Last Night’s Republican Debate

I am a football fan. One of the great things about football is that when you turn on a football game, you see a football game. It is played like a football game and reported like a football game. Last night I turned on the Republican debate. I am not exactly sure what I saw. I am a Hugh Hewitt fan. He was there, sitting in a special chair. I believe he had less talking time than most of the candidates. I guess that’s okay–the candidates were the ones having the debate, but why was he there? Also, why was the debate reported as if it were a football game. It’s not a football game–it’s supposed to be a serious discussion to help voters determine who they want to run for President. Or is it?

Now I am going into some tall grass. In August, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the establishment Republican’s strategy to make sure Jeb Bush was the party’s nominee. Basically, the strategy was to split the conservative vote in every early primary state so that Jeb Bush would win, even without a plurality of votes. If you look at the candidates, the theory cannot easily be dismissed. Marco Rubio will take Florida, Ted Cruz will take Texas, Lindsey Graham will take South Carolina, etc. Therefore, by the time you get to the more liberal Republican states, no conservative will have enough votes to challenge Jeb Bush.

In July I posted an article by Mark Jones which explained a new rule by the GOP:

Any state, other than the four exempt states already mentioned, that holds a Primary the first two weeks of the month will be forced to allocate those delegate on a proportional basis.  This means that if 5, or even 15, candidates are on the ballot, each candidate will receive a percentage of our delegates commensurate with the percentage of the vote they receive.This may sounds like a fair process on the surface, but as usual, there is more to the story.  The RNC’s penalty will mean that a number of very conservative states,with high delegate counts like Texas, Virginia, and North Carolina, that intend to hold early Primaries, will be forced to divide their delegates among multiple candidates.  In fact, 10 of 15 Southern states plan to hold their Primaries in this window. Conservative stalwarts like Colorado and Utah also plan to hold Primaries in this window.  It is highly unlikely any candidate will emerge from these conservative states with enough delegates to establish a significant lead or gain momentum in the race to be the Republican nominee before March 14.

The purpose of the debate (in the mind of the establishment GOP) is to divide the support among the conservative candidates. The media tends liberal, so they are going to play along so that the Republicans put forth a weak candidate. Unless the conservatives running for President agree among themselves on who gets out of the race and who remains in the race, we are going to have Jeb Bush as a candidate. I can assure you his candidacy will result in a Democrat President. The success of Donald Trump has thrown a bit of a wrench into the establishment plan, but I seriously doubt that a majority of Americans support a Trump presidency.

There are some good conservative Republican candidates. If nothing else, the assembled people on the state would make an amazing Presidential cabinet. The problem is finding a conservative leader. I am sure Jeb Bush is an intelligent and very nice man–I just don’t want to see him as the Republican candidate–I don’t think he can win.