The Republican Establishment's Two-Front War

The way Limbaugh analyzes it, The Establishment is fighting two wars at once. And they are probably going to lose one or the other, maybe both.  (Reince should have an updated resume.)

The Party regulars (elected RINOs) and camp-followers such as consultants, congressional staffers, money-takers like the Chamber of Commerce membership, accountants and lawyers who love the IRS Code and the Regulatory State--you know the bunch--are fighting against Ted Cruz.

On the other front, the same bunch is fighting The Donald.

They are two very different fights.

Ted Cruz is the real enemy to these people.  Ted Cruz will fight them tooth and nail, as he has proven on many occasions.  He will call them out for what they are:  whores and liars, just like former congressman Mark Neumann did (and still does; just ask him.)  Ted Cruz is an existential threat to everything they are.  (To me, that makes him the very best choice.  YMMV.)


...they hate Cruz.  They despise Cruz because they're afraid of Ted Cruz.  At the Republican Party conservatism is an outlier.  Conservatism is something to make fun of or be afraid of.  Conservatism is something that you only make a pretension of accepting, but in the inner sanctum where the people that run the show really are, you're not gonna find any real conservatives in there.  They're gonna be laughed at and mocked and manipulated or what have you.  And Cruz, they can't manipulate him, they can't, as the vernacular is, do deals with him.  He's doctrinaire.  He believes it.  He's persuasive with it.  He can articulate it.  And it's just scares the heck out of 'em, because in both things are at stake here, in a sense.  

Ted Cruz would demonstrate the irrelevance of the Republican Party by winning. ...

On the other hand, Trump is vilified NOT because he is an existential threat, but because he is not One of Them.  Trump does not want, and does not need, The Machine.  (That makes him an interim guy; he will break things, but not go to war with The Left.   That will have to wait for another day and perhaps another Opposition Party.        

...there is a natural enmity to outsiders, to intruders.  And when an outsider or intruder gets in, gets a nose under the tent and starts making noise, then the establishment lifelong members start caucusing together to figure out how they can get rid of this intruder who might just shake everything up.  When it comes time to get rid of the intruder all they know to do is what they've always done.  They go to their playbook.  Whatever party politics playbooks there are, they go to them. 

And so when you hear a lifelong political professional, consultant, fundraiser, donor, whoever, when you say, you hear them say, "Well, you know, Trump, he doesn't have a ground game.  I mean, come on, you can't win without a ground game. You can't just fly in and do speeches. Even if 30,000 people show up, you gotta have a ground game."  They're trying to make themselves feel less frightened.  Because what's really going on is the potential here that everything so many people have relied on that's made them rich, that's made them famous, that's given them power, is on the verge of being destroyed and turned upside down. ...

Nobody can make the case that The Donald is a conservative.  He's not.

On the other hand, nobody can make the case that Cruz is an Establishment Guy.  He's not.

So.  Why does Cruz get all that money from small donors?  Why does The Donald draw yuuuuge crowds?

Because both of them spit on The Republican Establishment.

And that, my friends, is what Limbaugh headlined it with:

...people, Republican voters and donors, look at all this, and they think there's a genuine crisis happening in this country, a genuine crisis that threatens the very existence of this country as founded. 

They don't see any opposition to it in the Republican Party.  They see opposition to it pooh-poohed, laughed at, made fun of.  To them, the people who make this country work, there's a genuine crisis for their kids and their grandkids.  So when it comes to being loyal to conservatism or libertarianism or whatever, that's of secondary importance to stopping what's happening. Which, translated, is opposition to the Democrat Party, opposition to the American left, opposition to liberalism, communism, Alinskyism, whatever you want to call it.

It's opposition to Hillary Clinton, opposition to Bernie Sanders. That is what is motivating, energizing, and inspiring this.  And that is not recognized, it's not acknowledged, it's not even given any respect at many areas in the Republican Party.  So what are people gonna do?  They're not gonna say, "You know what? I must make sure that conservatism does not get watered down in whatever..." It's way beyond that now.  Ninety-four million Americans are not working.  The border is wide open.  Floods of unskilled, uneducated, non-English speaking people are arriving here monthly, and they will work for diddly-squat or go on the welfare state rolls.

In either case, they're squeezing the people in this country who are working, limiting their opportunity for wage increases, career expansion, and forcing them to pay tax increases necessary to fund an ever-expanding welfare state.  They don't want to be part of it.  To them, it's not about compassion.  The Constitution's not a suicide pact to them.  They love the country. They want it to survive. They don't want it being destroyed. They don't want it tampered with.

They don't want it transformed. They have thought for eight years that there was an opposition party joining them in this effort and they haven't seen it.  Now, we've got this internecine fight going on over who's a real conservative and who isn't, and to me all this is so much bigger than that.  It's momentous. It is profound...

This is not hard, folks.  Add up the Cruz and Trump RCP poll-numbers and they total about 54%.  ALL THE REST have a combined total of about 36%.

Keep the popcorn handy, and buy more ammo!!

HT:  Althouse (!!)