I don’t remember the context at all, but I once heard someone put forth a theoretical dilemma… “You have a choice: You can save the world, but the person you loathe most in the world would get credit for it and be hailed as the hero of mankind… or, you can yourself be hailed as the hero of all mankind but in reality do nothing and the world is not saved. Which would you choose?”
That is basically where we stand today in the GOP primary. If it is saving the country that they are interested in rather than personal glory, the three guys who come in last in South Carolina tomorrow would drop out of the race and the fourth guy might consider it too if he doesn’t pull at least 10%. Why? Because, unless Donald Trump dies of a heart attack, those guys simply aren’t going to win. The fact of the matter is, in a six man race, a five man race, a four man race, and probably a three man race, Donald Trump will win and become the GOP nominee. It’s simply a game of numbers. Trump is leading in South Carolina and the opposition is divided five ways. This is like that cartoon where the bear is chasing two guys in the woods… one guy says to the other “We can’t outrun him” and the other guy says “I don’t have to out run him, I just have to outrun you!” Donald Trump doesn’t ever have to get above 50% to win the nomination. All he has to do is get more votes than any one of the other five guys most of the time and the nomination is his. Sixty five percent of the GOP don’t want Donald Trump, but as long as the opposition is fractured, he wins.
Sure, you can say we’re only two states into this thing, but the writing is on the wall. In New Hampshire Donald Trump came out as part of the progressive “Bush Lied, Soldiers Died” camp. He came out as a fan of Planned Parenthood. He stood up as a big fan of the abuse of imminent domain. He still won and may have even added to his lead in South Carolina. It appears to be the case that there is this core of around 30% of the GOP who will vote for Trump regardless of what he does or says. As such, the only way to beat him is to have a race where there are two men facing one another so that voters are forced to choose between Trump and a single actual rival rather than some amalgamation of five guys. One on one Cruz (and maybe Rubio IF he can throw off the immigration yoke he saddled himself with) would shine like a conservative rock star against the liberal, big government Trump. When given a distinct choice of contrast, most conservatives will go with the guy they agree with 90% of the time vs. the guy with whom they agree with maybe 50% of the time. But in a six man race that’s not the choice they have to make.
So, while everyone wants to be the hero who saves the country, the reality is, by staying in the race these laggards are going to be doing exactly the opposite. They are empowering Donald Trump and letting him gain momentum and delegates. Politics is about perception, and the more Donald Trump wins the more Donald Trump is going to be seen as the winner and that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. If these guys wanted to really help the country rather than dream of themselves as the next “World’s most powerful man”, they’d drop out and become cheerleaders for the guy who comes out of South Carolina as the strongest rival to Donald Trump. At that point they could play kingmakers, they could vie for the VP slot, and would no doubt put themselves on the short list for secretary positions in a Cruz… or Rubio administration. In a two man race Trump would be toast, in a three man race it would be a real competition… anything else we’re looking at Trump being the last man standing in Cleveland.
Come Sunday morning the also-rans in South Carolina really need to look themselves in the mirror and examine their motivations. Is it the good of the country or their ego that is driving them? What they do next will tell us everything we need to know.
Showing posts with label South Carolina. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South Carolina. Show all posts
Friday, February 19, 2016
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Maybe the race problem in America is… the focus on race
The events last week in a South Carolina were tragic and heartbreaking. Those are the only words I can come up with that embody the senseless loss of life and the pain the family and community feels.
Unfortunately however that tragedy has spurred some misdirected anger… specifically as it relates to what everyone is (wrongly) calling the Confederate flag. Many people are suggesting that that flag is a symbol of hate and are somehow using its presence on the grounds of the South Carolina capital as a symbol of state or white approval of the things that motivated a 21 year old white man to murder nine innocent people as they sat in church.
The flag may or may not be a racist symbol; it depends on who you talk to. Whether it is or is not however has little bearing on this situation. If people want to take it off the state’s grounds they have every right to petition to do so. What might have been acceptable 50 years ago maybe isn’t today. Mores change over time. But the problem definitely isn’t that that flag somehow inspired that killer. That argument is specious. There are tens of millions of those flags in America and if somehow the flag was a symbol of such viscous, violent hate we wouldn’t be talking about nine black victims of one drug addled white man, we’d be talking about exponentially more… and doing so regularly. But we’re not. In reality, the opposite is true. It’s an aberration. White people in America aren’t regularly going around killing black people. According to the FBI, in 2013, of the 2,491 black murder victims, only 8% were killed by whites, and in this case Hispanics are counted as white. Compare that to the reverse where 49% of the 1,891 non-Hispanic white murder victims were killed by blacks. 8% vs. 49%! Whites are six times more likely to be killed by a black person than the reverse.
The entire meme of a nation beset by white racism is simply false, and focusing on the “Confederate” flag simply muddles the debate. If you want to get rid of the flag, go ahead, but don’t somehow blame the flag for this tragedy. The young man, like so many other mass murders, was on mind altering drugs. In addition, he wanted to start a race war… so did Charles Manson. Does that mean that we have to ban Beatles records? Taking that argument one step further, thousands of Americans have been killed over the last two decades by Muslim terrorists who explicitly point to the Koran as their motivation. Should then the Koran be stripped from the shelves of every bookstore in America and Islam banned from the public square? The flag in question may indeed stir up strong emotions; both in support and opposition, but taking it off a flagpole won’t solve the complex race situation in America.
The murder of nine innocents by a racist, drug addled crazy loner says nothing about American society as a whole. It says something about racist drug addled crazy loners. There always have been, and there will always be racists in our midst – and they come in all colors – but there’s a difference between a racist carrying out his evil plan and a nation that condones, tolerates or even supports such actions or thoughts. Across the country among both blacks and whites you see just the opposite.
Those who are looking to somehow solve the race problem in America by focusing on banning a flag from the public square are fooling themselves into thinking they are doing something of value. When there were no blacks in football we were told there was a race problem. Today 60% of NFL players are black. When there were no Fortune CEOs we were told there was a race problem. Today the CEO of American Express is black. When all the occupants of the White House were white we were told we had a race problem. Today, the president, his Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security are all black and we’re still told we have a race problem. Maybe the race problem in America is… the focus on race. In the case of this tragedy in South Carolina race was certainly an issue, and maybe it’s driving issue, but thankfully it is an aberration, not the norm. Trying to leverage an isolated tragedy into a vehicle to propagate the fiction that white America is racist is foolish at best and probably reprehensible as it distracts from solving real problems that Americans of all stripes face.
Unfortunately however that tragedy has spurred some misdirected anger… specifically as it relates to what everyone is (wrongly) calling the Confederate flag. Many people are suggesting that that flag is a symbol of hate and are somehow using its presence on the grounds of the South Carolina capital as a symbol of state or white approval of the things that motivated a 21 year old white man to murder nine innocent people as they sat in church.
The flag may or may not be a racist symbol; it depends on who you talk to. Whether it is or is not however has little bearing on this situation. If people want to take it off the state’s grounds they have every right to petition to do so. What might have been acceptable 50 years ago maybe isn’t today. Mores change over time. But the problem definitely isn’t that that flag somehow inspired that killer. That argument is specious. There are tens of millions of those flags in America and if somehow the flag was a symbol of such viscous, violent hate we wouldn’t be talking about nine black victims of one drug addled white man, we’d be talking about exponentially more… and doing so regularly. But we’re not. In reality, the opposite is true. It’s an aberration. White people in America aren’t regularly going around killing black people. According to the FBI, in 2013, of the 2,491 black murder victims, only 8% were killed by whites, and in this case Hispanics are counted as white. Compare that to the reverse where 49% of the 1,891 non-Hispanic white murder victims were killed by blacks. 8% vs. 49%! Whites are six times more likely to be killed by a black person than the reverse.
The murder of nine innocents by a racist, drug addled crazy loner says nothing about American society as a whole. It says something about racist drug addled crazy loners. There always have been, and there will always be racists in our midst – and they come in all colors – but there’s a difference between a racist carrying out his evil plan and a nation that condones, tolerates or even supports such actions or thoughts. Across the country among both blacks and whites you see just the opposite.
Those who are looking to somehow solve the race problem in America by focusing on banning a flag from the public square are fooling themselves into thinking they are doing something of value. When there were no blacks in football we were told there was a race problem. Today 60% of NFL players are black. When there were no Fortune CEOs we were told there was a race problem. Today the CEO of American Express is black. When all the occupants of the White House were white we were told we had a race problem. Today, the president, his Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security are all black and we’re still told we have a race problem. Maybe the race problem in America is… the focus on race. In the case of this tragedy in South Carolina race was certainly an issue, and maybe it’s driving issue, but thankfully it is an aberration, not the norm. Trying to leverage an isolated tragedy into a vehicle to propagate the fiction that white America is racist is foolish at best and probably reprehensible as it distracts from solving real problems that Americans of all stripes face.
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