A friend proposed to me that Trump would never win, as Cruz would never win, because, in the end, Republicans will do what Republicans have been doing for 30 years, settling, unenthusiastically, on a choice that seems "safe."
The idea is that one should ignore all the particulars of a race -- candidate personality, agenda, etc. -- and focus on the structural underpinnings which decide most races.
Republicans, he reminded me, aren't all bloggers or angry young men who can just shrug off the possibility of massive upheavals or political chaos. They own businesses. They have mortgages. They have, crucially, children.
All of these things make them more risk-averse in their political choices than they might be if ideology were their primary motivator.
Now I have huge problems with Rubio. For all the talk of his "new ideas," he only seems to have George W. Bush's ideas, which are pretty unpopular now.
His speeches leave me ice-cold -- people talk about the kind words he has for America, but 1, that's easy and cheap, and 2, I don't hear him talking about America as America....
... the Establishment has convinced itself that Marco Rubio is the most "electable" candidate, because they think, wrongly I believe, that all it takes is a Spanish speaker to repeat George W. Bush's basic political prescriptions and the Hispanic vote will flock to us (or at least, say, 40% will).
And because the Establishment, and all of its idea-propagation power (and it has a lot of idea propagation power), has deemed Rubio the "safest" of all candidates, most people, who rely on group consensus for their own decisions, are deeming him the "safest" as well.
And then add into that Republicans' fundamental preference for "safe" over revolutionary or radical and you have a pretty good structuralist case for Marco Rubio's surprise win.
I don't know if I'd go so far as to predict that, though I'm leaning that way. Cruz is getting beaten up bad, now that he's a front runner (or until recently a front runner), and Trump is unable to break out beyond his stalwarts.
Meanwhile, the establishment and its thousand meme-carriers just keep repeating the idea that a relatively untested Senator espousing a version of George W. Bush's largely-unpopular agenda is somehow very "safe" and very "electable." Read more.
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