Trump voters in 2016 are not so different from Obama voters in 2008... Here's why

If Donald Trump gets the GOP nod against Hillary or Bernie, I’m voting for Donald. Frankly, after watching the debate on Saturday night I’d probably want to take a shower after pulling the lever for him, but pull it I would…

That being said, Saturday’s debate demonstrated Donald Trump to not only be a rude bully, it showed him to basically be a disingenuous one and someone with, shall we say, an odd understanding of history. While rebutting Rubio’s statement that Bush kept the US safe after the Iraq invasion, he chimed in that 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch. That statement is of course true, but it didn’t have anything to do with the point Rubio was making as it came prior to the invasion and was one of the catalysts that put Bush into the mindset that action had to be taken in Iraq. This of course came about the same time that Trump called GW Bush a liar, suggesting that he knew there were no WMDs in the country and stated he lied about them in order to invade. That is a page directly out of the truther’s handbook and with the level of intensity he argued the point, it suggests that Trump actually believes it. He also spent time supporting eminent domain (really, the abuse of such) as well as the funding of the “good parts” of Planned Parenthood. Those are, to say the least, unusual positions for someone running for the GOP nomination.

The debate was more like a schoolyard brawl fight than a debate, where the teacher couldn’t get or keep control. One has to wonder however if the Trump supporters will notice that their guy was obnoxious and nonsensical. And if they do, will they care.

Watching the numbers Trump is putting up in the GOP race and the throngs of passionate supporters his events draw despite the fact that he’s basically a liberal, not even conservative clothing, is beginning to make me think that many of the GOP voters in 2016 are doing exactly what Democrat voters did in 2008: They are pouring into an empty vessel exactly what they want to see. Barack Obama was indeed an empty vessel for most voters. The truth is, his “Hope and Change” is not so different from Trump’s “Make America Great Again”. Most certainly it is different in that Barack Obama pretty much hates everything great about the United States outside of golf courses and basketball, while Donald Trump loves pretty much everything including golf courses and imminent domain.

At a minimum one would expect Trump to make better deals than the one Obama made with Iran and not seek to divide the country by race and gender and sexuality and religion as Obama has done. But beyond that, when it comes to the actual work of governing, and doing so within the confines defined by the Constitution, one wonders what his supporters see in him. They say he’s going to build a wall. That’s an absolutely necessity, but Ted Cruz has promised to do the same. They say things like he doesn’t take crap from anyone and he says what’s on his mind. Both are true, but what do they have to do with governing? Barack Obama is a horrible president, but it’s not because he got into shouting matches with crybabies Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, it’s because he’s anti-American and thinks he’s king. Would Trump’s obnoxious behavior somehow make 535 congressmen and women more likely to follow his lead? Would it act as a moderating influence on power hungry bureaucrats?  Would his rudeness somehow convince the leaders of Russia, China and Iran to suddenly play nice on the geopolitical chessboard? How does boorish behavior translate to actually doing a good job of governing the country? It doesn't.  Sadly, sometimes listening to Trump supporters makes me think back to John Ziegler’s video from the 2008 election “How Obama Got Elected’.

The problem with Trump is that he has no fundamental convictions other than what is good for Donald Trump. He’s not a conservative. He professes to not be a liberal but his history tells a different story. He’s not a major supporter of individual rights and limited government. Very much like Barack Obama he sees the presidency as an opportunity to “get things done” and like Obama he will likely take a dim view of the constraints on his actions dictated by the Constitution.

But for his voters, none of that seems to matter. While I can appreciate the desire to have someone from outside Washington, from outside the establishment come in and shake up a heavily dysfunctional government, it matters what they want to do and how they want to do it. Everything you need to know about a Donald Trump administration can be seen in his comment about Carrier moving manufacturing to Mexico. He said “I'm going to tell them right now, I am going to get consensus from Congress and we're going to tax you when those air conditioners come.” Aside from the unconstitutionality of such a move, what he’s not saying is “How do we make it more economically viable for companies to manufacture in the United States?” No,Trump’s natural inclination is to use unconstitutional coercion against those with whom he disagrees (sound familiar?) rather than asking why it makes economic sense for someone to decamp to Mexico in the first place, and figuring out how to make America more compelling for employers in the first place.

At the end of the day, during this primary season Trump supporters need to ask themselves is Donald Trump the best person in the GOP field to lead the nation to prosperity? The best person to protect individual liberty? The best person to roll back the unconstitutional expansion of government undertaken by presidents over the last 25 years? The best person to appoint the next Supreme Court justice? The best person to make the government work for the people rather than the people work for the government? The best person to defy Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce and rein in a regulatory environment bathed in job killing and prosperity killing crony capitalism?

If they find that the answer to these questions is no, then perhaps they should put down the Kool Aid and open their eyes and ears to some of the other candidates. Elections aren’t WrestleMania events and the bluster on the stump and in the debate may be fun to watch, but unlike WWE, entertainment isn’t the fundamental goal of debates and elections.  No, the whole reason we're engaging in this quadrennial cage match is the pursuit of effective, constitutional government.  That's something someone with a long history of crony capitalism and little appreciation for the Constitution is unlikely to deliver.

Ted Cruz and the Oxymorons of Washington

Oxymoron: A figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction

One sometimes thinks the word started with our government: Government Intelligence… Government Efficiency... Government Accountability… In reality, it’s been around since the Greeks first coined the phrase, no doubt adding oxy to a word they probably used to describe their politicians too: Moron.

The Greeks may have invented the word, but the US government has perfected its common use. We have a welfare system whose ostensible goal is to get people back on their feet during hard times yet the numbers of people on the program never seems to go down. We have an education system that spends an ever increasing amount of money to somehow do an increasingly bad job of “educating” our students. Barack Obama has penned an agreement with Iran to keep them from getting nuclear weapons that actually rewards them for bad behavior AND makes it more likely they will get nuclear weapons!

As bad as those things are, and there are countless other examples, this very day we are witnessing possibly the single best example of government incompetence possible. So far this fiscal year the IRS has taken in more money than ever before, $2.6 trillion! Yet somehow they still managed to run a deficit of almost half a trillion dollars. And just two nights ago the utterly worthless GOP introduced a bill that enables even more incompetence in the form of a giant two year spending bill that would also raise the debt limit.  Somehow, Americans watch the middle class struggle while programs for the poor proliferate and the connected rich see their incomes skyrocket as Washington and its regulatory machine smothers more and more of the free market.

This is Washington unhinged. This is how liberalism works… including when enabled by the GOP. The government takes more and more of the citizens’ money, which leaves the citizens with less income with which to live their lives, nevermind have money left over to start businesses as they pursue the promise of prosperity. Seeing the resultant slowing economic growth, the government decides to come to the rescue by creating more regulations and more giveaways to make up for the “failures” of the free markets. It’s a viscous cycle… More government equals less freedom and less prosperity.

And today we have on full display the GOP’s disdain for freedom and prosperity. They seek crony capitalism for the specific purpose of ensuring their continued participation in the Washington cocoon – a comforting place where 7 out of the 10 richest counties in the country are located – out of a total of 3,143 counties! That Washington cocoon provides them with parties to attend, a staff to do their bidding, jobs for friends and family, introductions to the “right” people and of course a golden parachute upon leaving after having done enough favors for big business.

Unfortunately, this is likely a fait accompli as the anointed one, Paul Ryan, the soon to be head squish has jumped onboard. The result of this betrayal of the American people makes it only that much more important that voters look to someone like Ted Cruz to be the next president. We are at a point where the government continues to take more and more of our money, yet continues to demand to borrow even more, and this is while the GOP has both the House and the Senate. Ted Cruz has both the intellect and the intent to thwart the liberal enablers in the GOP. No one else in this race has shown the willingness to fight the GOP establishment the way Cruz has. Today’s treachery puts the nation on notice. If you want a change from the failure of liberal policies and crony capitalism, put someone in the White House who does more than talk a conservative game. Put someone in there who has shown a willingness to fight the leviathan of government and it’s GOP enablers. Someone who's not an oxymoron... That man is Ted Cruz.

Ted Cruz Has a 15:1 Advantage Over Jeb Bush With Conservatives... And Why the Establishment Should Care

It’s sometimes said that you can tell a lot about a person by the friends they keep. That makes sense. Friendships are generally based on complementary personalities, shared values, and a variety of intangibles that cause people to bond.

Money in politics is a similar barometer. The vast majority of Americans never donate any money to politicians or get involved in politics at all. For all of the kvetching about money in politics, there’s really not that much there. In 2012 a total of $6 billion was spent on politics. That includes spending by campaigns, outside groups, and independent organizations. To put that in perspective, Americans spend almost twice that amount on bottled water each year, five times as much at McDonalds and twelve times that on the lottery.

In addition, it’s only a small minority of Americans who donate to political campaigns at all, about 11% on average. Eleven percent sounds low, but that’s actually enormous when compared to the .05% of donors who provide $2.7 billion of that $6 billion by making contributions of $2,600 or more. Talk about “The 1%”! Campaigns seem to be funded largely from “The .05%”. Here’s the breakdown: 89% of Americans give $0 dollars to campaigns, 10.5% give a total of $3.3 billion, while .05% of the population give the other $2.7 billion. That means that a total of about 15,000 people are responsible for almost half the money spent on our elections… out of 315 million people.

Although the money is relatively evenly distributed between the parties, within the GOP there is an interesting dichotomy. Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, who raised similar amounts in the June 15 to June 30 period – $11.4 million and $10 million respectively – make for a good illustration. When Bush released his fundraising numbers, they showed that 97% of his money came from donors who gave more than $200. For Cruz that number was 61%. More interesting however are the average numbers. Overall, Bush had a total of 12,334 donors who gave an average of $926. At the same time Cruz had a total of 175,000 donors who gave an average of $81. Cruz had fifteen times as many donors but raised $1.4 million less!

This is not a screed against the rich. Rich people are often successful businessmen and that’s something we could use more of. What we don’t need more of however is crony capitalism. And that’s what makes these reports so compelling. They came out just a week before a report that the Chamber of Commerce, the shill for big corporations, is planning on targeting small government conservatives in the House, many of whom are strong Cruz allies. Their goal is to derail true border control, maintain the Export Import Bank and harness government to shield big businesses from competition whenever possible.

This of course shines an illuminating light on the Bush / Cruz numbers. Cruz is very much a phenomenon of the Tea Party movement. Against crony capitalism, against illegal immigration, against big government, and stridently so, he has animated grassroots conservatives in a way no one has in decades. (Or at least he had until the Trump earthquake came along… even if Trump is not really a conservative.) This is illustrated by the fact that 175,000 people donated to his campaign in its first two weeks. Bush on the other not only supports comprehensive immigration reform (which basically means no wall, no reform plus amnesty to boot) but shows his big government bona fides by seeking to foist the dysfunctional Common Core on the country. Both of those issues are anathema to conservatives and as a result, Bush has attracted very little in the way of grass roots support. He has however gained the support of the K Street mafia, the GOP establishment and their Chamber of Commerce enablers.

Of course there’s a long way to go and there are other candidates in the field, but it’s telling that there is such a stark contrast between what are the left and right wings of the party. While money may make up a big part of politics, success comes from getting people out of their chairs and into the voting booths. The GOP should take notice of the fact that small donor conservatives have broken 15 to 1 for Cruz against Bush. While that might not mean much in terms of money, on November 8th of next year it will be critical. After having been steamrolled by the establishment during the last two elections and seeing the resulting candidates go down in flames, conservatives may just decide to sit 2016 out if the party nominates another milquetoast candidate whose focus is on keeping the Chamber happy rather than working to shrink government and get it out of the big business business. Such as desertion just might be fatal for the GOP as it would likely lead to three consecutive losses, the first time that's happened since FDR.  With two viable parties a third party stands little chance in American politics, however with a feeble party unable to win the big prize, the prospects for one are greatly enhanced.  That's something the GOP establishment just might want to ponder as they seek to hand the nomination to another Bush.

My rapidly fading love affair with Wal-Mart

The first time I ever saw a Wal-Mart I was a grad student getting my MBA down in Tallahassee, FL. One opened up down the road from my apartment and I was immediately taken by the big bright stores with lots of stuff and what seemed to be pretty low prices. In class I learned the secrets to Wal-Mart’s success in its niche of “Always low prices”.   It demanded efficiencies from its suppliers. It became fanatical about using information technology to optimize its sourcing and distribution channels. It paid its employees the community average or sometimes slightly more, but never significantly so. And of course the company benefited tremendously from scale. At the end of the day Wal-Mart became a spectacular success because it provided the goods people wanted at the lowest prices possible.

Thus began a two decade long love affair with Wal-Mart. For most of the last twenty years I’ve spent most of my shopping dollars, particularly food, but other items as well, at Wal-Mart. It helped that, as I hate to shop, I could go there and get pretty much everything I needed in one place, from apple juice to socks to those little trees you put in your car to make it smell good.

I remember around 2003 when a friend of mine got married in Key West. I went to Wal-Mart and purchased a pair of those mesh shoes with the rubber sole that you could wear in the ocean. They cost about $7.95. I remember how amazed I was that they could manufacture that pair of shoes in China, label them, ship them across the ocean, transport them to my store where people would receive them, inventory them, display them and eventually charge me for them, and do so at a profit! Even if they paid their workers in China a penny a day I still didn’t see how they could do all of those things and still make a profit.

When my love affair with Wal-Mart began the company had 1,500 stores mostly serving rural communities across the country and generated about $25 billion a year in sales. Today they have 10,000 stores around the world and generate half a trillion dollars in revenue annually.

Like it or not, Wal-Mart has changed the face of American retail. By using the best of the free market the company has saved Americans hundreds of billions of dollars over its lifetime, savings that they might have used to can use to provide more food to their children, to give to charity to buy their kid a computer for college, or just buy another flat screen TV. By any definition Wal-Mart is an American success story.

Unfortunately however, my love affair with Wal-Mart is fading… and fast. The first injury to the relationship was when the company supported ObamaCare in an effort to increase pressure on its smaller competitors. The second was when they supported the taxing of online sales. Since those two events I’ve reduced the money I spend in Wal-Mart by well over 50%. Now I’m beginning to wonder if I need to redirect most of what’s left. According to Bloomberg, the company is considering supporting the Obama administration’s move to raise the minimum wage. While Wal-Mart knows that it would incur higher wage costs, it also knows that because of its size and efficiency it can better weather the increase than most of its competitors.

And that’s the problem. If Wal-Mart wants to raise the wages of its employees, it has every right to do so and most people would applaud it in the process. Indeed that is the route the Gap and Costco have chosen. But alas, that is not the route Wal-Mart seems to be taking. (They supported an increase back in 2007 as well.) Instead the company is seeking to use to use the power of government to tilt the marketplace in its favor. It wants to use the government to force higher costs on its smaller, less efficient competitors. Essentially it wants the government to put its competitors at a competitive disadvantage.

This is the worst of capitalism – crony capitalism – when businesses use government to harm competitors or keep them at bay. Whether it’s Obamacare or a minimum wage increase or restaurants seeking to keep food trucks off the streets, it’s not only the competitors who lose, it’s the consumers and the market itself. Had Sears or K-Mart used the power of government to strangle baby Wal-Mart in its crib the company would not today be the largest retailer in the world. If AT&T had succeed in defending its government sanctioned monopoly and keeping MCI and other startup telephone companies at bay for another 100 years do you think we’d have iPhones, Netflix, or fixed price wireless plans? No. Of course not. The marketplace survives and thrives the less government intervenes. Wal-Mart of all companies should understand this.

By getting into bed with government Wal-Mart is repudiating the very thing that allowed it to prosper in the first place – the free market. Now that the company has used that free market to become the 800 lb gorilla in the retail marketplace it has repeatedly sought to harness the power of government to keep potential rivals from enjoying the same opportunity. Crony capitalism is the most despicable form of capitalism because it hides behind the mask of free markets.  Thankfully however crony capitalism usually fails because the propped up company often becomes fat and lazy and forgets how to compete. If Wal-Mart wants to betray free markets, so be it, I just hope it’s not too long before the markets decide to strike back.