dagblog - Comments for "Winnowing the GOP Field with Jane Austen"

Cruz is making his break for

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 15 Dec 2015 22:51:37 +0000

In reply to No, pp, I'm not ignoring the

Cruz is making his break for the lead, like one of those long races where the runners stay bunched up way too long. Can Cruz survive this much publicity, or will it make him wither? And if not him, then who? Will they then triple down on the Donald? The fatigue grows even as the polls say he strengthens. Rubio pales by contrast, and the rest of the pack is simply gasping for breath, and over a month to go for first contest. Oh well, tonight the duel before cameras and the 2 leaders get to show their mutual contempt along mutual admiration. 2 peas in a pod.

He also has the not-to-be

barefooted — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 02:11:45 +0000

In reply to No, pp, I'm not ignoring the

He also has the not-to-be-underestimated "ick" factor. People know it when they see it, even rabid Republicans, and the more coverage his candidacy provides the more obvious it is. While he may be the only candidate with that particular gut recognizable quality, it's not one particularly appealing to suitors.

No, pp, I'm not ignoring the

Doctor Cleveland — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 01:22:34 +0000

In reply to Yes, Cruz would be something

No, pp, I'm not ignoring the all-things-to-all-people argument. I just don't believe it. Cruz doesnt have much cachet with the GOP establishment. In fact, the Republican establishment really. really hates Cruz, and he is openly running against that establishment.

This happened yesterday: Cruz tried another grandstanding symbolic vote on the Senate floor and the other Senators basically told him to shove it. They routinely allow each other to hold bs symbolic votes, even if that vote is going down in flames five minutes later. But they're through with Cruz's BS. He no longer gets the routine legislative courtesies that Senators always give each other because he's becoming a party pariah.

And then Cruz ranted on the Senate floor about how corrupt the GOP establishment was, until he got cut off and told to give up the mike. It was that bad.

Cruz isn't running as the establishment outsider, or the outside establishment candidate. He has always very clearly been running as an insurgent outsider. His problem is that he can't be more of an outsider than Trump, Carson, or Fiorina, who are completely outside the organized party and their own minds. The real opportunity is on the side that Cruz has steered away from and openly disqualified himself for. Bad luck for Cruz, but I'm not sorry.

Yes, Cruz would be something

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 04:52:57 +0000

In reply to We've talked about this

Yes, Cruz would be something of a Paul Ryan character but without the Mitt Romney reassuring capitalist beside him. Trump of course *will* collapse, and Fiorina is a fatally flawed candidate who already got thrashed by Barbara Boxer in a year the GOP won everything, and despite Cruz being freaky enough, he's arguably the least freak show of the remainder.

You ignore the all-things-to-all-people aspect - his background with the Bushes et al still gives him cachet with the old money & old votes even as he plays renegade driving legislation & the speaker & government into the wall for fun, which pleases the new crowd. And he's Mexican/Texan enough to tap into the southwest vote while whackadoo evangelical for the southeast.

And I think it's important to realize he's more clever than he looks. He did seem to play a key role in rolling over the election staff in Florida. His win-loss record with the Supreme Court is impressive (& conservatives will love that when it comes to say Roe v Wade), and he's managed the insurgent bit in Congress.

With the way post-Citizens United PACs work & the current schedule, he still has plenty of time to break out as the new darling with loads of cash. That's my prognosis, we'll see.

We've talked about this

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 03:26:50 +0000

In reply to I think people continually to

We've talked about this before, and I think you're over-estimating Cruz's establishment appeal.

Having had a fancy education, having connections with previous Bush campaigns, and having been Boehner's lawyer are the kinds of things that only matter if you're trying to get the party establishment on your side, which Cruz is not even trying to do. He's not running as the electable guy, or even as the compromise electable-enough/insurgent-enough candidate. (Walker was supposed to be that compromise candidate, by the way, but he's gone.)

Cruz's hope this year was to be the Hardcore Opposition Guy. That is his role in the Republican Party: the insurgent ideologue who challenges the party leadership. He is running as the Keeper of the Pure Conservative Flame. But the outsider/challenger role is taken this year, so that Cruz is really stuck in the mud, unless Trump collapses and the primaries revert to the 2012 Freak-of-the-Week pattern, with rotating outsiders taking short turns as "front-runner."

I think people continually to

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 12:39:00 +0000

In reply to Hi, Jim.Thanks for taking the

I think people continue to underestimate Teď Cruz, at our peril. He's probably the best educated in the field and best looking qualifications, helped Bush steal the presidency in 2000, has a firm role in the family values / Tea Party insurgency, and has that loony futile suicidal charge of the light brigade that inspires the GOP so much like shutting down government. For the second and last time he has Boehner's scalp. Non-incumbent elections usually have an early leader that fades fast - Ross Perot and his black dobermanns comes to mind. In the end, the GOP will choose someone who's not a full goose loony and has some semblance of qualifications. Trump is limited, Fiorina is toast - awful background with Anti-Carly playbook already uses once, the Lord spits out the lukewarm like Jeb. Carson? This year's GOP stable boy. Cruz has the advantage that he can turn more Hispanics into raving wingnuts. Arguably Marco Rubio is equal to Cruz, but Cruz is for all purposes pure Texas-bred Mexican despite the Cuban ethnic bits, and the new demographics is Mexican-salvadoran, not Cuban. There is another act in this play - my guess is that Shakespeare fits better than Jane Austen - this is not a parlor game - it involves castle intrigue and the mobilizing of forces, and ultimately I'd expect great treachery. Cruz is your man for that - he was once Boehner's attorney you know. And now Boehner sleeps with the fishes. Cruz is both old school and new, Bush vanguard and Tea Partier. Whether he attains worst performance of Richard III status remains to be seen. As well as whether he can take off with actual voters country-wide - but usually the GOP falls in line, and remember, even decrepit McCain and dingbat Palin got 47%

Good post! I respect the

Zachary Thomas — Sat, 26 Sep 2015 19:33:59 +0000

In reply to Winnowing the GOP Field with Jane Austen

Good post! I respect the writing-only approach, although infographics illustrating the Pareto principle and the different characteristics you were judging the Bennet daughters/Republican candidates would have been nice too.

Hi, Jim.Thanks for taking the

Doctor Cleveland — Sat, 26 Sep 2015 15:45:31 +0000

In reply to On what basis do you

Hi, Jim.Thanks for taking the time to comment.

I would say that in politics, as in romance, people sometimes allow themselves to get caught up in a lot of tiny, distracting details instead of focusing on the smaller number of big issues that end up being decisive. Dating, like campaigning, makes you pay attention to the tiny details, but in the end it's not the tiny details that make the difference.

And of course not having read Pride and Prejudice does not affect the validity of your argument. But not remembering the 2008 primaries does.

In 2008, HRC argued that she was to Obama's left using much the same laundry-list of arguments that you are now using to position O'Malley to Clinton's left. In fact, she tried to make an issue of trade agreements, just as you do. I distinctly recall a debate where she kept going at him about the fact that his health care plan involved an individual mandate.

But all of that was for nothing. Even though Clinton was factually correct some of the time, she was still perceived as to Obama's right, because of her vote on the Iraq War. That was the salient issue of that election. (In the 1992 general election it was the economy, stupid. In the 2008 Democratic primary it was the war, dummy.) The voters did not care about the other issues, or reasoned, quite defensibly, that Obama and Clinton's positions were too close to make a decisive difference; their health care proposals were only different in details, and both worlds away from McCain's not-expanding-healthcare plan.

Most voters don't actually gauge a candidate's positions with an exhaustive checklist. So the fact that Trump doesn't line up neatly with every conservative position doesn't keep him from doing extremely well with those voters. Clearly, Trump is winning on the smaller list of issues that a bunch of those base voters care about: he has staked out the strongest anti-immigration position, he is for an aggressive trade policy, and he would clearly stand for maximizing executive authority, because he would be for maximizing his own authority rather than dealing with Congress. Apparently, those are the key issues for a significant plurality of the Republican electorate.

I would also suggest that some of the other traditional "conservative" positions resonate with some voters as proxy for something else, so that some of the lower taxes/smaller government voters don't actually care about the capital gains tax they will never pay but take the question of social spending as a proxy for racial issues (see: Mitt Romney and the 47% of "takers"). More interestingly, some of the Republican primary voters may actually prefer positions that other conservative candidates have not taken. There may be a lot of conservative protectionist voters out there who've only had conservative free-trade candidates to choose among. A strong nativist element in the voting base isn't necessarily a good fit for a free-trade platform.

Now, you can talk yourself into believing that Ted Cruz can take away voters from Trump because he checks off more Tea Party boxes, but you really have talked yourself into that. IN fact, Trump (and Carson), have set Cruz's ceiling of support already. Cruz's appeal is that he's against the entirely liberal status quo, and especially against Obama. He can't match Trump on that issue. Trump is actually a birther. He's the only candidate who's publicly gone on record saying that Barack Obama is not from this country. That is very, very salient for a big batch of Republican voters, and that Cruz is a more orthodox Tea Partier (what an oxymoron!) won't be enough. If you don't believe me, fine. Time will tell.

Similarly, you can go through a list of positions where O'Malley is to Clinton's left, but most of those are not salient. This Democratic primary will not be about trade agreements or fracking. And you really give the game away by throwing same-sex marriage into your list, since that argument is now, thanks to Obergefell, totally settled on the Democratic side. The two to four salient issues of the 2016 Democratic race haven't come into full focus yet, but it's already clear that the Black Lives Matter movement will be important, and unfortunately we should expect more ugly news incidents to keep it on the front burner. O'Malley cannot possibly get to Clinton's left on that issue. His record as Governor of Maryland will be held against him. So this year, this election cycle, he is stuck on Clinton's right on one of the issues that matter. He might have been able to run on Clinton's left in 2000 or 2004 or 2008, and he might hypothetically be able to run on her left in 2020 or 2024. But this year, on the issues the primary voters care about, he is on her right and that is that. That is the big picture.

As far as arguing that Sanders or O'Malley might somehow be more electable than Clinton, you are outsmarting yourself. It's clear that Clinton has much more of what we talk about as "electability" - party support, campaign experience, name recognition, fundraising ability, and a knack for appealing to swing voters - than anyone else in the Democratic party. You can construct elaborate hypotheticals where she is worse than Sanders or O'Malley, but you don't have to worry about those circumstances occurring outside your thought experiment. You can construct a hypothetical where Herman Cain or Ron Paul was a better general-election candidate than Mitt Romney, but you'd just be fooling yourself, fixating on the fine details instead of looking at the big picture.

On what basis do you

Jim Lane — Sat, 26 Sep 2015 02:27:26 +0000

In reply to Winnowing the GOP Field with Jane Austen

On what basis do you characterize O'Malley as less liberal than Clinton? His position and/or record are to the left of hers on several significant issues, such as minimum wage, fracking, trade agreements, and marriage equality. If Sanders had decided not to run, many of those now backing Sanders would instead be rallying to O'Malley as the progressive alternative to Clinton.

The general point is that, in romance as in politics, choices are seldom as clear as the different rates at competing hotels. For example, who's the most electable Democrat? You can argue that the dreaded word "socialist" would sink Sanders. You can point to Clinton's favorable-unfavorable rating, badly underwater (unlike the other candidates'). You can tout O'Malley's credential as a governor (four of the last six Presidents), or conclude that attack ads about the Baltimore riots would doom him. I don't think you can say with confidence that any of them is Pareto-dominant on this criterion.

On the Republican side, Trump has appealed to many conservatives, but he's also gone sharply left by criticizing CEO pay and praising Canada's health care system. As a result, there's still room for Cruz to outcompete him for the conservative ideologue vote. I do agree with you, however, that the most interesting GOP contest is for "the mainstream/establishment/viable-in-a-general-election role that Jeb Bush hasn't managed to keep or win."

Admittedly, I haven't read Jane Austen, so my whole analysis may be suspect.

Thanks.

Doctor Cleveland — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 19:21:03 +0000

In reply to Congratulations to Doc

Thanks.

I think that this bears out the Pareto principle's emphasis on differentiating yourself from other choices. I am reasonably confident that I wrote the only Jane Austen/GOP primary/Pareto principle blog this week.