It’s ‘somewhat important Tuesday’ with primary elections in Michigan, Idaho, Mississippi, and Hawaii. Today’s media narrative appears to be ‘Is Trump losing Momentum to an ascendant Ted Cruz?’ Frankly, it’s a terrifying question, and there do seem to be reasons to believe Cruz could a make real move today (admittedly without consulting polling data or experts). I think you have to hope Trump’s recent fascist antics would cost him the campaign, and I think there is a good explanation as to why Cruz is better positioned to take advantage than Rubio (and all the polling data I look at suggest this is what’s likely to happen should Trump trip). Here’s my take in one short paragraph.
“Ideas” candidates, like Paul Ryan, for example, sometimes struggle to effectively connect their ideas to people’s perceived problems. Because that can come as ‘I know your problems better than you do,’ it appears like a fundamental misunderstanding of representative government. I think voters, maybe particularly GOP voters, prefer at least the impression of responsiveness to material problems rather than champions of philosophy who say ‘you’re seeing it wrong, you don’t quite get it.’ This explains, at least partly, why candidates like Donald Trump, for example, can be successful. Trump’s campaign is framed as a reaction to some people’s ‘real’ problems rather than a lesson about a worldview they don’t understand. Cruz might be the middle ground between Trump and Rubio in this regard. Rubio comes off as a teacher committed to out-of-date ideas. When Trump calls Rubio a loser, he’s really just saying you’re out of touch like Romney, like Bob Dole! Cruz, however, is effectively offering a better balance of material analysis and philosophy than either Rubio or Trump. Whereas Trump seems to be saying, ‘geez, not having jobs because of foreigners sure isn’t great, let’s get rid of the scary brown people’ and leaving it at that before jumping into some other crazy rant, Cruz seems to be saying pretty much the same things while also being much better able to articulate ideas about the constitution and religiosity that give his message more philosophical substance and continuity. But, not so much that it feels like old-GOP commitment to free trade and economic theory you have to study in college to really understand. So, for GOP primary voters maybe the moral will be that Trump is too reactionary, Rubio too professorial, and Cruz just right.
milieuXmorass 