Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016, Part III Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Never were words from a movie truer:

Paddling v Kicking

It's likely bad form to publish part three to this running saga so soon after I started part II, but I don't want any of these threads to take over the blog, which they threaten to do.  I'm doing this now, however, as the campaign, which has been an historically odd one, took a new turn last night with the dropping out of Ted Cruz.  This was followed by the surprising concession today of Kasich. This means means that the hard right insurgent elements, or populist elements, that have seized control of the GOP race and which are backing Trump how now doomed the party to spectacular defeat.

Yes, that's right.  It will be defeated, and at a historic level.

Now, I've taken a tour around sites where Republicans are debating and I know that the Trump backers are rejoicing and just can't grasp why others in the GOP are lamenting.  Those backing Trump really see him as the salvation of the nation and as somebody who can be elected.  They're fooling themselves.  And not only are they fooling themselves, having backed an un-electable candidate they're actually guaranteeing the dismantling of the things they are trying to hold on to.   The remainder of the GOP is coming in line, with some swallowing their true beliefs to support a nominee either because they are in the GOP, or they simply fear Clinton, or because they fear the implications of not supporting their own candidate.  Others are sharpening their knives.

Right now, President Obama has nominated a left moderate nominee to the Supreme Court.  After the November election, he will be confirmed. Even if Clinton's administration only last for four years, which is against the odds, she will appoint two more Supreme Court nominees and they're going to be in the far left.  My guess is that President Obama himself, who is a comparatively young man, may be one of those nominees.

So, the net result is that a Supreme Court which has had some judicial restraint for years now no longer really will, and will be happy to enshrine social thesis as law.  That's just the fact. And people who were hoping for some reference to the framers in a cogent form can now forget it.  Goodbye traditional definitions of one thing or another, goodbye Second Amendment. Hello social law.

Now, if this sounds bitter, it isn't meant to be. Rather, this is the way things actually will be.  Pretending that Trump can win isn't going to change that, and when he fails, those who backed him so ardently will have to live with the consequences of that mistake. But then, so will everyone else.

Part of the everyone else is the GOP itself. Four years from now, it's going to be a different party.  Indeed, while hardly noticed, those who are contemplating defeat are doing what I termed the Dunkirk Strategy  As I said in the last edition of this series:

Dunkirk, of course, is famous for being that location in France where British and French soldiers stages a heroic defense of the town against the Germans in 1940 so that the British forces could be withdrawn.  Basically, troops maintaining the line fought to save their army, so that it could be rebuilt in Britain.  Will, and others, are now urging Republicans to fight to save House and Senate seats so that the GOP can be rebuilt over the next four years.  Basically, the Presidency will be abandoned as a hope, conceding that it is already lost.

Will was blunt in his article that the forces that supported Trump will simply be dumped.  He doesn't want them.  The proposal, basically, is to create a new conservative party out of the wrecked shell of the current one, a pretty dramatic concession for a lifelong conservative Republican. 

If that occurs, chances are that John Boehner will be one of the Republicans joining him in that effort. The former Speaker of the House was caught this past week taking real hard shots at Ted Cruz, going so far as to indicate that he'd support Trump if Trump is nominated, but not Cruz.  He didn't apologize when audio of that was released, which we probably would generally have expected.  And he showed up with Obama on an amusing video that showed up at the end of the President's speech.  Cruz has been ineffective in trying to paint Boehner since then as just the sort of Washington insider that he's been campaigning against, so in a way Beohner's recent actions may turn out to be the "establishment" getting the last laugh on Cruz, whom they truly dislike.

 British soldiers being evacuated in 1940 from Dunkirk

Elections, of course, have consequences and part of those consequences are for the losers. The GOP will be the loser in the election and frankly it'll deserve what it's going to get due to having adopted such a cynical policy towards part of its base over the years.  That's going to end now, but in doing that, part of the base will be lost.  And the party will have to come out as a different party in 2020, as the base that took it into the fall with Trump is going to be less significant in 2020 than it is now.  

The way that this occurred is fairly obvious, but you have to take a long view of history.

The GOP has always been a bit of a fractured party in some ways, and indeed it had its origin in that fashion.  It came about after the self destruction of the Whigs over the issue of slavery, and opposition to slavery was really its only early uniting policy.  Even as early as 1865 there were serious rifts in the GOP over what to do with the defeated South, and there were plenty of bonafide radicals in the party at that time, men who, if they were alive today, would hang around with Bernie Sanders but not with Donald Trump.

At the same time, at least early post Civil War, there were northern conservative, Federalist, businessmen who were in the party.  They basically dominated it.  They'd find Trump crude and rude, but they'd probably also regard him as members of their class, with whom they could work.  It'll be interesting to see if their heirs today regard Trump the same way.  Cruz got panned in the election for citing to Trump's "New York Values", but his loud brashness has made him quite unpopular in the West and frankly a lot of that will not be overcome.  A state like Colorado, for example, is going to go for Clinton. Montana?  I'd guess Clinton also.  Idaho . . . who knows.  Trump will likely take Wyoming and Utah (whose politics are different from each other) but the margins Trump will take here will be potentially smaller than any Republican since at least the 1960s.

Anyhow, that all came to a head in the 1912 election, which will be instructive for us here and which I've written about in my earlier posts.  I've written about that election in our Today In Wyoming History blog, and I'll clip in a bit of that post here:

The next Presidential election would see Theodore Roosevelt run for office, and Roosevelt was a very popular President in the West.  He was also from the "progressive" branch of the Republican Party, so any Populist elements that were headed towards being Democratic were effectively cut off.

 Noted biologist, hunter, outdoorsman, conservationist, rancher, historian, and politician, President Theodore Roosevelt.

Republican fortunes gained during the Theodore Roosevelt Administration, and when his hand picked successor, his Vice President William Howard Taft ran in 1908, Wyoming demonstrated that it had lost its fondness for William Jennings Bryan, who ran against him. Taft took 55% of the Wyoming vote.  Perhaps reflecting some residual racialism, or perhaps recent immigration from Eastern Europe in some counties, Socialist candidate Eugene Debs amazingly took 4.5% of the vote.  Statewide, Wyomingites seemed satisfied with Republican candidates once again.

 

Former Governor of the Philippines and Vice President, and future Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, William Howard Taft.

Taft had the misfortune of following Roosevelt, who was a great man, but who was still a young man, in relative terms, and who just couldn't avoid politics.  Taft basically acted as a reformist candidate, but a somewhat moderate one, and Roosevelt, for his part, was becoming increasingly radical.  By the election of 1912, the split in the Republican Party that this represented broke the party apart and after Taft was nominated it actually became two parties, with the Rooseveltians becoming the Progressive Party.  The Progressive Party would be a radical party even by today's standards, and it says something about the politics of the time that it mounted a very serious campaign and had nationwide support.  At the same time, the Democrats began to tack towards the Progressives themselves and pick up parts of their platform.  The transformation of the Democratic Party into a liberal party really began with the Presidential election of 1912, and the party by the end of the election was never again quite what it had been, although the change would continue on for years thereafter.

Woodrow Wilson took Wyoming's electoral vote that year, receiving 42% of the popular vote.  The combined Taft and Roosevelt vote surpassed that, with Roosevelt taking 27% of the vote, a greater share than that taken by Taft.  Socialist Eugene Debs came in with an amazing 6%.  Given this, it is not possible to simply write off the election to the split in the Republican Party that year.  The combined Debs and Roosevelt vote made up a whopping 33% of the Wyoming electorate that was expressing support for a radical change in direction in national politics.  Wilson's 42% was not insignificant either. Even simply writing off the fact that any Democratic candidate of that era would have received at least 1/3d of the state vote, a surprising number of Wyomingites seemed to be espousing the progressive, and even radical, ideas that were the combined platforms of the Progressive and Democratic parties. Even accepting that the Democrats had come at this development through the Populist, which was reflected in their earlier nomination of Bryan, and in Wilson's appointing him to the position of Secretary of State, it seems something was afoot.  

 

Former head of Princeton and Governor of New Jersey, President Woodrow Wilson.

Indeed, in the same year, the sitting Governor, elected in 1910, Joseph M. Carey, left the Republican Party and joined the Progressive Party.  Carey, like most (but not all) of the Progressives, including  Theodore Roosevelt himself, would eventually return to the Republican Party, but it's at least interesting to note that a sitting, elected, Wyoming Governor publicly abandoned his party to join a third party.  A think like that would simply be inconceivable today.

Governor Carey just months prior to his defection to the Progressive Party, with a bored looking Dorothy Knight, the daughter of a Wyoming Supreme Court justice, at the launch of the USS Wyoming.

This tread, moreover, continued.  Carey's successor in the Governor's office was not a member of the Republican Party, nor a Progressive, but Democrat John B. Kendrick.  Kendrick did not remain in that office for long, however, as he was elected to the United States Senate by the electorate, now able to directly elect Senators, in 1916, a position he held until his death in 1933.  His companion in the Senate for most of that time, however, was very long serving Republican Senator Francis E. Warren (who of course had also been a Governor) who served until his death in 1929, when he was replaced by Republican Senator Patrick Sullivan.

 

Senator John B. Kendrick.

A slow shift began to take place in the early teens, however.  In the 1916 Presidential election the state again supported Wilson, giving him 49% of the vote.  3% supported Socialist candidate Allan Benson, and those votes would certainly have gone for a any more left wing candidate than the Republican Charles Hughes, but a period in which Wyoming leaned Republican but which would swing towards Democrats was emerging.  The state went very strongly for Warren Harding in 1920 (60%) and for Coolidge in 1924.  In 1924, however, the Democrats fared very poorly in the Presidential election, with the Progressive Candidate Robert LaFollette, who had taken up where Theodore Roosevelt would not have wanted to leave off for him, and then some, receiving 31% of the Wyoming vote.  David, the Democrat, came in a poor third, showing that a strong Progressive streak remained in the Wyoming electorate at that time.  That election saw the nation nearly completely go for Coolidge except in the South, which went for Davis.  Geographically it was one of the most divided elections in the nation's history.

That's a lot to digest, but the significant part of it is something I didn't really address.  The impact of the 1912 election on the GOP directly.

At the very moment of the split in the GOP the Republicans were doomed in the election, and as soon as it was over the housecleaning was felt.  Those responsible for the defeat, the Progressives who would not play ball, were allowed to crawl back to the GOP, but they weren't given positions of influence.  Their hero, Theodore Roosevelt, made sounds about running as a Progressive in 1916, but by that time the enthusiasm for that was gone, including with Roosevelt.  Roosevelt came back to the GOP, and was allowed to be an influential figure within it. . . sort of.  He never again had the sort of influence that he once had, and limited his activities to where they stood to be effective which, in large part, had to do with preparing for World War One.

The impact of the 1912 election was that the Republicans came out of it as a conservative party.  The progressives within the party were allowed in it, but they were not allowed to have much influence within it.  Over time, most "progressives" abandoned the GOP for the Democratic Party, which was itself remade by the 1912 election. The Democrats, which has been a populist conservative party became a liberal party in 1912.  Conservatives remained in it, but often because of regional attachment. And the Republicans, in becoming the conservative party, remained a northern conservative party that was pro civil rights, while the Democrats were split on that issue to say the least.

During the Great Depression the GOP's fortunes sunk and it became a fairly conservative party lacking in cogent thesis.  It lingered there until after World War Two when conservative thinkers began to put together a set of solid conservative concepts and ideals.  The 1964 election saw the last gasp of the old pre World War Two conservatives in the spasmodic nomination of Barry Goldwater, whose campaign failed miserably.  In the meantime the Democrats became ossified as a the party of FDR most places, but of Jim Crow in the South.  The party was really two parties held together by tradition.

The Vietnam War and the 1960s started the process of the Democrats ejecting Southern Democrats from their party.  At the same time, the new conservatives in the GOP began their rise.  They saw their first real, and really only, success with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

And hence the problem that the GOP has come into now.  From 1948 until 1980, national Republican figures really aren't comparable to what we see today. They were conservative, but they were big government conservatives of a type that really expired.  Starting in 1980, the Republicans were successful at capturing the Southern Democrats, which served their interest but they went on to become Republicans, which wasn't really contemplated in the fashion that occurred.  National Review conservatives, of the William F. Buckley type, saw a hugely successful candidate in Ronald Reagan, but the old big government conservatives came back with George Bush I.  Neo Conservatives, who had their roots as disaffected left wing Democrats (former Trotskyites, truly, by their own admission) came into the party at the time and were very influential in the presidency of George Bush II.

During all of this post 1980, the GOP came to rely heavily on the Southern vote which meant that the party slowly incorporated or co-opted, or pretended to co-opt, some ideals that were strongly associated with Southern Democrats. Strong nativism, a distrust of minorities, a certain brashness hard right wing style, and a strong dislike of government, all crept into the GOP sound box, but not really into the full GOP. As the GOP used the sound, the ideology crept down into the rank and file, and it produced a full blown movement that took over the GOP in many places. As that occurred, the GOP pandered to it for election purposes,  but it failed to act on it while in power as it didn't really believe it.  As this occurred, it started to fully fracture the party by 2012, with increasingly ideological "Tea Party" elements elected everywhere and nearly open civil war in the party in some localities, including Wyoming.  Wyoming saw a full scale GOP internal conflict that still lingers on which started openly with the struggle between Governor Mead and the Legislature against Cindy Hill and the Tea Party elements.  It continues on today in the current House election with some Tea Party candidates pitted against more middle of the road candidates who are trying to slip away from the radical elements quietly.

Promising people something, then not acting on it, is a dangerous course of action and it ultimately causes people to be angry and ignore you.  And that's what happened to the GOP.  The GOP repeatedly has indicated that it was concerned with the plight of the average American, and that it was concerned about unrestricted immigration, and that it was concerned about the increasingly leftward drift of American culture being supported by the government, but it did nothing about it.  It didn't address legal or illegal immigration, and indeed many came to feel that the GOP establishment was complicit in ignoring it as Republican businessmen benefited from it.  It did nothing concrete in the social arena either, continuing to complain about funding of things that average conservatives hate while approving the funding.  Only in appointing conservative Supreme Court justices did it really come through.

And when it did act, it acted in some spectacular but unwise ways, particularly recently as more and more radical Tea Party elements entered the government and tried to carry through, such as shutting the government down.

And so now we have Trump, with Cruz being the only candidate who could get close to him. And hence the evolution of the problem.

What those supporting Trump fail to realize is that criticizing Trump or Cruz is not a wholesale rejection of their concerns.  But rather, like all legitimate concerns, the problem is that in having pandered to them, while not addressing them, they festered and took on a nasty edge.

The concern over illegal immigration is a good example. This concern has existed in at least the West since the 1970s.  The Federal government simply quit enforcing the law.  People had a right to be upset.  Many were directly hurt by illegal immigration in terms of their own employment and wages.  However, years of pandering on the issue, combined with the incorporation of the Southern Democrats, caused it to fester.  During President Obama's administration the pandering began to take on a closet racist edge to it, and the GOP did nothing to restrain the outright bigoted comments that President Obama was continually subject to.  That may have pleased some on this issue, but it's revolted many, and now the GOP has lost Latinos whom, because of their conservative social views, should be Republican. Truth be known most Latinos were in support of trying to prevent illegal immigration, in spite of what members of La Raza may claim, and on social views they strongly reflect a Catholic heritage.  But if a person is insulted repeatedly and openly for being "Mexican" and there's a suggestion that the whole problem can be simply cured by a big wall, it's going to totally repulse anyone whose ancestry isn't from England or Scotland, and most people's are not.  The net result is that we are going to elect a Democrat who will be in favor of fairly open immigration, whether or not that's a good demographic policy for a nation of 350 million people.

Repeat pandering on the Second Amendment has worked the same way.  Most Americans support firearms ownership but there has been a hardcore repeated outcry about Democrats stealing our guns for years and years.  At least two Democratic Administrations, including the present one, have been as friendly toward firearms as some Republican administrations, but received bitter howls of conspiracy claims anyhow.  This one finally sort of gave up, logically enough, after it became clear that doing nothing on firearms at all still subjected it to bitter rancor.  The GOP could have played this much more wisely, crediting the President where he was not anti gun, and for most of the time, he wasn't.  But instead it pandered to the issue.  Indeed, it gave rise to a lot of local movements that have taken this in a direction that scares many people who otherwise support the Second Amendment, such as the insistence that firearms should be capable of being carried into city council meeting or open sessions of the legislature.  Even dyed in the wool firearms fans would never have proposed such a thing twenty years ago, but you hear suggestions of that type all the time now, and they aren't going to engender sympathy with people who aren't firearms fans, and won't even with amy who are.

A certain type of anti scientism likewise became a GOP staple in many local arenas.  Both parties were adamant supporters of engineering and science for most of their histories.  The GOP was the party that backed the engineering effort that became the Transcontinental Railroad. Both Republican and Democratic administrations supported space exploration.  Both parties supported the engineering projects that became the nation's highways, with the Eisenhower administration becoming permanently associated with the Interstate Highways.

Project funding was out of control by the time Ronald Reagan came into office, and arguably a lot of pork has never left the budget, but at some point thing began to chance from questioning spending to philosophically opposing the existential nature of certain projects.  It's one thing, and quite legitimate, to oppose a thing as a waste of spending, but it's another to assume that you must believe or disbelieve it due to your political leanings.

The topic of climate change has become one such issue.  As late as George Bush I both parties basically accepted it was real and based on science.  Now, I'm not here to argue about the science.  I have friends with scientific backgrounds who steadfastly maintain that the science doesn't support the theory.  But that doesn't mean that they should therefore be required to be Republicans, just as it the opposite belief doesn't mean that a person should have to be a Democrat.  But that is what's come around and this is so much the case that the legislature here actually considered taking on the topic of teaching the topic as a legislative bill, which they have no business doing.  Science should stand and fall on its own merits and inform politics, rather than be something that should dictate what party a person is in.  This has lead to a certain anti-scientific tinge in the GOP which ends up driving away people who are well educated in the sciences in some cases, even though they may be died in the wool conservatives otherwise.  GOP politicians will state a scientific position, adamantly, because they are in the GOP, which is not the way that this should go at all.  This is particularly evident locally where quite a few Republicans state this position with almost bitterness, while at least the Governor states it with a seemingly degree of lukewarm attachment. But they all state it.

That is in part no doubt due to the fact that the local economy is really energy dependent.  But that's another part of the problem, although it isn't a problem unique to the GOP.  Economic concerns or even disaster shouldn't dictate certain positions.  Here, locally, it's been popular for some time to blame the government for the problems with the energy industry. It was popular to blame regulation, and with coal its been popular to blame the President's policies. But the price of oil is down not due to Federal regulation, but Saudi efforts.  And coal has slumped in large part due to a lack of export demand from China and changing technology.  A more realistic approach to such problems is to admit that and start working on what to do, but instead people have been politicizing it, and still are.  Just two days ago Trump promised to get the miners in West Virginia back to work, for example.  Well, unless he intends to nationalize the coal industry and produce coal merely for the sake of producing it, that isn't going to happen.

Likewise, while we do have serious trade problems all over, the country's leaders have done a poor job of explaining why and a poorer job of addressing hurting parts of the American workforce.  There is truly a lot of things wrong in the economy and the angry voters in the GOP and the Democratic Party are very much aware of that.  But nobody has addressed it and now people are really mad.  So mad, apparently, that they're willing to accept mere assertions from the now GOP candidate that he's going to fix it even though his suggestions are without real merit and would likely be disastrous to the American economy.

A lot of this has been fueled by television, unfortunately. The explosion of television channels has meant that television news has gone from something that was basically thirty minutes long and roughly informative to something that is tailored for the audience.  Those on the right avoid left wing news outlets and vice versa.  But that means that basically the full scale days of yellow journalism have returned.  In the recently election the television news was so fascinated by Trump that they gave him a bully pulpit. At the same time, Sanders, who is a true radical, was ignored and had to slog his way to the top.  If Sanders had received the amount of media attention that Trump did, and he was every bit as unconventional, we'd now be looking at a certain Trump v. Sanders race.  We might, quite frankly, be better off if we were.  He'd be ineffectual, but at least there'd be a period in which the parties could sit back, dump the dead wood, axe much of their establishment, and rebuild.

And on that, next we will look at rebuilding the GOP, which it's going to have to do in the next four years, or it will decline into irrelevancy.

The current tallies:

Democrats:  Needed to win, 2,383.

Clinton: 2,223 (522 of which are Superdelegates)
Sanders:  1,450 (39 of which are Superdelegates)

Republicans:  Needed to win, 1,237.

Trump:  1,054 (of which 41 are unpledged delegates).
Cruz:  566   Cruz has suspended his campaign. (of which 16 are unpledged delegates)
Rubio:  173.  Rubio has suspended his campaign.
Kasich:  153.  Kasich has suspended his campaign
Carson:  8  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Bush:  4  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Fiorina:  1  Fiorina has dropped out of the race.
Paul:  1  Paul has dropped out of the race.

Commentary 

The fallout from the GOP race continues to fall, with not everyone getting in line as has been so often predicted.


Paul Ryan, for one, has not . . .yet.  Asked if he was supporting Trump, he relayed that "I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now".  He indicated that he hoped to support Trump, but he needed to see more out of him before he did. That's making big news right now, but it's probably a signal that Ryan needs to see some evolution in Trump's positions in order to support him. That doesn't mean he won't, but it is quite extraordinary for the Speaker of the House not to endorse his party's candidate.

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican, definitely isn't supporting Trump.  He's been the target of a "Draft Sasse" movement which he has so far not supported, but yesterday he released a Facebook statement saying:

AN OPEN LETTER TO MAJORITY AMERICA

TO: Those who think both leading presidential candidates are dishonest and have little chance of leading America forward:

(…or, stated more simply)
TO: The majority of America:

Note: If you are one of those rare souls who genuinely believe Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are honorable people – if they are the role models you want for your kids – then this letter is not for you. Instead, this letter is for the majority of Americans who wonder why the nation that put a man on the moon can’t find a healthy leader who can take us forward together.

I want to tell you about four unsolicited conversations from the Fremont Wal-Mart this morning:

**Retired union Democrat meat-packer:
“What the heck is wrong with that city where you work? Why can’t they give us a normal person? Is it really so hard?”

Me: “Actually, it is for them – because most people in DC buy the nonsense that DC is the center of the world. You and I, despite our party differences, both agree that Fremont is the center.”

Union Democrat (interrupting): “…Because this is where my grandkids are.”

**Young evangelical mom:
“I want to cry. I disagree with Hillary Clinton on almost every single thing – but I will vote for her before Trump. I could never tell my kids later that I voted for that man.”

**Middle-aged Republican male (more political than the other folks):
“It feels like the train-car to hell is accelerating. Why is DC more filled with weirdos and yet more powerful at the same time? How do we slow this down long enough to have a conversation about actually fixing our country?”

**Trump supporter (again, unsolicited):
“Please understand: I’m going to vote for him, but I don’t like him. And I don’t trust him – I mean, I’m not stupid. But how else can I send a signal to Washington?!”
________

I’ve ignored my phone most of today, but the voicemail is overflowing with party bosses and politicos telling me that “although Trump is terrible,” we “have to” support him, “because the only choice is Trump or Hillary.”

This open letter aims simply to ask “WHY is that the only choice?”

Melissa and I got the kids launched on homework, so I’ve been sitting out by the river, reflecting on the great gap between what folks in my town are talking about, and what folks in the DC bubble are talking about.

I trust the judgment of this farm town way more than I trust DC. And so I’d like to share a dozen-ish observations on these Wal-Mart and other conversations today:

1. Washington isn’t fooling anyone -- Neither political party works. They bicker like children about tiny things, and yet they can’t even identify the biggest issues we face. They’re like a couple arguing about what color to paint the living room, and meanwhile, their house is on fire. They resort to character attacks as step one because they think voters are too dumb for a real debate. They very often prioritize the agendas of lobbyists (for whom many of them will eventually work) over the urgent needs of Main Street America. I signed up for the Party of Abraham Lincoln -- and I will work to reform and restore the GOP -- but let’s tell the plain truth that right now both parties lack vision.

2.  As a result, normal Americans don’t like either party. If you ask Americans if they identify as Democrat or Republican, almost half of the nation interrupts to say: “Neither.”

3. Young people despise the two parties even more than the general electorate. And why shouldn’t they? The main thing that unites most Democrats is being anti-Republican; the main thing that unites most Republicans is being anti-Democrat. No one knows what either party is for -- but almost everyone knows neither party has any solutions for our problems. “Unproductive” doesn’t begin to summarize how messed up this is.

4.  Our problems are huge right now, but one of the most obvious is that we’ve not passed along the meaning of America to the next generation. If we don’t get them to re-engage -- thinking about how we defend a free society in the face of global jihadis, or how we balance our budgets after baby boomers have dishonestly over-promised for decades, or how we protect First Amendment values in the face of the safe-space movement – then all will indeed have been lost. One of the bright spots with the rising generation, though, is that they really would like to rethink the often knee-jerk partisanship of their parents and grandparents. We should encourage this rethinking.

5.These two national political parties are enough of a mess that I believe they will come apart. It might not happen fully in 2016 – and I’ll continue fighting to revive the GOP with ideas -- but when people’s needs aren’t being met, they ultimately find other solutions.

6. In the history of polling, we’ve basically never had a candidate viewed negatively by half of the electorate. This year, we have two. In fact, we now have the two most unpopular candidates ever – Hillary by a little, and Trump by miles (including now 3 out of 4 women – who vote more and influence more votes than men). There are dumpster fires in my town more popular than these two “leaders.”

7. With Clinton and Trump, the fix is in. Heads, they win; tails, you lose. Why are we confined to these two terrible options? This is America. If both choices stink, we reject them and go bigger. That’s what we do.

8. Remember: our Founders didn’t want entrenched political parties. So why should we accept this terrible choice?

9.  So...let’s have a thought experiment for a few weeks: Why shouldn’t America draft an honest leader who will focus on 70% solutions for the next four years? You know...an adult?

(Two notes for reporters:
**Such a leader should be able to campaign 24/7 for the next six months. Therefore he/she likely can’t be an engaged parent with little kids.
**Although I’m one of the most conservative members of the Senate, I'm not interested in an ideological purity test, because even a genuine consensus candidate would almost certainly be more conservative than either of the two dishonest liberals now leading the two national parties.)

10.  Imagine if we had a candidate:

...who hadn’t spent his/her life in politics either buying politicians or being bought

…who didn’t want to stitch together a coalition based on anger but wanted to take a whole nation forward

…who pledged to serve for only one term, as a care-taker problem-solver for this messy moment

…who knew that Washington isn’t competent to micromanage the lives of free people, but instead wanted to SERVE by focusing on 3 or 4 big national problems,
such as:
A. A national security strategy for the age of cyber and jihad;

B. Honest budgeting/entitlement reform so that we stop stealing from future generations;

C. Empowering states and local governments to improve K-12 education, and letting Washington figure out how to update federal programs to adjust to now needing lifelong learners in an age where folks are obviously not going to work at a single job for a lifetime anymore; and

D. Retiring career politicians by ending all the incumbency protections, special rules, and revolving door opportunities for folks who should be public “servants,” not masters.

This really shouldn’t be that hard.

The oath I took is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. In brief, that means I’m for limited government.

And there is no reason to believe that either of these two national frontrunners believe in limiting anything about DC’s power.

I believe that most Americans can still be for limited government again -- if they were given a winsome candidate who wanted Washington to focus on a small number of really important, urgent things -- in a way that tried to bring people together instead of driving us apart.

I think there is room – an appetite – for such a candidate.

What am I missing?

More importantly, what are the people at the Fremont Wal-Mart missing?

Because I don’t think they are wrong. They deserve better. They deserve a Congress that tackles the biggest policy problems facing the nation. And they deserve a president who knows that his or her job is not to “reign,” but to serve as commander-in-chief and to “faithfully execute” the laws – not to claim imperial powers to rewrite them with his pen and phone.

The sun is mostly set on the Platte River -- and the kids need baths. So g’night.

Ben

It's hard to read that and not imagine that Sasse is endorsing his draft movement, although getting on the ballots anywhere now would be tough.  If a person actually could, they might have a fair shot at the convention, if they kept Trump from getting the nomination before the convention, which would also be tough.  Maybe it's an endorsement of a third party run.  It's hard not to see it as an open invitation for revolt against what's occurred, which doesn't mean that shall occur.   Nonetheless Sasse is now being talked about openly a great deal, and has come just as close as he can to endorsing the idea of his running an a conservative independent without saying he'd do it.  His resistance to it so far has been stated in terms of his being a father and not being able to devote full time to the effort, but it's hard not to read his statement as stating that he would accept an offer if it were made.  And right now, it's hard not to see it being made.

Added to this, Romney isn't going to go the convention.  He'd earlier flat out stated he wouldn't vote for Trump.  The Bushes aren't going either.  John McCain isn't either.  Arizona Senator Jeff Flake indicated he was going to have a tough time supporting his party's nominee.

So then, will there be a Draft Sasse effort?  And how would that work at this late stage of the proces.

Or will there be a Sasse for President as a third party effort.

All third party efforts in U.S. history have been Quixotic.  But, there's never been an election like this before.  Most Americans don't like Hillary Clinton.  Most Americans dislike Donald Trump even more than they dislike Hillary Clinton.  It's May.  People have had years to form their dislike for Trump and Clinton.  Sasse would be fresh and, no matter how much Trump yelled at him, and no matter how much Clinton ignored him, most people would like him. But enough?  Who knows, but whatever else we can say about it, no independent run has had a better chance than this one would.

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Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016

Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016, Part II