The Counter-Insurgency That Never Was

If it is not abundantly obvious by now, the GOP Establishment is in a world of hurt. We're talking about sprained ACLs in both knees kind of hurt. This could be special kind of hurt. The Establishment is currently at the end of a lifeline with the rope about to be cut as the candidacies of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz surging through the Republican base. 

In short, the RNC has failed its party, and Reince Priebus' lack of leadership keeps the scatter-shot GOP field in a continued state of mayhem. The Establishment candidates have shown no sustained signs of life or true, long-term viability through two primary nights, and they are receiving no support or guidance from the national party. This is, of course, based on the key assumption here that what's good for the Establishment is good for the RNC and vice-versa.

Though we have to ask some key questions. Will an anger-based anti-establishment sentiment be the new normal for the GOP? Is the 'mainstream platform' of the party finally found itself completely out of touch with its base? Is there an ability for the national party to adapt? Is there a will to adapt? 

The Republican insurgency averages about 51% of the national vote with the now remaining four candidates (to include three Establishment candidates) fighting and clawing for some standing. To be fair, anything is still very possible and no single candidate has a true stranglehold on the path to the nomination. Yet, to quote Bane in the Dark Knight Rises, do you feel like you're in control? The mainstream of the party clearly isn't. Traditional things like money and television ad campaigns just aren't amounting to what they used to.

Looking back through the numbers (source: NPR), how frightened must the Establishment be? Traditional campaigning is not working, at least not in Iowa or New Hampshire. Just pointing toward New Hampshire, the four establishment candidates combined for 45% of the vote with total advertising running them an aggregate $2,606 per vote. In contrast, Trump and Cruz combined for 47% of the vote while spending an aggregate $42 per vote. 

Yes, you read that correctly. 

I would love to debate the merits of what that all means, but will possibly leave that to a future post. Right now, I want to focus on the state of the GOP establishment and exactly how much worse it stands to get.

The last week of the Christie campaign and the post-New Hampshire primary exit of the New Jersey governor shook the foundation of this race. Chris Christie arguably has had and may have the most significant impact on the GOP for the entire election cycle. We were very well aware of the Marcomentum that was taking place after the Iowa Caucus; however, a stumble and stall of the Rubio campaign, caused by an assailing Christie at the last GOP debate, changed the questions we asked about the primary. We went from asking if the Establishment can possibly go into cruise control with a surging candidate to wondering if they even have a horse they can back.

Chris Christie, in what has been described as a political murder-suicide, assassinated the Rubio campaign and sent the Establishment cause into a free fall. Christie incorrectly calculated that assailing the rising Rubio would stifle the Senator's progress all while having the impact of setting himself apart from the rest of the Establishment. Instead, he reaped none of the benefits and tossed a softball into the wheelhouse of the GOP insurgency, who knocked it out of the park.

Instead of the Establishment finally having someone to rally around and begin to consolidate support for a long-term campaign, they have a mosh pit filled flailing candidates. To make matters even worse for the Establishment, on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe', Mr. Trump informed Scarborough that Christie called him on Tuesday night and the two of them had a long talk. The broad speculation is that Christie is trying to position himself in the Veep-stakes on the Republican ticket. The governor continues to try to make calculating moves but any potential backing of Mr. Trump will continue to bury the Establishment. That will be a real intriguing story-line to watch play out.

Governor Jeb Bush's camp has made indications of going 'scorched-Earth' on Rubio and Kasich to try and push the other two Establishment candidates out of the race. After observing how that entirely did not work for the Christie campaign, how does this seem like a good idea? If anything, Bush needs to focus on what had been working for Rubio and worked for Kasich in New Hampshire: a positive message. I would submit to you that inner-Establishment desecration will certainly push the insurgency over the top. So why not just try what has worked? If Bush drops out, he hasn't caused any irreparable damage to his Establishment colleagues and the negative campaigning and 'dirty' tactics can be left to Trump and Cruz. That is how you truly set yourself apart in this race. That's what at least shown some signs of working so far. Oh, but there is that wild card still in play, and he goes by W. I suspect he might be making an appearance on the trail sooner than later.

Governor Kasich is unfortunately a one-state wonder. Kasich hit his peak in New Hampshire and was a really nice story on Tuesday night. The shame here is that Kasich is just so darn likeable. He really is. The problem is that he is running a general election campaign during primary season. His more moderate stances on many core GOP issues are simply out of touch with the rest of the party nationally. That will become painfully obvious as the GOP marches through a series of southern primary elections. I suspect he will drop out shortly after the Michigan primary, which is the next one he stands to do somewhat decently on.

Regardless of how you shape this issue, even now, the question is not if but when the GOP Establishment will coalesce around Marco Rubio. He still is showing well nationally and in a variety of other primary state polls. He has time, though not so much, to turn this around. He can finish third and maybe even second in South Carolina, which will get him back on the right track. But he has to perform and his ability to rebound is up in the air and has yet to be truly tested. Signs are showing that he will aim to get back onto a positive message going into South Carolina. It doesn't hurt that he has the endorsement of Senator Tim Scott who is trying to make the case for Rubio to the South Carolina electorate.

Ultimately, the RNC does not yet have faith in the general election viability of the three remaining Establishment candidates. Their inability to manage this race before it really got started put the GOP and perhaps the balance of the country on a very tenuous track. Better management of the field and an understanding of the dynamics within the GOP base and broader electorate could mean a very different story for all candidates still involved. However, the longer the GOP powers that be stall and the more that they want to appease the insurgency, the bleaker that the chances for this counter-insurgency becomes.

The mainstream and RNC is failing half of its electorate right now. The Party's cold relationship with Trump and Cruz is pretty well known by now, and they're still without a true alternative that can take back the GOP's course. 

If the national party is actually interested in stopping Trump or Cruz (and this is a very legitimate 'if'), time is slipping for creating a strong counter-insurgency. As it stands going into South Carolina, this is still the counter-insurgency that never was.

The Swamp Got Murkier?

The New Hampshire Primary does not have a precision-riddled history. In fact, the New Hampshire results consistently do very little for predicting the ultimate winner of the two parties' nominations. Though the 'First in the Nation' primary has a bet of a better track record than the Iowa Caucus, this just isn't the pressure gauge to make any sort of long-term judgement by.

If you look at each party's primary dating back to 1980 (excluding unopposed runs), the Granite State primary has only had a 9/14 accuracy, that's a 64% accuracy rate. Arguably though, since 2000, the New Hampshire primary has been much more accurate than since 1980, but all trends rely on history and many, many data points. That being said, I'm not putting much stock into what the primaries tonight mean for either party.

So, you ask, what do the primaries do? What's the point then?

Politically speaking, there are significant primary and secondary order effects, potentially much more so for the GOP than the Democratic field. With regard to Republicans, there are two factors that come into play when the results are finalized: momentum and the culling of the herd. Momentum was all of the post-Iowa talk. We heard about the bull market on Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and the bear market on Donald Trump and the three establishment candidates.

Obviously, this market trends in all directions at all times as we saw with Marco Rubio's stifled #Marcomentum post-Saturday's debate and John Kasich's seemingly steady climb toward the top of the second tier when he was never awarded a single delegate in Iowa. As we scream (or crawl) closer to the respective conventions, the next wave of momentum for the insurgents and the establishment will be key for anyone's long term viability.

On that matter of long-term viability, the New Hampshire primary also has the historical effect of culling the herd....historically. 2016 may very well be an exception with all 11 candidates that entered tonight (yes, even Gilmore) on the road to South Carolina. That aside, textbooks tell us that the field ought to be whittled down by a candidate or two, which means that you have brand new, undeclared voters that are just looking for a new home. This type of open capital puts candidates into a free-for-all to vie for the affections of these newly available supporters. Depending on who drops out (Fiorina? Christie? Carson?) that opens up a lot of people that swing the balance of the primary in a major way.

On the Democratic side, there's obviously going to be no culling of any herd. You have two candidates, and you're going to have two candidates until the winning delegates total is reached by one of them. Again, this comes back to the momentum argument. By all accounts (pre-results), Sanders ought to win the primary, but now this is where the expectations game comes into play.

There is a chance that Bernie Sanders blows his shot at the nomination tonight even if he wins. Expectations going back to just last week had the Vermont Senator sitting at a comfortable, victory formation distance. In the last week, polls show that Hillary is closing that gap. Now again, probably not enough to win, but she sets herself up very well going forward if the loss is in the low to mid single digits. She beat expectations and completed an effort to make her the second Clinton 'Comeback Kid'.

On the other hand, New Hampshire feels the Bern, we have a long race ahead of us, America.

There's a good chance that tonight's election does us no favors, but isn't that the fun of watching all of this? Politics itself is not a spectator sport, but being a spectator at this juncture is all the rage to me.

Digging the Political Grave

Senator Ted Cruz ran a masterfully tactical campaign in the closing days leading up to the Iowa Caucus. In fact, he ran a great campaign literally hours leading up to the casting of the first votes. An APN tweet from last week noted that Senator Rubio acts like he wants the Presidency the most, but Cruz is truly the one playing the game the best at this point.

Ground game, fundraising machine, and Iowa Caucus momentum aside, Cruz is on a different level than the rest of the candidates right now in the GOP field. Mr. Trump can bring the crowds and Governor Bush can lean on Right to Rise Super PAC, but their failures lie in their reliance on words. Cruz's multidimensional game includes actions that potentially no other candidate is readily conversant in so far.

However, Cruz's recent actions are tactically brilliant yet strategically short-sighted.

Since becoming very competitive with Mr. Trump in the weeks prior to the Iowa Caucus spanning into the hours before the initial voting, Cruz's "leak" about the Carson campaign suspension as well as 'Voter Violation' incident has sprung the campaign into a new light. Many of Cruz's competitors are attacking the campaign for dishonest, and Mr. Trump is going as far as calling for a nullification of the results of the Iowa Caucus and have a re-vote. That being said, the Cruz campaign has not done anything illegal and any movement to alter the results now ought to be out of the question.

Cruz is doing what it takes to win and doing it more than anyone else arguably on either side of the aisle. Even more than that, he knows it. Cruz was quoted by CNN as saying "I will apologize to no one for using every tool we can to encourage Iowa voters to come out and vote". The merits of the tactics aside, it is indisputable thus far that they have achieved results. That is the tactically brilliant portion of the argument.

There is an error to these ways though. These tactics largely rely on one thing to absolve the memory of their employment: momentum. In sports, they say that winning cures all ills. Much like in sports, the same applies in the political realm. A candidate can always brush away things he/she did or said when it results in a democratically elected win. At that point, the victories begin to mount and the momentum sweeps prior transgressions under the rug. That's it. That's the nature of this beast, compounded by the nature of a 24-hour news cycle.

But here's the hiccup in the philosophy. Hell hath no fury like a political candidate's supporters scorned. Similar to the hardened supporters of Mr. Trump, Cruz's allegiant supporters will not waiver despite the mounting allegations against the campaign. So, there's always a base for Senator Cruz to rely on. However, as candidates begin dropping out of the race, they remember their wronged candidate. That wronged candidate that was a manifestation of their own hopes and dreams for the country. An attack on their candidate is an inherent attack on them.

So, where do they go? The easy answer is not to Senator Cruz. Realistically, that support gets thrown to whoever is the antithesis to Cruz and who has the ability to defeat him. At this moment, that could very well be Senator Rubio. This is a worst-case scenario for the Cruz's campaign, as the surging Rubio, especially with a possible strong showing in New Hampshire under his belt, beginning to have support coalesce around him from all factions of the Republican party. The establishment is already anti-Cruz, but the supporters of the remaining candidates may also soon have reason to as well.

As the negative attention builds on Cruz's tactics (presuming there is more to follow), generally and newly uncommitted voters weigh two factors heavily as the primary tempo increases: electability and likability. With everything mentioned prior to this statement, the aggregate effect of these tactics, in addition to the media's likely demonization of Cruz will lead voters to feel positively about either that electability or likability, which spells trouble for the currently hot Cruz campaign.

The Iowa hurdle has sense been cleared, and now it's time for the Cruz camp to take a step back and take the long view in order to survive long-term. Relying purely on momentum may not be enough and, even worse, may be naive with just one very close victory in one primary thus far. From the outside looking in, Senator Cruz is in the act of digging a political grave for himself. Everything is still so early and not so far along that the ship cannot be righted, but the true conundrum is the following question. Does an overall strategy shift and denial of the tactics that have gotten him to this point take away from the appeal he has with his base and put a strangle on his ability to operate in the ways he has used to propel him toward the front?