Why Going After Ben Carson on the West Point "Issue" Is Unfair -- and Really Dumb

I am convinced that Ben Carson would be a disaster as President of the United States.  Not only are his views on a wide range of issues nothing but a version of right-wing biases and phony solutions to problems, but he consistency displays a breathtaking ignorance of basic information about American governance and political history.  While he plainly was a brilliant pediatric neurosurgeon, his degree of intellectual curiosity and breadth seems to have been limited to his chosen profession.

This is why the misplaced media hysteria over Carson’s recollections of his being offered the chance to go to West Point is so dangerous.  There is no reason to doubt his general recollection of the offer. Last night, Carson held a press conference in which he presented a totally reasonable explanation of the matter.  If the shoe were on the other foot – if a liberal candidate gave a similar explanation in a similar situation – I suspect that liberals and the non-right-wing media would be fully satisfied.  By trying to elevate nothing into something, “our side” has given Carson a cudgel that he likely will use (and probably with great effect), when legitimate issues over his prejudices and ignorance are raised. 

We can’t be like the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf.  Lord knows, there are plenty of reasons to be horrified at the prospect of a Ben Carson presidency.  But the West Point matter is not one, and by attacking him with it, “our side” may be making such a presidency more likely.

New York Times reporters recognize the Trump tactical advantage in the GOP primary struggle

This afternoon, Ken Bode, my boss at the Center for Political Reform in 1971-72, emailed me, saying, "I see that the NYT band of analysts finally caught up with you today. I just tell people you were well mentored." Very true. For many decades, Ken has been an amazingly astute observer of American politics.     

The New York Times reports that “[i]f Mr. Trump draws one-third of the Republican primary vote, as recent polls suggest he will, that could be enough to win in a crowded field. After March 15, he could begin amassing all the delegates in a given state even if he carried it with only a third of the vote. And the later it gets, the harder it becomes for a lead in delegates to be overcome, with fewer state contests remaining in which trailing candidates can attempt comebacks.” 

I wrote about this impact of the Republican delegate selection rules on August 11 in a blog post published in the Blue Nation Review on August 26. 

If Trump survives the latest flap surrounding his tacit agreement with a birther at a post-debate event in New Hampshire – and it looks like he will – then he most likely will be the Republican nominee. Unless the Republicans coalesce around one or two powerful non-Trump alternatives (something that is not likely to occur), all he needs to do is to keep at 30-35% primary electorate support; he doesn't need to expand his support, he just needs to maintain what he now has. Only if state parties electing delegates after March 15 switch from winner-take-all to proportional representation delegate allocation schemes could he be stopped. But if state parties now make such changes, Trump clearly will view that as a breach of his “contract” with the Republican National Committee to agree to support the nominee. That would lead to a third-party run by Trump if he does not get the nomination.

The Clown Car is running into a ditch.

Donald Trump's Hostile Takeover of the Republican National Committee: Will It Control the Party?

Earlier this summer, Donald Trump told the American public that he would like Carl Icahn, the (in)famous hostile takeover corporate raider, to be his Treasury Secretary. Thus, Icahn would be a key model for how Trump would govern as President of the United States. He has learned Icahn's lessons well.

Now, having determined that he is being treated "fairly" by the Republican Party, Trump announces that he has signed the Republican National Committee's pledge to abide by the Party's presidential nominating decision next year. This may well portend a hostile takeover of the RNC, so reminiscent of Icahn's tactics in the corporate world.

It is clear that the Party Establishment does not like Trump, but its members are afraid of him. I suspect that he has extracted a commitment from the RNC to oppose any changes in the current delegate selection process that could jeopardize Trump's march to the nomination. As explained in my earlier post, the plethora of winner-take-all primaries in the second half of the delegate selection process beginning on March 15 works to Trump's favor, even if he is opposed by a majority of the Party's primary voters. And if Trump and RNC Chair Reince Priebus have entered into a "contract" to keep the allocation process as it currently stands, Priebus (and the Party machinery) would have to squelch any state's effort to shift away from a winner-take-all delegate allocation. Any deviation by the Party would constitute a breach of contract in Trump World, which Trump would use as an excuse to run a third-party campaign if he does not receive the nomination. And while Trump stated this morning on Morning Joe that he determined that mounting a third-party campaign would be daunting, the fact that the July 18-21, 2016 Republican National Convention is earlier than in recent cycles means the effort would be easier than it would have been in the past.

So how would Priebus enforce his end of the bargain (if there is such a bargain) if a post-March 14 state party chose to change its rules to allocate its delegates proportionally to the votes cast? He could try to use the Convention's Credentials Committee to bar delegates chosen in violation of national party rules. But depending on the alignment of the membership of the Convention Credentials Committee, this might not work, and the fallout could lead to fractious battles on the Convention floor, a non-Trump nominee, and divisive litigation

Indeed, this is the type of scenario that plagued the Democratic Party in 1972. Then, George McGovern won the then-Party-approved winner-take-all primary in California with 43% of the vote. The anti-McGovern candidates challenged the result before the Convention Credentials Committee, and the Committee voted to allocate only 43% of the delegates to McGovern, with the rest to the Hubert Humphrey and Edmond Muskie. (This happened because the California members of the Committee were recused from voting on the challenge to their status.) In retaliation (and as a matter of survival of the McGovern candidacy, since McGovern needed more than 43% of the California delegates to win the nomination), the McGovern members of the Committee voted to deprive Mayor Daley's slate of Humphrey delegates from Chicago of all of their seats, because the Daley slate, while elected, violated procedural slating rules of the National Party. (This happened because the Illinois members of the Committee were recused from voting on the challenge to their status.) But the final Party decision on the credentials of these delegates and would-be delegates would go to the Convention itself.

Both the McGovern and Daley delegates who had been removed by the Credentials Committee brought suit in federal court. While the lower court dismissed the suits, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in Brown v. O'Brien, found in favor of the California McGovern delegates and against the Illinois Daley delegates on the ground that the National Party, having established clear rules for delegate selection, could not then ignore those rules. The U.S. Supreme Court stayed the Court of Appeals' ruling, since the Convention still might be able to work things out.

Chaos ensued. At the Convention, McGovern barely prevailed in reinstating his California delegates and in keeping out the Daley delegates. But due to the length of the delegate credentials struggles, the McGovern campaign had no time to vet its potential vice presidential running mates (leading to the Tom Eagleton fiasco) and ended up having what should have been its prime time nationally televised acceptance speeches given in the middle of the night, when no one but political junkies were watching.

It still is not clear legally whether a political party may disregard its own rules at a presidential nominating convention. In the last piece of legal fallout from the 1972 Democratic National Convention, the U.S. Supreme Court in Cousins v. Wigoda ruled that local courts in Chicago could not hold the challengers to the Daley slate in contempt for violating a state court injunction barring them from taking their seats at the Convention; the First Amendment freedom of association protected the National Party from state court interference when, as then, the Party was simply implementing its own rules. The Court, however, did not reach other issues, such as whether the courts could intervene if the Party ignored its own rules.

Would the RNC want to fall into the maelstrom of the 1972 Democrats? Of course not. Trump's pledge and the implicit (and maybe, in secret, explicit) commitment by the RNC to not alter the existing delegate allocation rules means that Trump has succeeded in his hostile takeover of the RNC. But the RNC doesn't have total control, as the Democrats' 1972 experience illustrates. So the RNC will have to walk a very thin tightrope, unless Trump either runs away with the GOP electorate or somehow self-destructs. It could be a bumpy ride for the Republican Party. And it still could result in a Trump third-party candidacy.

What will the GOP presidential nominating battle tell us about the Conservative Evangelical Christian Bloc?

Today's Monmouth University poll of likely Iowa Republican caucus voters may be indicative of an eventual fissure within the base GOP coalition -- at least in Iowa. And it may eventually tell us something significant about the Conservative Evangelical Christian voting bloc. Since 1988, Conservative Evangelicals have been a major voting bloc in the Iowa Republican caucuses. In every contested caucus since 1988, the candidate of the Conservative Evangelicals came in second (Pat Robertson in 1988 with 25%; Pat Buchanan in 1996 with 23%), first (George W. Bush in 2000 with 41%; Mike Huckabee in 2008 with 34%), or essentially tied for first (Rick Santorum in 2012 with 25%). With the emergence of the Tea Party, the Republican Party has lurched even farther right-ward.

What is unclear is the degree to which Conservative Evangelicals and Tea Party adherents overlap. While it seems that both groups generally share the same substantive positions on most issues, there is a difference of emphasis. The Conservative Evangelicals place more emphasis on theologically-based social issues, principally opposition to reproductive and gay rights. The Tea Party people place more emphasis on general hostility to the federal government, principally centered around the belief that any federal governmental activity will make their lives worse, not better.

So now we see Donald Trump channeling the Tea Party approach and getting 23% support, and Ben Carson saying (and apparently believing) all the things on social issues that the Conservative Evangelicals espouse and also getting 23% support. Ted Cruz, who is trying to stress both sets of issues, gets 9%; and Carly Fiorina, who seems to stress the general hostility to the public sector approach to politics, gets 10%. Trump is second choice of 10%, Carson of 12%, Cruz of 13%, Fiorina of 8%. These four lead the poll. The poll does not provide a breakdown of the first-place choices of the second-place respondents. Such a breakdown would be instructive. But it is interesting that among Evangelicals, 29% favor Carson, while 23% favor Trump, and among non-Evangelical voters, 24% favor Trump, while 18% favor Carson.

Since, at least at the moment, Trump is running well ahead of the field nationally, a big question is what portion of the Conservative Evangelicals, at the end of the day, would feel comfortable with the thrice-married, big-money hedonist Trump. (OK, I am loading the question by this characterization of Trump, but I suspect that much, maybe most, of the Conservative Evangelical bloc will see him this way, if they really believe what they say about what they want in a national leader.)

The pundits seem to think that, down the road, the big battle will be between Trump and a yet-to-be determined "establishment" candidate. But given the abysmal numbers for the so-called establishment candidates (Walker, Bush, Rubio, and Kasich, who poll at 7%, 5%, 4%, and 4%, respectively, in Iowa), it may well be that if there is a final face-off (or even sooner, in Iowa), it will be between Trump and an aggressively right-wing theological candidate. And if it is, we will find out how much of the Conservative Evangelical bloc's public policy views are really based on theology; while Conservative Evangelicals are big on repentance for past sins, Trump clearly (and proudly) does not repent for anything. But the more Conservative Evangelicals flock to Trump, the more it will be fair to conclude that their religiosity is really a cover for more deep-seated resentments having little or nothing to do with religion.

Judge Williams' role on Maryland's anti-gerrymandering commission bears watching

The Commonwealth of Virginia is under a court order to undo its gerrymandered Congressional Districts that unfairly favor Republicans.  And Maryland’s Republican Governor, Larry Hogan, is appointing a commission to address our state’s gerrymandering in favor of Democrats.  I agree with the Washington Post Editorial Board that we need to use this possibly bi-partisan moment to address gerrymandering, which increasingly distorts the democratic process.

However, I am a little nervous about the person Governor Hogan appointed to be the Democratic Co-Chair of his Commission, retired federal judge Alexander Williams.

It may be unfair to evaluate Judge Williams based on a single case, but I do think it worth noting that in 2005, he issued a 23-page temporary restraining order preventing the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) from implementing some revisions to its secondary school health education curriculum to include some basic, medically-accurate discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity.  Judge Williams’ decision was based on factually incorrect characterizations of what was in the curriculum (he falsely stated that the curriculum to be taught to the students included value judgments on the views of particular religious denominations); and a grossly-incorrect statement of law, in which he asserted that public school health curriculum constituted a public forum in which there could be no discrimination based on viewpoint, and that, therefore, any mention of sexual orientation had to include the notion (discredited by every mainstream American medical and mental health professional association) that “reparative” or “conversion” therapies could be warranted and effective in helping people change their sexual orientation. 

To avoid further litigation, MCPS agreed to cancel its curriculum revisions and start over.  In 2007, a new curriculum was offered; it contained some very good material, but, apparently in order to avoid another lawsuit, omitted some key material supported by the mainstream medical and mental health associations and further mandated that teachers could not say anything that was not, verbatim, in the curriculum.  Right wing groups sued anyway, this time in state, rather than federal, fora.  The State Board of Education, without a single dissent, rejected the same sort of arguments adopted by Judge Williams in 2005, and rejected the notion that MCPS was constitutionally barred from discussing what the mainstream health care community had concluded about sexual orientation without providing the arguments of the “other side.”  In early 2008, the Montgomery County Circuit Court affirmed the decision of the State Board.  Due to skittishness on the part of some in the school system, however, it took until 2014 for MCPS to improve the curriculum to include all the needed information (including the affirmative statements that being gay is not an illness and that the mainstream health community rejects “reparative therapy”) and to allow teachers to teach without being absolutely confined to a tight script.  Click here.  Thus, Judge Williams’ 2005 decision delayed for nearly a decade the implementation of a fully adequate secondary school health education curriculum in Montgomery County.

Hopefully, Judge Williams’ 2005 decision was an aberration.  If it was not, then the bi-partisan/non-partisan nature of the anti-gerrymandering effort could be in jeopardy.

(Full disclosure:  In 2003-05, I was Chair of the MCPS Board of Education's Citizens Advisory Committee on Family Life and Human Development, the Committee that advised the Board on the curriculum revisions.  Subsequently, in my role as Advocacy Chair of the Metro DC Chapter of PFLAG (2006-present), I worked to secure needed improvements in the health education curriculum.) 

Why Donald Trump, even if opposed by most Republicans, should be viewed as the favorite to secure the GOP nomination

So now Donald Trump, fresh from polling showing that he is still well ahead of his closest competitor, now tells the world that he will not run as a third-party candidate so long as he is treated "fairly."  He would not say what "fairly" means, but asserts that HE will know.

What does that portend for the Republican Party?  Well, if Trump has now shown that he can maintain pluralities everywhere, and there may well be nothing that he could say or do that would diminish his position, the Republican Party may be stuck with him because of the rules the Party has established for the selection of delegates.  Here is why:

There will be 2,470 voting delegates at the Convention -- or 1,236 to win the nomination.  As of now, 49% of those delegates will be selected before March 15 -- the time period during which the states MUST use a proportional formula for delegate allocation.  So let's say that Trump secures 25% of those delegates -- and is running in "first place."  In Trump World (and, to be honest about it, in Media World) that would mean he is "winning" even if most of the other 75% desperately wants someone else.   So on March 14, let's say he has 302 delegates (25% of the total).  He would need to get 934 of the remaining1,262 delegates to win.  Sounds daunting, no?

Well, it is not daunting at all, under the present rules.  The Republican National Committee allows states parties selecting their delegates beginning on March 15 to use a winner-take-all approach:  In other words, whoever come in first, regardless of the percentage of votes secured, gets ALL the delegates.  I don't know what the state parties have decided so far, but I suspect most or all have adopted a winner-take-all approach, because the party leaders generally want the process to be wrapped up early so that they can plan for the general election.

So even if a number of candidates drop out, it is not at all inconceivable that Trump will continue to role up pluralities; except that from March 15 onward, a 25% plurality translates to 100% of the delegates.  If Trump gets pluralities in states with 74% of the remaining delegates, he wins the nomination.

Of course, the state parties could easily deprive Trump of such a triumphant march to the nomination by changing their rules to mandate proportional representation (as is required in the pre-March 15 states).  Indeed, such an approach certainly would be more democratic.  But, in Trump World, that would be "unfair" because he would be deprived of so many delegates even though he is "winning" -- i.e., coming in first in a multi-candidate field.  If he loses the nomination because he is not treated "fairly," he has made it clear he will run as a third-party candidate, thus probably assuring a Democratic Party victory in November.  So the party leaders likely will not change their formulas.

Now if, by Spring, there is a one-on-one matchup with Trump, one would think that Trump would lose.  But who would that one candidate be?  Is there any party leadership that could clear out the field for a one-on-one matchup?  It is hard to see, for example, the Koch Brothers being able to push out Jeb Bush in favor of Scott Walker; and it is hard to see Scott Walker bowing out in favor of Bush.

There are many reasons I am glad I am not a Republican.  This is one more.

Donald Trump admits that he lies to get what he wants

The most striking thing about Donald Trump's performance today on ABC's This Week was his admission that he lies to get what he wants.

Trump was confronted by Jonathan Karl with his past praise of, for example, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, and Rick Perry -- three fellow presidential candidates whom he has recently savaged. Trump seemed not at all troubled by Karl's inquiry, and quickly gave this explanation:

"It's a very simple answer to that. I was a business man all my life. I've made a tremendous fortune. I had to deal with politicians and I would contribute to them and I would deal with them and certainly I'm not going to say bad things about people because I needed their support to get projects done. I needed their support for lots of things or I may have needed their support, put it another way. 

"I mean, you're not going to say horrible things and then go in a year later and say listen, can I have your support for this project or this development or this business. So I say nice about almost everybody and I contributed to people because I was a smart business man. I've built a tremendous company. And I did that based on relationships. 

"Now I'm no longer a business man. Now I'm somebody that wants to make our country great." (Transcript and video)

As is typical, even when a broadcast "journalist" asks a good question, the follow-up is lacking. First, Trump's statement that "I'm no longer a business man." Oh? If true, that would be a big story. Has Trump retired from business? Has he sold off his real estate and other holdings? Or at least the fig leaf of a blind trust? But Karl did not pursue that at all. Why not? Did Karl even listen to the answer? Or is he so accustomed to BS from Trump that he just lets it go? 

But even more importantly, Trump -- whose self-proclaimed passion in life has always been to become extraordinary rich, making huge amounts of money in the most visible ways -- admitted that he repeatedly lied about major political figures in order to advance his business interests. Even assuming this passion has been replaced by a passion to become President of the United States and "make our country great," why would he not now lie to the voters in order to reach his new goals?Karl could have asked this obvious follow-up question, but, again, did not. 

I certainly hope that those with access to the airwaves will point out Trump's admitted propensity to lie in order to get what he wants.