Why the Conventional Wisdom Has Been All Wrong This Election Season

Loading

VDH:

The current presidential campaign is blowing up lots of political myths.

For years, the conventional lament was that the “wrong” Bush had run for president in 2000. George W. Bush was supposedly tongue-tied. He was said to be polarizing. He was derided as too much the twangy, conservative Texas Christian.

If only his younger, softer-spoken brother, then–Florida governor Jeb Bush, had run instead!

So the myth went.

Jeb was said to be far more bipartisan and judicious. Jeb, not W., was deemed by many to be the more likable and more competent descendent of their father, former president George H. W. Bush.

The 2015 debates now remind us how false that comparison was. W. may have been more controversial, but he was decisive, unshakeable, charismatic, and connected with crowds in a way the bookish, distracted, and “low-energy” Jeb has not been so far.

For four months, pundits wrote off the flamboyant Donald Trump for his brash name-calling, political inexperience, bombast, over-the-top narcissism — and even his wild, dyed, combed-over hair. But the wheeler-dealer Trump only rose in the polls each time pundits wrote his epitaph.

Why? Trump’s candidacy was largely created by underestimated popular outrage over the federal government’s politically motivated refusal to enforce immigration law. That issue divides elites, who are not so much affected by their own open-borders advocacy, from the middle classes, who certainly are.

Trump saw that angry divide and so far has brilliantly capitalized on it. Illegal immigration sent the Trump candidacy from nowhere to front-runner status — in much the same way that uncontrolled borders have all but imploded the once-popular German chancellor Angela Merkel.

After Barack Obama’s two successful presidential elections, liberal and supposedly far more inclusive Democrats declared themselves the only party that looks like the new multiracial America. Republicans, in contrast, were written off as mostly old white fogies — has-beens bitterly clinging to their fading prior privilege.

The campaign has exploded that myth too. The Republican field is far more diverse, although the candidates see their ethnicity as incidental rather than essential, in bumper-sticker fashion, to their personas. The candidates include the young (44-year-old Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Marco Rubio), the ethnically diverse (Cruz, Jindal, Rubio, and Ben Carson), and successful outsiders who do not have political backgrounds (Carson, Trump, and Carly Fiorina).

#share#In contrast, the Democratic candidates appear far older, are all white, and are all political has-beens. Multimillionaire Hillary Clinton alone boasts of her female status (in a way her Republican counterpart, Fiorina, does not). But Hillary is neither young nor a fresh outsider. She represents half of a tired Clinton dynasty, whose old-boy network of Wall Street/Washington-insider, big-money politics goes back well into the last century.

President Obama polls poorly, especially among conservatives. His team often hints that racism is the culprit. But the meteoric candidacy of Carson, an arch-conservative African American who in some states is outpolling front-runner Trump, illustrates that Obama’s divisive left-wing agendas, along with his failed economic and foreign policies, are what finally turned off over half the country — not his race.

Media bias is usually dismissed as the whine of conservative crybabies. But anyone who saw last week’s CNBC debate noticed the embarrassing difference between the interviewers’ treatment of Republicans and how CNN had conducted its Democratic debate earlier last month.

Suddenly, an emboldened media gave up all pretense of objectivity in a brash way not seen since 2012, when presidential-debate moderator Candy Crowley jumped in to help Obama’s floundering defense after Romney had criticized the administration’s handling of the Benghazi attack.

Hostile CNBC moderators grilled Republicans with “gotcha” questions along the lines of, “How long have you been beating your wife?” In contrast, CNN moderators in the Democratic debate created a love fest between front-runners Clinton and Bernie Sanders — and mostly ignored the back-of-the-pack candidates

Read more

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
3 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Perhaps the past 7 years of liberal failure has opened the eyes of some bleeding-hearts, showing them the damage that can be done by putting all your money on “Hope and Change”… and nothing more, and this will completely upend what anyone believes will happen in 2016. I don’t know.

But, then again, I am more amazed every day at the number of people who still support Hillary, still excuse the video lie and close a blind eye to her money-grubbing tendencies (at the expense of national interests).

What passes for ”conventional wisdom” is now coming from a large group of pundits who have too much skin in the game. They NEED a certain outcome (Bush or Hillary.)
Because of that, they skew their writings.
Because of that, they only report on polls that back up their hopes.
But it’s all OK.
Way back in Los Angeles many years ago Mayor Tom Bradley tried to get elected as Governor of California.
The polls consistently found Tom Bradley in the lead.
But he lost by way over the margin of error in the polls.
His loss was termed, ”the Bradley Effect,” because people claimed they were voting for the black mayor but then didn’t.
Look at Kentucky this recent election.
The TEA Party is almost as looked down upon as being considered ”racist.”
While people in CA tried to not look racist by SAYING they were voting for Bradley, today, in Kentucky people were avoiding admitting they support the TEA Party candidates.
So, the pollsters were very surprised.
First, pundits demonized the TEA Party, then pundits acted surprised when the voters didn’t.

Hey MSM its the economy caused by Obama care, stick a fork in us we are done.
The aging population no longer wants a nanny you ninnies. We have finally COME to the point where we have figured out, THEY SUCK. We are fascinated by a guy running for office that really says take your PC liberal silencing tactics and shove them.
Today Harry Reed Blocked Kates Law, can we put him back on the exercise machine? 1 creepy old dem would rather allow a criminal aliens loose than protect young women walking along with daddy from getting shot by a 5 time illegal felon. Jeeze I hope his voters back home are proud of their rep.