Of all the endearing qualities of the Republican establishment – and there are many – perhaps the cutest is their total isolation and disconnection from the reality that exists outside the beltway. (Another is their unabashed corruption, but that’s another article).
They bop around Washington and the gilded eight surrounding counties as royalty, hob nob with Chris Wallace on the set of Fox News Sunday and so on, pontificate with each other inside their own echo chamber – and then assume they are the experts, the elites, people with their finger on the pulse of America who are qualified to lead us. Or rule us rather.
In truth, they wouldn’t recognize America’s pulse if it bit them on their asses – which is most certainly is during this entire Presidential Primary season. If they had had any perception of reality, they would have predicted the rise of Ted Cruz and should have understood that something like the hell storm of Trump might emerge as well.
But Cruz and Trump are not revered in Washington and the surrounding counties. Cruz is normally reviled while Trump was, until recently, considered a joke and a side show. Those like Jeb Bush were considered the future of the Republican Party’s White House operations.
This is how they roll inside the Beltway.
No one fits that category more precisely than South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham – who’s fanciful Presidential campaign stayed consistently in the zero to one per cent range until he mercifully pulled the plug. He then endorsed Jeb, who bounced around in the 3 to 6 per cent range – until he pulled his plug.
I point this out to demonstrate that Graham is out of touch with 90-95 percent of the Republican base electorate when it comes to the direction of the party. Moreover, Graham keeps talking about trying to save the Republican Party – and never seems concerned about saving the country.
And for months, the way to save the party in his mind was to nominate Jeb and defeat Trump and Cruz. Now? Not so much. In a recent interview on CBS, Graham admitted that “we may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Donald Trump.” This was now their only fail safe option given that the “party has gone crazy” in his words.
The elitism is just dripping off of Graham. Understand that when he says “we” – as in “we may be in a position” – he means the masters of the universe inside the beltway. They must intervene and save us from ourselves in his mind, and no doubt John McCain’s and Karl Rove’s and Mitt Romney’s mind as well.
However, by Graham’s own admission, the Cruz over Trump strategy is far from a slam dunk – saying in the same breath that “I’m not so sure that would work.” Part of the problem of course, is that many in the Republican establishment loathe Cruz more than they do Trump. For example, Trent Lott and Bob Dole – two establishment Jurassics – recently opined as much.
Which brings us full circle to salient point. Graham, by publicly favoring Cruz – a man who’s murder he joked about just days ago – he has just given Trump a gift. There were no doubt high fives in Camp Trump as this Graham statement emerged. Team Cruz certainly relished the statements from Lott and Dole as well.
As with all of the attacks from the Republican establishment and from the media, the result is always a strengthening of the Trump movement. Everything they do to fight Trump, they meaning establishment politicians or media members, ends up as an exploding cigar.
This is the natural result of Washington being so out of touch with the rest of the nation. Most of the problems we face are a direct or indirect result of this isolation of the would be rulers from the citizens. This has been catastrophic in many ways.
And yet, it is also deliciously amusing to see it unravel on the elites during this cycle. Graham no doubt thought his statement on CBS would carry weight. In a way, he might have been right. Whatever heft it conveyed, however, was counter to his intent. He stepped right into a Donald Trump endorsement, and doesn’t even know it.
Edmund Wright is a contributor to Breitbart, American Thinker, Newsmax TV, Talk Radio Network and author of several books including WTF? How Karl Rove and the Establishment Lost…Again. This is the 15th installment of the Series Rove – Stupid: The New Definition of the Republican Establishment.
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