In reference to the whitehouse.gov petition I started a week ago, we are now up to a grand total of … 15.
In 3 weeks or so I’ll be celebrating the least successful petition on whitehouse.gov, I suspect. Maybe my Arts Editor will make a celebratory poster.
Jeb Bush, one of the remaining contenders for the GOP Presidential nomination, has had a notoriously unsuccessful campaign, despite having the most success – by far – of the GOP pack of candidates, as documented in this New York Times article, which shows that he and his allied groups having raised $155 million, while his closest challenger in this category, Senator Cruz, is at $89.9 million. (An interesting substory is that Cruz has outraised Bush in terms of personal fundraising, while Bush’s allied groups have crushed Cruz’s allied groups. However, there are too many unknown variables to really be worth pursuing in this post.)
As my Arts Editor and I discussed the post on Senator’s Cruz campaign strategy, it occurred to me there’s a partial explanation for Jeb’s futility in Cruz’s success – so far. But let’s start with former President Bush – who supported him?
One memorable group was the evangelicals. Remember the lady who was convinced that God had picked George to be President, and said so in a TV interview?
So how important are the evangelicals in the GOP? According to this Gallup poll, quite:
And how did Jeb’s brother do with the evangelicals? They loved him, as this article, “The Real Reasons Evangelicals Love Bush,” from Christianity Today illustrates:
Yet while some evangelicals have soured on Bush, polls show the vast majority of evangelicals love him. Why?
It’s often said that they like him because he’s “one of them” and uses religious language, and that’s true–but only scratches the surface. Two new books and a new film on Bush and faith help us to see the real roots of his appeal. All three are campaign-style hagiographies but give a window into the spiritual sources of the Bush-evangelical connection: persecution, transformation, calling, and clarity.
So when Cruz swept in with an explicitly faith-based approach to the campaign, Jeb was deprived of a major group’s support enjoyed by his brother – a good 1/3 of the GOP may have ignored him in favor of the more familiar Cruz. (Similarly, former Senator Rick Santorum lost out in the same way. He won Iowa – barely – in 2012 by his popularity amongst the highly conservative and the evangelicals, while this year he polled 1% – and has since dropped out of the race, throwing his support to … Senator Cruz.)
As a former governor, Jeb comes under suspicion from many in the GOP, and as the support of many large contributors became known, he’s spattered with the mud of being part of the establishment and a possible puppet of Big Money. Recall that governmental experience is now considered a negative by the GOP these days; Jeb has it in spades.
Jeb’s bad luck comes in not realizing that the GOP is changing – but it’s not moving towards the mainstream, as one might expect from a pendulum swing, but rather ever more extreme as the moderates continue to move away from the GOP, and those who used to be too extreme for the GOP now find it more and more congenial. Whether this is a result of a takeover of the GOP, or just an unconscious slide caused by the neverending cause of purity, I’m not entirely sure, but we seem to be seeing the end of the “wait your turn” queue in GOP nomination politics, the queue that gave us Bush I, Bob Dole, Bush II, and Romney.
Brash, untried newbies such as Rubio and Cruz are butting in ahead of Bush III, Perry, Santorum, and they’ve done so by appealing to the sensibilities (if I may be so rash as to use such a word) of the newer members of the GOP – such a litany is unnecessary to repeat here, as many other commentators have pointed it out.
The winner of the GOP nomination is not clear, but the Presidential race may boil down to experience – Sanders and Clinton have it by the shovelful – vs novelty – either a businessman with zero experience, or an untried, unaccomplished Senator are the three (3) favorites in Trump, Cruz, and Rubio. In crude terms, is America still a meritocracy (which requires the voters be knowledgeable, in the truest sense of the word)? Or will we revert to tribalism, voting for the person who’s part of our group and enunciates our own prejudices with impunity?
The first primary is over, and a few barnacles have finally shaken loose (Santorum, Huckabee, Rand Paul, O’Malley) and been lost to the deep. No doubt the commentary has been quite prolix, with the fallout eliciting joy in some quarters, consternation in others.
I haven’t bothered to read the commentaries, so I don’t know if anyone has had any similar thoughts on the matter of the Cruz campaign overall. Let’s take a few facts and put them together:
In Senator Cruz we have a man who’s managed to get his name and, well, reputation onto the national scene, first through winning his seat, and then engaging in conduct well outside the mainstream for a Senator. He doesn’t appear to work on bills, and I’ve never seen a report of him reaching across the aisle; the mainstream, seasoned political reporter finds his conduct mystifying, repellent, and certainly opaque.
But to the conservative mind of a certain bent, they may see a Senator, but without the attributes associated with abhorrency: compromise, participation, even acknowledgement of the traditions of government. Without dirtying his hands, in those eyes, he’s managed to become a major player on the stage. He has displayed his qualifications, which have nothing to do with honest achievement, but rather with a purity of spirit and commitment to the values referenced by these memes.1 Essentially, he has managed to place himself in the middle of national politics without playing the game by its normal rules, and not only in the middle, but in what, at this juncture, appears to be a commanding position.
I have to wonder how long Ted Cruz has been planning this strategy.
And then there’s the ultimate goal. Is he such an arrogant man that he believes the Presidency is within his grasp, that he can achieve that goal? But why? Simply because it’s there? Or are there higher goals in place?
“I’m a Christian first, American second, conservative third and Republican fourth[.]”
Rumor has it that his father is a Dominionist, so one naturally wonders about the son. But does he really think he can unite the conservatives? Libertarians are not necessarily religious, and sometimes view religion with great suspicion; there’s little to keep them from voting Democrat if they can’t stomach the conservative candidate. Trump conservatives are reportedly new to politics; if their man doesn’t win the nomination, we may hear no more from them, even on Voting Day. Or he may be positioning himself for a long term leadership position in the conservative party.
Or we could simply take him at his word: a rock solid belief that his religious convictions are right; that religious freedoms are under attack; that God is calling him to be a leader in this mold. Having the glaring examples of theocracies staring at us in other countries, as well as European history, I cannot help but shiver at such a mindset; I do hope that Americans remember their history.
1Since we would typically come to such conclusions through judging his works, of which he has none, it is appropriate to insert the word alleged somewhere in that sentence.
My correspondent is a better reader than I concerning Flint:
First sentence of the last paragraph of the Wikipedia article you cited says: “An emergency manager, formerly emergency financial manager, is an official appointed by the Governor to take control of a local government under a financial emergency.”
I also ran across this tidbit:
Local governments were required to pay the emergency manager.
As if the financial stress were not great enough.
A reader’s reply regarding Flint:
Sounds like there are several, ah, different views on who was really responsible for the decision. But I believe, and feel free to correct, that all of the emergency managers were appointed by the governor.
According to Wikipedia:
When the Referendum petitions were approved by the Michigan State Board of Canvassers on August 8, 2012 under orders from the Michigan Supreme Court, PA 4 was suspended and the previous version, PA 72, was reinstated.[2] All current EM except for Michael Brown in Flint were reappointed as EFM by the Local Emergency Financial Assistance Loan Board. Brown was previously a Flint City employee in the past five years and was not eligible under PA 72 to be an EFM.[3] The Sugar Law Center filed to challenge PA 4 and PA 72. PA 4 was repealed by Michigan voters in the 2012 general election,[4] and the Michigan Legislature subsequently passed Public Act 436 of 2012 to replace the revived Public Act 72.[5]
Whether or not all of them were appointed through this board is unclear from that article, and I’m a little late in the evening to pursue this further. The board’s composition?
The Local Emergency Financial Assistance Loan Board (ELB) is ex officio formed board consisting of the State Treasurer of Michigan, director of licensing and regulatory affairs and the Director of Technology, Management and Budget as members or their respective designees.[27] The Board selects the emergency manager and chooses between the emergency manager’s cost cutting plan and the local unit board’s alternative plan.[5] The ELB approves all major financial decisions over $10,000 while a municipality is under emergency management, including transfers of publicly owned assets.
No doubt the governor has some influence.
Treehugger‘s Derek Markham reports on France’s latest roadway accessory: solar panels on the road surface:
… the new Wattway system doesn’t replace the road itself or require removal of road surfaces, but instead is designed to be glued onto the top of existing pavement. The Wattway system is also built in layers of materials “that ensure resistance and tire grip,” and is just 7 mm thick, which is radically different from that other design that uses thick glass panels (and which is also claimed to include LED lights and ‘smart’ technology, which increases the complexity and cost of the moose-friendly solar tiles).
While the techie part of me thinks this is cool, the engineering part is giving serious thought to the chronic maintenance costs these things may face…
A reader comments on Flint:
I just read the details of the actual cause of the lead poisoning in Flint. It’s a bit more subtle than most people would have gleaned from the popular press, but just as damning nonetheless.
It turns out the water from the river is more corrosive in just the wrong way so as to leach/dissolve the layers of minerals which have been deposited over the many years on the inside of the old pipes used in the water system. Those pipes were made of lead, a very common thing at the time. With an interior coating of things like manganese, iron or other salts which occur naturally in most water, those pipes are perfectly safe (they were not when first installed, of course, but we did not know better at the time).
Apparently the “cheaper” river water was a bad choice versus the more “expensive” lake water they had been using. The decision was made under a series of state-appointed city managers who were all about Republican-driven cost savings. The decision was made more than a year ago, or thereabouts. The problem was discovered by a third party 5 to 6 months ago (who knows when the water utility people spotted it — they’ve probably been threatened to silence). But the Republican leadership, from city appointees up to the governor himself were all busy denying and covering it up.
There’s no simple solution now. It’ll take years to naturally re-coat the interior of those pipes. Digging them up and replacing them is horrendously expensive. They’ve switched back to lake water, which stops the problem from getting worse, but the damage is already done. They may have saved a few dollars on the front end but they’ve lost millions on the back. Typical stupid right-wing planning.
Or at least, quarterly thinking – that is, gotta keep the shareholders happy each quarter. Governor Snyder has a background in the private sector, according to Wikipedia:
From 2005 to 2007, Snyder served as the chairman of the board of Gateway, Inc., based in Irvine, California. Prior to his election as governor, he was chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and co-founder of Ardesta LLC, a venture capital firm based out of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Which is merely an observation, not a real accusation. Still, the executive office must set the tone, to some extent, throughout the executive arm – especially when the governor is in his second term.
That said, here are the backgrounds of the relevant Flint Emergency Managers:
Darnell Earley: City Administrator and Municipal Administrator, with a Masters of same from Westsern Michigan University. He’s named in a class action lawsuit, but claims it wasn’t his decision; a while ago he claimed it was not foreseeable. I don’t know if that’s still his assertion.
Michael Brown: His career appears to be in various city administration positions. He preceded Earley.
So those two appear to have respectable careers in city administration. Ed Kurtz is harder to track down. In his support, The Daily Beast reports,
In a civil deposition not reported until now, Ambrose testified under oath that emergency manager Kurtz considered a proposal to use the Flint River, discussed the option with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and then rejected it.
In 2014, Ambrose was deposed in a civil lawsuit brought by retired Flint municipal workers against the state over severe cuts to their health care benefits. Attorney Alec Gibbs questioned Ambrose about the water decision (a year before Flint learned it was being poisoned). …
Howard Croft, the former director of public works for Flint who resigned in November 2015, asserted more than four months ago in a videotaped interview with the ACLU of Michigan that the decision to use the dangerously corrosive river came directly from the Snyder administration.
In the interview, Croft said that the decision to use the river was a financial one, with a review that “went up through the state.”“All the way to the governor’s office?” the ACLU of Michigan asked him.
“All the way to the governor’s office,” Croft replied.
