Cruz talks tough against the Donald:
Republican presidential candidate Texas Senator Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)97% declared that fellow candidate Donald Trump’s campaign has a “consistent pattern of inciting violence, and threatening violence” and “Donald is behaving like a mobster. His campaign is behaving like Democratic union thugs” on Tuesday’s “Sean Hannity Show.”
Cruz said, “I am very troubled at the Trump campaign’s consistent pattern of inciting violence, and threatening violence. Just today, I spoke to the Chairman of the Colorado Republican Party [Steve House], the Trump supporters put out his phone number, put out his address. He’s been receiving death threats. They’re telling people to come to his house with guns, because the Trump campaign is so unhappy that they lost the election.”
This is a huge mistake. Conservatives are K-strategists who see a rapidly approaching period of K-selection. Angst is building, and rage is barely constrained. Anti-establishment conservatives are the most aggressive of all – they want to fight the establishment because they feel it isn’t fighting the left hard enough.
Given all of this, Cruz arguing that Donald is too aggressive, is the worst possible argument he could make. He is subconsciously associating pacifism with his political image, making him seem like every other weak and ineffectual anti-establishment pacifist who wants to work with the left to govern in a bipartisan fashion.
Not helping is Cruz’s old comments about Obama, which are noticeably tamer than what he directs at the Donald:
“I respect Barack Obama a great deal. I think he is committed to his principles, which is rare in politics.”
Republicans who attack conservatives more aggressively than they will liberals. We have seen that before.
Clearly Cruz has decided his best ticket to the White House is through the establishment. The question is will the establishment warm up to him more than his anti-establishment base cools to him.
My guess is Donald’s support will increase as comments like this gain greater prominence.
[…] Cruz Is Losing The Anti-Establishment Vote […]
I don’t believe you are being objective re Trump.
You would have noted repeatedly if liberals had doxed a conservative member that such activity is indicative of r-selected behavior. See here for your commentary on the related activity of SWATing:
http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/r-selection-vs-k-selection-rabbits-freak-during-k-shifts/
But since it comes from a Trump supporter you simply gloss over it.
You also fail to notice that Trump has promised to keep in place most, if not all, of the social welfare programs that you deride as indicative of r-selected strategies.
Is sum it appears that Trump followers are more indicative of r-strategists than K-strategists under your own definitions.
What you, and many other people, seem to be reacting to is a level of staged indignation produced by Trump along the lines of what he produced in reality TV shows and his WWE appearances.
Is it possible that you are so invested in Trump at this point that your analysis is starting to falter?
On Colorado, it is clear to me that Cruz understood how the game was to be played in Colorado and just went out and won. In my experience winners win and losers bitch about unfairness.
Thoughts?
I don’t believe anyone in politics. I assume Ted is corrupted by the machine, and I assume Donald is not a strict ideological conservative. That said, my initial calculus was Cruz that was fighting to win by appealing to ideological conservatives who opposed the establishment, and as a result he would “leave the dance with the ones who brought him.” I liked him more than Donald back then.
Then he began to cozy up to the establishment, deride Donald’s aggression against the establishment and the left, and take the side of the protestors over Trump. All of that was emboldening the left, which is a very bad thing to do. The left needs humiliation and degradation.
I never thought Ted was strict conservative himself ( I assumed he was a smart politician, and probably bought already, in large part because of the TPP and TPA), but I felt he would govern conservative where he could, had things played out as they initially appeared they were going to. I still suspected he would have to give in to the establishment on spending, and other things, but he seemed the best option for conservatives.
Trump is more of an unknown ideologically, and obviously he has a lot of people around him sympathetic to “moderation” at least. But he has one advantage. He humiliates leftists at the grassroots level. In a post tomorrow, I’ll highlight how Bono thinks the best way to fight ISIS is to use comedians to make fun of them. He thinks that because he fears being made fun of himself. Donald could shift the political spectrum, and shut off the leftists’ voices.
As Cruz showed recently, in bemoaning the aggression and violence surrounding Trump, Cruz is more of a GW Bush, get along with the opposition type. Although he might propose good conservative policy, he will not shift the underlying balance of the country by humiliating leftists, and that underlying balance is our nation’s real problem now. I suspect if Cruz spoke some truth about transgenders or leftist treachery, and people complained, he could even be cowed into apologizing.
In short, I think true purists in politics are rare. Every candidate will have warts. I have not ruled out that Trump could be some sort of plant by the machine – it is not impossible. But of all the candidates, I think Trump has alienated all the right people enough that he will have to regard them as enemies for the rest of his life in politics, he ahs promised a wall which I can’t see him walking back, and he may release enough confrontational K-stimuli to do for conservatism what Reagan did, at the level of the people’s opinions.
If Cruz wins the nomination I’ll vote for him, and not unhappily. But I worry he may do for Conservatism’s support among the people what GW Bush did, because he seems to lack the confidence in his own voice to humiliate his enemies. So I see Trump as a better option right now.
But I make no representations of Trump’s people as K-strategists. I’m sure a lot are rabbity.
Though I would never rule out using rabbit tactics against rabbits. As Bono’s comments show, rabbits seem to fear rabbit tactics even more than a Genghis Kahn-like razing of their entire world.
Thanks.
Your reply indicated analysis that was much more nuanced than I had given you credit for in your original post. I suspect that I am also reacting to the “alt-right’s” embrace of Trump which I attribute largely to his pissing off all of the right people (which I also enjoy) and not because of what they believe he would actually do once elected. While that was fun in the early bits of the primary, it strikes me as a bit nihilistic now particularly given Trump’s overall negatives.
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