* * *
With the Iowa caucuses a week away, the front-runner for
the Republican nomination, who leads in all the polls, is Donald Trump.
The consensus candidate of the Democratic Party elite,
Hillary Clinton, has been thrown onto the defensive by a Socialist from Vermont
who seems to want to burn down Wall Street.
Not so long ago, Clinton was pulling down $225,000 a
speech from Goldman Sachs. Today, she sounds like William Jennings Bryan.
Taken together, the candidacies of Trump, Sanders, Ben
Carson and Ted Cruz represent a rejection of the establishment. And, imitation
being the sincerest form of flattery, other Republican campaigns are now
channeling Trump’s.
This then is a rejection election.
Half the nation appears to want the regime overthrown.
And if spring brings the defeat of Sanders and the
triumph of Trump, the fall will feature the angry outsider against the queen of
the liberal establishment. This could be a third seminal election in a century.
In the depths of the Depression in 1932, a Republican Party
that had given us 13 presidents since Lincoln in 1860, and only two Democrats,
was crushed by FDR. From ’32 to ’64, Democrats won seven elections, with the
GOP prevailing but twice - with Eisenhower. And from 1930 to 1980, Democrats
controlled both houses of Congress for 46 of the 50 years.
The second seminal election was 1968, when the racial,
social, cultural and political revolution of the 1960s, and Vietnam War, tore
the Democratic Party asunder, bringing Richard Nixon to power. Seizing his
opportunity, Nixon created a “New Majority” that would win four of five
presidential elections from 1972 through 1988.
What killed the New Majority?
* FOUR YEARS OF GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH.
(*SHRUG*)
* AND SINCE THEN... THE "BUSH" REPUBLICANS.
First, the counterculture of the 1960s captured the arts,
entertainment, education and media to become the dominant culture and convert
much of the nation and most of its elite.
Second, mass immigration from Asia, Africa and especially
Latin America, legal and illegal, changed the ethnic composition of the
country.
* YEP! FEW TALK ABOUT THIS... BUT IT'S KEY!
White Americans, over 90% of the electorate in 1968, are
down to 70% today, and about 60% of the population. And minorities vote 80%
Democratic.
Third, Republicans in power not only failed to roll back
the Great Society but also collaborated in its expansion. Half the U.S. population
today depends on government benefits.
* YEP...
(*SIGH*)
Consider Medicare and Social Security, the largest and
most expensive federal programs, critical to seniors and the elderly who give
Republicans the largest share of their votes. If Republicans start curtailing
and cutting those programs, they will come to know the fate of Barry Goldwater.
Still, whether we have a President Clinton, Trump,
Sanders or Cruz in 2017, America appears about to move in a radically new
direction.
Foreign policy retrenchment seems at hand.
* LET'S HOPE SO!
With Trump and Sanders boasting of having opposed the
Iraq war, and Cruz joining them in opposing nation-building schemes, Americans
will not unite on any new large-scale military intervention. To lead a divided
country into a new war is normally a recipe for political upheaval and party
suicide.
Understandably, the interventionists and neocons at
National Review, Commentary, and the Weekly Standard are fulminating against
Trump.
* DON'T FORGET THE WSJ AND FOX NEWS!
(*WINK*)
For many are the Beltway rice bowls in danger of being
broken today.
* YEP...!!!
Second, Republicans will either bring an end to mass
migration, or the new millions coming in will bring an end to the presidential
aspirations of the Republican Party.
* YEP...
(*SHRUG*)
Third, as Sanders has tabled the issue of income equality
and wage stagnation, and Trump has identified the principal suspect — trade
deals that enrich transnational companies at the cost of American prosperity,
sovereignty and independence — we are almost surely at the end of this present
era of globalization.
* LET US PRAY!
As in the late 19th century, we may be at the onset of a
new nationalism in the United States.
* YEP... HOPEFULLY... THE QUESTION IS... HOW MANY
AMERICANS CONSIDER THEMSELVES... "AMERICANS?" (IN A CULTURAL AND
IDEOLOGICAL SENSE... IN A "TRADITIONAL" SENSE.)
A vast slice of the electorate in both parties today is
angry over no-win wars, wage stagnation and millions continuing to pour across
our bleeding borders from all over the world. And that slice of America holds
both parties responsible for the policies that produced this.
* AND RIGHTLY SO!
Thus, given the deepening divisions within, as well as
between the parties, either an outsider prevails this year, or Balkanization is
coming to America... as it has already come to Europe.
(*SOLEMNLY NODDING*)
For the Sanders, Trump, Cruz and Carson voters, the
status quo seems not only unacceptable, but intolerable.
* AMEN!
And if their candidates and causes do not prevail, they
are probably not going to accept defeat stoically, and go quietly into that
good night, but continue to disrupt the system until it responds.
Unlike previous elections in our time, save perhaps 1980,
this appears to be something of a revolutionary moment.
We could be on the verge of a real leap into the dark.
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