By Kevin D. Williamson
Friday, October 30, 2015
‘Ted Cruz is only going to be popular,” a lefty
correspondent sniffs, “in those places where the Osmonds are still popular.” If
that is true, then the news for Senator Cruz could not possibly be better,
inasmuch as this puts Nevada into play: Donny and Marie signed up for a
six-week stint in Las Vegas back in 2008, and extended, and extended, and will
be performing in the showroom now named for them until the end of 2016, at
least. Good tickets for the reliably sold-out show are $260 each — no laughing
matter when one considers that the Osmond demographic includes some pretty
large families. It can be hard to see it from Williamsburg or Petworth, but the
culture isn’t (only) what the hipsters think it is. If Senator Cruz proves as
popular as Shania Twain and NASCAR, he won’t just be president — he’ll be
president-for-life.
And that is of some interest, given that Wednesday’s
debate very much left the impression that this is a Ted Cruz–Marco Rubio race.
About those other guys . . .
Jeb Bush’s performance confirms an earlier judgment of
him, that he was a pretty good governor a long time ago with no special oomph
today, a decent man whose misadventures on the critical policy questions of
immigration and education, along with his too-familiar surname, are like heavy
boots on a drowning man. His strategy to push Senator Rubio to the side in
order to be positioned in such a way that the bulk of the
reasonable-to-just-short-of-howling vote should fall upon his head as fading
reality-television grotesque Donald Trump enters the Norma Desmond stage of his
campaign, leaving Senator Cruz to wage a pyrrhic campaign for the moonbats, was
too calculated. It was so calculated, in fact, that Senator Rubio was able to
deftly parry it simply by pointing out the calculation. Bush père screwed up by reading his stage
directions aloud — “Message: I care” — whereas the (younger) younger Bush stood
mutely by as Senator Rubio read aloud from his playbook. It was like watching
the smartest kid in the fourth grade mangle his own name at a spelling bee.
Ben Carson, whose occupation (neurosurgeon) and melanin
level (high) assuage certain Republican insecurities, continues to be excellent
and modest and in no way prepared to be president. As others have pointed out,
he might have made an excellent mayor of Baltimore or governor of Maryland, if
it weren’t for the fact that for certain men the presidency seems to be the
only job in politics worth having.
Speaking of which . . .
Trump’s performance was — what’s that phrase? —
low-energy, remarkably so. It is always difficult to calculate which moment was
Trump’s lowest — that’s one of the challenges of chronicling low men — but his
scoffing at Ohio’s energy industry stands out as characteristic of the Trumpkin
approach: Governor John Kasich, Trump argued, deserves no credit for Ohio’s
economic performance because Ohio “got lucky” with fracking, because it “struck
oil.” That’s true. Trump’s native New York might have done the same, except for
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s ban on modern techniques of oil-and-gas extraction. If
only New York had had the services of some prominent, extraordinarily famous,
and media-savvy businessman to spearhead a campaign in favor of energy
exploration when Governor Cuomo was playing Hamlet-on-the-Hudson on the
question! As with immigration, Trump has had a lifetime in the public eye to
take the lead — or even to take a halfway honorable stand — on New York’s
energy industry, but he cannot be stirred to act in the service of anything
other than his own celebrity. Like Carson, Trump might have made a good mayor
or governor, but neither is grand enough for him. New York’s Southern Tier is
dying an ugly slow death, and New York’s most famous businessman — who says he
wants to be president of these United States — hasn’t lifted a finger on behalf
of his own state. That there is almost nothing behind Trump’s showmanship is
becoming apparent to some of his admirers, albeit slowly.
The also-rans also ran. Senator Rand Paul’s testy
libertarianism remains a hard sell in demographics more diverse than the dinner
table when Matt Welch dines alone; Mike Huckabee is still a better candidate
for Bill O’Reilly’s chair than Abraham Lincoln’s; Kasich leaves one wondering
how he even got to be governor of Ohio, which, according to my almanac, is an
actual state; Chris Christie’s “Hey, remember, I’m from New Jersey!”
special-pleading shtick is sometimes charming but not the sort of thing that makes
one want to hand him control of a nuclear arsenal; some of us true believers
are still rooting for Bobby Jindal down in the junior-variety division, but
there’s not much sign of hope.
I envision Carly Fiorina joining Mitt Romney in the role
I sometimes describe as the crypto-presidency: If there is a Republican
president come January 2017, these two should be the Cleaning Crew, given
powers that are very narrowly defined but Gaullist in their vigor and tasked
with cleaning out problem agencies, with the president declaring the Veterans’
Administration, the Secret Service, etc., something like federal disaster areas
and then sending this duo in with a stack of pink slips and orders to bayonet
the wounded. The fact that Fiorina would be extraordinarily good at this — and
that she’s probably do it with a smile — is the best reason to vote for her for
president, and also the reason that most people won’t.
So, Cruz-Rubio/Rubio-Cruz.
Lifestyle liberals of the fair-trade-soy-latte variety
recoil instinctively from Senator Cruz, and even many of his would-be friends
and admirers lament what some unkind critics (including me) sometimes call his
“Elmer Gantry” mode of persuasion, the televangelist mannerisms and the
undertone of quiet desperation that makes it easy to imagine him saying to
voters: “Tell me exactly what you want to hear, and I’ll say exactly that.” In
an interview with Sean Hannity immediately after the debate, the senator was
utterly abject, twice declaring his desire to see a debate moderated by
Hannity, Mark Levin, and Rush Limbaugh. Which is to say, he practically begged
Hannity et al. to lean his way once their infatuation with Trump and Trump-ism
finally becomes too embarrassing to sustain.
It may be that Senator Cruz thinks that the Republican
primary electorate is full of boobs and that he therefore must appeal to the
yahooligan sense of style. It may be that Senator Cruz suffers from the
affliction all too common among Texas politicians — notably Governor Rick Perry
and former president George W. Bush — that causes them to do some sort of limp
John Wayne impersonation when they are feeling beset by East Coast media types.
In almost every corner of these United States — even Ohio — there is some sort
of local pride; the two great exceptions to that are New York City, whose
residents have instead of municipal pride a form of Stockholm Syndrome, and
Texas, which has instead of a statewide identity a statewide case of psychotic
grandiosity. (I’m from Lubbock; I’m allowed.) Senator Cruz, like Rick Perry and
(in my very limited experience) George W. Bush seems like an entirely different
man off-camera. Maybe that’s cynical calculation; maybe it’s just that he is,
after all, still sort of new at this.
Senator Cruz is not unaware of his shortcomings as a
politician. His confession that he is more of a designated driver than a guy
you want to have a beer with — odious cliché — was well-considered. The
republic could use a period of reflective political sobriety lasting, oh, 60
years or so, and Senator Cruz would be an excellent man to initiate that.
Nobody ever accuses Senator Rubio of Elmer Gantry-ism.
Why? Because if he is a cynical, calculating performer, he’s a brilliant one. I
like to think that I am immune to political oratory, but one does have to
admire the way that Senator Rubio can turn on that American-dream stuff like
flipping a switch. Shortly after the Gang of Eight immigration fiasco, I saw
Senator Rubio face a very, very skeptical audience — with Senator Cruz also on
the stage — of conservatives who were practically ready to bear him out of the
venue on their shoulders when he was done. He is, as Jeb Bush put it icily, “a
gifted politician.”
He is also an apostate on immigration, the issue that has
revealed the purported “libertarian moment” of 2017 to be anything but that.
Conservatives would be foolish to simply declare anathema upon Rubio for his
ill-considered immigration-reform misadventure — he did, after all, walk away
from the mess he helped make once it became clear what a dog’s breakfast it was
— but they are right in being suspicious of the fact that his first instinct
was to make a deal and to be willing to make one that even in the best-case
scenario wasn’t very good.
Senator Rubio here has the opportunity to combine good
politics with good policy and declare that, should he become president, in his
first term action on immigration would be limited to border security and
enforcement. If, at the end of four years, he can make a credible case that the
border is secure, that we have developed a credible procedure for dealing with
visa overstays, and — most critical — that we have a robust system of workplace
enforcement of our immigration laws, then in 2021 we might have a reasonable
conversation about what to do about the millions of illegals who are here
already. If we’re actually doing real workplace enforcement, then there should
be a lot fewer of them come 2021. He should also make it clear that even if we
do settle upon some process for normalizing the status of at least some of the
illegals already here — and you can go ahead and call that “amnesty,” because
that is what it is — citizenship should be off the table. Indeed, it is a
mystery why citizenship for illegals, as opposed to simple legal residency, has
even entered the discussion.
If the final days of the GOP primary fight should in fact
end up being a Rubio–Cruz contest, that would be an excellent thing:
Republicans would be considering an all-Latino presidential field as a result
of ideas, talent, and gumption rather than phony diversity rhetoric and
affirmative action. Either man would provide a dramatic contrast to Hillary
Rodham Clinton, who regards the presidency as a personal entitlement and who
carries in her train more baggage than Louis Vuitton. Cruz-Rubio/Rubio-Cruz:
One’s a little bit country, the other a little bit EDM — and the GOP could do a
hell of a lot worse than either.
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