“Awake! Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake!” This awesome alarm system from Lord of the Rings basically describes the Republican Party right now. Fresh off of three fairly decisive primary victories in Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina, many believe that Donald Trump’s nomination is more or less inevitable.  That need not be the case, however, as Trump has two chief rivals who could easily knock him out. The problem? Until one of them drops, neither will win (it would also help if Carson and Kasich also dropped out, but that is another matter).  Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, combined, can defeat Trump but individually, they both lose. Until this matter is resolved, the likelihood of a Trump nomination will only increase.  For the good of the party and the country, Senator Cruz should be the one to drop out.

As this awesome table shows, Marco Rubio is quickly gaining the support of the power-brokers in the GOP. While this might count against him in a year when the theme of both parties seems to be “burn down the establishment!” it is quite telling that Rubio has the support of thirteen of his Senate colleagues while Cruz does not have ANY support from his Senate colleagues (and, for what its worth, Rubio also has more support from House members).  Neither Rand Paul, nor Mike Lee, nor Jeff Sessions (a man whose name Cruz uses a trump card whenever he can), nor even his fellow Texas Senator John Cornyn have yet been willing to endorse the Senator from Texas. This tells me that Rubio’s colleagues believe he will be the easiest to work with as president, while none of Cruz’s colleagues believe he would work with them in actually attempting to govern.

This lack of Senate support gives Cruz a major incentive to suspend his campaign.  If Cruz ends his campaign now, I think it could be the first step to re-building some of the many bridges that he has burned with his Senate colleagues. If, in this most desperate of hours, Ted Cruz finally set aside his ego and ambition, I think it would restore some goodwill among his fellow senators.  Cruz’s time in the Senate has been marked by tactical debacles that could not even count as Pyrrhic victories for the party, most notoriously, the 2013 Shutdown. He has called his party’s floor leader a liar on the floor of the Senate and made enemies of all but a handful of his fellow Republican senators.  This singular act could help Cruz become a more effective senator by getting rid of some of the bad blood between him and his fellow senators. The sooner he drops, the better it will be for him in the Senate.

Cruz should also drop because Rubio is in a MUCH stronger position to win the General Election.  Even though there are only miniscule differences between the two, ideologically, Rubio is universally regarded as the more mainstream of the two and the bigger threat to Hillary Clinton.  Cruz doomed his campaign from Day One when he mocked and wrote off the “Mushy Middle” of American politics, gambling his fate on an electorate of “courageous conservatives” who almost certainly do not exist in the numbers he claims.  Even if they do exist, I am skeptical that they will make up for the independent and moderate voters he would lose and it seems foolish to put faith in the least-reliable group of voters (those who have not voted recently) AND my guess is that said “courageous conservatives” live in states that Mitt Romney won handily in 2012.  This election will be won in the suburbs and cities of Virginia, Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania- the sort of precincts that Rubio won in South Carolina on Saturday and which Cruz derided as “pockets of liberalism.” Northern Virginia, for example, is one such area that Cruz would have to win to win the White House, but his whole campaign is founded on a war against the “Washington Cartel” which means, in effect, that it is a war against NOVA voters.  Cruz’s strategy was great for the primary season, but would be a disaster in the general election. There are not enough rural voters to compensate for losing urban voters so handily.  Rubio, on the other hand, would probably do well enough in these precincts to pull off a White House victory.

Finally, Cruz should be the one to drop because there is nothing he can offer Rubio to drop.  If Rubio loses this election, as the nominee or before, it only means that he will take a few months off before running for Governor of Florida. I do not believe, for one instant, that he has any interest in being Cruz’s running mate, nor should he. For one thing, Rubio would not add much to Cruz’s ticket in terms of demographics, experience, or ideology.  For Cruz to have a viable shot in the general election, he will need to balance his ticket with a fairly moderate and experienced woman, preferably not from the South or Heartland.  Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Kelly Ayotte, and Lisa Murkowski come to mind. Second, I do not think Rubio and Cruz would make a great team- the wounds they have inflicted on each other might be too deep for them to fully bury the hatchet. Third, I suppose each could offer the other a Cabinet position, but that gives neither an advantage in this stalemate. But Rubio has one trump card that could make the difference here: Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat.  Cruz, by virtue of his legal background, is qualified to be a Supreme Court justice.  And he would the perfect replacement for the notoriously fiery Scalia.  I have a difficult time imagining that Cruz would turn down such a prestigious offer, and I think his Senate colleagues would confirm him so that they could be rid of him once and for all.  Everybody wins.

Unless Cruz and Rubio come to some sort of agreement, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. If the relationship between the two was not so acrimonious and if they, together, would make a good ticket, maybe the solution would be easier to find and for partisans of both sides to swallow. So, either Rubio offers Cruz the seat of Antonin Scalia in exchange for Cruz’s support or one of them will have to be noble and willingly sacrifice himself for the good of the party and country.  Cruz cannot win the general election, but by sacrificing himself in this election, he could win back some of the friends he has lost in the Senate.  As an added bonus, he would save money in his war chest for a future run at the Oval Office (if he does not end up getting Scalia’s seat). In short, there are many incentives for Cruz to shelve his presidential ambitions this year and support his fellow conservative Cuban-American, Marco Rubio. I hope some sort of agreement is quickly reached because the hour grows late and Trump is only becoming more powerful. Some have already proclaimed the race to be over, but it is not over yet. If Cruz drops out before Super Tuesday, Trump can be stopped. 

A couple of days ago, I tried to figure out who the “real” Donald Trump is (and I am not sure if such a thing exists).  Now that it looks like Trump is going to win the South Carolina primary, I believe the time has come for the Republican Party to seriously assess what they should do about Trump. He is no longer a punchline; he is a serious threat to not only the GOP, but to the country. Last year, when he announced his campaign, Reince Priebus and many others (myself included) assumed he would launch a short-lived bid that would flame out within a couple months because of his reckless style of campaigning and habit of insulting everybody.  But now that he has established himself as the nominal front-runner, play time is over. Unless the GOP power brokers act soon, the party will only be left with losing options.
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Option 1- keep things going the way they are and do not interfere with the process.

Best Outcome- there is still a good chance that Marco Rubio could win enough states and capture enough party support to make the RNC a brokered convention.  If that happens, Rubio’s powerful supporters in the party should be able to sway delegates after the first round of voting. If this happens, Trump’s supporters will not be able to justifiably claim that the RNC cheated them out of the nomination.

Worst Outcome- Trump secures the nomination by sweeping winner-take-all states.  The GOP then loses in a McGovern-esque landslide in November, losing not only the White House (again), but also the Senate and possibly even the House of Representatives. The Republican Party never recovers from Trump’s oft-racist and inflammatory campaign.  Another equally-bad outcome is that Trump somehow pulls off a win in November and puts the Republicans in the awkward position of being forced to try to work with him and form some semblance of an agenda. After two years of battles between Trump and Congress, the GOP loses the midterm elections in a landslide.  Two years after that, Trump gets defeated in a landslide and the GOP brand never recovers.

Option 2- call Trump’s bluff and force him to run a third-party bid

Best Outcome- Marco Rubio or John Kasich wins a three-way race and builds a new conservative coalition that does not include the sort of racist nationalism espoused by most Trump supporters. The Republican Party then controls the White House for the next 24 years as Presidents Rubio, Haley, and Gardner all enjoy successful terms in the Oval Office. The GOP becomes more diverse and friendly towards Millennials and Trump’s presidential “campaign” is forgotten before too long.

Worst Outcome- The worst outcome here would be that Trump not only runs a third-party campaign, but ultimately wins.  This would be a far less preferable outcome for the GOP than even losing to Hillary or Bernie because the Republicans on Capitol Hill would march in lock-step opposition to a Democratic president on important matters and the GOP would likely enjoy a landslide victory in the 2018 midterms (flipping Missouri, Indiana, North Dakota, Montana, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and maybe one or two other Senate seats). If the president is Trump, however, the Republican Congress will be in the awkward position of trying to decide when to work with Trump and when to fight him, with victories being very few and far between. The only saving grace here, from the RNC's perspective, is that the 2018 Senate map endangers only one or two Senate seats for the GOP. Thus, if Trump were to be president, Dean Heller might be the only Senate casualty in what would otherwise be a brutal midterm election for the party.  Regardless, though, a Trump victory would mean four years of chaos that would reflect badly on the GOP, even though Trump won as an independent. 

Analysis
There are other potential sub-strategies within these broad options, but it is quite clear that the Republican Party does not benefit in any way from having Trump as the nominee.  Even if Trump runs as the nominee and wins in November, what does the Republican Party ultimately gain? Basically, nothing. They would get a president who is nominally affiliated with their party, but would be a complete wild card on every single issue.  Trump’s past is so checkered and so full of inconsistencies, he would be just as likely to rule as the most liberal president since FDR as he would be to rule as a conservative. Ultimately, the party would be better served by having him lose the general election than having him win; because at least if he loses, he would be quickly out of the picture and the party can get back to re-building, but more in accordance with the post-2012 autopsy.  In either case, though, having Trump as the standard-bearer of the party would cripple the GOP’s efforts to not only win elections, but also grow the party for decades to come.  The stench of the barely-veiled white supremacy underlying much of his support would destroy the party’s already-feeble attempts to attract voters who are not old, white, evangelical conservatives.  As the country becomes less white, a post-Trump GOP will struggle to even be competitive against the Democratic supermajority. Simply put, there are absolutely no short or long-term benefits for Republicans to nominate Trump.

The RNC should have called Trump’s bluff months ago. Reince must make it clear that the RNC will not do anything on his behalf should he win the nomination. Even if they cannot make donations to other candidates, Reince and powerful Republican politicians should openly express their support for a 3rd party candidate if Trump secures the nomination (similar to how the Tennessee Democrats reacted to the nomination of Mark Clayton in 2012). The best outcome here (Rubio winning the general election over Trump and the other Democrat) is a vastly superior outcome to any that involve Trump as the nominee.  But even if a Democrat wins the general election, this outcome is preferable to having Trump win as the GOP nominee. The GOP would be united against the Democrat’s agenda and it would show that the party valued integrity over winning.  In the long-term, the party would be so much better having built bridges instead of walls to minority communities.

The RNC thought they could avoid the Trump problem by simply waiting for his campaign to die out. They thought that if they played nice with him, Trump would not launch an independent bid and would instead encourage his supporters to back the eventual nominee once he suspended his campaign. In doing so, they failed to heed the words of the great Winston Churchill, "an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last." Well, the crocodile is now poised to consume the GOP as it continues its campaign of destruction. It now appears more likely than not that Trump could win the nomination and force the GOP to make a Faustian Pact of supporting the devil and selling their souls just to keep a Democrat out of the White House.  Even worse, however, is the fact that this Faustian Pact is unlikely to pay any dividends, at least as far as conservatives are concerned.  Because this is starting to look more and more likely, the RNC must cut their losses and break any and all ties with Donald Trump. Even if they lose without him, they can return to fight another day by disavowing him. But with Trump, the only possible outcomes all amount to losses of far greater severity than any losses that might result from cutting ties with him.  Therefore, if the GOP wants to have a bright future, it is in there interest to place their bets on the likes of Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, and Tim Scott rather than to desperately gamble on a man who is the antithesis of conservatism and is as trustworthy as a cornered viper. 

As it is starting to look increasingly likely that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for President of the United States, I thought it would be prudent to take a long look at the man to see if there is any remote justification for supporting him. In the first of this two-part series, we will look at Trump, the man, to see if we can better understand him.

Naturally, the first question is: who exactly is Donald Trump? He is a successful businessman, a reality TV star, and a lifelong Democrat who is now seeking the Republican nomination. He is a New Yorker through and through, and possesses probably the second biggest ego in the world at the moment (his only competition is Kanye West). Throughout his life and career, he has taken just about every position on every salient issue, imaginable. Recently, he has taken up the conservative positions on many (but not all) issues, but it is not difficult to find a past statement he has made on an issue that would contradict his current professed positions.  For one so loud, he is actually a bit of an enigma as to what he actually believes.

If there is one thing Trump has built his campaign on it is the issue of immigration.  Admittedly, I did not foresee that immigration would become the salient topic that it has. I did not think that in the face of ISIS, lingering economic problems, Supreme Court appointments, and other problems that immigration would be all that important. But Trump has certainly tapped into an angry base by taking the most hardline positions imaginable on that topic. He has, in other words, made use of one of the oldest and saddest of American traditions- the tradition of using immigrants as the scapegoats for all of one’s problems (be they Chinese, Mexican, Irish, Japanese, or any others). The extent to which he personally believes what he is saying is unclear, but he certainly picked some fertile ground for a primary campaign that the others would have largely ignored.

Classifying Trump on the normal ideological spectrum is difficult.  It certainly cannot be done on a one-dimensional scale, or even a 2-dimensional scale (such as the Political Compass).  Although he is espousing strong racially conservative views, he does not align very well with conservatives on other views. He is not opposed to taxation, for example, in the way that someone like Grover Norquist would like. Nor is he an especially strong social conservative- defending Planned Parenthood and having made statements in the past supportive of abortion.  As for foreign policy, from what I can discern from his often incoherent rambles, he is certainly no neoconservative. In fact, his accusations against President Bush and the War in Iraq made him sound like Dennis Kucinich in the 2008 Democratic primary. In terms of trade policies, he appears to be the strongest protectionist in the Republican Party since the days of Robert Taft. Trump’s views, in short, are a wild array of different beliefs that lack substance and are not nuanced, but allow him to defy classification according to the normal ideological labels. The fairest way, I think, to label him would be a racially conservative nationalist protectionist isolationist populist demagogue.

Trump and the Tea Party
Interestingly, Trump’s largest base of support seems to come from the remnants of the Tea Party movement- figures like Sarah Palin. I call this “interesting” because Donald Trump is the antithesis of everything that started the movement.  In its original form, the Tea Party was a fiscally conservative and libertarian movement more closely aligned with Ron Paul than with anything remotely like Trump.  The Tea Party formed in response to programs like TARP and the various bailouts that, in the eyes of the Tea Party’s founders, represented crony capitalism and poor economics. Social issues and foreign policy were not concerns of the Tea Party in its infancy, just fiscal conservatism.

So what happened? Desperate to grow and become more influential, the Tea Party allowed itself to morph from a libertarian economic protest movement to a movement without any particular direction due to the numerous issues they pledged to attack.  According to their website, illegal immigration somehow made it to the very top of their list- the most important “non-negotiable” belief in their manifesto. Suddenly, the movement was overwhelmed by the various factions within it and looked more like Michele Bachmann’s core principles than Ron Paul’s more narrowly-focused vision.  Since then, it has only gotten worse as the Tea Party became a haven for people angry at everything rather than a coordinated movement dedicated to slowing down the rise of big government in the realm of fiscal policy. The Tea Party, in short, merely became the extreme arm of the Republican Party, rather than the next step of the Ron Paul movement.

Given this lack of direction, focus, and discipline, it is hardly surprising that what is left of the Tea Party would embrace Donald Trump seven years after the birth of the movement.  Trump speaks to their anger and offers them a list of villains to blame.  His decidedly  less-than-conservative record is cast aside by his demagogic tirades against immigrants. And since some Tea Party politicians have failed to deliver on their promises, his nuclear tactics against any politician seem like the logical next step. Trump, in essence, is the manifestation of everything the Tea Party has become over the years, of how much of their message they are willing to sacrifice for a demagogue.  Instead of fiscal conservatism, he speaks of protectionism, trade wars, and even eminent domain.  Instead of strong religious and family values, they embrace the man who is on his third trophy wife, has only recently expressed pro-life positions, and made money by owning casinos. Instead of opposing Obamacare, they endorse a man who has openly expressed his desire for single-payer universal health care, the same as Bernie Sanders. Instead of seeking the sort of unity Americans had on September 12th, 2001 (which was the purpose of Glenn Beck’s tangentially-related 9.12 Groups), they are campaigning for a man who is one step away from being a full-fledged 9/11 Truther!  Instead of denouncing the auto and bank bailouts of 2008 and 2009, they are throwing their support behind a man who supported these actions- the ones responsible for jumpstarting the Tea Party movement!

The Tea Party has truly lost all sense of direction by endorsing the sort of big government demagogue that the movement formed to oppose.  Donald Trump is the manifestation of this undisciplined, out of control movement that is now only really united by anger directed at abstract enemies like China and immigrants.  And a movement that has no unifying principles beyond just anger cannot really be expected to survive for very long.  As far as I am concerned, he has killed the Tea Party movement, co-opted it into his own personal cult and capitalized on the anger fueling what is left of the movement.  He has taken advantage of the cacophony of oft-competing messages espoused by Tea Party leaders and re-forged it into his own unique political message that betrays the original purpose of the Tea Party.  But, he is exactly what that movement deserves for being unable to stay true to their original intent and allowing anger to blind their judgement.

​Conclusion
So, who is Donald Trump? I have three theories. First, that he is an extremely talented entertainer and underrated politician who has a keen sense of what his audience desires and tells them what they want to hear in order to boost himself.  He is breaking and re-writing all the political rules because he had a better sense of his audience’s anger and desire for chaos than any of us who study politics for a living. In this theory, he is only running for president as part of some kind of ego trip just to prove that he can and that Americans really are stupid enough to ceaselessly support him out of anger (making him little better than a con artist). My second theory is that he is Hillary Clinton’s ultimate agent of chaos. Bill Clinton only won in 1992 because of Ross Perot’s 3rd party bid, so Hillary might have sensed that Trump could help her in a 3rd party. Even better, from her perspective, he could open Pandora’s Box against the Republicans and irreparably split the GOP by running a successful primary campaign.  In all seriousness, I cannot think of anything Trump could do differently to plunge the GOP into chaos in an election year.  Every time he threatens an independent bid, the RNC falls flat on their face trying to make it up to him.  He is systematically destroying some of the GOP’s best candidates (beginning with Scott Walker) and trumpeting a toxic political issue (immigration) that forces Republicans to take positions that will hasten their eventual demise as a party.  He has reduced the debates to incoherent screaming bouts that inexplicably never seem to backfire on him in the polls.  His campaign is destroying the Republican Party, but I cannot decide if this is intentional on his part or if he just does not care. Finally, my third theory is he is actually sincere about his desire to become president and actually believes the oft-vile statements he spews.  I find this to be the least plausible (oddly enough) because he has no consistency, whatsoever, in his history of political philosophies.  It seems to me he usually just spouts out whatever pops into his head or whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear. But if he does actually believe the things he says, that is the scariest thought of all…

Stay tuned for my thoughts on how the Republicans should respond to Trump, now that he is no longer a punch line.

On Saturday, the political world was thrown into chaos. The great jurist Antonin Scalia died of a heart attack and now the equilibrium of our entire legal system has been shattered. For now, as long as his seat is vacated, the Supreme Court looks to be divided 4-4 in some crucial upcoming cases and if President Obama gets his way, the Court will have a 5-4 liberal majority for the first time in 25 years (since Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall). America lost, on Saturday, one of the finest judicial minds in American history and certainly the funniest (probably the only one who could make legal opinions remotely enjoyable to read). For conservatives and Republicans, the loss of Antonin Scalia is incalculable. He was the true intellectual anchor of the conservative wing and the founder of the now-dominant approach to judicial philosophy on the political right- Originalism. Obviously, for President Obama, Democrats, and progressives, the loss of Scalia represents a golden opportunity to solidify their grasp on the Supreme Court. The Court’s liberal bloc (Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan) has occasionally poached Kennedy or Roberts on key cases in recent years, but they will not need to do that if a genuinely progressive justice is on the Court. Needless to say, the stakes could hardly be higher in this battle and both sides are arming themselves for what could be a year-long fight.
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Shortly after the announcement of Scalia’s death, the Republicans began to mount their opposition to the candidate, who has not yet been named. I think this was a tactical mistake, especially since nearly everyone, beginning with Mitch McConnell, has tried to justify obstructionism by claiming that the American people should choose the next justice and that it is somehow not the norm for a president to try to successfully nominate someone to the Court in their final year. This is neither constitutionally nor historically the case. It is true that it is rare, but this rarity has nothing to do with the election cycle. If it did, Anthony Kennedy would not be on the Court right now. And while Abe Fortas failed to be confirmed in LBJ’s last year, this was due entirely to ethics problems he was confronting, not the impending presidential election. And the Constitution is crystal clear that the sitting president absolutely has the right to nominate whomever he/she desires. I have no idea why the Senate GOP (and national GOP, for that matter) decided it would be best to build the case for opposing the president’s nominee on the back of such fallacious arguments.

What they should have done is simply waited for Obama to make the first move. They should have announced that they would do everything in their power to ensure that Scalia’s successor is not someone who would negate and reverse everything Scalia has accomplished, but that they would allow the president to fulfill his Constitutional role by allowing him to nominate someone and giving the nominee a chance to make his or her case before the Senate. That would have put the ball entirely in Obama’s court. Obama would have been the one who would be forced to decide whether to fight a long, bloody battle with Congress or to rise above partisan politics and name a successor worthy of Scalia’s legacy in the eyes of the Republican majority. If the president picked the first option, public opinion might actually favor the Republicans since it would appear Obama was the one playing partisan games and has no desire to actually fill the seat. If he picked the latter option, everyone wins.  But inventing a new doctrine of Constitutional procedures based on the electoral cycle only serves to make the GOP look bad, especially since the nominee has not even been named yet.

Right now, Obama holds most of the cards.  The GOP looks bad in the press and he looks like the one following the Constitution. He has several options right now, all but one of which lead to a victory for him.  His first option (which is the one I think he will take) is to nominate a progressive to replace Scalia and force the GOP to reject his nomination.  In the interim, the liberal bloc of the Court will probably win on several key votes coming up (union dues and abortion cases) since ties in the Court are broken by deferring to the lower court decision. And while his nominee awaits his/her confirmation in the Senate, the GOP’s numbers will continue to tank as THEY appear to be the ones playing partisan games. Not confirming his nominee could cost the Republicans both the Senate and White House come November, which means that Obama can easily win a war of attrition by simply pushing this nomination off to the next Senate and President.

Obama’s second option is to nominate someone similar in ideology to Anthony Kennedy.  Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit comes to mind, but his computer porn scandal disqualifies him from serious consideration. A relatively moderate or center-right choice (Brian Sandoval fits this bill) might be enough to placate serious Republicans in the Senate and ensure that Scalia’s seat is filled by the end of this session of Congress and Obama’s presidency. The upside (from Obama’s perspective) would be that the Court would still be dragged in a leftward direction (especially on social issues) and he would earn some renown for rising above partisan politics by nominating someone acceptable to the Senate majority. Moreover, I would expect that confirming any Obama nominee would anger the Republican base so much that the Democrats still end up winning the Senate and White House in November.  Especially since there is a sizable chance the next president will pick the replacement for Anthony Kennedy, this would not seem to me a major setback for progressives.  Sandoval, in particular, would be a brilliant tactical move for Obama because it would remove from the chess board a rook lurking in their future who could cause serious headaches on the national scale. And finally, if Obama were to nominate someone like Sandoval, he would be even better off if the Senate were to not confirm him- the Republicans would look like petulant, uncompromising ideologues and Obama the statesman. This move could be a brilliant bait-and-switch for Obama, a trap he can set that gives the Republican Senate no avenues for victory.  At worst, Obama would come out on top by replacing a conservative stalwart with a relatively moderate justice and by removing the threat Sandoval poses to the Democrats in the future as a presidential candidate.

A third option is for Obama to do nothing. He, obviously, will not take that option as he would not be fulfilling his constitutional duties and he would be ceding control of the narrative to the Republican Senate, thus seriously jeopardizing his party’s chances in November. There is nothing to gain and everything to lose by this strategy.

Finally, Obama could really throw a monkey wrench into the system by nominating Senator Ted Cruz. There is actually a compelling argument for this strategy. First, Obama would not upset any ideological balance by nominating Cruz. Cruz is essentially the same as Scalia in terms of positions and approach to jurisprudence. Knowing that the next president will likely replace 3 justices (including the crucial swing vote, Anthony Kennedy), it is of utmost importance to the president to ensure that his party controls not only the White House, but also the Senate. Therefore, a second reason that this strategy makes sense is that Cruz is a leading contender for the Republican nomination for president, BUT the leader is one Donald Trump, a man whose base of voters does not differ too greatly from Cruz’s base. As such, removing Cruz from the race would increase the likelihood that Trump gets the GOP nomination when a sizable portion of Cruz's supporters defect to him (if for no other reason than immigration).  In turn, this would all but hand the White House to the Democrats for another four years AND sink the GOP’s hopes of winning Senate races in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Thirdly, I think the Senate would confirm Cruz and here’s why- they (his colleagues) would be quite eager to get Cruz out of their hair once and for all. They would, I think, happily relegate him to a relatively isolated office where he can be as divisive as he wants to be and it will not reflect poorly on them. Finally, Cruz is actually quite qualified for this position. He has clerked for a Supreme Court Chief Justice, argued cases before the Supreme Court, and has a law degree from Harvard Law School. In all honesty, I think the Supreme Court is where he belongs.  As an added bonus, Obama would look like a statesman for nominating someone so diametrically opposed to him in tribute to Justice Scalia. But should the Democrats win in November, the pending replacement of Anthony Kennedy would relegate Cruz to a loud, but lonely voice as one of nine and part of the minority bloc. In the short-term, everyone wins, in the long-run, progressives win. 

In conclusion, the Republicans are really stuck between a rock and a hard place here. Playing hardball, they risk losing the White House and Senate by proving they cannot govern or compromise. But if they approve any candidate the president offers, then they might just as easily lose both by permanently turning the base against them. President Obama holds all the cards right now (save that the GOP is the Senate majority). It all depends, however, on who the president nominates. If he nominates a liberal, the Republicans could win by refusing to confirm and painting the president as uninterested in compromise and statesmanship, but interested in insulting the memory of Scalia by nominating someone diametrically opposed to his principles and philosophy. If he nominates a moderate or conservative, the better option might be to confirm his choice. My guess is that everyone defects here (meaning that neither side cooperates) and we will have a year-long battle that leaves both sides bloodied and bruised. Remember, the Senate does not have to confirm, but I think they should give the president a chance to rise above petty partisanship and nominate someone worthy of Scalia’s legacy. No matter what happens, though, the country lost one of its greatest jurists of all time. 

A great essay by George Orwell discusses the effects that written and spoken language have on political systems.  Beyond merely making one sound unintelligent, poor use of language has some deleterious effects (both intentional and unintentional) on our political system. For instance, making use of double (or more) negatives can obscure one’s meaning, as can the use of an outdated (or misused) idiom. In this spirit, I think the Republican Party needs to have a discussion of the language it uses, in particular, the words “establishment” and “RINO.” Although I have long thought that conservatives were hysterically overusing these particular terms, I think the final straw has finally arrived with Sarah Palin calling Ted Cruz “an establishment shill.” If Ted Cruz is “establishment,” then the term really is meaningless, anymore.
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Once upon a time, the Republican Party was a political party with strongholds in New England and virtually no presence in the South.  Figures like Jacob Javits and Nelson Rockefeller led significant portions of the Republican Party while conservatives were largely found in the Democratic Party (some exceptions, of course, were found. Phyllis Schlafly and Robert Taft commanded a sizable following in the 1952 contest against Dwight Eisenhower).  After the passage of the Civil Rights Act, however, the parties experienced a series of realignments that brought conservatives into the GOP and gradually forced liberals and some moderates out of the party. By 1980, Ronald Reagan had built a strong coalition of free market conservatives, religious conservatives, and foreign policy hawks who challenged liberal figures in the GOP like Lowell Weicker and Charles McCurdy Mathias.  After the 1994 Republican Revolution, and certainly by 2004, there were hardly any of these Rockefeller Republicans left in positions of power (Lincoln Chafee and a few others remained).  Now, there is just Susan Collins left.

Before the GOP became so thoroughly dominated by conservatives, it may have been appropriate to label somebody as a member of the “establishment.” The GOP was largely a party of eastern moderates and liberals who tried hard to keep conservatives out of power. The defection of many of these former Republicans is a testament to them being a “Republican In Name Only” (Weicker, Arlen Specter, Jim Jeffords, and Chafee are among those who were once powerful Republicans and eventually left the party to become independents or Democrats.) Specter, in particular, proved that he deserved the “RINO” label after switching to the Democrats just because he (correctly) anticipated that he would not survive a primary battle against Pat Toomey.

Now, Phyllis Schlafly’s victory is complete. The entire Republican establishment is conservative on social, fiscal, and national security issues.  As much as base conservatives may criticize Mitch McConnell for making deals with President Obama (something one has to do in politics if one wants to actually govern), it is ridiculous to assert that the man who single-handedly built the Kentucky Republican Party is as liberal as any of the aforementioned Republicans. Paul Ryan, the man whose selection as Mitt Romney’s running mate was derided for being “too conservative” is now the Speaker of the House! Moreover, John Boehner was no liberal. He may have been a weak Speaker prone to crying, but at the end of the day, he was a pragmatic conservative who defended his principles and found a way to work with others.  Finally, every single Republican candidate for president (except Trump) is a fire-engine red conservative.  Even if Kasich is the most “moderate” of the candidates, he still has a record as governor and in Congress that would have been derided as “more conservative than Goldwater!” fifty years ago (Goldwater was considered a “liberal Republican” by the time he retired because of his pro-choice views). In short, the conservative takeover of the Republican Party is thorough and complete. The old “establishment” does not exist, anymore.

That does not stop, however, Tea Party and other conservatives from using “establishment” and “RINO” as insults every chance they get.   Nowadays, a single deviation from pure conservative ideology (even on procedural matters) opens one up to these sorts of claims by base activists and those who still listen to Rush Limbaugh and other conservative media figures. For example, before Paul Ryan became Speaker, there was a not-unsubstantial effort among the most conservative of conservatives to lambaste him as a “RINO” and make sure he did not get the position he did not want.  And then once Ryan grew a beard, some even asserted that he might be some kind of Radical Islamist turncoat! It has been even worse in the presidential primary cycle. Because of one legislative effort, Marco Rubio (once hailed as the “Crown Prince of the Tea Party”) has, ironically, been blasted as a “RINO” by supporters of Donald Trump (and Ted Cruz, for that matter) and has been called the “establishment choice” for the nomination (ignoring the fact that Rubio defeated one of the all-time great RINO’s in Charlie Crist a mere six years ago). But Sarah Palin deriding Ted Cruz as an “establishment shill” has to be the apex of lunacy.  Again, I am no fan of Ted Cruz, but he has alienated himself from the powerful figures in the party from the first day he set foot in the US Senate. He has committed himself to destroying his party for the sake of making it even more conservative. He has gambled his entire campaign on an electorate of grassroots conservatives committed to bringing down the “Washington Cartel” that I am not sure even exist.  Palin made this charge in spite of all of this, and while supporting a candidate who has openly admitted to buying politicians with his money.

If Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, and Trey Gowdy are “establishment,” then the term is truly devoid of any meaning, anymore.  Same with “RINO.” Conservatives have so fully dominated the former Republican Establishment that they seem to have no idea what to do now that they occupy the throne.  Figures like Phyllis Schlafly and Sarah Palin, who spent their lives trying to purify the GOP from the Rockefeller Republicans and other less-than-conservative officials, are now waging war against the conservatives they once supported and are embracing the least-conservative Republican running for president since Arlen Specter in 1996. Even more ironically, they are endorsing the candidate most likely to leave the GOP at a moment’s notice and either return to the Democratic Party or wreck the GOP’s chances in November by launching a 3rd Party bid. To me, that makes someone more of a “Republican in Name Only” than a slightly-moderate conservative who has been a Republican his entire life. For these reasons, terms like “establishment” and “RINO” should be retired, not only for the sake of the party, but also because they are vague, undefined abstractions that only serve to dumb-down our political discourse.  Conservatives have not only conquered the “establishment” of old, they have annihilated the old order and thus rendered term “establishment” obsolete.  Maybe Schlafly and Palin are so used to denouncing the "establishment," they have no idea what to do when politicians they support become "the establishment." In any case, it is clear that the terms are meaningless and contribute nothing useful to our political discourse.