Armageddon for the Establishment?

With the race apparently now a two man affair between Cruz and Trump, the Establishment may start to wonder if maybe they did something wrong.

I liked this David Frum point:

Maybe you remember Aesop's fable of the boy and the nuts?

A boy put his hand into a jar of filberts and grasped as many as his fist could possibly hold. But when he tried to pull it out again, he found he couldn’t do so, for the neck of the jar was too small to allow of the passage of so large a handful. Unwilling to lose his nuts but unable to withdraw his hand, he burst into tears.

A bystander, who saw where the trouble lay, said to him,

"Come, my boy, don’t be so greedy. Be content with half the amount, and you'll be able to get your hand out without difficulty."

If--as the polls suggest--Donald Trump wins the Republican contests in Iowa and New Hampshire; if, 14 days from now, he's heading on to contests in Nevada and South Carolina as the overwhelming favorite; then the leaders of the Republican party will have cause to remember Aesop's fable.

Obviously that was written before Iowa, but the point still stands, with Cruz winning Iowa (Trump 2nd) and Trump winning NH (Cruz 3rd).

I do not hate everything about the Establishment. I am, psychologically, kind of inclined to be an Establishment/corporate sort of guy. I'm not proud of that, but I am.

Yet they have completely alienated me.

I will repeat I point I made 20 times in 2014 and 2015: A political coalition is in fact a coalition. That means we agree, mutually, to advance each other's interests, and not actively thwart each other's interests.

That means that the Establishment does not get to run the entire show, and get everything it wants, and block the Tea Party/grassroots from having anything they want, and attempt (successfully) to squelch and block every single Tea Party candidate.

That means that the Establishment does not get to run on Tea Party rhetoric for three months every two years and then pursue nothing but Establishment agenda items for the next twenty one months, while frequently demeaning the Tea Party as "crazy" and "wacko birds."

This is a presidential nomination, but it is also an armed negotiation. We have tried persuasion; we have tried submission. We have tried everything, in fact, short of insurrection, and I guess, all other options having failed, we're left with that one.

I would not mind being in a coalition with the Establishment again: But it must be a coalition. The GOP cannot exist for very long as a vehicle for such a small cohort of the country's population, while throwing out meaningless rhetorical chum for the Dummies they think will keep voting them power.

It is too late for any negotiations this presidential cycle -- no, we're not going to agree to Rubio based upon some very-late-in-the-game, completely-insincere-promises.

However, going forward, the Establishment may want to consider some consultation with, power sharing with, trade-of-priorities with, and basic respect for the Ugly Stupid Ill-Educated Unfashionable voters they trick into voting for them every two years.

Or else this thing just ain't gonna work, and it ain't gonna be around much longer.

posted by Ace at 05:07 PM

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