).  Cruz would almost certainly go down in flames, come November, but his defeat would not linger for generations (think Barry Goldwater).  President Cruz may not be as interested in working with the GOP as President Trump could be, but I think he would damage the party far less than Trump, in the long run.  In any event, it concerns me that party elders like Grassley, Dole, and Orrin Hatch appear to be warming up to Trump. Making bedfellows with Donald Trump would be an irrevocable mistake.   

Once upon a time, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, and Phyllis Schlafly were shrewd conservative activists who succeeded in transforming the GOP from the centrist party it was under Dwight Eisenhower to the conservative party we see today.  Now, they have all fallen for Trump’s bill of goods hook, line, and sinker and thrown their support by someone who is not a conservative in any sense of the word.  Why? The only answer I can provide is that they truly believe Trump will halt immigration (even legal immigration!) and keep brown people out of the United States.  Normally, I hate to invoke race, but Trump has gotten into bed with neo-Nazis and I think that makes him fair game to be accused of racism.  Ann Coulter, moreover, is backing Trump because she earnestly believes immigrants could never possibly become conservatives and therefore must be shut out of the country so that the largely-white Republican Party can remain competitive longer. It is truly unbelievable that they have so little faith in conservatism that they want the GOP to become the party of white supremacy (don't forget- she wants to deport Nikki Haley). In a country where whites will soon be a minority, I would think the better strategy would be to modernize the party and build new coalitions rather than cling to the past and destroy families just for political gain.  It is one thing to oppose illegal immigration, it is another to demand a police state in the form of mass deportations, oppose legal immigration, and scapegoat racial minorities. To me, that is nationalism bordering on racial fascism, not conservatism.

I am deeply disturbed by the growing strength of Trump’s cult of personality. He is immune to everything and has somehow cast a spell over people that makes them blind to a lifetime of flip-flopping on issues, insulting everyone and everything, and caring little for the Constitution or anyone who stands in his way.  He can release a video of three girls singing about him “crushing the enemies of freedom” and his supporters do not see the irony (to me, it was eerily reminiscent of the opening scene from The Interview). As I said earlier, he can insult the intelligence of his supporters by saying they would vote for him even if he was killing people, and it probably will not cost him one vote. I believe he is an astute entertainer and (I hope he) is putting on a show for certain segments of the population, but they do not realize they are being conned. Trump’s demagoguery puts him in an elite group in American history, alongside Andrew Jackson, Huey Long, and George Wallace.  But he out-demagogues them all.  He is stirring up the angry passions of the masses without even possessing a clear message.  With Trump, it is a crapshoot to guess what he actually believes on anything.  The only constant in everything he says is that he is awesome because he is rich. Maybe that is the key to Trump’s success- making it all about him and feeding his ego.  The people apparently crave a dictator and Trump will give it to them if he becomes president.  Again, this is not conservatism, it is demagoguery cloaked in an extreme form of one conservative position.

The GOP has to stand up to Trump now, and follow the example of the great minds at National Review.  For months, they have tolerated his whining and catered to his every whim out of fear that he will launch a third-party bid that would ensure a victory for Hillary Clinton.  At this point, there are few good options, only bad options and worse options.  The absolute worst outcome would be for Trump to win the White House and run roughshod with the presidency for the next four years.  The GOP would never win another presidential election.  The next worst would be to have Trump be the nominee and lose the general.  He would still leave his mark on the party brand, which would be challenging for future nominees to overcome, but at least the Trump Era would be over.  Nominating Ted Cruz would be disastrous, but the party could recover.  In any case, there is absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose by putting the Republican Party’s fate in the hands of Donald Trump.  Nominating Trump could be the end of the Republican Party (at worst), or at best, it could diminish the Grand Old Party to a permanent position as the opposition party after Trump’s campaign forever tars the GOP brand in the minds of a more diverse electorate. And for what? A demagogue who is not a conservative. 

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Imagining the Presidency of Ted Cruz

1/25/2016

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​We are now less than a week away from the Iowa Presidential Caucuses; the event that traditionally marks the real beginning of the presidential primary season. On the Democratic side, frontrunner Hillary Clinton is trying to run out the clock on the insurgent candidacy of Bernie Sanders (in other words, she is desperately hoping to avoid a repeat of 2008 when Barack Obama pulled off a political upset for the ages against her).  The Republican side, however, is much more interesting with a dozen candidates still vying for the nomination.  The most sober analysis of the GOP race, however, would admit that it is a three man race between Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Marco Rubio. Once the dust clears from Iowa, New Hampshire, and perhaps even Super Tuesday, those three will likely be the last ones standing. As such, Senator Ted Cruz has a legitimate shot at the White House.

Senator Cruz’s candidacy has been unorthodox, to say the least, even before it officially began. Quite frankly, his campaign for the White House began the instant he defeated Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the 2012 Texas Senate primary; a political upset that shot him into national stardom with Tea Party and other conservative factions of the Republican Party.  He carried this momentum into the Senate, where he quickly made a name for himself as a man willing to fire shots at his own party and risk monumental political defeats for the sake of his ideology.  No event better illustrates this than the government shutdown he initiated in 2013, ostensibly to force Democrats to abandon Obamacare. Needless to say, this strategy failed big time (at least as far as ending Obamacare was concerned) and was a monumental public relations defeat for the Republican Party. From that moment on, it was Cruz against the “Washington Cartel,” (the cabal of Republican and Democratic elites Cruz believes conspire to make sure they do not lose power) and a presidential campaign was all, but inevitable.

Cruz announced his campaign last March, the first major candidate of either party to do so. From his first announcement at Liberty University, the bastion of social conservatism created by Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, Cruz has staked his candidacy on appealing to the far right, specifically conservatives who he believes did not show up to vote for Mitt Romney in 2012 because they believed Romney to be too centrist.  Whether or not such a large electorate even exists is unclear, but for Cruz’s sake, he had better hope that they are, since he has completely alienated the traditional party power brokers and derided the “mushy middle” of American politics. If Cruz is to be the nominee, it will be the first successful coup against traditional Republican kingmakers since the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964, and the first of any consequence since Ronald Reagan in 1976.

The uniquely anti-party nature of Cruz’s campaign lead me to wonder how many American presidents were hostile to the leaders of the party that elected them and how successful they were in the Oval office.  In American history, I can think of four such presidents: Jimmy Carter, Teddy Roosevelt, Andrew Johnson, and John Tyler. Three of these figures ascended to the presidency as Vice President, so Carter was the only one who was truly elected as the kind of “outsider” that Cruz claims to be. Unfortunately, only one of these four figures is universally recognized as a truly successful president- Theodore Roosevelt. TR belongs in this list because Senator Platt of New York and other party powerbrokers sought to constrain him by appointing him to the oft-meaningless position of Vice President. This plan backfired when Leon Czolgosz assassinated President McKinley a few months into McKinley’s second term, elevating Roosevelt to the Oval Office. The energetic Roosevelt seized control of the party agenda and was quite willing to use his executive power to effect change when Congress did not act quickly enough for him.  His trust-busting, conservation, and foreign policy victories have given Roosevelt a uniformly positive reputation among historians.

​The story is not so rosy for the other three presidents, however.  John Tyler, while successfully leaving his mark on the presidency by asserting the Vice President’s right to become president upon the death of his predecessor, was nonetheless disastrously at odds with the national Whig leadership. He vetoed many key Whig initiatives, lost the support of the Cabinet he inherited, and was eventually expelled from the party for his many battles with the Whig Party. Andrew Johnson was never actually a Republican, despite being Abraham Lincoln’s running mate on a wartime national unity ticket. Johnson, the lone southern officeholder to support Lincoln and the Union from the beginning of the Civil War, was nonetheless a southerner at heart. As such, his vision for Reconstruction and bring the South back into the Union was drastically at odds with the Radical Republicans who wanted harsher punitive measures and far more liberal civil rights measures than Johnson supported. Johnson’s battles against the leadership eventually morphed into a series of demagogic crusades that resulted in impeachment by the House and almost conviction by the Senate (one vote short). Finally, Jimmy Carter’s presidency is generally regarded as an unmitigated disaster. Between the Malaise Speech, the Iranian Hostage Crisis, and stagflation, Carter experienced dramatic failures in every realm of policy (although, to be fair, the Camp David Accords was a shining accomplishment on his part). Certainly on domestic matters, much of Carter’s failure can be attributed to his inability to work with Congress, especially a highly influential senator named Ted Kennedy. Carter brought in many of his own people and tried to get too many things accomplished his own way, without consulting the powerbrokers on the Hill who could help him pass such ambitious agenda items as health care and increasing social programs. In the end, Carter could only stand there helpless as the country’s economy collapsed around him.

So, which of these presidents would Cruz most likely mirror? Given the exhaustive list of things Cruz is aiming to destroy or repeal, it is hard not to see a conservative version of Jimmy Carter in the future.  President Cruz would be far more interested in vilifying Mitch McConnell than actually working with him to pass a conservative agenda, he would let his vision get in the way of what he could actually accomplish (it has happened before). Cruz’s senatorial record is the reason why I lean towards Carter, as opposed to TR. Had Cruz successfully carried out any of his policy goals as a senator, I would be inclined to think that he could lead in the way that Roosevelt did.  Instead, he has yet to accomplish anything meaningful as a senator and instead has made enemies out of leaders in Congress, especially those of his own party.  Depending on how Obama’s executive actions hold up in courts, Cruz may be empowered enough to be as energetic and active as Roosevelt, but if the courts strike down these “executive actions,” he could find himself perpetually fighting Congress like Andrew Johnson in a demagogic style. No matter what, if he wins the White House this year (a rather slim chance), Cruz will have to prepare himself for a series of long, drawn-out battles even among his fellow Republicans. 
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    Alex Welch is Assistant Professor, General Faculty at the University of Virginia.

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