I have my Facebook friends completely confused when I talk US politics.
One asked:
"Do you think RINOs helped nominate Trump because they thought he was least likely to win against Hillary?"
No I think Reince Priebus and the RINO's were trying to block Ted Cruz and the Freedom Caucus at all costs. They used Trump to block Cruz but then failed to organise someone to topple Trump at the convention via the second or third vote strategy. They tried to manipulate the convention and its rules but botched it.
Their candidates Jeb Bush and John Kasich were no match for Hillary. In simple terms they believed their own propaganda about Bush and Kasich and believed the lefts propaganda about Hillary beating conservatives like Ted Cruz. I doubt they really thought it though with Trump until Jeb Bush dropped out. At the convention they blocked Ted but had no-one else to go with as a candidate from the floor. Romney and several others turned the plotters down. Anyone inclined to accept was clearly un-electable.
So they switched to plan B get Trump elected and controlling him. I don't think they expected Hillary to win. She had lost the rust belt to Trump and the black vote was lost to Facebook history memes of the KKK democrat party connections. The black vote stayed home.
To get Trump to a winning number on the first vote they transferred votes from Bush and Kasich to Trump without telling the delegates or Trump. Ted Cruz had the numbers to force it to a second vote and would have won the second convention vote. That was unacceptable to some at the convention.
Ted Cruz saw Reince Priebus attempt to control of
Trump coming. He also saw the great danger of Hillary winning in the
south east and south west where Trump was weakest but in those areas Ted
Cruz was much stronger so he passed almost all of his campaign
personnel to Trump. He also seems to have passed all his cabinet
picks and maybe his VP pick, Mike Pence, to Trump creating an
unbeatable machine in the election. Kellyanne Conway was added to the mix to keep things organised. She was a Cruz organiser and fund raiser.
Then once back in the Senate Ted Cruz and the Freedom Caucus launched a policy blitz beating Priebus out of the White house. As the battle for Obamacare repeal and replace progressed Priebus was blocking the Freedom caucus and other conservatives from getting to Trump. The RINO's that backed and wanted to control Trump actually do not have any viable alternative policies. They have never articulated policy to achieve Trumps goals or their own. The freedom caucus is clear and public in terms of goals and policy.
Instead of fighting Trump the freedom caucus is trying to find ways to make the results Trump articulated policy work. That is why the wall is a fence in places. They already knew, as do Trump supporters, that the key is enforcement and that the guards need to be able to see through the wall in most places. Priebus recommendations failed repeatedly, while Cruz had got working people and policies in where it mattered. Eventually Reince Priebus had to leave beaten.
Then once back in the Senate Ted Cruz and the Freedom Caucus launched a policy blitz beating Priebus out of the White house. As the battle for Obamacare repeal and replace progressed Priebus was blocking the Freedom caucus and other conservatives from getting to Trump. The RINO's that backed and wanted to control Trump actually do not have any viable alternative policies. They have never articulated policy to achieve Trumps goals or their own. The freedom caucus is clear and public in terms of goals and policy.
Instead of fighting Trump the freedom caucus is trying to find ways to make the results Trump articulated policy work. That is why the wall is a fence in places. They already knew, as do Trump supporters, that the key is enforcement and that the guards need to be able to see through the wall in most places. Priebus recommendations failed repeatedly, while Cruz had got working people and policies in where it mattered. Eventually Reince Priebus had to leave beaten.
So what about Steve Bannon?
Steve Bannon and also Newt Gingrich and
Pat Buchanan were all on board with Trump early. I suspect that they
all sounded out Ted Cruz and a few others in 2014 but Cruz, Rand Paul
and others Libertarian favoring caucus members would not go along
with all of their plans.
Bannon, Gingrich, Buchanan want protectionism to be the banner but a different kind of protectionism than the 1930's and 1960's. All conservatives not just Ted Cruz want real free trade not fake free trade but he is not willing to threaten protectionism to get it. The catch is that without threats of protectionism your going into a trade negotiation empty handed and naked. [No you can't do free trade by simple declaration as the libertarians want to. ] Trump understood the need to threaten protectionism to get true free trade so they backed Trump.
Bannon, Gingrich, Buchanan want protectionism to be the banner but a different kind of protectionism than the 1930's and 1960's. All conservatives not just Ted Cruz want real free trade not fake free trade but he is not willing to threaten protectionism to get it. The catch is that without threats of protectionism your going into a trade negotiation empty handed and naked. [No you can't do free trade by simple declaration as the libertarians want to. ] Trump understood the need to threaten protectionism to get true free trade so they backed Trump.
I think Cruz (and Newt) also understands that some industries are truly obsolete and will never return and that's is a real problem for the percentage of people in those dying fields that genuinely can't be retrained.
The past six months all five men have learned that they will have to converge their positions creating a more nuanced program of policies. If they can't do that they wont get a policies though.
Bannon has not been kicked out of the White house. He has realized that the problem is not the committees in the White house. Attending meetings is point less if you discover that the committee all agrees yet the government genuinely can't do some things even with full control of both houses and the White house.
It needs to be not just take a majority in congress. You must obliterate the Democrats and the RINO's AND 30 million bureaucrats that will not implement policy even when ordered to. (That's a big unreported story).
In that you need a permanent campaign
mode and so Bannon has been redeployed where he can do the most good
at Breitbart.
Bannon is not a libertarian or CATO type conservative so he still
disagrees with Ted Cruz and Rand Paul on things. And Cruz and Paul
differ to. Like me he probably thinks that such things will work but
that we simply can't sell them. This was always Ted's problem you
can't talk complex policy in a pub. Newt has the same problem.
Unintelligible policy wonks might be right but can't win if no-one
understands a word their saying. Trump simply does not try.
In the next months we will see people aligned to both Trump and Cruz running against incumbent RINO's that face re election in 2018. There will also be people running against the most vulnerable Democrats in the Rust belt. The DNC gerrymandered those blue collar districts to hold them half a century ago but with the blue collar vote flipping to Trump they guaranteed they will now loose them.
Watch the southern black districts too. A new generation of black Republicans are running there and the same memes that broke Hillary's grip in 2016 will now switching up to the next stages pointing out that Marx, Lenin, Andrew Jackson and Lyndon B. Johnson were not black and that Frederick Douglass, the first black congressmen and Martin Luther King jr were all Republicans. The democrats are not being helped by black lives matter crowds with marxist banners or KKK actively reminding everyone that they were once called the "the military arm of the Democratic Party". These things are piling up and will drive a disconnect between socialism and black rights. It will happen very fast without warning and the DNC can only afford to loose 10% of the black vote to loose half the south permanently.
In the next months we will see people aligned to both Trump and Cruz running against incumbent RINO's that face re election in 2018. There will also be people running against the most vulnerable Democrats in the Rust belt. The DNC gerrymandered those blue collar districts to hold them half a century ago but with the blue collar vote flipping to Trump they guaranteed they will now loose them.
Watch the southern black districts too. A new generation of black Republicans are running there and the same memes that broke Hillary's grip in 2016 will now switching up to the next stages pointing out that Marx, Lenin, Andrew Jackson and Lyndon B. Johnson were not black and that Frederick Douglass, the first black congressmen and Martin Luther King jr were all Republicans. The democrats are not being helped by black lives matter crowds with marxist banners or KKK actively reminding everyone that they were once called the "the military arm of the Democratic Party". These things are piling up and will drive a disconnect between socialism and black rights. It will happen very fast without warning and the DNC can only afford to loose 10% of the black vote to loose half the south permanently.
The Democrats have lost the old
industrial states on the great lakes. The left is losing its grip on
the black vote. The LGBT block is tiny; vocal but not enough to
matter and Harvey Weinstein has blown up half the feminist vote and
most of the Hollywood lobby. The party may even die!
The RINO's, called the Tuesday group in congress, are a policy free zone. Out of ideas. They are pro-military and pro-police but left of center or clueless on everything else. They will face conservatives in their primaries. They will be forced to shift or loose well before November 2018.
We will get President Crump. Policy Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, etc signed into law by Trump to achieve his agenda because there is no other way.
PS technically everyone's kicked out of the White house, not just Bannon, because their doing maintenance. No one is reporting where the National Security Council meetings are being held while they rip the wiretaps out of the Oval office.
