2016 Republicans and Their "Manfred Mann" Syndrome

2016 Republicans and Their “Manfred Mann” Syndrome.  I have spent a good deal of my limited value time pointing out the flaws of Hillary Clinton as a 2016 Presidential candidate.  I remain convinced that she is not Presidential timber and will not be elected; but hey…I did not think Obama would get re-elected either.  Having said that, if you squint your eyes a bit and gaze long enough through the haze, it is possible to see the avenue that could deliver Hillary into the White House.

Reality check: There is 40-45 percent of the electorate that will vote for the Democratic candidate in 2016; there is 40-45 of the electorate that will vote for the Republican.  Assuming there is no Bloomberg, or Trump, inserting themselves into the mix as a third party choice, it is the 10-20 percent of the electorate in the middle that will actually decide the 2016 Presidential election.  Although there is clearly divide and dissension in both parties, I think it fair to say the Democrats are far more disciplined than the Republicans when it comes to coalescing around their ultimate candidate.  They are much less likely to sit at home in a snit and not vote because their candidate did not get the nomination.  They seem to better realize that the game is on and it is time to put aside differences.  If this is true, then the margin of error in this area for Republicans is smaller than that of Democrats; predicting the urban vote in this nation is far easier than predicting the rural vote in this nation.  Both parties are now immersed in pretty intense primary battles.  Both parties are currently divided as to which candidate will best serve their party in the general election.  But once again, Democrats have traditionally demonstrated a better ability to put aside residual resentment once a primary winner is decided.  This puts a much greater value on Republican Party unity than on the Democrats.  The Republicans are much more prone to limit their focus to the primary battle at the exclusion of general election considerations; they tend to acquire tunnel vision until the primary is settled and only then do they begin to address the challenges of the general election.  They are, in the words of Bruce Springsteen and so eloquently presented by Manfred Mann, Blinded by the Light. 

The Democratic Party enjoys some great advantages when you consider the American electoral process.  Most notably, they enjoy a caretaker arrangement with the mainstream media.  Fox News, for all of its fair and balanced bullshit, is not typically fair and balanced.   Look at their nightly lineup and show me the balance.  Every time there is panel of experts, there will be perhaps one liberal and anywhere from 2-4 conservatives.  Factually, they do approach a high level of fairness and balance, strictly on a news basis; but their opinion and analysis is clearly and demonstrably conservative in nature.  That is, until the Presidential debates come up.  Then, in some bizarre type of effort to demonstrate their nobility to fairness and balance, they go overboard to eviscerate the Republican candidates; pitting them against each other and even laying video traps for them to fall into.  The Democrats are either too clever or too frightened to put themselves before the Fox News moderators; you be the judge whether this is to their credit or discredit.  But if you take Fox News out of the equation, there is no other outlet in the mainstream broadcast media that makes any pretense to anything other than Democrat bias.  The NYT and WP continue to be nothing more than rags for Democratic talking points; oftentimes to the point of obvious coordination.  MSNBC, CNN, and all the other cable channels do not approach the viewership level of Fox News; but when combined with each other and the traditional network coverage, they offer a quite adequate, if not superior, balance to the conservative tilt of Fox News.  One needs look no further than the debate moderator at the most recent Democrat debate hugging the candidates once the debate was over or Candy Crowley’s intervention on Obama’s behalf when he faced Romney.  Can you imagine Trump, or any other Republican candidate for that matter, hugging Megyn Kelly after the Republican debate? 

My point is this: Republicans and Democrats alike, whilst in the throes of their primary battles, tend to engage in a Ponzi Scheme state of mind.  They think that all of the arguments that they make against the other party is resonating with the national electorate; that the pure correctness of their logic is so clear that everyone can understand and embrace it.  Newflash: that ain’t so!  Just like the Ponzi Scheme profit comes from pulling others into the Ponzi Scheme, the party primaries’ profit comes from pulling party members into their own party.  There is no real profit; they are Blinded by the Light, because the real profit lies with the aforementioned 10-20 percent of the electorate that resides ideologically between the two national parties and is not really interested in paying attention until we get down to the two major party candidates.  The party self-effacement that occurs in the primary is absolutely stupid and counter-productive, but the Democrats have much less to lose in this regard than the Republicans.  The main stream media will help to lessen the impact of Bernie’s attacks on Hillary; that post-debate hug from Rachel was pretty much instantaneous redemption.  The wounds that the Republicans are inflicting on each other will not be so easily forgotten and will resurface at a later date to haunt them in ways that will not be pleasant.  Having paid little attention to the primary process of both parties, the electorate in the middle, the ones who will ultimately decide this contest, will simply tune in to the post-primary media environment and make their decision based on what they see and hear; some from Fox News and some from all of the others. 

Both parties and their respective candidates would be well-advised to stop directing all of their ammunition at their party faithful and leave a bit for the folks in the middle; but for the Republicans, this is a much greater urgency.  They need to cease their Ponzi Scheme mentality, stop being Blinded by the Light, and begin to focus on the issues and strengths of each candidate; not the weaknesses and foibles that will ultimately be leveraged by the Democratic Party in the general election. The primary process is a very efficient exercise in selecting an ultimate candidate, giving them the opportunity to hone their campaign skills and experience the political battlefield in anticipation of the ultimate conflict.  However, the concept of circular firing squads makes no more sense today than it did 200 years ago and the blind ambition of some candidates is really pretty pathetic to watch.

Through the lens of the Republican Party, it is very difficult to see how Hillary Clinton could be elected President.  Through the lens of the mainstream media directed to the 10-20 of the electorate that will decide the winner, it is quite possible to see how Hillary Clinton might be elected President.  She starts with a solid 40-45 percent and only needs about half of those voters in the middle, who are by and large uninformed voters dependent on what they read and what they hear.  If the Republicans hope to win the White House in 2016, they had better keep in mind that they will also need a solid 40-45 percent behind them to keep the field level.