The Republican Primary

To do a write up of the Republican Primary justice I think you need to spend more time writing up your analysis than I, someone doing it for free in my spare time, can provide time to do. But here I am trying.

Right now the Republican Primary consists of Trump, Rubio, Cruz, Kasich and Carson.  Carson and Cruz seem to be trying to split the religious conservative vote.  Trump has the non-religious, anti-establishment, and conservative vote. Rubio and Kasich are vying for the establishment conservative vote.  You'll notice a theme there.  Conservative.  There are no moderates in this race.  Anyone calling Kasich a moderate conservative or a moderate Republican is an idiot and only trying to put him on a right axis line graph with no left.  They really are all bunched up on the extreme right end of the scale. So level of conservatism isn't a huge factor here.

The other thing happening in the Republican Party is the full scale adoption of authoritarianism.  (Yes, you can be anti-establishment and authoritarian.) Politico has an article by Matthew MacWilliams about a poll conducted testing authoritarian belief in Republican primary voters.  MacWilliams writes, "49 percent of likely Republican primary voters I surveyed score in the top quarter of the authoritarian scale." The study finds that Trump has locked up about half the authoritarian votes in the primary.  He doesn't write about where the remainder of the Republican authoritarians are leaning, but I'm willing to bet that a number are locked into Cruz and Carson.  Cruz and Carson are vying for the evangelical vote and evangelicals generally score high on authoritarian scales. Authoritarians believe generally in strong father figures that must be obeyed and quite frankly the evangelical view of God is the ultimate father figure that must be obeyed.

The question in my mind is what happens when Cruz and Carson drop? Where do their supporters break?  Do they go establishment or do they go authoritarian?  I think that's what will define the end of the primary. Mind you that Trump is in the driver's seat in this campaign.  Rubio has proven that by adopting the campaign tactic of making personal attacks against Trump.  I have no clue what Rubio is trying to do.  Attacking Trump personally just solidifies him with his base.  It isn't going to peel off Trump voters. Trump's appeal isn't his crassness.  His supporters enjoy it because they find it refreshing and it's something they fantasize about being able to do.  Trump is a billionaire which means he has freedom  to do whatever he wants.  Trump doesn't need money and he doesn't need a job.  If his followers spoke the way he does they would get fired.  Fear of being jobless and moneyless is a key factor in curbing certain speech.  Maybe Rubio thinks it makes him look like Trump, but at the end of the day you can have the Real Trump or you can have the cheap knock off version.  Rubio is the cheap knock off version.

The authoritarian bent isn't the only factor in the nomination for the Republicans, but it is a big one.  And I do think it's going to be a large driver to who wins.  Another factor comes down to the establishment versus the anti-establishment.  The Tea Party is extremely anti-establishment. They have tried to oust the establishment in Congress and have had considerable success in doing so. Trump is the ultimate anti-establishment candidate in the Republican Party right now.  Upon a time Rubio was a Tea Party darling and represented the anti-establishment, but at this point he is the establishment's best hope of beating Trump.  So the next question is if the Carson and Cruz voters are interested in going establishment or anti-establishment and I think there's a strong case that Cruz's supporters are anti-establishment, but Cruz also has a large evangelical following and I'm not sure which factor is going to drive them.

Obviously I've spent a lot of time thinking about the Republican Primary and I just don't know how this ends.  Lindsey Graham this week referred to his party as being batshit crazy. Senator Graham is solidly conservative and also very much an establishment guy.  His summation of the Republican Party is pretty much right on and that's what makes it so hard to predict which way this is going to go.  The Republicans are driving off road and while that makes it an intriguing puzzle for someone like myself who enjoys the analysis it also makes it scary as all Hell. This is a party that has gone insane. I know a lot of people sit back and think that is a good thing since "there's no way they can win the White House," but that's a lazy analysis.  Let me close by adding that the MacWilliams poll indicated that in regards to the authoritarian angle 39% of independents and 17% of Democrats have authoritarian leanings.  Let that sink in for a bit.


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Links:

Matthew MacWilliams, The One Weird Trait That Predicts Whether You’re a Trump Supporter: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533.

Bob Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba has done considerable analysis on authoritarianism and I advise reading his book: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/.

South Carolina Democratic Primary

Hillary Clinton handily won the South Carolina Democratic Primary.  That was pretty much a given.  It's the edge of the South and Bernie Sanders is going to have a hard slog through the South.  I'm personally of a mind that Hillary will win the Democratic nomination.  There certainly is a path to victory for Bernie and he is going to have his share of victories going forward.  I just don't think the probabilities are on his side.  His path is an unlikely one.  Bernie is going to serve to push Hillary toward the left through the primary, but she's not going to go too far.

South Carolina Republican Primary

Trump's path to the Republican nomination got a lot clearer yesterday.  The Republican Primary in South Carolina was held on February 20th (the Democratic Primary is next weekend).  Trump came in first with 32.5% of the vote, Rubio came in second with 22.5%, Cruz came in third with 22.3%, and Bush, Kasich and Carson finished with under 8% each.

Kasich and Carson are finished.  I expect Kasich's support to flow to Rubio and Carson's to Trump. Bush will hold on until Super Tuesday.  The elite and establishment will consolidate now around Rubio and the money will flow his way.  We've seen the start of Cruz attacking Rubio as a creature of the establishment and I would expect that to increase at this point.  He's going to get hammered on that point and will become radioactive with the base which is distinctly anti-establishment and anti-elite.

Cruz is going to hang on for a while, but he'll be toast before long.  He uses a lot of dirty tricks and he's doesn't come across as particularly moral.  He's a career opportunist and this is his high water mark.  I'm not entirely sure where Cruz's support goes when he drops out.  I think a best guess would be a split between Trump and Rubio, but I'm not sold on that.  Trump has suprised me in that he has a fair number of Evangelical Christians voting for him.  It's possible that they rally to Trump's banner.

Of course I'm in pundit mode and even though I've been mostly correct so far (you'll have to take my word for it since I was still on blogger hiatus as of last week), I'm painfully aware of how hard it's been to make predictions about this race.  Six months ago I wouldn't have guessed Trump vs Rubio for the nomination.  I would have guess Bush with Trump playing the spoiler.  This race is a dream come true for people who enjoy political analysis.

UPDATE: Well, one of the problems with not following the news closely is that Bush dropped out already.  So I'm off on the timing on that one.  I really thought he was going to wait for Super Tuesday.

SCOTUS Justice Scalia's Former Seat

With the death of Supreme Court Justice Scalia his former seat on the Court is now vacant.  Even though Justice Scalia died on Saturday by Saturday evening the Republican politicians had already stated that President Obama should be blocked from filling the vacancy.

Most of the Republican presidential candidates came out with some sort of weird new tradition that the President hasn't made a nomination to the Court in his last year in office in eighty years.  That is demonstrably false.  (It's a lie.) Scotusblog was good enough to compile a list of election year SCOTUS nominations made by presidents during election years over the last 100 years.  The list includes five cases between 1912 and 1987 where the nominee was confirmed by the Senate and then another two cases one in 1956 where President Eisenhower made a recess appointment that was confirmed by the Senate the following year and another in 1968 when President Johnson attempted to fill a vacancy, but it was blocked by the Senate.  The most recent case was in 1987 when President Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy to the Court and the Senate confirmed him in 1988.  The New York Times has also published a graph showing all the Supreme Court nominations going back to President Washington which shows when in a term the nomination was made.  

Senator Mitch McConnell has commented that the American people should have a voice in the nomination via the Presidential election campaign currently underway.  As shown in the previous paragraph this would be an unusual situation.  Also let me remind you that the American people have had a say in this nomination since in 2008 there was a Presidential election in which Barack Obama was elected president and then another in 2012 where he was re-elected to the same office.  

Article II, Section 2, of the US Constitution spells out the ability of the President to make nominations to the Supreme Court:

He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.

"He shall have power" not should, but shall.  That means he does.   It also states "with the advice and consent of the Senate."  So there you have it.  President Obama was elected twice to the office.  He can exercise the powers provided by the US Constitution.  He has the power to nominate justices with the advice and consent of the Senate.  There is no tradition of Presidents not nominating someone to fill the vacancy during an election year and anyone who says otherwise is simply playing games.

I'm going to lay it out there blankly.  Anyone who claims to support the Constitution and who then tries to say that the President shouldn't or can't nominate someone to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court doesn't actually support the Constitution.  The Constitution is pretty clear on the power of the President to nominate.  It doesn't have a secret clause that says "except in an election year or the last year in office."  It's pretty simple.  Either you believe in the Constitution or you don't.  If you say you don't, but then in practice you say it shouldn't apply to a case, then you are a hypocrite or a panderer and in either case you've disqualified yourself to the Office of the President of the United States of America.  

Been a While

It's been almost four years since I last wrote a blog.  I've had two others.  "Notes to Leicester" which I started around 2007 and folded it sometime around 2011.  "Notes to Leicester" was focused on town politics back when I was very much into local politics and had a school committee seat in my home town.  I followed that with "Heart of an Iconoclast" and then folded that shortly after the 2012 election.  "Heart of an Iconoclast" was focused on state and national politics, economics and a bit of town politics when the mood struck me.  When I folded that I focused on Twitter.  Learning how to communicate in 140 characters was refreshing, but since the 2016 election season has unfolded I've been thinking I need more characters with which to elaborate my thoughts, so here it is "Whiskey, Coffee and Politics."

I happen to be a fan of whiskey, coffee and politics.  Also whiskey and coffee tend to be flowing when conversations of politics are occurring.  So if you've come looking for discussion of whiskey and coffee you might get disappointed.  If you've come for discussion of politics you may still be disappointed.  I'm a rationalist.  I'm not someone who is going to sit and write emotionally charged commentary.  I'm going to write commentary that has been considered and hopefully logically rational.  You'll also be treated to the occasional discussion of economics.  Actually more than just the occasional discussion of economics, because I'm of the mind that politics and economics are intertwined and one leads to the other.  

I'll just present an up front warning.  I don't watch or listen to broadcast news or talk radio.  If you get your news from those sources, then I'll have very little for you here.  I do gather written news from multiple sources and will often respond to what I've read.  I'll also have commentary based on things important enough to have floated through my general air of indifference.  I do glance at the headlines and I'll read an article that I think may be of interest.  I don't read Drudge, Breitbart or Red State and you can extrapolate from there where this is all going.