How To Damage Trump

Something I just posted in a thread at National Review:

Here are a few of the points I'd like to see made against Trump in tonight's debate (and others):

- No other Republican candidate has as close a relationship with the Clintons as Trump does. The Clinton campaign would be able to run ads featuring Trump's previous endorsements of Clinton. There's general agreement among Republicans, including Trump's supporters and self-identified liberals and moderates, that we want to defeat Clinton. Trump's lengthy and explicit record of supporting the Clintons would make him uniquely weak as a Republican nominee.

- Nobody has worse general election numbers than Trump. Rubio would be the best one to highlight this point, since his numbers are among the best. (Carson has some good numbers as well, sometimes even better than Rubio's, but he's not as good of a communicator and has shown so little interest in going after Trump, so Rubio would be better at bringing up this issue.)

- Trump is remarkably self-contradictory. Cruz could use Trump's flip-flops on whether Cruz is eligible for the presidency as an example, then cite other examples. I'd suggest making the criticism as forceful as possible, such as by saying that Trump is the most self-contradictory candidate to ever run for the presidency. In addition to "self-contradictory", I'd use the term "unstable". That has broader implications, and it's an accurate description of Trump.

- Mention at least twice (to make sure it gets remembered) that Trump openly boasts about committing adultery with many women. That's another way in which Trump is uniquely corrupt. As bad as Bill Clinton is, at least he didn't brag about his adulteries in a book he published. Bringing up this aspect of Trump's character should be especially helpful in states with large religious populations, like South Carolina and other states coming up soon. People want to like the president at a personal level, probably more so than with any other office in our nation. Trust is important. How much will people trust somebody who publishes a book bragging about damaging so many lives through adultery? (I'd recommend that the people criticizing Trump even refer to how he "destroyed homes", "wrecked lives", "ruined marriages", etc.)

The Overreaction To Rubio's Debate Stumble

Jim Geraghty has a good assessment of Rubio's poor handling of an exchange with Christie in last night's debate. Rubio hurt himself, but not much. His critics are exaggerating the significance of it.

He's performed well in every debate, including the large majority of last night's debate. Trump and Carson frequently commit mistakes far worse than Rubio's. Trump loses every debate, in the sense of being the worst performer of all, and he repeats himself far more than Rubio does and with far less substance. But Trump is often judged by a different standard. He's expected to cross a low bar, while somebody like Rubio is expected to cross one that's much higher. If Trump's irrational supporters are thought to be likely to keep supporting him after his performance in a debate, then his performance is treated like a success. As if Trump's irrational supporters set the standard for him, while somebody like Rubio has to meet a standard far higher. What we ought to be doing is judging all of these candidates by the same standard. Trump has flunked out every time, whereas Rubio has had some occasional bad moments (with last night's being the worst) while usually performing at the level of something like a B or B+. There were multiple segments in last night's debate in which Trump performed worse than Rubio did in his exchange with Christie (e.g., the segment on eminent domain, Trump's comments on healthcare), but Rubio gets a more negative response from analysts and worse media coverage. Similarly, Rubio can have more good moments than other candidates (e.g., his comments on abortion) and a better debate overall, yet get less of a positive response.

I think Cruz had the best performance last night. He'd be a significantly better candidate if he would always conduct himself that way.

Voters Are More Guilty Than The Establishment

Here's something I recently wrote in an email, in case anybody would find it helpful. I'm responding to an article by Ben Shapiro :

Shapiro's argument doesn't make much sense. There are major obstacles to Trump's winning the nomination, which Shapiro doesn't even mention. His negative numbers among Republicans are unusually high, and his negatives are even worse outside of the party. When it's still 2015, there's still a double-digit number of candidates running, and most of the negative ads against Trump haven't even started airing yet, his consistently getting in the twenties or thirties in polls doesn't amount to much.

The phrase "the establishment" is vague and defined and redefined in so many ways. If everybody would stop using the term, I think we'd be better off for it. The phrase didn't have much value to begin with, and it's now been overused to an absurd degree.

Is Karl Rove part of the establishment? He recently told Michael Medved that he includes Cruz among the candidates he considers to have the stature of a president. He didn't include Trump. What about the National Review writers who have been most vocal in opposing Trump? I've repeatedly seen them make positive comments about Cruz and comment on how he's an acceptable choice and better than Trump. Shapiro's claim that Cruz is the candidate the establishment is most opposed to strikes me as ridiculous. They'd prefer Cruz to Trump.

And given how conservative Rubio is, I'd say that the widespread support for him among people often labeled as part of the establishment goes a long way in demonstrating that the establishment isn't opposed to conservatism. Their problem with candidates like Trump and Carson (and Cruz to a lesser extent) isn't that they're conservative. (As if Trump is too conservative for them.) Rather, they're concerned about electability. And they should be. Shame on the people who either aren't concerned about it or are far less concerned than they ought to be.

There are some problems with many of the people who are often labeled as part of the establishment. But the problems are often exaggerated, and a lot of their critics have some problems of their own.

Shapiro's comments about talk radio are misleading. He writes:

"Members of Republican media are now attacking others in Republican media who don’t see Trump as the gravest threat to the Republican Party or the republic; they bash Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin for focusing in on the left and the media, rather than on stopping Trump."

The problem critics see with people like Limbaugh and Levin isn't that they "don’t see Trump as the gravest threat to the Republican Party or the republic" and "focus in on the left and the media". Rather, the problem is along the lines of what Guy Benson describes in his article I recently linked on Triablogue.

Then there's Shapiro's failure to criticize the people most responsible for choosing our candidates and the people most responsible for making poor choices in the past: the voters. Who chose McCain and Romney? Voters made the choice more than anybody else. And they rejected candidates like Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson, Tim Pawlenty, and Rick Perry in the process. I can see rejecting some of them. But choosing Romney over Pawlenty was a mistake. That wasn't the establishment's mistake. It was the mistake of the voters, and talk radio and other critics of the establishment were at the forefront of making that mistake happen. They were focused on Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and other weaker candidates while they gave Pawlenty almost no support. They rejected Rick Perry for far less significant problems than the ones many of them are willing to overlook in Trump.

For a party that puts so much emphasis on personal responsibility, Republicans spend a remarkable amount of time blaming a vague establishment and not much time holding the voters responsible for their mistakes.

The Weaknesses Of Cruz And Carson

Two recent posts at National Review are good at summing up some of the biggest weaknesses of Ted Cruz and Ben Carson. And notice the irrational responses by supporters of Cruz, Carson, and Trump in the comments sections of both threads. They unwittingly underscore the point that Rubio should be the nominee. As you hear from Rubio's critics in online forums, on talk radio, etc., keep in mind that he has a 94% rating from the Heritage Foundation and 98% from the American Conservative Union.

Carson's liabilities

I'll say a few things about Ben Carson. To begin with, if it was a choice between Trump and Carson in the primaries, I'd vote for Carson in a heartbeat. Likewise, it if was a choice between Hillary and Carson in the general, I'd vote for Carson in a heartbeat. 

I don't know quite how to account for Carson's popularity. I think it's partly due to some conservative voters who seek a protest candidate, and he's more acceptable than Trump. 

Thus far there's been a disconnect between his popularity and his debate performances. There's an ironic sense in which Carson is intellectually lazy–something he shares in common with Trump. "Ironic," I say, because he's very intellectually disciplined when it comes to neurology. But outside his specialization, Carson seems to think his personal experience of triumph over adversity equips him with all he really needs to know to make domestic and foreign policy judgments.

One reason that hasn't hurt him thus far may be that his reputation precedes him. He's been a regular on the 700 Club. So I'm guessing he had a following even before he threw his hat into the ring. And it's the kind of following that's normally invisible to pundits, because they don't move in the same circles or watch the same media. 

Likewise, there's a movie about him–the kind of inspirational movie that's family viewing for a certain Christian audience. Here's a review: 

http://jamesbradfordpate.blogspot.com/2015/11/movie-write-up-gifted-hands-ben-carson.html

All this flies under the radar of the pundits.

One of Carson's potential political liabilities is that his so much of his popularity is based on personal appeal and his inspirational biography. That means he has nothing to fall back on if his reputation is tarnished. 

In that respect, one problem is his use of ghostwriters who embellished his record. In addition, there's evidence that he himself has a weakness for flattering tall tales: 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/eidos/2015/11/what-ben-carson-and-the-west-point-story-tells-us/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/eidos/2015/11/god-dr-carson-and-yale-the-failure-of-cmc/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/eidos/2015/11/ben-carson-and-why-your-church-must-be-on-guard-from-the-cmc/

In addition, he used to be pro-abortion:

http://frederica.com/writings/dr-ben-carson-and-the-vote-know-ad.html

One would like to know when and why he supposedly become prolife. 

Actually, his (former?) pro-abortion position is consistent with his Seventh-Day Adventist faith. Although it has a conservative reputation, it takes a very liberal position on abortion. And not just on paper. SDA hospitals routinely perform elective/theraputic abortions: 

https://www.adventist.org/en/information/official-statements/guidelines/article/go/0/abortion/

http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2011/01/24/adventists-and-abortion/22

http://religiousliberty.tv/unsurpassable-worth-tony-brandons-sermon-abortion-adventist-hospitals-transcribed.html

In that respect, it's not surprising that he used to be pro-abortion. One wonders how firm his current prolife posture actually is.

Then there's his reported position on the infamous Terri Schiavo case:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/13/ben-carson-says-the-terri-schiavo-case-was-much-ado-about-nothing/

He has a bad habit of attempting to wing it on very serious issues. 

The State Of The Republican Presidential Race

Here's something I just posted on Facebook about what Republicans should make of the four frontrunners in the Republican presidential campaign.

Poor Benjamin's Almanack

Dr. Ben Carson is full of plain-spoken wisdom and common sense. For example, see this article.

(I'm not necessarily suggesting this means he'd make for a good president though. I think that remains to be seen.)

#IAmAChristian

(Source)

Carson had a point

"To This Secular Muslim, Ben Carson Had a Point"