How Rubio found the right tone with Donald Trump

Many Americans may be shocked in the general election to hear that some of the GOP candidates actually have detailed policy plans and not just one-liners carefully crafted to stop Donald Trump from being the Republican nominee.

However, last night's debate was about finding the right tone to finally take down Trump and prevent his incredible momentum from actually resulting in victory. For candidates like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, detailing policies or engaging in rounds of marginal differentiation between the various non-Trump candidates has led to the Donald's rise.

Now it was time to join Trump in the mud and take him down. It was really time long ago, but there's no time like the present.

Besides Iowa and South Carolina, most of the money and investment from candidates like Rubio was being spent attacking other establishment candidates and consolidating the support of the donor class, the moderates, and the more urban/suburban wings of the party.

Numbers such as Trump's favorability numbers in a state like Texas, where 45% of Republican voters see him favorably and 50% see him unfavorably, suggest that successful consolidation of the non-Trump voting bloc would finally see the real-estate tycoon go down in defeat.

However, it was still essential that Rubio finally take on Trump for the following reasons:

1) It's impossible to appear as a strong leader who can unite the party if you don't confront the frontrunner. 

This holds especially true if the frontrunner's specialty is mocking and demeaning his top opponents with precise strikes that often cut to the heart of their failings.

2) Rubio needed to maintain the notion of a Trump "ceiling."

Trump has struggled in most states to get over the 30-35% hump, and there's good reason to believe that he's the last choice of most of the voters outside of that group, but it was essential that Rubio hit Trump hard enough that he was certain to be the last choice of all of those voters.

It's been proven to be very difficult to dislodge Trump's core of support but if Rubio can consolidate everyone who hasn't been a Trump supporter that should be enough.

3) Rubio needed to do what he could to diminish Trump's key strengths.

As I just noted, it wasn't likely that Rubio would steal many voters from Trump, but his attacks on Trump's record of hiring illegal immigrants and Cruz's follow up attacks on how Trump funded the "gang of eight" amnesty bill's legislators (except Rubio apparently) cut at the heart of Trump's appeal with his hardcore fans.

Trump's serious strength comes from being seen as the defender of old, white America from the forces of immigration, political correctness (i.e. cultural marxism that blames all of life's problems on the pernicious evils of white males), and from his perceived strength as a frontrunner.

Rubio (and his sidekick Cruz) needed to do what they could to hammer away at each of these legs and see if they could get Trump to fall out of his chair as a result.

I'd say that the Latin duo's attacks were successful on all three fronts.

Rubio's plan was to demean Trump and marginalize him as a candidate that serious voters don't take seriously. That should be relatively easy but it was completely beyond the skill of Jeb because Jeb lacked the social confidence to pull it off.

Marco seemed to be totally comfortable with the fine art of trolling and mocking an opponent, here was his best exchange:

You notice that Trump immediately goes for what he thinks is the jugular, that Marco Rubio is a "choke artist" who can't handle the pressure of the moment. If he's successful, that would devastate Marco's chances of winning the trust of Americans to become their Commander-in-Chief. No one wants the guy in charge of doing diplomacy with Putin or taking down ISIS to be someone who craters under pressure.

Rubio's "water" incident and debate meltdown against Chris Christie all fed into this line of attack, but this time things went very differently.

First Rubio picks the fight and he picks it over the very issue that Trump desperately wants to use against him, that he repeated himself in robotic fashion when Christie went after him. But...

Trump goes for it and Rubio keeps needling him over the fact that A) Trump doesn't really have much of a plan to address Obamacare and offer new healthcare legislation and B) Trump is basically just bluffing and hoping that this goes by unnoticed.

Trump says, "I watched you repeat yourself five times 30 days ago," and Rubio snarks back, "I saw you repeat yourself five times five seconds ago."

He finally closes hard when he sums up Trump's ENTIRE campaign message in the most condescending fashion imaginable as:

"He says the same five things every night. Everyone is dumb, we're going to make America great again, we're going to win, win, win, he's winning in the polls, and the lines around the state."

The message, "this guy isn't a serious candidate with real solutions, he's just a blowhard." If there was another Donald Trump in the race, that's exactly what he'd be saying about Trump, if that makes any sense. It's the insult that cuts right to the core of Donald's failings the kind of insult that Trump himself is so great at finding and utilizing.

On the second front, limiting Trump's ceiling, Rubio and Cruz successfully painted Trump as being a totally untrustworthy person who has been a hypocrite on the major issues and would get pulverized in a race against Hillary when team Clinton and the media would suddenly shine lights on all of his shady business dealings like "Trump University."

This also helped on the third front in weakening Trump's image as the inevitable nominee and ultimate winner. Cruz repeatedly emphasized that Trump is weak in polls against Clinton and would likely get smashed in a general election.

Trump's response, "well if I would get beat imagine how badly you would do!" That's a solid line of rhetoric against Cruz, but it's not likely to hold sway against Marco or blunt the damage done by the comparison against Clinton. There's no better way to unite a frayed group of people than by providing a common enemy and suggesting that the common enemy Hillary would win if Trump is the leader is a powerful argument.

It's hard to imagine how that debate could have gone much better for the Rubio/Cruz alliance other than Trump losing his head and finally saying something so ridiculous that it destroyed his own candidacy. Frankly, that might have happened and it will just take some time for it to sink in.

Next up you're going to see Rubio and Cruz both release their taxes, per Romney's request, and then put increasing pressure on Trump to do likewise, all the while insinuating that he has something he wants to hide. Every Trump bluster and refusal to do so will make it seem all the more likely that he does in fact have something to hide.

If you don't think Cruz, Rubio, and Romney orchestrated this whole maneuver together...well we'll just have to disagree.

This leads us to our last point for today, the apparent alliance between Rubio and Cruz. Now this could be a marriage of convenience since Cruz knows he can't possibly win without all of the conservative, anti-immigration voters currently rolling with Donald.

The fact of the matter though is that even if Trump can be taken down or diminished, Cruz doesn't really have a path to the nomination any more, the delegate math just doesn't add up. You wonder if last night was an audition for the role of "base rouser and VP attack dog" for Rubio.

Cruz would be a strong VP for the purpose of going hard after opponents (his campaign ads are often the most biting and his debate cross examinations are brilliant), rallying the GOP base (including potentially some of the Trump fans who don't trust Rubio over immigration), and bringing his ground game operations to the fold.

For the purpose of stopping Trump, there's no reason for Cruz to drop out of the race before he's utilized his strength in Texas to beat Donald there on Super Tuesday and then perhaps to drop out and endorse Rubio before the crucial "winner takes all" vote in Florida. It's hard to imagine him doing so without assurance from Rubio of a VP slot on the ticket or some other concession but it's also not hard to imagine that happening.

Beyond that, Rubio's path to stopping Trump is to consolidate middle class voters who are being easily convinced that Trump is not a trustworthy man or a serious candidate, whatever his poll numbers say, and then to either win the nomination himself or keep Trump from getting the 1236 delegates needed to secure the nomination.

If we get to Cleveland for the Republican national convention and no candidate has 1236 votes, then they'll have to work some deals to choose a nominee and there's no chance they choose Trump.

Donald and his fans like to say, "if you screw me like that then I'll run third party!" but "sore-loser" and "double registration" laws will actually make it impossible for him to do so. They'll have to find another anti-immigration demagogue to rally behind and they'll have to find them very quickly.

The Republican party, initially hellbent on nominating another Bush, allowed Trump to get very far before finally training their guns on him and looking to bring him down. It may very well be too late, but last night was the first step in what could be a successful operation to stop him.

Checking in on the presidential primaries

Other than my recent abstract notes on the difficulty of winning modern presidential elections and the glaring fact that neither party has settled on a candidate poised to build a winning coalition and then setting about governing the country, I haven't given as many specific notes recently looking to break down what's happening the two races.

After South Carolina and Nevada on Saturday, both races have come into sharper focus but there's still a lot of media and factional narratives obscuring the reality of what's happening. The popular narrative coming out of Saturday is that you have your likely candidates in Donald Trump for the GOP and Hillary Clinton for the DNC.

I'd like to look just a little bit deeper though:

The Democratic primary

This one is actually going down more or less exactly like I assumed it would. The middle class white voters who were feeling the Bern and looking to sweep the "Democratic Socialist" into office are starting to arrive at that awkward moment when they realize that the result of building the "coalition of the fringes" that elected Barack Obama to consecutive terms as president meant finding candidates that would be palatable to a diverse demographic of voters.

The key to Democrat victories in key states such as Ohio, Virginia, and Florida is turnout from black voters. Sanders went down in flames with this group in Nevada by a 76%-22% margin. This means that Sanders is probably also doomed to lose big in South Carolina and likely also lose his momentum and standing with other Democratic voters.

Sanders' "the system is rigged for the wealthy and powerful against everyday Americans" is one that should theoretically resonate with black voters like it resonates with people in most demographics, but the personality and identity issue is the problem. Black voters have years of trust built up with the Clintons and none with this Jewish socialist from an all-white state.

Since the media loves to frame things with narratives, the easy one to sell papers with over the next few weeks will be Hillary finally bringing things together and winning her inevitable victory due to her strength with minority voters. This was always the truth but it was obscured.

What's been more interesting is how poorly Hillary has done with white Democrats and you wonder how she'll do with moderate white voters in a general election if the GOP nominates someone with broad appeal. Black turnout in South Carolina (she may be winning their votes but are they flocking to the polls) and who her opponent will be should be the focus of the next few weeks.

Then there's the email scandal, frankly it won't necessarily be that beneficial for Clinton if Sanders fades away because that just means that the email scandal has the potential to dominate the Clinton-related headlines once again.

The Republican primary:

I'm going to throw some numbers out there that I think will illustrate what's actually happening in the GOP primary, numbers from back in 1996 when the GOP was trying to find a candidate to cut Bill Clinton's time as president down to just a single term.

Here were the results from the first six Republican primaries:

As a helpful glossary:

Pat Buchanan was/is a nationalist-style conservative and a pre-runner to today's Alt-Right. His major concerns have always been immigration and protecting America's future as a Anglo-American country with Anglo-American values. Sound familiar? He held 25-35% of the votes throughout the early stages which made him a force in a divided field until Bob Dole consolidated mainline Republicans.

Steve Forbes was a successful businessman and fiscal conservative who magically discovered that abortion was evil and that prayer should be allowed in schools just before he ran for president on the Republican ticket. Sound familiar? His appeal ranged wildly based on what state he was in until voters coalesced around Dole.

Alan Keyes was the Ben Carson of the 1996 GOP primary field. An intelligent, well-spoken black Christian with a deep concern for adhering to the constitution who it might have been hoped would help to draw some black voters into the Republican fold.

Lamar Alexander was/is a neo-con with an iffy record on social values issues much like today's Lindsey Graham, Phill Gramm was/is an establishment conservative in the mold of John McCain.

Bob Dole was the eventual winner of the primary, thought it's hard to clearly see his momentum on the chart above and his strength was in his ability to combine moderates with conservatives thanks to a mixed record of being somewhat firm on fiscal issues, more moderate on a few social issues, and a hawkish veteran and hero of WWII.

Here were the results in the general election when Dole squared off against the incumbent Bill Clinton:

There might have been a tie for Dole, or even a victory, against Clinton if not for the fact that the vote was split by populist independent candidate Ross Perot. Perot's thing was a less racially-based variety of Buchanan's message, he talked about protecting American jobs and interests rather than cratering to more globalist interests.

Here's what I'm getting at, Donald Trump is appealing to a faction of the Republican party that has always existed but hasn't always had candidates in the race. For over a decade the Republican party was able to keep these forces at bay with George W who initially had broad appeal to conservatives eager to take back the White House and then when running for re-election he was a war-time president of the sort that populists/nativists are not likely to rise against. John McCain had something similar going for him in that he was a war hero.

Mitt Romney may not have been an appealing option for nationalists but he was running against a liberal black man.

Now this faction has a candidate in the fold again and a very divided field. Trump and his fans would have everyone believe that, when they drop out, he'll get his share of the Jeb Bush/John Kasich/Ben Carson/Ted Cruz voters. What's more likely is that Trump is simply grabbing a share of the country that has always existed but always had a ceiling.

Observing his favorability numbers, which aren't great among Republican voters and are horrible with Democrats and Independents, it's easy to see why Trump would struggle to win more supporters as the GOP field winnows.

In fact, if Kasich and Jeb! had dropped out before South Carolina and all of their voters had rallied behind Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American Senator would have won the state by 40k votes.

Rubio is the classic Republican candidate of the modern era. His devout Catholicism and strong stances on social issues can keep evangelicals within the fold, he's able to articulate and sell an updated vision for the economy that isn't just "tax breaks for the bourgeoisie," and he's hawkish and pro-Israel at a time when tensions are high about radical Islamists and tensions in the Middle East.

The big questions are whether he can coalesce the anti-Trump voters before it's too late (probably) and what happens in a general election if Trump or some other anti-immigration populist runs as a 3rd party candidate? His support of the "gang of eight amnesty" bill really hurts him in this regard.

Ted Cruz was uniquely suited to uniting evangelicals with movement conservatives and anti-immigration forces but he has proven to be thwarted by the fact that the old Buchanan guard is firmly behind Trump and nearly implacably so.

Things really went wrong for Cruz when Marco Rubio slipped up before New Hamsphire, the establishment lane failed to consolidate, and Trump was allowed to rebuild his image as a winner with a major victory. Consecutive setbacks in the first two states likely would have weakened Trump and perhaps Cruz could have picked off some of his supporters but that hasn't worked out.

Another problem, truly the biggest issue for Cruz, is that he simply doesn't have the personality to sell himself as genuine and honest in the face of charges of machiavellian ambition and salesmanship. He comes across as a bit too forced. I suspect that a major reason for his intensely anti-establishment time as a GOP Senator has been to entrench himself as "the most trustworthy conservative" in anticipation of this being a potential flaw in an election. He needed a record and resume to do what he couldn't do through public appearances, sell himself as being a humble, honest type like George W Bush or John McCain.

It didn't work. Now the best Cruz can do is keep on trucking, try to score some victories against Trump across the South and in Texas that prevent the GOP frontrunner from pulling away from everyone with a big lead, and perhaps put himself in position to benefit if something crazy happens or if there's a brokered convention.

For Rubio the path is clear: consolidate the establishment lane and start to win some victories. If he can knock out Kasich in early March and win states like Massachusetts so that the Ohio governor drops out before Michigan and Ohio he should be in great shape. Then it's a matter of winning a war of attrition as a result of Cruz and Trump preventing each other from building a delegate lead, sweeping the winner takes all states like Florida, and then hoping that a prolonged battle makes it less likely that Trump runs as a 3rd party candidate.

Should be interesting, this thing is still far from over. In the meantime:

The job of the US president is becoming impossibly difficult

One of the most stark lessons of recent years and the current 2016 primary season is how absurdly difficult it is these days to become the president of the United States and to do the job effectively. The Democratic primary is making clear that neither candidate is equipped to rebuild the Obama coalition and the Republicans have yet to match the George W Bush winning coalition with either McCain or Romney or even find their guy in 2016.

Obama was one of the more successful coalition builders of recent memory, but after securing 69.5 million votes in 2008 and getting swept into office with a mandate he then proceeded to enact an agenda that saw his party steadily lose control of congress. He's probably been one of the more effective presidents we've seen in the last few decades but has still been regularly stymied in trying to enact his agenda since successfully passing Obamacare.

Meanwhile, Bush set his party back several years and doomed McCain (and arguably Obama) with a combination of disastrous wars and economic calamity brought about through misguided lending policies.

You see, there are two key ingredients needed to become the president of the United States and finding someone who checks off both boxes is becoming impossibly difficult.

Ingredient 1: The ability to build a coalition and winning mandate to get things done in an increasingly diverse and fractured country

As the candidacies of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Bernie Sanders daily demonstrate, there are major chunks of America's middle class that believe their values and interests currently aren't but definitely should be the guiding force governing the country.

People are taught that democracy is where you find the candidate that most closely aligns with your interests and then you vote for them. If someone doesn't align with you? Forget them, this is a democracy not a dictatorship!

This is becoming increasingly difficult in an age that is defined by access to information, the increasing numbers of college educated Americans who think their degree confers to them the knowledge of how best to govern the country, and the increasingly disparate interests of the people who make up the electorate.

The democratic candidate is going to have a heck of a time winning a general election if they can't get these middle class voters flocking to Sanders' socialist standard to turn out with enthusiasm but even more importantly, a low turnout election amongst the nation's minority groups will certainly doom their candidate.

Meanwhile on the Republican side, what Bush and later candidates have created the possibility of doing is making the GOP the party of white Americans. White voters made up 72% of the electorate in 2012 and went to Romney by a 59-32 margin. A larger margin of victory here, though perhaps dangerously divisive, would guarantee GOP success for the foreseeable future

However, in that block you have the Alt-Right and more hard-line conservatives who have seized greater control of the party through the tea party and wave elections in the last two mid-term elections and then you have the standard, traditional white American who leans more conservative but is more driven by the interests of the time than ideology.

If the GOP candidate can't get the kind of turnout that allowed the Republicans to seize congress then they aren't winning a general election. However, they also aren't winning in election without appealing to moderates and more pragmatic voters. They also still need to pick off minority voters who are convinced that the GOP's Anglo-American values and leadership are best suited to running the country and build inroads into those groups for the future day when white voters may not be the overwhelming majority of the electorate as they are now.

For a candidate to replicate these winning coalitions, or to build a new one, requires that they have a personality which is suited to coming across as trustworthy (this is likely Cruz's downfall), that they possess an identity which gives them a foot in different camps (see Rubio's devout conservative Catholicism and immigrant upbringing), and that they have a message that resonates clearly and effectively across the different groups (Hillary's problem, as her message is "I'm a qualified woman and that means it's my turn!).

This is all rather difficult, especially when there's a figure in the race with limited appeal but a real knack for clearly and viciously underlining everyone else's deficiencies.

As difficult as it is, it's also massively important to the party. Many voters pay attention primarily to the president and the executive branch sets the agenda for the legislature and defines the coalition and the mandate that the party is responsible for carrying out.

For instance, if that vicious man with limited appeal somehow becomes president then the clear mandate for the Republican party will be to engage in nationalist policies with the goal of making America great again. Either that or else to collapse within itself like a dying star.

Ingredient 2: The ability to effectively represent said coalition and govern in a way that pursues their interests without actively hurting Americans outside the coalition

This has become a big problem for Obama as very few people have drawn a major net positive effect on their lives from his presidency save for America's wealthiest citizens while many Americans have seen their values and preferences degraded. That result has now made it very hard for Hillary to cleanly win the democratic nomination in the face of Sanders' "this process is rigged for the wealthy!" message.

She's clearly one of the more qualified people to actually lead the government in terms of experience doing so, although she's arguably done a terrible job in the past in that post.

Obama's path to winning relied heavily on an incredibly non de script run as a senator and as a virtual outsider previous to that. Americans got to know Obama through the message he crafted and presented during his campaign and then through what he did in office. Many responded very negatively to this, obviously, as it sparked a huge movement within the GOP to reverse as much of what he accomplished as possible.

There was no clarity on how exactly Obama might govern, no track record to indicate what his strengths and weaknesses would be in this regard.

The problem facing America's political system is that because the executive branch is becoming increasingly powerful, it's becoming increasingly important that someone particularly competent man the post. However, the path of building a diverse coalition that can lead just over half the electorate through messaging, personality, and identity automatically disqualifies most everyone from the job.

You begin to see how someone like Putin is made the de-facto King of Russia, or why different nations have had kings to begin with. Once you have someone who's actually qualified to unite the country and then govern effectively it's a real wrench to see them step down after no more than eight years on the job. Most other modern democracies have parliamentary systems with multiple parties and unelected heads who serve as the frontmen for the parties after working their way up and proving themselves at lower levels of government. Not so here.

Instead the man who looks best equipped to unite a big enough coalition to win, Marco Rubio, suffered a major setback when he was characterized leading up to the New Hampshire primary as robotic and false (and also when most every other candidate made him their major target of negative ads) though this doesn't seem to be sticking. The vociferous nature of the primary also makes things more difficult in that it because it's ruled by the more stringent members of either part, it's more difficult for someone with a broader coalition to win.

Take Ohio Governor John Kasich for instance, a man with a stellar record of governing Ohio for the last six years who's attempting to win the GOP primary by coming across as the more moderate option. With years of successful executive experience combined with a long run in the house where he served on the armed services committee, he's probably one of the best qualified candidates in the whole race to serve as president.

However, he's facing a tough challenge in winning the nomination thanks to the fact that he's not a first choice for most Republican primary voters. He might pull it off, but he's far from the favorite right now.

So how will this be resolved?

There are three ways that America's current dilemma of requiring a strong executive branch but lacking candidates to lead it could go. The first is that perhaps the country will find more talented politicians who are capable of running and winning the presidency.

By tweaking the rules of the nomination process, perhaps either party could make it easier for strong leaders to emerge and win the consensus of the party without having to endure the primary season and cobble together a winning coalition while adhering to the Iowa-NH-SC-etc state by state process.

Another possibility is that the United States could weaken the executive branch and handle things more at the local level. After all, the country was designed from the beginning to accommodate diversity and national differences by allowing different states to largely govern themselves while the federal level simply made sure that everything fit together adequately.

The US has been moving towards more and more centralization, in part because that's what urbanized nations tend to do and in part because the slavery issue required a strong executive branch and tremendously costly war to resolve and that set the precedent that the nation handles major issues with a strong executive.

A final possibility is that the US will find a strong leader in a time of crisis and determine to keep them in power, essentially setting up a king and undoing the deepest wishes of the founding fathers. You can laugh if you wish, but it wouldn't be the first time that a republic went down this path.

In the meantime, it'll be interesting to see which of the main candidates left in the election is able to piece together a winning coalition and then whether they can wield it in office effectively enough to win a second term or whether a stronger leader is waiting to take over in 2020. Hopefully we aren't on the verge of a crisis that would sweep someone into power who would remain there.

The last GOP debate and the nation's moral compass in war time

There were two very interesting questions that came up at the last GOP debate in New Hampshire, both basically revolving around the basic questions of war time ethics.

War time ethics are a seriously complicated issue, and they have been made much, much more complicated by the fact that modern warfare is dominated by 4th generation warfare, which is where the state no longer has a monopoly on the practice of war but instead non-state forces are regularly fighting and for causes beyond serving states.

As hard as it can be to believe in the wake of events like WWI and WWII, war is actually much more restrained when fought by states than when fought by non-state groups. Why? Because a state has a lot more at stake and a much greater and more diverse group of people that it has to serve and keep happy.

A group that is geared entirely around elevating a narrow cause is generally going to feel much more free to utilize whatever tactics are necessary to achieve their aims whereas a state is constrained by the need to maintain a consensus with their own people, who each have dozens of causes and issues that are important to them.

Then we have the issue of the "moral level" of warfare. As America's greatest military mind, Colonel John Boyd (no relation ;) ) noted, there are three levels of warfare:

The physical, the mental, and the moral. The physical is the least powerful, yet probably the one most heavily emphasized by the American military. With the physical realm of warfare we're generally talking about the ability to physically destroy things.

Next is the mental, where you get into strategy, operations, and tactics. Superior strategy will defeat superior physical forces, as the early years of the Civil War clearly demonstrated before the Union finally found some leadership that press their advantages to defeat General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia.

Finally we find the moral. People have to have something to fight for or they won't endure the awful process of warfare.

For instance, in WWI the Germans had the best army and the best generals, but they got themselves beat because they grievously lost the propaganda war by playing the aggressor, invading neutral Belgium, and executing Belgians who resisted their march through the country. Germany ended up making too many enemies for their superior military to defeat.

They encountered a similar issue against the Soviet Union in WWII as their policy of enslaving the Slavic peoples had the effect of uniting all of Eastern Europe and the entire Russian population behind a Soviet government that also wasn't particularly popular and leading to their inevitable defeat when they couldn't match the mobilization or the intensity of the Russian war effort.

William S. Lind invented this handy graph that I've mentioned before which is fantastic for detailing whether a particular issue in warfare will bring victory by checking whether it hits the check marks in the right grid boxes:

Now, let's talk about some of the issues raised in the GOP debate about particular issues in the war effort against terrorism and Islamic radicals such as ISIS:

On torture

Too often the question of whether the US should employ torture is couched as a "do you keep the country safe or do you utilize every means necessary?" issue. It is not, if we utilize the grid above we realize that torture can easily cause you to lose at the moral level.

For instance with torture: It totally disheartens Americans to hear that their military, which we prefer to think of as being our best and national heroes, are employing tactics that we would associate with villains. The blow to moral at home is a grievous one.

Secondly, it charges up America's enemies and helps create more. If you think radical Islamists have success decrying America as "the great Satan" because of our support for Israel how much more true is this if we are torturing Muslims?

The issue of torture in the "war on terror" is pretty cut and dry. It may be helpful here and there for collecting key information but small, physical or mental victories matter a great deal less than maintaining a moral victory by which we can bring order and peace and prevent terrorism from being a viable strategy.

Since the nature of these debates is often for moderators to try and play "GOTCHA!" and ask the questions of candidates that they would rather avoid, we generally get questions like this where the moderators are trying to trap Ted Cruz and undermine his effort to come across as a strong leader in a time of war:

"So Senator Cruz, you have said, quote, "torture is wrong, unambiguously, period. Civilized nations do not engage in torture." Some of the other candidates say they don't think waterboarding is torture. Mr. Trump has said, I would bring it back. Senator Cruz, is waterboarding torture?"

If you aren't familiar with the art of waterboarding, it's a method where interrogators lie someone on their back at an angle where their feet are higher than their head, put a wet rag over their face, and pour water over the rag. It simulates drowning and it triggers a panicked response from your body.

It's awful and certainly psychologically torturous to anyone forced to endure it, but it's not necessarily physically harmful.

Ted Cruz answered that waterboarding isn't, by rule, torture because it doesn't involve physical harm but he added that he would restrict it's usage to high profile major events, suggesting that in the event of an emergency he wouldn't hold himself back from protecting the country by any means necessary.

You can read the full transcript here.

Next came Trump, who affirmed waterboarding on the basis that ISIS brings a medieval level of brutality to this war, concluding:

"I would bring back waterboarding and I'd bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding."

Trump's aim is to get elected by deferring to the interests of Americans and no other people, which is understandable, but you can't win wars on the moral level by "bringing back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding" in an offensive war in which you are fighting on someone else's soil, trying to dictate to them what kind of state and what kind of leaders they should have.

Jeb Bush, who witnessed his brother make endless mistakes in this conflict, came next. His answer, paraphrased, was that there should be no torture, and he added that killing people with drones isn't a good way to win this war, that it's vastly preferable to capture people and imprison them.

Jeb is absolutely right. America's prosecution of the war on terror by killing people with robots and failing to even meet enemies eye to eye has been a horrendous moral defeat in the war against ISIS.

People too quickly evaluate strategies like this from the physical or mental side of things, reasoning "drones allow the military to access bad guys, hit them with precision, and avoid risking any American lives."

Sure they do, but they also turn the US into this horrifying and evil place where the citizens and even soldiers sit comfortably in front of their screens with doritos and beer in hand while they kill Muslims with the push of a button.

If you want to find allies and bring stability to the region you can't do it in that fashion.

Finally we got an answer from Marco Rubio, arguably the current frontrunner, who's answer can be summed up as: Anti-terrorism isn't the same as law enforcement and different rules apply (implying that torture or waterboarding might be acceptable) and that candidates shouldn't be asked to talk openly about anti-terrorism tactics.

Here I'd suggest that America would have considerably more success controlling 4th generation opponents if they handled things like police would, with an eye towards serving the people and bringing law and order, then by doing things that have the effect of making ISIS a preferable option to many Muslims than US hegemony.

On women in the draft

Later in the debate, this amazing question came up from the press:

"Just this week military leaders of the Army and Marine Corps said that they believed young women, just as young men are required to do, should sign up for Selective Service in case the Draft is reinstated.
Many of you have young daughters. Senator Rubio, should young women be required to sign up for Selective Service in case of a national emergency?"

This should have been the easiest question to answer in the entire debate. Some possible answers that would have addressed this issue succinctly and effectively:

"Hell nah! Have you lost your mind?"

"What??? Why would we do that??? Are we about to be invaded by a massive army of Martians? Why in the world would we need to force women to fight????"

"Well, many parents and young women are worried about what will happen to them at our Universities these days and the issue of sexual assault, so yeah, it makes perfect sense to ask them to sign up to potentially fight enemies who routinely rape women and sell young girls into sex slavery."

Marco Rubio got the first crack at this question and his answer could be summed up as him arguing that this was a good idea because the US needs to rebuild the military because it's become much smaller than it used to be...

First of all...the US military is plenty large. Unless Rubio is planning to go to war with China or Russia there's no need to increase the number of people in the military. Wait...Rubio isn't planning to go to war with China or Russia is he?

Secondly, the idea that forcing America's 18 year old girls to sign up to potentially be drafted into the military is not going to make the US Army a more effective fighting force. This should be obvious to everyone.

The blow to morale at home would be tremendous, the blow to the morale of US soldiers who would then go into every conflict worrying about whether the young girl next to them might be captured or raped would be tremendous, and the blow to the morale of the nation if they saw stories coming back from the front about the hell endured by our daughters in a war would be totally crippling.

Jeb got the next crack at this question. He fumbled it, essentially, and made notes that he wants to increase the role of women in the military (why????) but seemed confused over the issue of drafting them and argued that the US didn't need to draft anyone into the army. I don't think Jeb would ask our nation's daughters to register for the draft, but as his custom he flubbed an opportunity to stand out in the debate by saying so.

Ben Carson offered some rambling answer about his solution to help veterans and increase the chances of America being able to rely on volunteers so that no one will have to be drafted. This answer was frankly quite stupid because A) The US has no shortage of soldiers for any of the tasks they are likely to face and B) He also missed the opportunity to stand up and defend women in this country.

Finally Chris Christie came up...

Chris Christie's best chance in this election is portraying himself as the law and order candidate who is best equipped to keep this country safe based on his experience as a governor and as an attorney general during the Bush presidency in the war on terror.

Chris Christie gave this answer:

"Part of that also needs to be part of a greater effort in this country, and so there's no reason why one -- young women should be discriminated against from registering for the selective service. The fact is, we need to be a party and a people that makes sure that our women in this country understand anything they can dream, anything that they want to aspire to, they can do. That's the way we raised our daughters and that's what we should aspire to as president for all of the women in our country."

I didn't watch much of the debate, or read through every exchange, but I doubt that anyone said something stupider than this.

You can't be the law and order candidate for this country who will make Americans feel safe if your solution is to ask 18 year old girls to register for a draft that could send them off to fight ISIS.

I honestly believe that there might be an outright revolt in this country if the government required that our daughters might HAVE to go to war, especially against an enemy like ISIS. Especially when we aren't even talking about the US being invaded, a situation where all citizens might reasonably be expected to do all they can to resist the enemy.

None of the other candidates spoke on this issue in the debate, although Cruz later tweeted that he would never ask young women in our country to register for the draft. He said the proposal was "nuts." He's right, of course, and if I were him I'd try to make this issue the dominant story heading into the New Hampshire primary tonight.

I love Rubio and Christie's potential capacity for building voter coalitions that can win a general election, but men with such horrifyingly weak perceptions of how to wage war and how to protect this nation are poor candidates for Commander in Chief.

After Iowa, what's next for the six main candidates?

If you read this blog yesterday you weren't shocked by the results of the caucus last night since I anticipated a narrow Democrat primary, a Cruz victory, and a Rubio ascendance into a close third. I touched on what the narratives would be coming out of that result yesterday but I'd like to just hit on what I think we can expect moving forward for the six main candidates.

Bernie Sanders

For all intents and purposes, Bernie Sanders won Iowa. His ground game (organization to get voters to the caucus sites) was strong and his strength amongst middle class voters within the Democratic party meant he was always going to have a good chance.

I thought about titling yesterday's piece, "always bet on the middle class," as they are still the dominant force in this democracy of ours. Sure they are typically led by the ruling elites in one direction or another but they're also capable of rising up and anointing their own candidate in full defiance of what those elites prefer.

That happened in both primaries, but I digress. Sanders now has the needed momentum and credibility to win in New Hampshire as well and put Clinton and the DNC in a really tight spot. Bernie had to win in Iowa, but he basically did.

Mike Bloomberg

The democratic party DOES NOT WANT Bernie Sanders to win as he would be a disaster both in taking on the Republicans and in serving at the top of the ticket to help Democrats win seats in the house and senate. The DNC is not yet willing to bet an election on America's comfort with democratic socialism. What's more, former NY mayor Mike Bloomberg is just waiting to run for President if he gets a chance to compete against anti-establishment options like Berne Sanders and Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.

In the event of both parties losing control and giving way to hardliners like Sanders and Cruz, Bloomberg would then rise as an independent who could unite the parties and get things done. Don't be fooled, there is absolutely a chance he could win that election. Bloomberg saw what happened in Iowa and grinned.

All he needs is for Clinton to hang around for a bit before being taken down by Sanders surging or email indictment and for Cruz to win the nomination for the GOP and he'll rise by building a coalition of minority voters, independents, and moderates from either party who don't want to see the country pulled apart by a divisive leader. Perhaps he could borrow some of Trump's "Make America Great Again!" messaging as well. Just something to watch for.

Hillary Clinton

The biggest lesson from Iowa was that the Democrats don't have someone on the ticket right now who can hold together the Obama coalition of white liberals, minority voters, under-30s, and suburban moderates.

The plan was to follow the typical American path of empowerment, first you finally give the black man his chance to have a voice in politics and then you enfranchise women as well. It was a nice plan, and Clinton has a lot of influence and know how in the party, but the problem is that she has an awful personality for a figure that needs to unite and excite a diverse coalition of voters.

That's really more Bill's role, and he's decreasingly effective at it since A) He's no longer at the top of the ticket but just coming in support and B) his sexual misconduct is seen even less favorably now by young liberals then it was when it happened.

Now, Clinton is still virtually a lock to win South Carolina and Nevada but the longer she allows Berne to hang around and build momentum and the longer the email scandal lingers the more the party is going to consider trying to salvage this nomination process before they end up with a candidate who is going to get whipped.

Donald Trump

Donald Trump was shockingly humble in his concession speech and tried half-heartedly to claim that finishing second after his initial rise was so unexpected was a hyuge victory, but it wasn't. Donald Trump had all of the media attention and the help of the entire Republican establishment in trying to take down Ted Cruz and he couldn't parlay that into success getting enough voters to turn out to win.

In fact, based on the high turnout it's possible that many people flocked to the polls to ensure that he didn't come away with a big win to carry him into New Hampshire.

Because of the rise of the last guy on our list, I think we're going to see Donald Trump start to fade away. Perhaps he'll say something that enables him to dominate the news cycle for another week but I'm guessing he loses New Hampshire and then completely fades away. His coalition was diverse but simply doesn't consist of enough middle class voters of the sort who have the discipline, confidence, and investment in this country to show up to something like a caucus.

Instead, he was a temporary voice for a frequently disenfranchised group of Americans who will now probably limp back into the corner in bitterness. Hopefully whoever wins the presidency will make it a point to speak to their concerns.

Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz proved that his "turn out the base" plan for winning the Republican nomination, and then the general election, has at least enough legitimacy to make him a frontrunner for the nomination. Here's the problem for Cruz, the ruling elites all despise him and what he represents, which is "new money" and the ascendance of divisive tactics and hard-line groups previously held at bay.

The GOP wants to be big tent party and that's not really what Cruz is aiming for with his candidacy. Now he's going to continue to be a major target but instead of using Trump to split his votes I suspect the establishment will now instead rely on Marco Rubio to give them a shield from Cruz winning the nomination.

Cruz needs to start peeling away Trump's supporters fast and winning big in the early primaries while starting to broaden his coalition and appealing to less radical parts of the base before Rubio unites them all and surges into the lead with the Florida primary.

Marco Rubio

If the GOP field still wasn't so big I'd imagine that Marco Rubio now has the best odds of becoming the next president of the United States. His appeal is much broader than Cruz's, who often has a penchant for sounding preachy, in-genuine, or too hardline, and he's capable of holding conservative principles while packaging them in a way that sounds appealing and current.

His ability as a devout Catholic and former Mormon to speak the language of evangelical voters is going to be a problem for Cruz since he could pick off many of them that think the Texas senator is too extreme. He's also proven that he's pretty tough and tested after surviving a carpet bombing of negative ads from Jeb Bush's Super-PAC.

Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush were all big losers from Iowa for the simple fact that Marco Rubio did so well. None of them stand out as a particularly strong establishment option in comparison to Rubio who appeals to moderates and non-evangelicals but can also maintain that important demographic within the base.

Rubio even ran for senate in Florida as a tea party guy, he has extraordinary political talent.

It's now going to be a battle between Cruz and Rubio with Marco having to prove that he cares enough about securing the border to keep Cruz from stealing some of Trump's support and winning the nomination with a coalition of nativists/Alt-Right folks, tea partiers, and evangelicals.

Rubio will try to do this by picking off just enough of those demographics with a "I will represent your interests but I'm more electable" message and adding them to a coalition of non-hardline evangelicals, Catholics, moderates, and conservatives who don't view immigration as the dominant issue in modern politics.

I'd say there's a good chance he's successful and it will start with him winning in New Hampshire in a week.

Projecting the Iowa Caucus results

Tonight Iowa will caucus and all the polling, campaigning, and debating will finally yield concrete results. The different results that could come out could mean a lot of different things for the future of the race.

I'm going to give my expectations for the outcome and what they will mean, then I'll come back around and pivot if I'm off (which is not improbable). Let's use the comments section to discuss the results as they come in tonight.

The Democratic Primary

Bernie Sanders really needs to win these two early states, Iowa and New Hampshire, when only liberal white voters will be participating in the primary. We've discussed how he's doing poorly with the minority voters that make up much of the modern democratic base and who will dominate upcoming contests like South Carolina.

He has to win now and stay in the spotlight as a viable candidate so he can try to win some of those voters over or be in position to be the primary beneficiary if Hillary is indicted by the FBI for emailing classified info on a private server.

Hillary needs to win now to build the narrative that she's the inevitable, and only true option for the DNC. If she loses Iowa the sharks will begin to circle and some may seek to enter the race.

Projection: Sanders wins narrowly

I haven't been super glued in here but the fact that the email issue is again resurfacing as a major impediment to her combined with his popularity in the key demographics make me think this will at least be close. The real problem for her, and for another candidate we'll get to in a moment, is that she's not the favorite of the middle class and that's the demographic that tends to turn out people who will go and caucus for two hours on a monday night to get something done. If she wins tonight it'll be because she did alright with that group and because Bernie became another classic victim of low turnout from young voters.

The narrative coming out of Iowa

The narrative after a close contest here will be "Sanders isn't going anywhere," and "what happens when he wins New Hampshire?" and "Is Clinton really inevitable?" or "Does Clinton really a strong candidate?"

All of those questions will be valid, the Clinton campaign is not going strong right now. She's a very effective and qualified candidate to further advance the cause of the Democratic party once she's in office but she's a very ineffective candidate at exciting voters and building coalitions by force of her personality. She really needs Bill for that effort and the glimpses back at his ethical issues with a sharper, less forgiving modern perspective are blunting his ability to be effective there.

The Republican Primary

Both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz both really need to win this thing. If Trump loses it pops the "he's inevitable, he's surging, he's bringing new energy and voters to the process!" narrative and demonstrates that the polls projecting his victory based on massive turnout are all false. All of his polling strength becomes suspect and he starts to look like a paper tiger.

If Ted Cruz loses the question becomes, "if he can't win Iowa, which is normally dominated by evangelical turnout, how will he win anywhere else?" Both Cruz and Trump have enough money to stick around for a while but all that means is that they'll continue to split the vote each needs to win the nomination and they'll each grow weaker while the establishment winner becomes stronger.

Each need to start to fully form their winning coalition and that can't happen if they can't dispatch the other and take away a big chunk of their support.

The establishment-lane candidates Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio all need to show enough strength to demonstrate that they can have appeal to rural and evangelical voters. If one of them does this it'll be proof that they can lead a winning coalition in November that includes this essential part of the Republican base in addition to the independents and moderates that they also plan to bring into the fold.

Projection: Cruz wins narrowly over Trump, Rubio finishes a close third

Rubio is the guy to rally the moderates, less hardline conservatives, and bring in some evangelicals and find a primary coalition that can take down the anti-establishment guys Trump and Cruz. He's starting to find some momentum in Iowa, especially after a solid answer to a question from an atheist voter that went viral that emphasized the role of faith in his life and in traditional American values.

If he finishes strong it's a win for his camp and I think he will based on the support of people looking to elevate a candidate who A) isn't Trump and B) seems like a strong general election guy.

Trump's polling success is all based on turnout models that seem to me to be highly implausible. I'm expecting the turnout to fail to match those models and Cruz to win by virtue of his strength with the evangelical organizations on the ground that have tended to dominate this event.

Trump is hoping that he's getting new voters into the process and that lower class voters are going to become active participants in a caucus primary and that he's going to accomplish this without much organization.

If the middle class doesn't go to Cruz or they get beat out by new entrants into the process from the lower class ranks that will really signal a new day in American politics and bring some real weight to the notion that Trump is actually a legitimate force in real elections.

The narrative coming out of Iowa

If Cruz beats Trump then he'll become a pretty strong candidate heading into South Carolina and the upcoming "SEC primary" of southern states who could potentially siphon off a lot of Trump's supporters. He'll get a different kind of media coverage because he's been under siege by the party's establishment and Trump for the past week as they each have a vested interest in seeing him taken down.

If Trump wins he'll be very likely to win in New Hampshire and Cruz will slowly start to bleed out after losing the early election determined by evangelicals despite having the support of key figures in that demographic. Some in the media will began to talk about Trump as an inevitability while the establishment will turn sharply against him and began to initiate the process of taking him down while coalescing behind their alternative.

If Rubio can demonstrate that his recent "surge" is legitimate then he'll start to edge out Christie, Jeb, and Kasich and potentially make a really strong showing at New Hampshire by uniting a coalition from the rather large group of people who don't want Trump to win the nomination.

As a devout Catholic with a strong record on issues of social conservatism, Rubio has real potential to steal away evangelicals from Cruz. Indeed, if he finishes better than expected in Iowa it'll be because he won over a ton of evangelicals who seem him as a more viable alternative to Trump than Cruz.

If either Cruz or Trump get whipped here it's Rubio who is likely to benefit. He's survived a barrage from Jeb and will be in prime position to win major donors from other establishment candidates and voters from virtually anyone but Trump if they slide. He just needs to appear viable after tonight so he can begin what seems like an inevitable process that will result in him rising up and securing the nomination.

Leave your own comments and thoughts below and we'll update after the results come in tonight.