The Trump Problem 2: What the Elites Don't Know, but the Base Understands

This morning, the Oracle of Wasilla Sarah Palin made a curse against Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and all his doin's, to the effect of her being in support of Rep. Ryan's being primaried and cast in the place of darkness, there to wail and gnash his teeth, like Eric Cantor was. 

This is not an absurd thing to say. There is a Republican challenger for Ryan's seat, and if I know anything about the good folks of Wisconsin, it's that they voted for Walker three times and produced a Glenn Grothman, so? Maybe the pride of Janesville should feel a little discomfort. (Or maybe, if freed from having to appeal to everybody as the guy both begged to become Speaker of the House and arm-twisted until he had to deny wanting to make a run at the convention for president in the event it was contested, the sigh of relief.) But how vast this former VP candidate's (Ryan, I mean, not Palin) heresy is depends on your POV.

After all, when I derided Paul Ryan's response to Trump's nomination as he was "just not ready" as being willing to be brought to "yes",  I considered that he was going to get there, eventually, but it was just possible that he was aware of a certain ticket with a flashy, but under-informed VP candidate with great right-wing bona fides, but which, nonetheless, lost to a celebrity-quality POC with a funny foreign name and a gaffe-prone 70's vintage Democrat Congresscritter.  And even Sarah Palin knows the weaknesses of that particular ticket. In other words--Ryan is just being cagey about whether the entire country is ready to swallow what the GOP base drinks in every day.

I remember when that very question was very much on the minds of a handful of high-profile names in the GOP circa 2009. Rep. Eric Cantor, former Gov. Mitt Romney, and former Gov. Jeb Bush were all keen to take what they learned from the post-mortems of the 2008 election and try to reconcile it with a listening tour of the Republican base.

There's a pretty impressive "Where are they now?" Romney lost in 2012, Rep. Cantor lost in a primary, and Jeb Bush's 2016 Presidential Primary bid was a subject of pity and awe. Whatever they were listening to--it could not help them.

Revisiting Cantor's Defeat

I have a tendency to turn things over in my head for awhile, and the loss of the VA-7 GOP primary for Eric Cantor is the kind of thing I do puzzle over. I write about politics. This completely fascinates me because it is anomalous, which means information, which means there is something to be learned.

So, let's just agree, it's a thing that blind-sided some pundit-folks. Hell, it blind-sided the bejesus out of Cantor's pollster. And I just want to say--the poll numbers are what seem weird to me. A deviation of four or five percent I could roll with. A 40 point differential isn't an error--it's like a crime-scene. And I really don't think in Cantor's district that there would be enough Democrats "in on" a secret whisper campaign to fiddle with Cantor's seat to make that huge a dent.

This was an in-house drive-by. The home folks were genuinely upset by Cantor's inattention. And he paid. Despite his campaign having out-raised Brat's by something like 26-1, he couldn't pull this one out because he was blissfully unaware he had to. No small amount of the cash Cantor brought in was from corporate sources, and Brat hit him on cronyism. But let's be real. You don't knock off a macher like Cantor without klout, and well, maybe Brat got a little.

I don't know how any pollster would be unaware of a challenger like Brat getting good name recognition via right-wing media, though. I don't know how hard it is to identify "likely voters" when the actual district is pretty much conservative. I do know, though, that political polling for a campaign is a tool to see what potential problems need addressing within a potential voter pool, and should not be about stroking a candidate's ego. This trend of favorable polling seems pretty useless. Maybe if I were running a campaign, I'd like someone brutally honest or even weighting stuff against me so my crew would try harder to look for votes. It's too late for Cantor (anyone thinking he has a lobbying position just a little time and money away lined up for him, though?) but I don't know. It just seems like a good idea. For the people who like getting elected to office.

Eric Cantor's Loss is Something to Think About

You know who I did not expect to lose a primary challenge this season? Right--Eric Cantor. As House majority leader and one of the GOP's "Young Guns", he's been a pretty big deal on the Hill, and so help me, I would have figured he would be safe.

And I would have been wrong.

You know who else thought Eric Cantor was certain to win?  Eric Cantor's campaign, the internal polling of which had him up over his opponent, David Brat, by 34 points--but Brat bested him 55.4 percent to 44.6 percent. That is pretty damn different. I dunno if he hired Dean Chambers or what. But I do perceive one insect that might have tampered with the balm--former Republican Congressman Ben Jones made a push to have Independents and Democrats vote in the GOP primary with getting rid of Cantor very much in mind. I would love to see an analysis of who voted to see if this made an impact, but other wise, it looks like low turnout helped in Brat's favor. People just weren't going out of their way to vote Cantor.

One thing this does is give the lie to the narrative that the Tea Party is done for--this and the polling for the Mississippi run-off that puts McDaniels up over Cochran suggests that the "Return of the Establishment" isn't necessarily so. But another thing it does is upset the GOP House leadership expectations, that maybe, if John Boehner was of a mind to say "take this job and shove it" with respects to the Speakership (which I've always thought he might be in mind of doing, since it has seemed to me to be a thankless position), that Eric Cantor would naturally be their man. (He was, after all, something of a string-puller, I noted, regarding the budget and debt ceiling deals in 2011. He'd have been a logical choice.)

I honestly don't know that much about David Brat, or whether he has any "Akin-like" tendencies to open mouth-insert foot. And I have a feeling this is probably a safe district for the GOP hopeful regardless, having returned Republicans to Washington so frequently, so lately. But as one of the opposition, I find this turn of events pretty damn interesting. It does make you wonder what other strange upsets might be lurking where the political field isn't really as predictable as we think.

I'm so Not Trying not to make this the "All About Ted" Show--

But when I read things that make me concerned that he is exactly the sort of nutter who wants all the shit to burn down, I become increasingly concerned that Ted Cruz needs to be caught in flagrante delicto with a chicken or some other such career-stopping thing. Or needs to be temporarily mislaid in someone's trunk (kidding!)

Also a person I am disquietous about--Eric Cantor. That little rule change is fucking us hard. I can hope Cantor has his head sufficiently *not* up his ass to at some remotely last minute, do a reasonable thing (better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, amirite?) but I also think this fool might be shorting T-bills. So what I'm saying is I have no faith. (FWIW-- he did this before.)  (If Cantor were--is that an ethical complaint? Or just natural House perks?)

What I think I'm saying is--I am tired of pinning this to random members of the GOP. I'm comfy now calling them all to share blame. They do. Both houses. And if I slandered a House Majority leader, I am so sorry. Seriously. I shouldn't have slandered this guy and apologized after the fact, because that shit is clearly wrong. Also, one should probably do what is right. Like not shut down the government and threaten a debt default.  Just sayin'.

Can't Get No Satisfaction?

What's the matter guys? No one got "bingo" yet?

You know, I'm still trying to work out how this is going to turn into a win for the House GOP.  I think the answer is--it doesn't. A government shut down is a funny old thing--as time wears on, so does it. It wears on people's nerves. And they don't seem to be able to make this look exactly like a bipartisan "failure to communicate", no matter how butt-hurtedly Boehner moans about President Obama being able to talk to Iran's president, but not him, or when the assembled uptight, white, and none-too-bright he-men government-haters' club gathers across from empty chairs to remind us--um. That nobody even wants to hear from them at this point unless they're talking about a clean CR? One clean CR, by the way.

I really don't know what kind of schmuck thinks a bunch of little resolutions to fund different agencies to draaaaggggg this thing out even more would be an improvement.