* The liberals have actually been helping Trump with a lot of their attacks. I look at video after video of Mexicans waving Mexican flags, while cursing in Spanish at middle class American citizens at Trump rallies who have to pay for all of them and take all the blame in the world, and all I can think of is how screwed up this country has become and how Trump is the only one who is even trying to tackle the problem, instead of exacerbate it. There’s clearly quite a few others who see it too.
* That which got Cruz this far was the same thing that meant that he wouldn’t make it all the way to the top. That is, being a lamestream conservative ideologue who plays by all the soi disant informal political campaigning rules. Like you’ve been saying, lamestream conservatism is trying to solve 1980′s already solved problems in 2016′s world.
The good news for him is that even in our era of the Presidency attaining more and more power over domestic issues, to match its near dictatorial power over foreign and military policy, being a United States Senator is still an enviable position; hell, I was one election away from being a staffer for one. I think that now that he realizes that the Presidency isn’t happening, Cruz will quit acting like he can or should be President, which I think was part of the reason why his Senate colleagues don’t much like him, and get to work being a good Senator. Also, part of the reason his colleagues disliked him is that he came right into the Senate thinking of the Presidency, they didn’t like him because they think he needs to win a couple of terms and pay his dues, and not jump ahead of older more experienced politicians. Now, Baraq Obama ran for and won the Presidency after barely working in the Senate after winning one term, but he was different for one very obvious reason: B-L-A-C-K. Cruz, while “Hispanic,” in terms of having a New World white Spaniard for a father and therefore his surname, wasn’t social justicey or civil rightsey enough for his election to be a profound or a first.
I can compare Ted Cruz to another Ted, that being Kennedy. At some point, he realized that the Presidency was never in the cards for him, and started getting down to business as a Senator. This is why he was able to go from being resented to being loved by Democrats.
* I personally liked Cruz for his oily Nixonian vibe. Sometimes you need a slimeball like Nixon. Michael Lind once said something like, “Nixon wasn’t the best president, but he was the best realistic option America had at the time.”
Ah, well. Maybe one could say the same thing about Trump. I said from the beginning I’d support him if he was the nominee, and I meant it. So here we go…
* I gotta say that Trump was ruthless with Cruz. Those attacks on his wife and allegations of extramarital affairs must have been psychologically extremely distressing and disruptive for Cruz’s family given that his wife has a history of serious depression. When people called Trump’s nasty tweet about Heidi a huge mistake and turning point I suspected they were wrong. It was calculated to land like a bomb right in Cruz’s house. Trump is a genius when it comes to f*cking with people. My dad was that way, so I know it when I see it.
Can he do it to Hillary? I bet he can. He’s played enough golf with Bill Clinton to know a thing or two about their dynamic. In fact, that may be what convinced him to jump in the race.
I think Hillary is going to be on the defensive from here on out, and she’s not very good when she’s in that mode. Even if she wins the general, Trump will have done permanent damage to her and her health, both mental and physical I’d wager. That man is merciless.
* I think it truly is time for the Republican Party and the conservative movement to come to a reckoning over its future. The numbers that are relevant aren’t just Trump’s, but the combined numbers of Trump and Cruz. Both ran in opposition to immigration. Both ran as outsiders (Trump with more credibility on the point than Cruz).
What is almost incredible is how very few votes were ever cast for a candidate acceptable to the establishment, and running on a platform acceptable to the establishment. Bizarrely, the establishment imagines that these outsider candidates — especially Trump of course — have betrayed the conservative movement. But what this nomination process makes crystal clear is that there is no conservative movement as the establishment imagines it. There’s just about zero electoral support for their “movement”. What Trump and Cruz have done is a splendid piece of exploratory surgery, effectively separating out what the voters really want, allowing them clear choices. What voters want is something the establishment has always opposed, and which the candidates the establishment have backed have been designed to obscure.
The establishment may generate all the ideas and policies and money they desire — but their movement fails to exist, because it is empty of voters.
* Bobby Jindal said on Hannity that he will put his differences that he has with Donald Trump aside and vote for him in the general election, because the thought of a Hildabeast presidency scares the hell out of him.
The Donald better hope that he gets more voters like Bobby who are not crazy about him, but sees him as the lesser of 2 evils when compared to Hildabeast.
* Stalin once said that he didn’t care who casts the votes, he only cared who counted the votes. The reason he said that is that he was a mid 20th century Soviet Russian. If he was an early 21st century SJW American, he would say that he doesn’t care about who casts the votes or who counts the votes, he cares about who interprets the election results.
Interpreting election results is a very underappreciated choke point in the machines of modern democratic republican governance in a modern media climate.
We all know how the Republican establishment, at the behest of the cheap labor gluttons in the donor class, interpreted Romney not winning in 2012 as a function of him not being open borders enough, therefore the solution is for the party to be even more open borders. This is why you had Gang Bangers of Eight, Schumer-Rubio, Jeb!.
Parallel to that, the people that live in the lamestream conservative bubble universe interpreted Romney not winning and the several million white people who voted in 2008 but did not vote in 2012 as a function of those four million people giving Romney a lamestream conservative purity acid test which he failed ergo they stayed home. That silly reasoning is so easy to refute on so many levels, (the easiest way is that these people did vote for John McCain, who is even less conservative than Romney). Sean Trende actually had the best analysis of these missing whites; I know you’ve had posts about it. And of course the elderly black women who turned out in record numbers. But, the truth doesn’t matter, it’s what lamer cons in the lamer con ideological cult bubble believed. This is why you had Ted Cruz running a campaign of lamestream conservative ideological purity, because he is one of those cultists. Sure, it was good for 7.2 million votes and 11 states, but it’s not good enough even to win the Republican Party nomination in 2016, much less the whole Presidency.
* I hope that the Trump campaign informs the #NeverTrump camp that they are cordially invited to go f**k themselves. George Will, Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and all the rest of those flatulent gas-bags should be declared persona-non-grata. No innaugural ball tickets for you, fellas. Knowing who is on your side and who isn’t is an important part of politics.
* Cruz gave up because if he could not turn things around in Indiana, he knew it was hopeless.
Cruz’s major advantages in Indiana:
Talk Radio
Indianapolis’ WIBC, a Fox affiliate, along with a half dozen other major radio stations are owned by EMMIS (“Absolute Truth” in Yiddish/Hebrew) Communications controlled by uber neocon, ultra Zionist Jeff Smulyan. WIBC/EMMIS was heavily pushing Cruz, telling its listeners that Cruz was the “real deal”. Popular local Hoosier host Greg Garrison would say in his typically hokey way that “Ted Cruz is a strong as a garlic malt”. When Greg Garrison’s listeners started calling in complaining about state Republicans selling them out on immigration, Common Core, the Gay Agenda, and WIBC’s insane Zionist foreign policy, the station stop taking callers.
Jeff Smulyan was so strongly behind Cruz that last summer that when Rush Limbaugh started warming up to Trump because it was apparent that so too was his audience, WIBC made the unprecedented move of dropping its by far top rated show. Instead WIBC replaced Rush with ultra Cruz shill Dana Loesch, from Glenn Beck’s now cratering The Blaze media empire.
Apparently Smulyan played a big role in Cruz’s quick breakup with Kaisach in favor of selecting Carly Fiorina as a running mate. WIBC hosted several rallies for Fiorina in the last year. Smulyan was clearly delusional over Fiorina because besides being hated as an outsourcer of jobs, Hoosiers despised her for being an early supporter of Common Core right up until she realized how radioactive it is in the Midwest.
Indiana Republican Establishment
The ultra Cucked state Republican party establishment was 100% against Trump. Gov Mike Pence endorsed Cruz. Right up until the Republican base started screaming, they openly plotted to throw their delegate votes to anyone but Trump.
Indiana Right to Life
Indiana is one of those states where the abortion issue still miraculously motivates lots of voters and volunteers for the Republicans. Our home got 3 or more phone calls telling us Trump was immoral and lousy on Right to Life.
Demographics
Political Scientists like to describe Indiana as Northern Appalachia. And while it is true the state has lots of redneck migrants from Kentucky and West Virginia who talk like Tom Hardy’s Fitzgerald from The Revenant, the other major demographic are of 1848, not “1488″ Germanic stock. These folks are suckers for the universalist empty ideological rhetoric of the Neocons and Conservatism Inc. Another major demographic are the Christian Dispensationalists brainwashed with Scofield Reference Bible lunatic love for Israel.
* Cruz actually did run a very good campaign. He outlasted every other Republican (other than Trump obviously and the irrelevant John Kasich) and won about a third of the electoral votes. It was especially impressive for him to outperform Rubio, Bush, Walker, and Christie. It takes talent for a new Senator to come in and go that far.
Cruz was very adept at adjusting his ideology to fit the base, especially on immigration and foreign policy. He did very well at turning out the vote and grassroots organization. That was evident after his unexpected win in Iowa.
Cruz’s basic problem was that Trump’s nationalism was always a lot more popular than the standard 80s conservatism. When the base was exposed to a viable nationalist candidate, they jumped on the train. Republican voters realized that the typical conservative platform (smaller govt, lower taxes, hawkish foreign policy) didn’t really align with their interests as much as the nationalist platform (protectionism, immigration restriction, America first).
However, I don’t think many people (outside of Pat Buchanan, the AltRight, and Sailer) realized the appeal of nationalism until now. If Trump wins in November, nationalism may become the dominant ideology of the Republican party.
Of course, the Donor Class won’t be happy. So I expect plenty of opposition to Trump.
On the Democratic side, it’ll be interesting to see if the economic leftists can take their party back from the oligarchs within the next few years. Most likely not in 2016 (Hillary is the ideal candidate of the globalist oligarchs), but what about 2018 or 2020?
* Of course he is not actually a nationalist. Why would so many Big Money backers have donated if he had been a nationalist? Nationalism does not make globalist corporations increased profits.
Yes, he did come around to nationalist issues. To put it another way, he imitated what trump was saying after he realized that unless he did he was going to get buried. The problem is that a lot of us realized that he is just another lying politician who will say anything to get votes. We don’t believe lying politicians like ted cruz.
The media and the establishment had no problem whatsoever with cruz imitating trump on so many issues. Why? They understand also that cruz was just saying whatever he needed to say to get votes. They understand that he is a lying politician and that he will bend his knee to globalism if ever elected.
* Funny how when Trump started talking about America First, his campaign immediately went to a higher level….must have been a mistake, right????
* I never liked Fiorina. Her extremist foreign policy views alarmed me. After Russia began military involvement in Syria, I remember that she called for an American military confrontation with Russia. That’s absolutely insane. Russia is a nuclear-armed nation.
It’s strange that American media and political elites are so scared of Trump, who actually has very sober and restrained view with respect to foreign policy. It’s equally strange that they treat loony Fiorina as a serious public figure.
* Before Trump entered the race, I spent some time with Cruz at two or three private fundraising events. Back in May. Nothing frustrated me more than hearing him say that Reagan Democrats were coming to him and that the missing voters were Evangelicals. For how great his team was organizationally, they really whiffed on that one. The missing voters were non-southern, working class white voters. They all voted for Trump. They care about immigration, trade and US national interests (which we all here know). I begged Cruz in May to take populist/nationalist positions on immigration and trade. He didn’t listen because he didn’t believe it. In fact, he told us then that he was going to hit Walker because he had suggested cutting legal immigration. Then he wanted nothing to do with Jeff Sessions. He also had no problem with Muslim immigration. Once he came around to the nationalist issues it was too late. He lost because he’s not actually a nationalist.
* I want someone who could do 2 things.
1. Advise Trump on immigration policy
2. Help pass anti-immigration legislation through the House and Senate
Sessions can do that. He’s a very bright guy.
Of course, I think Kris Kobach could be good too. Even Tom Tancredo.
I see Sessions as a realistic choice because he’s very close to Trump and has been advising him extensively since August. I could see Trump choosing him as VP. While I like Kobach, I’m not sure if Kobach is close to Trump.
I do agree that if Sessions becomes the VP, we need a good replacement. A Senator who will fight for our side.
* Northeasterners like Trump because lots of them are ethnic (Irish, Italian, etc.) proles with abrasive personalities. Trump is their type of guy. Trump’s crushing victory in Staten Island really demonstrated his popularity with the east coast Italian/Irish loudmouths.
Nice Midwesterners feel Trump is too mean.
By the way, Trump did well in the South. Southern whites are polite, but lots of them are roughneck Scots-Irish types.
* By the way, isn’t it interesting how Trump talks about Japan so much? It’s been decades since American politicians even mentioned the trade threat from Japan.
NYTIMES: Donald J. Trump has often aimed his raucous brand of disparagement at foreign countries during his presidential run. There is China, “ripping off” the United States on trade and stealing its jobs. And Mexico, closing its eyes to a flood of migrants and drugs across the border.
But his preoccupation with Japan is perhaps more unusual, if not anachronistic.
Mr. Trump chastised Japan last week in a Republican candidates’ debate, naming it along with China and Mexico as countries where “we are getting absolutely crushed on trade.” He has previously accused Japan of manipulating its currency to achieve an unfair economic advantage, and of exploiting its military alliance with the United States to protect itself at little risk and cost.
His complaints are reminiscent of another era, when Japan’s economy was booming and its companies were buying trophy American assets like movie studios and Rockefeller Center. Since the 1990s, though, Japan’s growth has been mostly flat, and trade friction much more subdued, even as the United States continues to run large trade deficits with Japan.
Whereas Japanese officials once feared so-called Japan-bashing by Americans, today they are more likely to lament “Japan-passing,” a shift in attention to places viewed as more dynamic, like China.
“Trump’s comments on Japan remind me of the period from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, when Japan was considered a serious rival to American economic pre-eminence,” said Glen S. Fukushima, a former United States trade official who is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group. “It’s interesting that despite the two-decade stagnation of the Japanese economy, Trump is now reviving the idea of Japan as an economic rival robbing America of jobs.”
Or, as Robert E. Kelly, an East Asia specialist at Pusan National University in South Korea, put it on Twitter during the Republican debate: “Japan, Japan, Japan again. Trump is living in the Michael Crichton ’80s.” (Mr. Crichton’s best-selling novel “Rising Sun,” published in 1992, depicted a Japan that waged ruthless economic war against the United States.)
Mr. Trump’s ascendance has begun to cause serious unease in Japan. Even if his run ends short of the White House, the worry is that an election dominated by such talk could leave the United States more closed to trade and less willing to defend its allies.
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“My friends in the Foreign Ministry are in a state of panic,” said Kiichi Fujiwara, an expert on international politics at the University of Tokyo. “This is the first time in a long time that we’ve seen straightforward protectionism from an American presidential candidate.”
Continue reading the main story
“If there is a big shake-up in American politics, there is a danger that Japan could become an outlet for popular dissatisfaction with the spread of inequality and other issues,” The Nikkei financial daily said.
* We were told that this was the strongest most interesting diverse vibrant accomplished Republican Presidential candidate field of our generation.
Donald Trump just beat every last one of them.
Let that sink in.
And draw your own conclusions.
* eff Smulyan in is own way is a major Zionist media macher that most folks don’t know about.
Also people don’t know that Smulyan is the man who gave Alex Jones his start.
And for decades Alex Jones has been a textbook example of the TWMNBN tactic of creating a false “controlled opposition” that deflects populist outrage away from Jewish interests and if need be onto ridiculous conspiracy theory dead ends.
http://alexjonesexposed.info/alex-jones-and-emmis-communications/
The problem now is that Alex Jones seems to want to break away from Smulyan and hold on to his audience which is increasingly being “Red Pilled” by the alt-right.
* I live in a very wealthy area. But nothing pisses me off more than walking into Costco and feeling like I’m at the United Nations. You can’t go to the movies or mall or zoo anymore without feeling like you’re in some third world hellhole. And that doesn’t even speak to Islam, which so many of us believe has no place in the West and yet now is quite visible here. If I felt this – and again, I don’t live or work amongst the diversity that much, no doubt others feel it too. Why are these people here? The third world invasion has become too apparent.
Had Buchanan not been an anti-Semite, perhaps he could have won. He was right on a lot of issues, but he was a bit nutty on certain things, such as his WWII version of events. But yes, I agree that the future of the GOP is as a nationalist party. That’s what happens when you go multiculturalist.
* Southerners seem to mix their surface politeness with an underlying hardness. They sometimes give off a vibe that you don’t want to f*** with them. Midwestern whites generally don’t.
Perhaps that explains why Wisconsin blacks are so different from rural Mississippi blacks.
* As has been noted many times before, our rulers are culturally and economically completely out of touch with regular Americans. They don’t realize the anger below the surface because they don’t interact much with ordinary people. Also, PC makes people keep their anger quiet these days.
Trump has revealed that there’s a huge amount of discontent below the surface. He’s expressing how a lot of us feel. That’s why he wins.
For political elites and oligarchs who live in a bubble, this is tough to understand.
* A big factor in Trump’s success has been his decision to avoid fighting the culture wars and stick to populist issues like immigration and trade. Getting into heated debates about social issues like abortion and gay rights is a high risk, low reward strategy in the current political climate.
* LF: I think Trump will choose Scott Brown to be his VP. A great choice.
* Even if he loses, Trump has already accomplished more of significance than any R nominee of my lifetime; Trump has begun the process of de-legitimizing the cultural Left and re-legitimizing the traditionalist Right. Reagan only barely attempted such a feat.
I heard the best encomium to Trump from, of all things, a Wall Street (apparently financial industry) superpac regular R donor who was holding off contributing this year. Asked in an interview whether he was holding off because he didn’t like Trump he said, and I paraphrase, ‘me and my friends are re-examining the R party. The genie is out of the bottle and things will never be the same again.’ In other words, the scales have fallen from the eyes of too many Americans to ever return to the old ways. That ideological intersection between capitalism and rootless cosmopolitanism pawned off as ‘the conservative movement’ will be fighting a defensive war from here on out. If Hillary is elected, is there any chance the circumstances that brought about the Trump rebellion will be diminished? Of course not. Trump has ushered in a new era just as Thomas Paine did. Whether he becomes president or not is almost incidental.
* It’s very disheartening to see exotic third worlders imported en masse by assorted do gooders and leftist plotters. The state (meaning the stupid tax paying typical working person) pays these invaders to breed future democrat voting EBT SNAP Section 8 Obamaphone and Medicaid sucking parasites. Your tax dollas at work you rules obeying law abiding suckers
* The common image Europeans (who know Germans better than Americans do)have of Germans is of coldness to the point of unfeeling ruthlessness and merciless remorselessness – not traits of the sensitive at all. Perhaps this is all colored by the unspeakble Geramn atrocities committed in WW2, but the general idea (and I’m not being gratuitously offensie here), is of a deficit of ‘human’ qualities and a remorseless, robotic will to power and intolerance, yes Greeks and Italians might fail economically and have to be bailed out as basket-cases, but we recognise human failings in them and thus sympathise with them as ‘being like us’. The image that persists of the Geramn is of the square headed, shaven headed Prussian sergeant with a big moustache and spiked helmet barking out orders – and beating those who fail with a big stick – not Schiller or Beethoven at all. The idea is Nietzschaen ‘will to power’, the machine, efficiency, the ant-hill, science fiction warriors and societies etc – that old Hanna Barbera cartoon of the ants as Roman soldiers (which no one seems to remember).Of course the last war cemented the idea of the ruthless robots and their mad genius god shaking he world and only stopped by hubris.
Strangely enough, the image of Jews as tragic, etrnal victims, violin players and tortured, sensitive professors, persecuted by gentile beasts, is totally at odds with what the world has discovered of murderous, vulgar Russian oligarchs, agressive Isreali gangsters and pimps and neocon/zionist aggression and hatred in general.
Europeans, who have lived amongst other Europeans for centuries are much better understanding of these subtleties than Americans, who generally live by propagandised stereotypes and deliberate falsehoods.
* I am the anon at 7:51 who mentioned the book discussing the possible connection between Nietzche and Zionism and Zimbardo book on shyness which briefly discusses the low score of Jews on psychological tests for this trait.
A lot of interesting comments on so many different issues.
“Dr Van Nostrand said…
and pimps” and neocon/zionist aggression
Evil, evil Zionists for wanting to keep a land the size of Jersey ,surely no other people EVER acquired land any larger than by force …right…. .”
Yes, I once pointed out something like this to a Chinese American colleague who was highly sympathetic to the Palestinians and Arabs and not so much to Jews in Israel.
I suggested that the original land taken by the Israelis after WWII was not that large (particularly if you do not believe that most Israelies have designs for a greater Israel stretching to the Euphrates or “world domination” as some outliers claim).
I guess my attitude, probably shared by many other White Gentiles in the U.S., was it’s a fairly small amount of land with apparently no oil, why can’t they (i.e. the Israelis and Arabs) just learn to get along without having to draw the U.S. into it and spend trillions of dollars and sacrifice thousands of lives of our citizens (of course the Neo-cons have seen to it that we were dragged into Iraq, Afghanistan,, Libya and now on to Syria and Iran).
His attitude was that it was “principle” of the thing. That even if it might seem like a small piece of land in the grand scheme of things the Palestinians would never forget nor would their Arab cousins (nor should they).
Yes, I suppose this is true, but one wonders if some workable two state solutions could be devised. Sigh … it’s a mess. It would seem that there would be a lot of potential synergies if the two groups could cooperate rather than be in conflict, but perhaps that is asking too much of human nature.
The older I get the more I find solace in Schopenhauer’s remark that if you have low opinions of human nature you are more inclined to feel pity than anger when you see humans behaving badly.
“fnn said…
A minor literary classic that expresses these sentiments at great length is this memoir of an Italian officer serving on the Russian Front:
Few Returned: Twenty-eight Days on the Russian Front, Winter 1942-1943
Thanks for the tip. It looks interesting. I noticed that the Amazon reviewers remark about the propensity of German and Russian soldiers to shoot wounded enemy combatants they find.. I have a bunch of uncles who fought in WWII in the U.S. army. One of them relayed a story about killing Germans who were attempting to surrender ( his own platoon was lost behind enemy lines). He was still haunted by it. Under extreme conditions people do terrible things out of what may possibly even seem like necessity at the time. I am not sure that the Germans and Russians are that much different than any other group in this regard.
* Cruz may have destroyed his political career during this campaign. He should have realized he could not win the nomination after Trump won Florida. The betting parlors in Ireland actually paid off those betting on Trump to win the nomination after Trump won Florida, and for good reason, it was clear Trump would win…but then the neverTrump camp encouraged Cruz to dig in and fight for a contested election. He was not campaigning to win, he must have known this if he is intelligent. He was going to lose states in the northeast and even admitted afterwards he expected to lose these states.
His tactic to poach delegates was not acceptable to most republicans, but he had to boast and brag about his success which made it worse. it gave Trump a legitimate complaint and made it easy for him to attack Lyin Ted. Trump was much smarter than Cruz and encouraged Cruz to steal delegates, knowing it would tarnish Lyin Ted’s reputation. I will not applaud Cruz for his tactics, because it ultimately harmed him, thus it was not in his best interest, It was clear the establishment did not actually support him, Romney campaigned for Kasich in Ohio. Jeb refused to endorse anyone in Florida. The establishment sacrificed the political career of Cruz in an effort to get Ryan on the ticket in a contested election. Cruz fell for their trap in his quest for power.
Cruz was smart not to go after Trump early in the campaign, but then went viral , attacking Trump instead of promoting his own agenda, knowing the establishment did not fully support him. He should have maintained his integrity and avoided getting down and dirty with Trump. Now his political career is in jeopardy. Bad move for a young politician. He would have had more opportunities to advance his agenda, but not now. I am not happy he destroyed his career.He could have been useful to the GOP is a few years. Now he will be working for Goldman Sachs to pay off his loans. Thus I cannot cheer for Cruz. He is no longer of value to the GOP because he foolishly compromised with the establishment when the odds were stacked against him. He took a big risk for little gain, not smart. Not a long term strategist.
* George W Bush destroyed the GOP. any President who doubles the burden of federal spending in just eight years is disqualified from being a conservative – unless the term is stripped of any meaning and conservatives no longer care about limited government and constitutional constraints on Washington. Bush coerced republicans in congress to support the utterly irresponsible prescription drug entitlement. There is no doubt that Bush’s net impact on healthcare was to saddle America with more statism. On regulatory issues, the biggest change implemented during the Bush year was probably Sarbanes-Oxley – a clear example of regulatory overkill. Another regulatory change, which turned out to be a ticking time bomb, was the expansion of the “affordable-lending” requirements for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
During the savings & loan bailout 25 years ago, at least incompentent executives and negligent shareholders were wiped out. Government money was used, but only to pay off depositors and/or to pay healthy firms to absorb bankrupt institutions. Bush, by contrast, exacerbated all the moral hazard issues by resucing the executives and shareholders who helped create the mess. Last but not least, let’s not forget that Bush got the ball rolling on auto-industry bailouts.
His hubristic attempt to remake the political culture of foreign nations via military occupation was not conservative. His profligate spending habits were not conservative. His empowerment of the federal education bureaucracy at the expense of state and local control was not conservative. Federal funding of embryo research was not conservative.
* I was an admirer of Cruz. Not anymore. He is a very bright guy but his instincts are poor. And, more fundamentally, there is really something offputting about his character.
Some of the missteps:
* Attacking Trump after the Chicago protests
* Blaming Trump for NE story (without any evidence) while calling Trump a liar for saying he was behind the Melania ad
* The whole fake Carson is dropping out so vote for me fiasco
* Constantly lying about his position on 2013 amnesty
* Saying that nominee would and should be the one with most delegates going into convention and that Establishment wanted a brokered convention but then switching course to defend a brokered convention when he no longer had a path to nomination
* Refusing to say he would support Trump as the nominee
* Defending the cancelled straw poll in CO. Could have merely said he was playing by the rules set by the CO GOP but that he prefers wider voter participation when possible
* In general, just his off-the-charts ambition. Cruz could have secured a place in a Trump administration or even SCOTUS. Instead, he put his personal ambition ahead of the country once it was clear that the only way he would receive nomination would be in a contested convention
* All the weird religious baggage on full display. None of it seemed to help him except perhaps parading out Beck in Utah. Certainly would have doomed him in general had he succeeded in winning nomination.
* Unlike Buchanan, Trump is not an ideologue and he is not an intellectual. He came to his nationalism emotionally, as did most of his voters and that is why he connected with them. Cruz was a phony when he spoke about immigration or trade and you could feel it.