Canadian Election Disaster Trilogy

This is not the total disaster I had feared. Liberal, World Economic Forum golden boy Mark Carney was parachuted in to save the Liberal Party of Canada from the disaster known as Justin Trudeau. Notice he wasn't parachuted in to save Canada, but to save the Liberal Party. Pick your theatrical villain, this guy is it: 

Yep, that's him with the associate of you-know-who.

Sadly, Canada is full of uninformed people (due largely to our lock-step Leftist media), weak-willed cowards with a knee-jerk reaction to president Trump's tariffs.  

Going into the election, the Conservative party had a somewhat charismatic (in an understated way) leader unafraid to take on the media, unafraid to talk common sense. He was winning so much support, it looked possible that the Liberal party could be actually wiped out entirely. Less than four months ago, Conservatives were a certainty. Meanwhile the Liberals had historically unpopular Justin Trudeau. A global laughing stock of a leader.  After a decade people tend to tire of the incumbents, that's true anywhere not just Canada. 

There was a lot that went wrong with Canada's populist revival, and it was a perfect storm of sh@% that resulted in a Liberal 4th consecutive term, albeit barely. What happened? Three things mainly.

One - Too soon, too personal

Well the first problem was the Conservative party's strategy worked too well. Once Pierre Poilievre was elected leader of the party the strategy to demonize Justin Trudeau starting years before the election date worked. It worked so well, that along with Justin Trudeau's own contribution of ineptitude and horrible policies,  the Liberals approval ratings were near flatline. The problem though was twofold. Firstly they started way too early. The other problem; it was too Trudeau-centric. The Conservative popularity soared and Trudeau's waned abysmally as he deserved. But because this happened a year before the mandated latest election date, and because it was so closely tied to Trudeau, the Liberal party was able to jettison Trudeau and solve both problems at once.  A 'fresh' 'new' face cleared punted the problem for the Liberals. 

True, nobody wanted Trudeau, not even liberal voters. But he was no longer on the ballot. The Conservatives were a victim of their own early success. Liberals had time to present themselves, along with a compliant media as revitalized and different.  It's not true, as has often been pointed out, but it became the perception. Liberal voters flocked back to Liberal support, abandoning the other parties (mostly the NDP) they had drifted towards.

 

Two - I have to say it; Donald Trump

At one point probably 60% of conservative voters in Canada were very much pro-Trump for America. President Trump coming in and going after Trudeau with tariffs was a real miscalculation. Canadians didn't see it as an attack on the Trudeau they for the most part detested. They saw it as an attack on Canada. We've been a loyal friend to the United States for over a century. This about face made no sense. There are trade issues on both sides for sure, but we're not China.

Trump created a climate of fear in Canada that permeated the election cycle. It was now about Canadian sovereignty. That gave Pierre Poilievre a no-win hand to play. Endorse Trump and seem anti-Canadian to most of the country or talk tough and say Canada First. He had to chose the latter or get decimated in the election. But choosing the latter meant that he was just like the Liberals. This may have also been a strategic mistake. There was probably a third path; a path of reconciliation with America.  A path of let's address the concerns of both countries. But it would have taken an enormous campaign to get that message through and per point one; the Conservatives went through a lot of budget before the election even got started and probably couldn't muster the resources to carry that off.

President Trump inserted himself into a Canadian election in a way that hurt Conservatives' election chances. It may have been a deliberately gamble to help the Conservatives but if so, it failed. Badly. While addressing trade grievances and fentanyl issues are certainly important and admirable, this was ill-timed and will end up hurting working class and middle class Canadians who are suffering badly already thanks to their Liberal overlords. I know, I am one of them. The Canadian economy for ordinary Canadians is on the ropes. This could spell the death of Canadian middle class. 

Three - Jagmeet Singh

The clown of a leader for the New Democratic Party (socialists), Jagmeet Singh was so self-serving that for years he propped up Justin Trudeau, holding on as long as he thought was possible. If he had had any backbone, Canada could have held an election any time over the last two years. Didn't happen. He kept Trudeau in power long enough to give the Liberals time for an alternative. Singh earned himself enough tenure for a lucrative lifetime government but he lost his own seat in parliament in the election as a result. He decimated his own party to a rump in parliament with virtually no power anymore. And it cost Canada. If he'd been less a Trudeau lacky Canada would have had a conservative Prime Minister and his NDP party would have been better off too. His selfish and progressive ambitions have made Canada a country on life support.

There's your trilogy of reasons for the disaster. There's a trilogy of disastrous outcomes for Canada, we are stuck with more World Economic Forum leftist leadership. We have a squandered opportunity for conservative populism and for a reinvigorated relationship with the United States

Not all is lost

I started by saying this was not the complete disaster it could have been. It's true.  The Liberals do not have a majority government in parliament. Support from the ruined NDP party won't be enough to keep them in power now. They are subject to a non-confidence motion and a snap election at any time. The conservatives and the Bloc Quebecois (who don't like the Conservatives but detest the Liberals) will likely see to it that the government lasts 18 months or less. My gut says 9 - 12 months. People will have time to see Carney is every bit the villain that Justin Trudeau was. A conservative majority is still a looming possibility, perhaps merely delayed.

The real danger for the Trump 2024 campaign

Donald Trump is an infinitely better candidate for president than Kamala Harris. He'd be a much better debater if she musters the courage to debate Trump (she probably won't and that alone is very telling). Trump would of course make an infinitely better president than Kamala Harris. We know this. But there's reason to worry. The Democrats are not playing to win, they're playing to be able to be in a position to say they won.

If you look at the RealClearPolitics poll averages in the swing states (something I urge you to do with caution as it averages polls that are not alike), as of today, Trump still leads Harris in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Georgia. He's only trailing in Michigan, but thanks mainly to a highly unlikely outlier poll. If the entire current RCP state of affairs holds true, Trump will get 297 electoral college votes and win the presidency.

But here's the catch, the polls, particularly including the outliers, have significantly dampened the lead Trump holds.  In fact they've depressed the margins strongly enough (again as of now), that it would be fairly easy for Democrats to pad the vote totals and steal the election in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.  Those two states alone would swing the election to Harris given enough ballot stuffing. And the Trump leads are a bit tight. You could also add Georgia to the list of possible Harris steals. Maybe even Arizona. 

The real danger therefore, is not Trump being unable to win the right combination of states to win the electoral college, the danger is not winning the right combination of states by enough votes to overcome cheating on an epic scale by Democrats in those states.  If Kamala Harris does indeed choose inexplicably popular Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate, being able to cheat Pennsylvania into her column becomes infinitely easier.  If she holds the suspect polls for Michigan, that means any one Wisconsin, Georgia or Arizona would capture the Whitehouse for the Democrat.

The map with Harris as the Democrat nominee should be at least as easy for Trump as it was with Let's Go Brandon, but the truth is, it got harder. Not through legitimacy, but the bar to provably win each swing state got higher.

Nikki Haley as a third party candidate

The establishment strategy and tactics are going to change. Nikki Haley got absolutely trounced in her home state of South Carolina in the 2024 GOP primary.  She has no path to victory.  So why does she keep running? The common theories are that she's delusional, or that she's staying in the race to secure a VP spot, or as a fallback in case president Trump is forced out for legal reasons, OR she's in it to hurt Trump's chances of winning because she's an establishment puppet.  This morning I had another thought.  What if the latter theory is true, and she wants to hurt Trump?  What is the best way to do that?  

It's not going to cut it with her staying in the race and losing state after state. She's not hurting Trump much at all.  Her support is coming from establishment Republicans and crossover primary voters (Democrats) who want to see anybody but Trump win. Firstly take a look at a few clips as the premise for my thinking.

1. Trump is doing everything right and it's no contest at this point:

Keep in mind that ABC is cherry picking to try to find how this is not good news for Trump when they talk about the electability of Trump after a possible conviction of a crime.  Keep that 36% in mind.

2. MSNBC exit polls tell an interesting story:

Yes, it's MSNBC, and yes it's just exit polls (and early ones at that), but there are still some takeaways that add context to the of the ABC report.  Firstly 31% non-Republicans voted. That could, and probably does account for the largest chunk of that 36% mentioned in the ABC exit polls about a Trump conviction.  Not all, but probably the majority.

Secondly, this means for Nikki Haley, is she does not have a shot among Republicans, who will always represent the vast majority of voters among the remaining primaries.  In some cases, they represent the entire primary electorate.   It means she CANNOT win the GOP nomination. But yet she persists, hence all the theories as to why she is staying in the race.

3. Her establishment financial support is also slipping away now too:

This makes her GOP primary win even more impossible (if that's even a thing). So what next? She's still not dropping out, and people like the Koch brothers are backing away because they are wasting money at this point.  Her strategy will have to change, and her tactics will have to also as a result of the strategy shift as well.

No matter the scenario that proves out to be the reason she is staying in the race, the following holds true: she would do better as a third party candidate.  Let's take a look at the possibilities.

She's delusional: If she believes she can win the GOP nomination, she is delusional. She has no path. But she's gotten pretty far politically prior to her run for president this cycle, and that doesn't happen because of delusions of grandeur.  I don't believe she's delusional, she has an agenda. That agenda may be to become president but we cannot pretend she doesn't understand the polls. But to entertain the notion, if she truly just wants to win the presidency, doing it as a GOP candidate is not her path.  An easier approach would be to run as a third party candidate and take the voters from both Trump and Let's Go Brandon with whom she believes she has a connection and can secure enough votes.

The VP slot: She's not really in it to secure a VP slot.  Trump has already intimated that she's not on the list. It's another scenario I'd simply rule out.

The fallback candidate: She does not represent the logical fallback candidate just because she was the last opponent standing. Loss after loss does not inspire confidence. She is hurting her chances in that scenario.  Instead going third party and trying to stand on her ideas seems more like the high road.  If for some (highly unlikely) reason Trump cannot serve as the Republican nominee, being called back in from an independent run seems far more positive and perhaps even gracious; stepping in to rescue the party from it's own flawed electoral 'mistake'.

The Establishment puppet: This scenario, to me, makes the most sense.  The GOP establishment and the establishment writ large, want to hurt Trump; they want to stop Trump by hurting him, constantly. Death by a thousand cuts if necessary. Keep hitting Trump with criminal cases, civil cases, a primary challenger, and whatever else they can throw in his way, so that (i) he cannot focus on his campaign, (ii) they find something that sticks and forces him to bow out and/or (iii) turns off his voter base. In that case having Nikki Haley in the reason is just one more speed bump for Trump. 

But it hasn't been working; Trump's support continues to grow (or at least, not falter) with each roadblock they attempt. Despite his focus being split his campaign seems to be humming along just fine. And with each case crumbling, finding something to stick on Trump seems to be not only falling further out of reach, it's making the establishment look more and more desperate, more and more suspicious and galvanizing support for Trump.  It's all a failure, which is why you are seeing the Koch money pull out.  The strategy has to change.

It won't make Nikki Haley president but that's not the establishment goal. The goal is to stop Trump. A third party run might do to Trump what the RFK Jr. run does to Let's Go Brandon; siphon off enough votes to make a difference. And the Koch money for Haley pulling out of the GOP primaries might be the signal to her to switch strategies.

To be clear, it's not likely to stop the Trump train, but the establishment is running out of options at this point. They may end up trying to ditch Let's Go Brandon as their last play, and if they do it's a sign of desperation. If they do though, it's also a clear sign the GOP establishment and the Democrat establishment are the same establishment, or at a minimum, they have almost identical agendas.  And that goes well beyond president Trump.

Red Ripple

Cue the fail music.  The Republican red wave didn't happen. It seems like they're likely to win congress, but the senate is up for grabs.  Governorships so far the GOP is down 2 from yesterday.  This is not to say that there's a mandate for Let's Go Brandon. This was not a red wave, it was a red ripple.

That's not to call it a horrible night for conservatives.  Bad?  Almost.  Sub-par?  Definitely.  Nevertheless there are positives to be taken away from this already.  I'm not talking here about individual races, though to be sure there are bright spots.  I'm not talking about the possibility that Republicans can still take the senate or do well in the remaining uncalled governor races, though both of those are still achievable. 

No I'm talking about 2024.  Two more years of misery may be just what the country needs to finish shaking off the swamp stew it has been ingesting for more than a decade.  Democratic control of key levers means the next two years will not get better as far as inflation, unemployment, wage stagnation, labor force participation, woke culture, crime, illegal immigration etc. That means the rot will fester, and that's bad for America.  But so too will the grassroots energy to do something about it.  By 2024 that ripple may turn into a tsunami.

If the GOP play their cards right. Mitch McConnell has to go, he left senate wins on the table for the Democrats, just to protect his own fiefdom.   The grassroots of the party needs to continue to support MAGA populists.  It does not have to be via Trump, though it can be.

The real potential here though are learnings.  What did Florida Republicans do right and how does that get translated to other states? Is Trump still the guy or has his window passed? Did Kari Lake's fail to appear to move to the center harm her in the Arizona governor general election and if so how can that be avoided?  Many Latinos have moved to the Republican column, how does the GOP grow that further?

Beyond the top line takeaways, the obvious tactical takeaways that I have been arguing since 2008; the core things the GOP must do are (1) engage (2) listen and (3) persuade.

Engagement means reaching out to disaffected communities go to various constituencies (e.g. college educated women, Latinos, African Americans, people with addiction issues).  This is a long term, big tent approach to broadening the reach of the party.  These groups cannot listen if you don't even talk to them. 

Next, listen to their concerns.  Understand what it is they want and need from government.  This does not mean abandoning conservative values, it means finding out what matters to voters.  If you are offering solutions to voting irregularities when gas prices are the issue of the day, you are not understanding the battlefield that is taking shape in front of you.

Lastly once you have engaged and understood (both have to be ongoing processes by the way),  you must tailor your solutions to the problems of the day.  You do not give up your principles, you determine how to solve the problems, within a conservative, common sense framework.  Then, and only then, do you try to persuade the audience that your solution is better than the alternative.  And you do so in a positive vision sort of way. If you do not have your own realistic and workable solution you cannot argue that the other guys are wrong because the response will (and should) be "so what, you don't offer an alternative".  

All three of these require a well-oiled and robust infrastructure which is something the GOP seems to be lacking at times and in places.  So this too must be addressed.  Fund raising, intra-party messaging and communication.

The final takeaways are more tactical.  We laughed when Let's Go Brandon was in New York stumping for governor Hochul.  But they understood their firewall, and shored up a defensive path to victory in key places. This was our mistake.  We should have read the room and adjusted our own strategies accordingly.  It seems conservatives were just too busy gleefully anticipating a red wave; our mistake.  

We believed the polls.  Why?  Because it looked heavily tilted in our favor. Relying on polling is a mistake we too often make (myself included in trying to account for bad polling).  Some of the best pollsters from 2020 did the worst with respect to 2022.  Oops. The great Rush Limbaugh often opined that the only poll that matters is the ballot box.  Run like you are in a dead heat.  Run like you need more votes. Otherwise you turn a red wave into a red ripple.

Is Let's Go Brandon locked in?

That headline could mean a lot of different things.  Is he locked in a basement to avoid gaffes, like he was during his presidential run?  Is he locked in as the candidate for 2024?  But what I am referring to is whether or not he is locked in to policies positions that clearly are ineffective.  His managing of the situation with inflation and gas prices have been some of the worst in history, not ineffectual but effectively worse than doing nothing.  At this point nothing would be welcome.  But he keeps doubling down on things that seem designed to appease the radical left.  Either he firmly his policy ideas like raising taxes will help inflation (in itself that would be a form of being locked in), or else he is trapped into continuing with an extreme leftist agenda.

I think at this point it could be the latter circumstance.  When you look at how bad his favorable/ unfavorable ratings are, he has alienated the center and a surprising percentage of many traditional Democratic constituencies to the point that there is no recovery short of a genuine miracle. So Let's Go Brandon has two choices: 

(1) move towards the center to win back a lot of that lost support.  It would mean reversing course on a lot of things and there's no guarantee at this point it would have enough effect to stop a midterm lambasting for the Democrats from voters.  

or

(2) Continuing to double down on his chosen path in hopes of driving massive turnout from the radical left in order to try to minimize the damage to the party that is coming in November.

Here's why the latter course is more likely.  As mentioned a course change would potentially not do very much to gain support as it really would be too little, too late.  But not only that, it would have the reverse effect of option 2 above; it would alienate the radical left base that still supports him. He has no choice but to continue.  In addition, he probably is a true believer in Keynesian economics, manmade global warming, radical feminism etc.  Why would he go against anything he's moved further towards for the last twenty or more years?

The real locked in question for Let's Go Brandon, is whether the Democrats are going to remain locked into him.  After November 8th, the answer will likely tilt a lot further towards 'no'.

 

 

The E.U.'s "secret" strategy on Brexit

This is actually not so secret. The E.U. wants to make this hard for the U.K., which is ironic since Theresa May seems to have the U.K. making it hard on itself anyway.

Conservative strategy for 2016 - ignore Obama

President Obama is back from vacation, and reportedly fired up. He's going to do something about gun violence using Executive Orders. I thought he was supposed be a lame duck.  His job approval ratings have leveled out in the low 40's, and he's not going to get a lot of support on much from voters and perhaps from fellow Democrats.  So why isn't he acting like a lame duck?  Or is all of his bluster just for show?

Actually, none of that matters.  What Obama is really doing is looking for a way to get a bump in his approval ratings, but not for him.  He's trying to ensure that Hillary Clinton (or less likely, but preferably for him, Bernie Sanders) wins the presidential election in November this year.  He wants a Democrat to win in order to cement his legacy on things like Obamacare, on the Iran deal, and on Cuba normalization, among other things).  Should a Republican win, and the GOP manage to retain both the Congress and Senate, the next president is likely to oversee a significant dismantling of the Obama agenda items.

And that's why what Obama does (trying to glom onto gun control or any other issue that he might think will stick in order to improve his own approval ratings and thus help his possible successor), should not matter to conservatives.  The rationale - the way Obama will operate is not be conciliatory but to be confrontational in the steadfast belief that he's still the smartest man in the Capitol.  As a result, he will continue to win no friends and there is no reason to believe he can move his approval ratings in a positive direction in any significant way.  Everything he has done prior to this has followed the pattern and all it does is cement things where they are - supporters support it, detractors don't like it.

His efforts will have no impact. He's made himself a lame duck by continuing to operate in a predictable fashion.  He has learned nothing as leader.  He has personified the the difference between intelligence and wisdom.  He may have a decent IQ, but he does not learn from his own mistakes and continues to make them.  So he may be intelligent (I'd argue not really even that), but he's not wise.

What Obama does now is totally irrelevant.  Conservative pundits would be wise to ignore the president entirely this year (barring of course, new scandals) and focus on the problems with Hillary and with Bernie, as well as seasoning that with the positives of the GOP candidates.  It'll be a winning formula, helped in part by Obama's insistence on being a stubborn tactician. Who knows, his increasingly irrelevant status may push him into doing something foolish that actually hurts his own party.

GOP ground zero is a good thing

Democrats on the far left love to demonize big business. They in fact legislatively undercut all businesses, and more acutely smaller businesses, with onerous requirements that have caused a lot of investment potential a lot of innovation opportunity to sit idle on the sidelines that could have had a positive impact on the country's economy. As Democrats have sewn this antagonistic view, so now have they reaped much of the consequence politically. The country however continues to feel the impacts of everything from Dodd Frank, to Obamacare, to loose monetary policy. It's crippling America at a faster rate than every before.

Meanwhile the Democrats claim to champion the underprivileged and laughably, the middle class. Minimum wage laws designed to keep people out of the lowest of the income brackets have been proven to drive unemployment. But beyond that, the psychological harm to business of these pro-people, anti-business measures are quite significant.

The message could not be clearer - the legislation Democrats have enacted has helped the poorest, marginally at best, and the wealthiest significantly. They are insulated from new competition by the sheer enormity of the administrative and taxation burden placed on smaller companies. Those companies cannot grow to competitive levels and right now they aren't even inclined to try. Therefore they are not adding more jobs, and importantly, they are not adding more middle class jobs.

The Democrats have been running a Zero-trickle-down legislative agenda, intentionally or not.

This is where the opportunity exists for the GOP from a messaging perspective. A positive message should show people that prosperity is not a zero-sum game. When the economy does well, everyone benefits. But a little more nuance than tha tis required. The message should say be something along the lines of "our policies are not designed to codify people, and make them think of the world as us and them, but rather to enable everyone the same opportunity to start their own journey to success."

Equality of opportunity extends from education right through to starting and growing your own business. A truly level playing field requires it. Republican policy should deliver it. It's not about creating jobs - it's about creating opportunities (of which jobs is a mere subset).

Every policy and piece of legislation should start from that basis. And every policy and piece of legislation must have crystal clarity on how it enables equality of opportunity at every stage of life. That is done not by layering more complexity upon existing complexity. Rather it is done by simplifying the rules. It is done by ensuring that rules do not discriminate against anyone or any business entity.

People can be made to see those truths if the messaging is clear. Investors certainly can be made to see them. That alone would spark a fire in the economy. Then ensuring that everyone has a shot at taking advantage of the prosperity to better their own lives becomes the main raison d'etre for government.

Obama's wrong again: Crimea is a win for Putin.

Obama yesterday claimed that Putin was not being clever strategically in rushing into Crimea.  Obama is 100% wrong. Russian leader Putin claims he's interested in protecting ethnic Russians in Crimea which is why he's sent "plainclothes" Russian military into the region after Ukraine's recent .upheaval.  But Russia has ulterior motives.  It's about the money, and the strategic military value of the region.

Crimea has some strategic importance to Russia.  Consider:

The Black Sea is Russia's only warm-water port.

Though Crimea is recognized worldwide as a part of Ukraine, the Russian Navy has kept its Black Sea Fleet stationed at a naval base in Sevastopol (in southern Crimea) since the late 1700s. In 2010, Russia negotiated an agreement that allows the country to share the all-important Sevastopol naval base through 2042, in exchange for deep discounts of about $40 billion on natural gas from Russia.

The Ukraine, which is a very big producer of corn and grain, sends much of it's exports through Crimean ports.  Crimea also has it's own agricultural base and Crimea also serves as a tourist destination.  These things are important for Russia economically and for helping to feed Russians.  Having Crimea under Russian control benefits Russia economically, and reduces the dependence on the Ukraine.

And let's not overlook the fact that an international crisis increases gas prices, which Russia exports to Europe.  As tensions stay high, Russia can generate additional revenue as a result.  Obama  just doesn't understand geo-political strategy.  He's once again proving that for him, it's about making himself look good.  He's trying to save face rather than looking at the situation realistically and making decisions accordingly.

Obama shifts strategy, again

A bunch of ill-conceived and disjointed attacks on Romney from the Obama campaign (and liberal pundits invested in his re-election effort) over the course of the year, have proven that the Obama campaign doesn't have a consistent message for voters other than "please ignore the economy, foreign policy and everything else, and focus on the fact that Romney is a bad guy. 

The messages they've put forward are incongruous: Mitt Romney - flip-flopper.  Mitt Romney - right of Attila the Hun.  Mitt Romney - not a serious contender.  Mitt Romney - flip-flopper.  Mitt Romney - right of Attila the Hun.  Yeah, let's go with that one this week.

Hey left, you screwed up.

You had the media. We on the right are onto that. You had the web, we're onto that too. You had the courts. We're working on that one. With all of those advances by conservatives to combat your underhanded tactics at tricking the public into voting for your progressive liberal candidates, it's only natural you'd be looking for new ways to own the voters.

Sure, some tried and true methods like public schools and unions still represent strongholds for you but they aren't enough. Your agenda requires a complete web of misinformation. You need more tactics to employ. This is especially true in the time of Obama where the screw-ups come at us in a fast and furious way. You need to run cover for the president and more importantly for the agenda.

So it's only natural I suppose that we'd see you try to juice the polls to mount a voter suppression effort. It's ironic that liberals scream about the voter suppression of voter ID laws proposed by conservatives but are more than willing to use dubious polls to disenfranchise voters.

As an aside, it's also ironic that as the party of big government you deem requiring people to present some official form of documentation to be allowed to vote as bad. You'd think you'd be all for another government issued ID for voters and perhaps another agency to manage the whole system.

But with the speed of the news cycle in the era of the Internet, we're onto you on the poll trickery much more quickly than we were with the other things you've done. While it might have some limited success short term, it won't last. Every time you try a new tactic, we will counter it. Alinsky's playbook is a set of guidelines you can no longer rely on. Everything it advocates can be countered.

You pushed us too far and we are no longer going to stand idly by and let it continue. That's ultimately where you really screwed up. Whether it takes a generation or two or three to fix, we're on it now.

The Senate needs more Tea Party focus

Help us help...Libya?

The Senate has just overwhelming voted to continuing sending aid to Libya, Egypt and Pakistan. It speaks volumes about what the conservative/Tea Party agenda should be for the next decade.

Big Picture: Perception of the GOP nominee

Then what?

Here's a strategic question I promised to talk about a few days back:  How is the GOP going to be perceived coming out of the nomination process?  It depends on a few factors; whether the current battle is hurting the eventual nominee, who the nominee is and even to a certain extent, what ends up happening to Ron Paul.

After the Republican party has it's nominee, that person will have to face president Obama.  The internal nomination process and the dragged out contest this year was actually a result of a design put in place by former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele.  He put in place the proportional delegation assignments for states which has served to draw out the nomination process since the winner-take-all assignment, particularly in the early states, prevent a front-runner from winning too many delegates too quickly and sewing up a nomination before being vetted on a more national basis.  Of course the other factor is that the front runner hasn't really gotten the electorate to rally behind him.

Big picture stuff

Stepping out of the day-to-day primary campaigns that get bogged down in tactical considerations and arguments, it’s good once in a while to step back and look at the bigger picture.  There are a number of important strategic considerations for the GOP and for conservatives to consider going into the general election.  


I’d like to offer my perspective on them over the next few days.  Keep an eye out for posts. On the topics below.

5 lessons from the Alabama & Mississippi primaries

Five lessons from the Alabama and Mississippi primary results:

1. Mitt Romney's biggest ally is the multitude of his enemies:  Alabama and Mississippi prove that the not Romney votes can continue to be split while Santorum and Gingrich remain in the race. What matters more is that Romney's delegate advantage is maintained by those votes being split between Gingrich and Santorum.

2. Santorum and Gingrich are not coordinating states among themselves and they probably should be doing so. The most effective use of the combined resources of Gingrich and Santorum in fighting Romney, in isolation from each other, rather than fighting each other as well.  That keeps that vote splitting to a minimum - split up states among each candidate and focus your limited resources in smaller, focused, controlled bursts.  In essence they can make Romney fight a two front war rather than benefiting from a free-for-all.

3. Mitt Romney's strategy of picking off easy delegates is slowly working - Hawaii, Samoa, Guam add to his total.  His third place delegates in Alabama and Mississippi aren't inconsequential either.  They aren't high profile, but the numbers still count, and they are counting in his favor.

4. Gingrich is a regional candidate. Paul is a nomad candidate.  Santorum and Romney can both claim with some validity that they have won in a broad spectrum of regions.  Gingrich cannot claim the same.  His success has been all deep south success, and even there, it's limited. Paul is becoming a non-factor and he will not have enough momentum to get a prime time slot at the GOP convention.  He may end up being given one in an attempt to buy his allegiance, but he will not have proportionally earned it.  He's fading to the status of footnote or afterthought.

5.  The night was more of a loss for Romney than anything else.  Yes Santorum gets momentum and in the long run that may be the big story.  But Mitt Romney did not close off the race and wins in those southern states would have been bold victories that could have given him the air of inevitability and sealed the nomination for him.  Instead, by playing the long game, he allowed both Santorum and Gingrich to survive.  It was a timid play.  He could have tried to end it in those southern states but he didn't.  What is striking to me is that his timidity doesn't speak favorably about how he would do as president.  No bold solutions, he would just tinker around the edges. That's not exactly what the country needs, nor what he has promised.

And after all of that, I'm still re-thinking things. 

The right tactical move but bad strategy

Different time frame, but same principal.

Mitt Romney backed out of the CNN debate just prior to Super Tuesday (which is on March 6th). He was followed by Ron Paul and Rick Santorum in a move clearly designed not to let Newt Gingrich back into the race just prior to a mass of delegates being allocated by voters.

Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum decided to skip the March 1 debate that was to be co-hosted by CNN and the Georgia and Ohio state Republican parties, their campaigns confirmed Thursday.

CNN decided to cancel the debate after being left with a single confirmation, Newt Gingrich, who would have been left to square off solo with moderator John King. Gingrich’s camp is unlikely to be happy with the turn of events as the former House speaker has used the nationally televised spectacles to savage the media and twice revive his lagging campaign.

It was the right tactical move for that objective. After all, Newt clearly has the best debate skill of the bunch. But for at least two of the candidates, it was the wrong strategic objective.

GOP 'crowdation'

With Newt Gingrich surging to the top of many polls, clearly his momentum has caused other candidates to try to take a different tack in order to gain, or regain, some traction.  Oddly, it seems like everyone who is trying to differentiate themselves is taking the same sort of approach.

Perry Nevada strategy misses on tactics

I thought that Rick Perry might try to make a stand in Nevada.  Articles are saying it's a Romney state.  But given the proximity to Texas, given that Perry needed to make a stand and win a pre-Florida state, I thought Nevada made sense for him.  Apparently so did Perry and the twin imperatives of winning a state and needing to go after Romney, meant he was going to go on the attack last night.  But it was ugly. You can see it here.

Bad.  While this wasn't exactly the Bay of Pigs, I think it's safe to say the tactics didn't match up to the strategy. It looked petty and desperate, I don't think he helped himself, but I don't think he helped Romney either.

The Obama plan IS 'no plan'

There is no plan.

There's one obvious point that I think is being largely missed in the right blogoshpere with regards to the debt ceiling and the budget cuts debate. If not being missed, perhaps it is being skimmed over but it is an important point that should be a Republican talking point at every interview they get - be it on Fox, CNN or MSNBC.

The point is that we can say with virtual certainty that the President is playing politics with the debt ceiling. The reason for that certitude is that while he is trashing the GOP plan he has put no plan on the table whatsoever. That is clearly deliberate.

Conservatives are getting gamed - again.

Conservatives are getting gamed. Democrats are once again proving that strategically, they are outsmarting us because we are busy focusing on the fine print instead of the big picture.  It doesn't mean Democrats, liberals, progressives, unions and special interests are right.  It doesn't even mean that they are necessarily being effective. What it does mean is that they are playing the game to win in 2012, while conservatives are focused on doing what we think is right for the economy and for America, right now.  Conservatives often forget that doing what is right for America requires political victory too.  Democrats know that to enact their agenda, they have to score political gains and that is what we are witnessing them attempting to do in Wisconsin and elsewhere. Why conservatives and even those in the Republican party can't see the bigger picture is astounding.