A divided America and the rise of Trump and Cruz

Perhaps the most significant trend in the 2016 presidential election has been the rise of anti-establishment candidates in either party, be it Bernie Sanders with his emphasis on the middle class over and against the ruling economic elites, or the Donald Trump/Ted Cruz combo which has been working to take down the Republican establishment.

I talked some about Bernie Sanders' campaign the other week, now I'd like to get into some of the deeper going ons within the anti-establishment flavors of the Trump and Cruz campaigns.

As a general rule, I think both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are symbols for historical pendulum swings brought about by long-term Western trends that have been coming to a head over the last eight years.

Donald Trump and the "Alt-Right" movement

There's been a ton written and said about Donald Trump, what he's tapping into, and what he's after but I think a lot of it has ignored the perspectives of the people who are actually supporting him.

I have a suspicion that much of Trump's candidacy and platform is only partially about what he personally thinks or believes is best and partially what he knows will fill the demand gap created by the rise of the Alt-Right movement and it's lack of major political leaders or voices.

Trump's campaign is being described largely as "populism" which at this point might as well be a euphemism for "appeals to lower middle-class to lower-class white Americans."

This is unquestionably a large percentage of where his support comes from, although he's also doing fairly well for a Republican amongst black Americans, as many of the people in this demographic have been drawn to Trump and his "Make America Great Again!" message. America's economic and cultural decline has been felt most strongly amongst the nation's middle class who are seeing home, health, and educational costs rising while increased immigration, free trade policies that have moved manufacturing overseas, and the expectation that women now work has severely diminished their take home pay.

In the past, if a family's parents worked hard they could secure major advantages for their kids and allow them to take off and change the socio-economic status of the family for future generations, but now it's become very hard for younger Americans to achieve a middle class lifestyle.

What's more, the economy no longer produces an abundance of jobs with solidly middle-class incomes and millions of Americans are having to take on massive student loan debt to have access to the kinds of jobs that used to be plentiful and approachable thanks to the strength of the American manufacturing industry.

So it's getting harder to break through to the "American dream" and the path is more dangerous and loaded with debt, which makes long term growth much more difficult. Indeed, stats now indicate that the bottom 40% of Americans hold negative total assets. That means they owe more in debt than they have.

Trump is promising to champion America and bring back manufacturing and local businesses by pushing for protectionist economic policies and an end to massive immigration that brings in foreign workers to drive down the price of labor, increase the challenge of maintaining an American middle class, and creates a more diverse and divided society. All of that can be described as "populism."

But the "Alt-Right" movement is a response both to the above factors and some other concerns. Those on the Alt-Right undoubtedly have concerns about whether the American government is actually working to improve the lots of Americans but they also have concerns about the decline of Western values.

One of the major strategies of Obama that he used to get elected and then re-elected was to play "identity politics" where he looked to make pitches to advance the causes of specific demographics over and against the "oppressive" rich, white traditionalist Americans that were allegedly holding them back. In the midst of that push, Obama pushed the democratic party away from serving the interests of lower middle class white Americans by championing the causes of violent black criminals within the inner city when they clashed with police, pushing for open borders and legalization and enfranchisement for illegally-present Mexicans, and pushing for free trade agreements that move manufacturing jobs to other countries.

The Alt-Right movement is white Westerners realizing that the way to get ahead in the post-Obama world is to also play identity politics and push for a political party that will protect their own interests and advance their causes. Many of these folks are going to support Trump because they feel he's the only option who actually speaks for them.

Some of the intellectual strength of the movement, which you rarely hear about on the news in the midst of Trump's own simplistic rhetoric and the angry characterizations of his movement from his rivals, comes from Gen-X or millennial men who feel that America has left them behind or even cast them as the villain while looking to champion the interests of everyone else.

If you are a young, white male in America you likely have a ton of student debt, might not be married or have any kids yet, and likely aren't terribly far along in your career. You are unquestionably insecure in your identity as an adult male and frustrated with your apparent lot in life.

Yet you frequently hear that you are the reason that minority groups or women don't have access to the American dream and that their interests need to be put above yours. This demographic thus feels pretty disenfranchised and angry right now.

Trump is a just a strong personality that is tapping into that sentiment, which was already very strong and exists amongst a fairly diverse spectrum (lower middle class Americans and millennial males who feel left behind), and giving it a seat at the table amongst the Republican party.

The proposals of the Alt-Right movement are for a nationalist approach that champions and invests in traditional western values and traditional western peoples. There is a certain degree to which the Alt-Right movement does actually, as it is commonly accused, push for national socialism. A state which is defined by a single nation or ethnic identity and values system that looks to become a co-op for that group to work together to advance their interests in the world.

When you think of national socialism today, you think of the tremendous evils perpetrated by Adolf Hitler's 3rd reich, but the idea of a nation-state built around protecting the interests of an ethnic nation isn't really an evil thing in and of itself.

The problem is that championing a particular ethnicity in a diverse society tends to have the effect of fostering even worse division and potentially for the more dominant group to feel justified in perpetrating violence and oppression on the other group.

Minority groups and movements like the #BlackLivesMatter deal often accuse white Americans of systemic oppression but there's nothing going on today remotely like what could be possible if greater division and resentment were to be fostered either by increasing strength and resentment in the Alt-Right movement or by further disenfranchisement of white Americans.

This leads to the obvious question: If America doesn't allow space for nationalist sentiment in the political process will that result in the Alt-Right movement getting thrown into the dustbin of history? Or will it result in the movement becoming stronger and more extreme, at which point the evils of radical nationalism could become a reality?

I suspect it's the latter and while I don't endorse or support Donald Trump, who again I think is just a savvy businessman and opportunist who's using his strong personality to assume the leadership vacuum at the head of the Alt-Right movement, I think it's important that this group isn't further marginalized and deprived of a voice.

Ted Cruz and the conservative push back

You'll find that liberals are often very poor at considering consequences in their evaluations of what proper policy should be. They are motivated primarily out of a sense of justice and will tend to get pulled around by their heart strings and what sounds like the right thing rather than more careful considerations of the unintended consequences of various actions and measures.

As a result, they are often totally oblivious to the fact that war is a two-way street. Every time you try a tactic out on an opponent that is effective, you are effectively teaching them how to fight back. Each tactic that is utilized by one side should always include the consideration of, "are we comfortable with the fact that they may start doing this to us in return?"

Ted Cruz winning the GOP nomination and subsequently the general election would be Republicans utilizing lessons learned from losing to Democrats in the last two elections.

Barack Obama started his career as a community organizer and lawyer, learned how to make himself an appealing figure to fellow black Americans (he was already appealing to white liberals since he grew up amongst them, won a senate seat and made an effective speech at a Democratic national convention, and then failed to do anything particularly offensive or noteworthy to hurt his positive standing in the party.

Then he ran for president, won office twice through divide and conquer political strategies and identity politics, and has been by far the most liberal president that America has ever had.

So what did conservatives learn? Ted Cruz learned that the key is make a big mark as a first term senator, to build a coalition of people that will turn out and vote, play divide and conquer with identity politics, and then have the freedom to enact a principled (or divisive and radical, depending on how you look at it) agenda as president.

He's been more avert about his political leanings than Obama, but he's also tapping into frustration across multiple demographics who feel that their values and interests have been trampled upon, marginalized, or ignored under Obama because they didn't fit into his winning coalition. Appealing to the Alt-Right movement and lower middle class voters who used to be democrats (or Reagan Democrats) is a big part of his plan.

I'm not sure how long America can survive power going back and forth between people who are committed to representing limited chunks of the electorate at the expense of voters on the other side, but I suspect that we'll see the pendulum swing at least once to the right before we either find some kind of national compromise or else start to break apart.

The biggest question moving forward in our country is whether we can build a new national identity that can encompass the values and interests of our increasingly diverse people, or whether the United States will fail to remain united. 

If they do fail to be united, let's hope that none of the major political movements are preaching the justification of violence against opposing groups and do what we can to be aware of that possibility and stem the tide.

The Conservative movement is rallying around Ted Cruz

This blog won't always be political in nature but since it's election season there are just so many opportunities to break down what's going on in the political world beyond the rhetoric and back and forth you typically see from headlines and Facebook banter so I'm going to do my best to explain what's now happening in the GOP primary.

As I predicted months ago, the GOP basically had four options in this primary.

The first was to embrace nationalism and Donald Trump, the first candidate since Ross Perot to speak to the concerns and interests of lower middle class white voters or conservatives primarily concerned with losing the nation's identity and values due to immigration (which is an increasing percentage of conservatives out there).

The second was to finish what the tea party started in holding Republicans accountable to their failure to enact conservative legislation with what would be the the first conservative, outsider candidate to lead the party since Ronald Reagan...Ted Cruz.

Third was to go with Marco Rubio, a more conservative candidate than many establishment types who has a knack for being personable and policy-fluent in a way that would likely resonate with moderates and people outside of the conservative base while maintaining strict values on social conservative issues like marriage and abortion.

If Marco Rubio hadn't staked so much of his reputation years ago on the Chuck Schumer "gang of eight" bill that would have allowed illegal immigrants a pathway to staying in the country while doing nothing to address border security, and infuriating the party's base, he would be a shoo-in right now to win the primary.

Finally there's Chris Christie, who's still hanging around and hoping for a strong performance in New Hampshire to make him the choice of the establishment. Christie's play is to be the tough, law and order candidate in a time where Americans are concerned about border security, increasing violence in the inner city, and ISIS.



Christie would likely have been the leader from the beginning of the primary season if not for a scandal in New Jersey where it seems that his office closed a bridge to punish a political rival.

Up till now, Ted Cruz had been very cleverly working behind the scenes and avoiding a ton of national attention while using Donald Trump as a stalking horse to position himself as the winning candidate in a primary where "let's hold Washington accountable!" sentiment is driving the race.

Donald Trump completely flustered and disordered the more established parts of the Republican party and made their favorite son, Jeb Bush, look like a weakling...



Now the GOP establishment is trying to figure out how to position themselves to seize control back over the primary. Unfortunately for their efforts, they are no longer united in determining how to do so.

Jeb is still the nominal leader to be their guy and his plan is a stupid one, namely to attack every other candidate besides Trump in the hopes that when Republican primary voters have to choose between the loud-mouthed mogul and a third Bush that he'll finally appear as a preferred option. It's just plausible, and if different candidates split the early states while Jeb hangs around he could surge late and take over, but it's more likely that he'll just hurt the people who could have won the primary and hand things over to the less moderate candidates.

Which brings us to Ted Cruz and the conservative movement.

In the last Republican debate, Ted Cruz hammered Donald Trump for the first time but he did so in a different way than Jeb, Rubio, Kasich, or anyone else had done.

Cruz needs to attack Trump and knock him down because he's not going to build a coalition that can win the primary against Rubio, Christie, or Jeb if he's splitting anti-establishment conservative votes with Donald Trump. However, that meant that Cruz's attack on Donald is designed to invalidate Trump without invalidating his supporters. He's essentially looking to co-opt the Trump movement.

His method for doing so started with the #NewYorkValues comment that has driven liberals, New Yorkers, and establishment folks around the country to frothing with rage:



In the media this has been described as a defeat for Cruz, because the media is driven by people from New York, but it was a brilliant rhetorical tactic that is now serving as the vehicle for Cruz's larger attack.

Which is that he's tying Trump to the establishment by noting his background and the fact that historically Trump has not been a conservative at all. Other candidates have tried to question Trump's conservative bonafides but they didn't do so from the position of strength that Cruz is now operating from and they didn't do so in the weeks immediately preceding the Iowa caucuses when more voters start to pay attention.

Not only has Cruz moved with good timing and with an attack that can have the effect of plying Trump's supporters away from the mogul without insulting them for preferring Trump in the first place as Jeb's condescending attacks did, he's also doing so with the full coordination and weight of the tea party and conservative movement behind him.

Immediately after launching these attacks on Trump, Ted Cruz immediately got support from several major conservative figures and outlets.

-The National Review's David French wrote a front page article asking "what is driving the Establishment's preference for Trump over Cruz?"

Implicitly tying Trump to the establishment that he has campaigned to take down and framing the battle as between Cruz the outsider vs Trump, who's actually an insider.

-Talk radio tycoon Rush Limbaugh did the same, starting to frame the issue as Cruz: the true conservative outsider trying to bring reform vs Trump: who speaks truth to power on immigration but doesn't have a trustworthy track record of standing up to liberalism and the establishment.

These conservative figures are ready to go all-in on Ted Cruz because he's demonstrated the ability to build a coalition that could win the primary and because he'd be the final solution to their efforts to take control of the Republican party. The 2010, 2012, and 2014 elections were described as "wave elections" in which conservatives were able to take down moderate candidates in the primaries and then win general elections against Democrats, leading to the GOP now controlling both houses of congress.

However, despite those efforts, they have been unable to get anything done to promote their own agenda or even fully block the agenda of Obama due to weak leadership and the power of the presidency.

Getting Cruz into the White House would be the ultimate wave election that would seize control over the direction of the country from white liberals and place it in the hands of traditional Americans.

Now, in the face of multiple conservative outlets joining in and framing the debate in a way that will inevitably favor Cruz and allow him to co-opt Trump's movement and become the standard bearer for angry Americans wanting to take back the country, Donald has completely played into their hands.

First he fought back against the charge of #NewYorkValues by pandering about 9/11, as though the fact that the city was attacked by terrorists 14 years ago had anything to do with whether he could be relied upon to set a conservative policy agenda from the powerful seat of the presidency.

Secondly, he's ended up garnering a ton of support from the people who love and embody #NewYorkValues. People such as Mayor De Blasio and former NY senator and democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

So now the debate over #NewYorkValues has become Ted Cruz and average Americans vs big city New Yorkers, Donald Trump, and major liberal politicians.

Offered a chance to apologize about this comment, Cruz went for the kill in a fashion you might have expected from Trump:



"I apologize to the millions of New Yorkers who have been let down by liberal politicians in that state..."

As someone who knows some New Yorkers from upstate and outside of the city, I can tell you that the people in the city are often regarded as self-obsessed and keen to inflict policies that work for their city on everyone else in the state regardless of whether it works for them or not.

New York city and it's people are fairly insulated, and so while they are furious about this charge, Ted Cruz has used a rhetorical trick that is going to resonate with Americans all over the rest of the country who resent New Yorkers sense of self-importance and entitlement about their own qualifications to lead the country.

The next step for Cruz is to take down Donald Trump in Iowa, which team Cruz assumes is a task already in the bag, and then use the major blow to Trump's ego and mythos of greatness and inexorability to surge and exceed expectations in New Hampshire as well.

If Trump loses both of these states, the air will release out of him and Cruz will be in position to pick up the pieces as the chosen reform candidate to go clean up Washington. Then it'll be up to the establishment to give up on Jeb and choose between Rubio and Christie who is the better choice to fend off Cruz and the conservative movement.

If the battle between Trump and Cruz is prolonged, than the establishment will have plenty of time and should be able to take advantage of them splitting the conservative movement vote and win late.

The truths about Bernie Sanders' campaign no one is talking about

Bernie Sanders' campaign and recent success in polls has been a fascinating study in American politics, the future of the Democratic party, and how truly aware either conservatives or liberals even are of what's actually going on in the West.

It's worth bringing up now because Bernie Sanders is now only down two points to Hillary Clinton in Iowa in the Des Moines Register's most recent polls. He's also up big on her in New Hampshire. There's a reasonable chance that Sanders could win some big victories early in the primary and have a chance to make the Democratic primary battle a prolonged fight, which is absolutely to the disadvantage of both Hillary and the Democratic party.

The major issue at play here is that Bernie Sanders is largely the choice of white liberal Americans and that demographic is losing control of the future of the country without even realizing it.

Take a look at the demographic breakdowns of the 2012 election, a major victory for Barack Obama that has helped infused liberal democrats around the country with confidence in their ascension and control of the country:

(numbers calculated from Wikipedia entry on 2012 election)

Obama's winning coalition was dependent on two major additions to the white liberal camp to bring victory. First, heavy turnout from black voters almost all of whom voted for him. Secondly, other minority groups whom he also carried with major percentages. He lost white voters to Romney 59-39 because white liberals are a rather small part of the electorate, even though they are currently guiding the direction of the nation.

What white liberals are aiming the country at right now is to become more like other Western nations such as Canada, Germany, England, or the oft-cited socialist states of Scandinavia. This is also an attractive outcome for America's various minority groups, but there are two considerable problems with trying to bring this kind of state and system to the U.S.

The first is that there are many electoral land mines to getting these kinds of policies put into law and second that a Western-style socialist system won't work in America.

America is not designed, as a system of government, to allow even a majority to quickly and easily push through major, comprehensive changes at the Federal level and there is also a lot of leeway for the individual states to impose their own preferences for their own population groups, which is really what the Constitution is facilitate as it was established by individualistic Anglo-Saxon values, not cooperative German ones.

However, because socialism is a centralized system for administering government, Democrats are not content to simply turn states like Vermont into liberal bastions but are consistently trying to gain access to the Federal branches of power and the U.S. treasury from which they can do much more.

As Ezra Klein recently outlined, Hillary understands the problem of bringing socialism to America after she failed to bring a single-payer healthcare system to the country back in the 90's. America is increasingly diverse, and although Obama worked that to his advantage in 2008 and 2012, some of what he did is going to make similar practices increasingly difficult for future Democrats.

By playing into identity politics and playing a game of divide and conquer whereby conservative and traditional white Americans were outnumbered by a coalition of virtually every other group in the state the result is that conservative and traditional white Americans are now starting to fight back. They've seized control of congress through the Republican party and are now working to transform the GOP into a party that enacts their own vision rather than that of the powerful interests which have traditionally guided the party.

Whether they will be successful or not in seizing control over the direction of the country from white liberals is unclear, I think the prognosis is grim, but they can sure make it harder for the liberal agenda to get pushed through.

Another aspect of the electoral problem is the fact that white liberals depend on heavy minority turnout to drive election victories. They're starting to discover that this doesn't work well in mid-term and local elections, where minority voters simply aren't as invested, as in presidential elections where the candidates and power at stake is clearly recognizable.

That means that Democrats are now living on the edge of the knife, dependent on holding the presidency since they aren't likely to hold majorities in both houses of congress and dependent on finding presidential candidates who will draw minority voters to the polls.

While Sanders' policies of universal healthcare, free college education, and greater access to debt are obviously attractive to minority voters, Sanders himself is not attractive. While Obama was cool and had a personality cult that attracted the attention of minority voters that don't necessarily follow cable news cycles, listening to a bald, old white man with a Northeastern accent drone on about specific policies hasn't been able to garner the same support.

Clinton is killing Sanders amongst black voters and also amongst hispanic voters. That means that when it comes to states like Texas, California, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, the majority of democratic primary voters are not going to be the white liberals that Sanders is winning with in Iowa and New Hampshire. Even if he wins the first two primaries it'll be a smokescreen, masking his ultimate inability to win the nomination when non-whites are given a voice.

What's more, when it comes time to win a general election, if Sanders doesn't get fantastic turnout from black and hispanic voters in Florida, Ohio, or Virginia he's going down in flames in any attempt to match Obama's electoral path to victory.

So, Sanders may get some momentum early but his fate is sealed. The only thing he can likely accomplish by prolonging the battle is forcing Hillary to compromise some of her moderate policy proposals and move to the left to capture the white liberal voters needed to put him down. That will not serve her well in the general election in winning moderate, white suburban voters or lower middle class white voters, the former whom Rubio is likely to be strong with and the latter whom Trump and Cruz are courting.

The next problem is that while democratic socialism has actually worked well in Europe, it won't work in America, it's actually already been tried.

Conservatives grit their teeth and hiss when liberals point to the success of healthcare programs in Canada, Scandinavia, Germany, and other locations and tend to stutter through explanations of why they are actually evil or secretly ineffective.

They really aren't. When you have a homogenous population of successful, hard-working people then democratic socialism basically becomes a massive co-op. Everyone agrees to pay into the system and they understand and generally accept the fact that some will get out more than others, that doesn't matter so long as the system is efficient and effective so that the bottom line for everyone is good.

When you have a diverse population of people with massive disparities in values and tremendous distrust between groups, a massive co-op doesn't work. The groups that feel they are being taken advantage of (namely, white Americans) become resentful and do all they can to block the system from being enacted. Then there's the other problem that people don't want to talk about, disparate work values and productivity amongst different ethnicities.

Let's start with something more palatable to modern sensibilities: Scandinavians and Germans tend to be more amenable to working in a socialist/co-op kind of system than other Europeans. Their societies are defined by being orderly and communal whereas Anglo-Saxon or Scots-Irish folk are often more individualistic. This is particularly true in America, which was built by pioneers that set out to conquer the west in family units and still isn't as urban as Europe has become.

Take Wisconsin, or far west Germany as it could also be known, which is an American farming state filled with white people that you would normally expect to be pretty conservative but instead it's historically been a liberal state that pushes for expansion of social services.

The problem came from the fact that there's free movement of labor within the country and the state became less white after enacting many of their more generous welfare programs.

Here's the key point from the linked article:

"before the increase in welfare payments in the 1960s and 1970s, northern cities attracted those Southern blacks who wanted to better themselves by getting factory jobs. But during the big liberalization of welfare in the 1960s-1970s, northern cities attracted those down South who heard it was easy to get welfare."

The result was the collapse of Milwaukee and the abandonment of the city by it's white population who fled in massive numbers to the suburbs. 

You are now seeing the same thing happen in Germany and Scandinavia as Middle-Eastern and African immigrants are utilizing the refugee crises to flood into these generous Western states and take advantage of their fantastic social programs. The result is an utter catastrophe and growing crises. Even the most generous and liberal Scandinavian states are starting to close their borders as they realize that their systems won't work when they go from being a national co-op to becoming a pure system of redistributing European wealth to African and Middle-Eastern populations.

You'll notice that Bernie, who hails from the the ultra-liberal but also ultra-European state of Vermont (98.6% of the population is white European in ancestry), is opposed to open borders within the U.S.

No one in America wants to have a frank discussion of the relative strengths and weaknesses of different ethnic groups out of fear of being labeled racist, but it's unquestionably true that the secret to Western success is Western people.

Moving people from a different culture with different values and different strengths and weaknesses from one land region to another will not change any of those underlying traits.

You see an understanding and resentment of this fact in American through things like "white flight" wherein successful, middle-class white Americans withdraw from regions and areas where they are asked to be a part of co-op/socialist programs with people from other ethnic groups. You also see it in re-gentrification where successful, middle-class white Americans use higher prices to force "minority flight."

White liberals don't talk and discuss these things though, because it flies powerfully in the face of the narrative they push (the end of conservative white values and their oppression!) and the result they are trying to achieve (an egalitarian, socialist state). For that reason, they are currently pushing for Bernie Sanders without realizing that 

A) He can't win because Obama rebuilt the Democratic party around minority voters and they aren't interested in his candidacy

B) He can't pass his policies because of white push back

C) His policies can't work because of white push back and a cultural weakness amongst many minority groups for sustaining Western-style socialism.

I'm curious to see when white liberals start to grasp these points and how they'll respond when they do. This primary season sure is interesting, isn't it?

Why are all these people running in the primaries?

Have you ever wondered why there are so many people on the debate stage in the Republican and Democratic presidential primary debates? Why so many of these figures who clearly have no chance to win still insist on conducting campaigns and fighting for votes in a very public process?

It's all about the kabuki dance.

A kabuki dance is an elaborate and bizarre Japanese dance with ornate costumes but it's a phrase used in political spheres to describe a grand performance which is exactly that, just a performance.

Many of these candidates know they have zero chance of actually winning the nomination or a general election, that's not their aim. They have other goals that range in scope. Let's examine a few, here are the figures who were on the stage at the last GOP debate:

Donald Trump: The emergent outsider

My suspicion is that Trump, ever out for attention and influence within the US, realized there was a demand gap within the Republican party for a nationalist candidate and has seized the opportunity to fill it and potentially win the presidency. I'm not sure if he initially started out with the intention to win or not but he's certainly in decent shape to do so now.

However, he's in serious trouble in regards to winning the nomination. You see, the Trump campaign is all about posturing himself as the strongest candidate and the guy who will get things done. His evidence for his own candidacy are the national polls, which show him with a large lead nationally. However, state polls in Iowa and New Hampshire show he's vulnerable.

What will happen to his persona and the perception of his campaign's momentum if he loses Iowa to Ted Cruz, which very well might happen? What if the hit causes him to lose New Hampshire as well? Will he still trend well nationally when the myth of Trump's invincibility is busted?

At that point it'll be interesting to see what his campaign looks like and how serious he is about winning or if he's out to make another point.

Ben Carson: The token candidate

Carson has never been a serious candidate but has simply fulfilled the role as the token black Republican who has a few key roles within the party:

-To say all of the things about race relations and the inner city that white Republicans want to say but are afraid to say lest they are branded as "privileged" or worse, "racists."

-To show black voters that there are black Americans who are Republicans in order to build some credibility within that normally very strongly Democratic demographic.

-To indicate that the Republican party is inclusive towards people who aren't WASPS.

For his own part Carson has gotten a lot out of this and will likely end up with a talk show on radio or TV, if not more book deals, and is now a public figure within the party and the conservative movement. As an evangelical popular within that large and important Republican demographic he also served another role which requires multiple actors, the vote-splitter.

You see, the party's establishment wants moderately conservative candidates who will be effective leaders of the party's national ticket, but moderate conservatives don't make up the majority of the party's base.

If the GOP has to stick a strongly conservative candidate at the top of their ticket they're concerned that this will hurt their more moderate candidates that are running for congress. They are absolutely terrified of what will happen to their current majority in congress if Trump or Cruz are at the top of their ticket.

Therefore to help the moderate conservatives win the nomination the establishment will encourage and support multiple ultra-conservative candidates to be a part of the field in order to split the vote. Why else do you think Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee keep running for president every four years?

They are encouraged and supported to do so by powerful figures within the party in order to split the evangelical vote.

John Kasich: Servant of the establishment 

I expected Kasich to be a guy the establishment would rally behind when they realized that the party wasn't going to go for Jeb Bush, but it seems he's had other aims. His attempts to take down Trump, his way-too-early surge attempt in New Hampshire (where moderate conservatives usually stake their claim as frontrunners), and the way he's approach the election suggest that he's here to split the vote to buy time for Rubio or Jeb and to be an attack dog.

When it becomes advantageous for him to leave the race in order to boost the real establishment candidate he'll do so. What does he stand to gain from this? If he could have stuck around and made some noise he could have been a Jeb back-up plan, but he's failed to do so.

Carly Fiorina: Angling for a cabinet seat

Carly talks good and Carly talks tough but her chances in a general election are horrendous. There was no way that Democrats were going to lose to a woman who was fired from Hewlett Packard after nearly overseeing the company's destruction, who mandated terminations within the company as part of fear-based motivational tactics and undoubtedly made a ton of enemies along the way, and who was given a golden parachute when she got her own pink slip.

No way Americans were going to vote for a woman in a time of growing income disparity and distrust between the elites and working class who fired tons of American workers and then received $40 million when it was her turn to get the boot.

On the brief occasion when she surged in the GOP primary polls she did next to nothing to capitalize on her gains and soon dropped back. So what's her goal? To establish herself as an effective communicator of conservative principles, a capable and confident figure within the party, and a strong candidate for a post such as Secretary of State.

Rand Paul: Giving voice to the Libertarian wing

Rand Paul isn't really trying to win at this point either and his father was never a serious candidate, instead their goal is to be a voice for the Libertarian wing of the party and try to push the conversation and actual nominee to compromise some with Libertarian values so the party doesn't veer towards advocating for big government in pursuit of conservative aims.

In the same way that Bernie Sanders is trying to build momentum for Democratic Socialism to have a seat at the table in American politics the Pauls are trying to get Libertarians a place in American politics as well.

Marco Rubio: Jeb back-up plan A and future of the party

The set-up of the nomination process is such that as long as the vote is fractured and not united behind any particular non-establishment candidate, the establishment candidate can rise to supremacy by winning Florida, California, and Ohio in their "winner takes all" votes.

This was supposed to be Jeb, but since he's now a laughing stock it'll probably be Marco Rubio instead. He's failed to totally build up momentum and consensus as THE choice for moderate conservatives for reasons that can only be speculated at. He's a great communicator and can appeal to different parts of the party as a respectable yet very conservative candidate who's rise took place as a part of the tea party.

Whether he gets it this time or not he's likely to be a big part of the GOP's future.

Chris Christie: Original establishment choice and now back-up plan B

Before his Governor's office was accused of shutting down a bridge in New Jersey to hurt a political rival, Christie was a front-runner to be the main moderate-conservative candidate. Then that happened and he tanked.

However, he's hung around and is now emerging as a plausible figure due to his background as a US Attorney in an election where being a law and order candidate might be the strongest possible position.

He's currently surging in New Hampshire and taking shots at Rubio, whom he needs to pass in order to become the back-up plan for replacing Jeb. He's got Karl Rove in his corner, who was George W. Bush's savvy advisor who's biggest fault was probably not doing more to help his guy defend himself while in office. I suspect Christie won't have a similar problem.

Ted Cruz: The strongly-conservative candidate

Cruz is exactly the type of candidate that the establishment of the party is typically working to keep from winning. He's a figure that could potentially unite the various factions of the party who outnumber the more moderate conservatives and get a more conservative candidate at the top of the ticket.

His problem is dealing with the fact that the nomination process works against him and trying to unite them over and against the other non-moderate candidates in the fold. Cruz is a legitimate candidate but the preponderance of different figures in the race muddy the waters for his effort.

Not only are there other candidates going after factions within the more right-wing parts of the party but people like Rubio and Christie are also biting into his share of conservatives.

What you can expect is for Christie, Jeb, and Rubio to all stay in the race through the early phases to ensure that neither Trump nor Cruz seize too big of a lead before the winner takes all states come up and a single establishment candidate tries to take over.

So that, in my estimation, is the actual picture of what's going on with this crowded GOP field. What'll be important to watch for is the following events:

1) Can Trump win in Iowa and New Hampshire?

If he's able to maintain his momentum and win several early states it could lead to a domino effect where he's too strongly positioned for the establishment to take down.

2) Who finishes highest in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina amongst the Jeb back-up plans?

Does Rubio maintain his lead as the presumptive beneficiary of Jeb's collapse or does Chris Christie take it from him?

3) How much of a lead can Cruz build if Trump falters?

Cruz needs either for Trump to maintain strength and keep things split for a while so that the establishment candidate doesn't dominate the winner takes all states or else to build enough of a lead himself that he can contend in those same races.

Should make for interesting theater.

What should be the GOP's national security strategy in 2016?

The battle lines within the GOP frontrunners has come to foreign policy and America's grand strategy, at last. 

“So Rubio’s foreign policy and national security strategy is to invade Middle Eastern countries, create power vacuums for terrorist organizations, allow their people to come to America unvetted, give them legal status and citizenship, then impose a massive surveillance state to monitor the problem,” Alice Stewart, a national spokeswoman for Cruz, said in a statement to the Guardian. 

“I’m trying to figure out if it is more incoherent than dangerous or vice versa."

Alex Conant, a Rubio spokesman, hit back:  

“No amount of false rhetoric will cover up the fact that Cruz voted for Rand Paul’s isolationist budget to slash military spending and gut US intelligence programs. Cruz might talk tough, but he would endanger America by partnering with rulers like Assad and Putin. Marco has consistently fought to strengthen America’s military, intelligence programs and border security, and as president his top priority will be to keep Americans safe.”

Rubio vs Cruz, the gloves are coming off! Credit to both of them for taking logically consistent positions that coincide with their overall views on immigration. The rhetoric here is particularly fierce and with good reason. Due to the attacks in Paris and California, national security is likely to be a big part of the 2016 presidential election and the GOP candidate will want to lean heavily on their perceived superiority over Clinton on the issue of national security.

If Democrats tend to have an easier time casting themselves as the party that takes care of social concerns, Republicans still know how to win national elections by promising law and order.

You'll remember that I laid out two main directions for the GOP in this election with four different pathways/candidates. The first direction was the anti-establishment candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump who want to upset the tables and change how the Republican party approaches issues in order to represent smaller interests who are often ignored in Washington. The second direction was with the establishment candidates Marco Rubio and Chris Christie who will look to evolve the Republican party into a new century with fresh strategies for maintaining some conservative principles in a liberalizing nation.

Two directions on national security

The establishment of the party is controlled by powerful interests, including globalist economic interests who have a lot at stake in all of the power brokering that takes place in international politics. The anti-establishment party is controlled by everyday Americans, who's interests are strictly American which means they are narrower in focus and generally fairly ignorant of geo-political concerns.

The establishment is eager to have a hand in matters that take place around the world, including helping to topple Assad in order to open a pipeline of oil into Europe that would limit Russia's ability to hold Western nations captive to buying their petroleum.

Immigration plays into this issue on two levels. First of all, globalist economic interests are keen to flood the US with immigrants so they can have access to more skilled workers from Asia and more cheap labor from Mexico and Latin America. The more workers they have in each labor force the cheaper the costs and the better the options.

Secondly, there is an inherent fairness in the idea that if you're going to mix your hand into Middle Eastern politics than you should be willing to take in the people who's homes you've destroyed and who's neighborhood you've transformed into a disordered mess.

The anti-establishment side of the party sees things very differently. The everyday American doesn't like immigration because it lowers his wages and results in the creation of neighborhoods that he doesn't want to live in, forcing him to spend more money on housing location which he struggles to do because of his depressed real wages. As a result he'll tend to have fewer kids while the immigrants have several, leading to his country becoming less defined by his own people group and values and more defined by those of the immigrants.

The average American can be convinced by the establishment to engage in this or that war for heroic causes such as the defense of American liberties (it's not always clear which ones are at stake) or the defense of some helpless and oppressed people against the dictator that's oppressing them. However, as they become aware of the costs of such ventures, such as increasing immigration or higher body counts for their sons, they become less and less easily persuaded.

Who's winning this battle within the GOP?

Ted Cruz's line of rhetoric here is very interesting on two different levels.

The first is that he's very aware that he needs to appear tough on national security in the midst of people feeling more and more at risk due to Paris or California but yet he's embracing the anti-establishment arguments as he does so rather than conventional GOP wisdom on how to appear tough.

The idea that the establishment's foreign policy can be summed up as "invade the world, invite the world," originates in the blogosphere and sums up the anti-establishment intellectual rhetoric against the GOP's typical foreign policy.

Normally Republicans convince voters that they are tougher than the Democrats because they are more willing to go kick a** internationally and also to increase national surveillance and police operations to tighten down on potential domestic terrorists. You'll note that these are issues which the Clintons typically don't allow themselves to be flanked on by Republicans.

This may still be a popular message but it falls flat these days with the more intelligent of the anti-establishment elements of the GOP who notice that with the US toppling Saddam Hussein (Iraq), Muammar Gaddafi (Libya), and potentially Assad (Syria) the risk never seems to shrink and the more radical terrorists seem to grow in strength while also gaining increasing access to the US.

So when Rubio's spokes person says "Cruz might talk tough, but he would endanger America by partnering with rulers like Assad and Putin," that line of argument is increasingly falling flat. It seems more and more obviously true that while surveillance programs routinely fail to stop terrorism in the West, allowing dictators to maintain control in the Middle East has the positive effect of curtailing radical Islam.

No one is less interested in radical Islam gaining momentum in the Middle East than the dictators who are attempting to control the regions and stand to lose everything.

As for Putin, if you took an opinion poll in the GOP base these days you may find that the Russian leader would poll ahead of much of the field.

Cruz's line of rhetoric is also interesting because, before Trump, it's not one that establishment Republican candidates had to take very seriously. Back in the day when Ron Paul would say things like this the other candidates would wave their hands and talk about how Ron Paul was a wacko who would allow terrorists to run amok and give your kids free heroin.

But now? The nationalist side of the GOP is gaining steam and it has a coherent policy for national security that has appeal to the party's base of every day people. Namely, "what if we stopped de-stabilizing already volatile regions and stopped importing the people from volatile regions into the US? Wouldn't that make us safer in addition to serving several other national interests? Maybe then airport security wouldn't have to take so dang long and we still wouldn't have to worry about being blown up by armed Muslims."

Dismiss it as simplistic if you like but it's actually quite logical and very easily communicated and understood by the average voter.

It'll be interesting to see how Rubio (or Christie, who's probably more up for this fight than Marco is) responds to this line of rhetoric if it continues to be successful in connecting with the base. In the midst of repeated military disasters and failures by the government to recognize the threat from the California shooters or the Tsarnaev brothers, everyday Americans have little reason to trust the establishment's plan to protect them with more military and police spending.

After all, don't the military and police already have exponentially more resources than America's enemies? Will having six million times the funding make a difference that having five times the funding didn't?

Whoever wins this debate will then have to carry their argument against Hillary Clinton, who should be vulnerable here, but they better make sure their own side believes it first.

Given that the Clintons have also supported foreign intervention, regime change, increased policing, and flooding the US with immigrants, the anti-establishment argument may be the one where Republicans can actually offer substantial choice. Here's hoping the Ted wins this debate and we have an actual discussion in the general election on what America's grand strategy for defending her citizens should be rather than a nuanced discussion focused on to what degree either side will do virtually the same thing.

Terrorism in Oregon or political savvy?

I've noticed a lot of frustration on Facebook from folks who believe there is racism inherent in the media's coverage of the militia uprising in Oregon compared to the #BlackLivesMatter protests in Ferguson in Baltimore. If you haven't followed closely in the news, some ranchers in Oregon who started a fire (with good, legal cause, they argue) were arrested and convicted as terrorists behind the cheerleading of a neighboring, federal wildlife preserve that had a long-standing feud with the ranching family.

The Bundy's, an activist/militia group out west, took the opportunity to show up in Oregon to protest, even seizing remote property of the wildlife preserve and vowing to hold it until Federal agents come and remove them by violence. The Bundy's seem to be motivated largely by looking for opportunities to challenge the expanding reach of the Federal government and desiring a less centralized American state...good luck to them in that venture, I see little hope of that occurring anytime soon, at least not in the fashion they are hoping for.

The media has been hesitant to stick with the label applied by the courts, that this is a terrorism event, which has infuriated BLM (Black Lives Matter) activists and sympathizers who believe that this act of armed, civil disobedience would be more fiercely condemned if the Bundy's and their fellow protestors were people of color rather than white American males.

I've got an alternative prism for looking at this whole issue that doesn't come down to whether you think either protest movement is sympathetic or criminally evil. I think the Bundy's are a much more politically savvy 4th generation unit than is the BLM movement.

4th Generation Warfare

If you read any of my musings on politics you'll note that I put a great deal of emphasis on the concept of "4th generation warfare" which military theorist William S. Lind highlights as a major shift in how the world handles conflict and something likely to heavily impact the future of the Western state.

The theory of 4G warfare is that in the modern era the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which established a sort of state monopoly on armed conflict, has given way to a world in which the primary focus of armed conflict is between the state and non-state actors.

The State system is losing legitimacy around the world and people are lining up to fight on behalf of causes, tribes, and other reasons against the interests of the state. The #BlackLivesMatter movement is not generally a group that focuses on armed conflict, but they are absolutely a group that is working against the state and even apply violence (looting and violence in Maryland, Missouri) to bring disorder and work against the state.

Their sympathizers like to emphasize how none of these events featured armed protestors, but that hardly matters when many of the results include violence and disorder.

The Bundy militia are also a 4th generation group, an armed American militia looking to work directly against the state in support of their own cause. They claim to be fighting for the constitution, but while the American nation may be sympathetic to that cause, this militia is still working directly against the people's government.

However, while the Bundy's are carrying weapons and confronting federal authority in a more direct fashion than did recent BLM protests, you'll notice there are two things they are not doing.

First of all, they are not acting to undermine the state in its most basic function, which is maintaining order. None of these protests have caused harm to other Americans nor threatened any great future harm like the BLM protests did by looting shops and turning Ferguson and Baltimore into lawless dens of robbers.

Secondly, they are positioning themselves in a place of potential weakness in order to win on the moral level.

In a 4th generation conflict, you'll notice that victories are generally won on the moral level. For instance, the US has been bombing resistance fighters in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria for ages without seeing any positive results in the aim to establish Western-friendly/terrorist-hostile states in any of those regions. Winning on the physical level is useless without victories on the moral level. Here's a grid that William S. Lind designed to guide how victories can be won by either side in 4th generation conflicts:

Ideally you want all activities to have check marks in that bottom right box where the "moral" and "strategic" levels overlap.

Who's on a more likely path to victory?

Now let's consider the BLM protests in accordance with the grid. On a strategic level they drew a lot of attention to the issue of violence by white cops against young black men, but on a moral level they were massive failures as the protests hardly came across as justifiable and the alleged martyrs had murky character that made them less sympathetic as heroes.

The Bundy's on the other hand have succeeded at the strategic and moral levels in seizing an obscure government facility that would be difficult to recover without a scene in which American power is flexed against a smaller, weaker foe in which case the state would look like a bully. How can the Federal government win this altercation on a moral level?

If they go in with force and have to kill these men it will provoke national outcry. If they try to do it quietly and with military precision like they did with Osama Bin Laden it could look even worse and lead to cries of "look, the government is turning all these modern weapons and surveillance tools on it's own citizens!"

Meanwhile, none of the actions of the militia are causing any major or obvious harm to Americans so they don't stand to lose on a moral level from these behaviors whereas the BLM movement alienated many people, including fellow minorities who weren't inclined to side with the aggressive and massive young black man who bullied and robbed a small Asian clerk.

Strategically, the Bundy's have forced the state into a direct conflict in which their cause is given national attention and potential sympathy from Americans all over the country who are also hesitant about Federal overreach. I doubt the Bundy's win this ultimately, as it should be simple enough for the state to just ignore them and avoid a confrontation over an issue that has little to no impact or relevance in the minds of most Americans. But the strategy here is solid, much better than what we're seeing from the BLM movement.

Whatever you think of either the BLM folks or the modern day private militia, they are both parts of very modern struggles that are going to become increasingly commonplace in a 4th generation world.

Most people are going to discuss which of these two sides is right or wrong based on how they sympathize with either group, but on a purely pragmatic level it's clear which side is utilizing sound strategy and which side is fumbling the ball. If you don't like the outcome but still believe in the cause, change the strategy.