Bush Will Win The Nomination

In 2008, John McCain won the Republican nomination handily. I was shocked. How could this be? “The base” hates McCain because he opposes everything they stand for and he’s disloyal; indeed, he’s one of the few to whom the label RINO actually applies. Even worse, he’s unstable. Yet, he won. How? Well, I spent a good deal of time trying to figure that out. What I learned was shocking, and it tells me that Bush has already won our nomination.

Let’s start with McCain. How did he do it? Well, there were many “conventional wisdom” possibilities. Chief among these was the idea that the party simply prefers old guys “whose turn it is.” But conventional wisdom is almost always wrong. It tends to mistake correlation for causation. In fact, even worse, what it often tags as THE “cause” is more typically actually caused by the truth the conventional wisdom has missed.

This is like the misleading “running yards” indicator in the NFL. It has been observed that teams that run for more yards win more games in the NFL. Hence conventional wisdom says that having a solid running game causes teams to win. The reality, however, is that the teams with the most running yards tend to get those running yards in the fourth quarter at a point where they are way ahead and simply want to eat up the clock. Thus, in reality, being a winning team causes teams to run more, which gives them higher running averages. Ergo, the conventional wisdom is entirely backwards: winning causes teams to get more running yards, running yards do not cause wins.

This was the case with the “next old guy in line” theory. These guys (McCain, Dole, etc.) didn’t win because the party felt they were owed the nomination because of their seniority, they won because their experience taught them what they needed to do to win, something the young guys hadn’t learned yet. Thus, the conventional wisdom took a correlation (their seniority) and wrongly called it the “cause” of their victory, even though the real cause was something completely different but which correlated to their experience.

So how did McCain win? McCain won the nomination in 2005 and 2006. He did it by going to every single state in the union and campaigning for every Republican he could find at the local, state and national levels. He gave money and advice. He gave endorsements. He held fundraisers. He even donated to guys who were unopposed. And in so doing, he won the loyalty of the overwhelming majority of the most important, most connected, and most respected Republicans in every single state.

When the primaries began, these people returned the favor. They endorsed him... much to the shock of conservatives everywhere: “Why are these real conservatives endorsing HIM?!!” Many also helped organize his campaign in their states or even ran the campaign for him. This meant they used their own networks/contacts to help him. They even fundraised for him. The result was that his campaign became a juggernaut in state after state. And while talk radio toyed in 2007 and 2008 with choosing which “real” conservative they would back, they totally failed to notice what McCain had done and that he was jumping to insurmountable leads everywhere. They didn’t realize the race was over before it even began, it was just a matter of waiting for the votes to confirm it.

There was one more key aspect to his victory too, which I never realized until the recent talk radio civil war: the “base” that hates McCain and which make it “impossible” for guys like him to win are only about 20% of the party. Another 20% could be considered swing conservatives, who vacillate between wanting to win and making ideological statements. And the other 60% of GOP voters are much more moderate and prefer competence and a strong resume to ideological purity. That means the idea that the base will reject moderates as talk radio claims is simply wrong.

Enter Jeb Bush. For the record, I hate dynasties (it’s un-American) and I loath the idea of voting for another Bush. His family has all but destroyed conservatism twice now. G.W. stopped the Reagan revolution cold by ceding the moral high ground to the left by repeatedly characterizing Reaganism as something cold, uncaring, harsh, destructive and in need of being replaced by something kinder and gentler. He also never once defended Reagan against a campaign of slanders from the left. Moreover, he blurred Reagan’s common sense, middle class-ism with the New World Order of international governance, and he called that conservatism. The end result was the total halting of the Reagan revolution and the handing to the Democrats of a chance to become the permanent majority party. Only Hillarycare saved our butts.

W was a million times worse. He was sold to us as “don’t worry, he’s not like his old man... conservatives have nothing to fear... he’s one of you!” But right away, his administration reeked of corruption and robber baronism, which he falsely claimed was “pro-business conservatism.” His economic policy was disastrous Keynesian crap, which he falsely claimed was “free market conservatism.” He did stunningly liberal things, like create new Medicare benefits, which he called conservatism with a heart... again suggesting that conservatism is somehow immoral, cold and harsh. He totally embraced nation building, got caught lying to get us into a war with Iraq -- which let the left equate conservatism with war mongering. Add to that torture and his attempt to strip the Gitmo detainees of guaranteed human rights. He won the war itself (at first) but proved utterly incompetent in managing the peace, which resulted in thousands of lives and trillions of dollars lost. Katrina incompetence. The financial crisis. Wall Street bailout. Etc.

Each of these things destroyed Bush’s reputation with the public, especially as he never fought back, no matter how bad the political damage. Even worse, because he hid behind conservatism like a cloak or shield, conservatism became tarred with his sins even though he never once acted like a conservative. Consequently, by the time he limped away from office, conservatism was all but dead in America. The only thing that saved conservatism was Obamacare. Without Obama’s horrible presidency, the US would have become center-left akin to Germany or modern Britain.

So along comes Jeb. Jeb was an OK governor of Florida, though he proved not to be very conservative. Since leaving office, he has continuously criticized the GOP and conservatism. Yet, we are told not to worry because this Bush isn’t like the prior two. All I can think is, “Fool me twice, shame on me... fool me three times, WTF is my problem?”

In any event though, none of that matters. The race is over and Bush has won. Consider this...

The right is disorganized. Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Ben Carson and a number of lesser figures all want to be the talk radio champion. Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, and a few others are trying to win both the talk radio right and the more moderate mainstream right. This means that fringe 20% and the swing 20% are scattered among many potential candidates. The moderates are not.

Running against this collection of dwarves was Chris Christie. Unlike the others, Christie positioned himself as a moderate who could attract moderate and even Democratic votes. This makes him appeal to the 60% of moderates and some of the 20% of swing conservatives. Only, Christie is too bombastic, and has too many flaws. Bush does not. By entering the race, Bush automatically wipes out Christie and takes that 60%-80% support.

Further, so far, the dwarves have only played around with the idea of running. They’ve given speeches at various gatherings. They’ve tried to stake out some issue(s) that they think will set them apart, and they’ve pandered to the talk radio hosts. A few have sought out donors, but nothing on a grand scale. In fact, there seems to be this idea that they should do nothing until after the 2014 mid-term elections. Only Rick Perry and Rand Paul seem to be doing more.

Bush, by comparison, has spent the past few years following McCain’s lead. He has quietly helped leading Republicans everywhere he could. He spent his time distancing himself from the nasty conduct of the fringe right in recent years, and he’s sold himself to party insiders as Christie without the flaws. He’s also built a massive donor base – something Rush ignorantly pooh-poohed the other day. In fact, Rush bizarrely warped these people into the enemy of conservatism by describing Bush’s appeal to them as being his ability to “win the party nomination without owing anything to the tea party. Their wildest dream is to render the tea party conservatives an irrelevant factor.”

The result of this is that Bush has essentially sealed up the “moderate” vote which Romney proved was around 60% of GOP primary voters. He’s also got enough promises of endorsements and the such to make sure this support remains firm throughout. He’s collected enough money and promises of money to be able to stay in the race until the end no matter how things start – this means he can survive the early primaries, which are geared toward the fringe, until he can sweep states like New York and California. And he’s done all of this without talk radio realizing what he’s done, which means they will be fighting the wrong battle, i.e. they think the battle has yet to begin when in reality the end game is playing out now.

Thoughts?