Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders winning in New Hampshire is as good an indicator as any that Americans — or at least Live Free or Die staters — are tired of the bipartisan Establishment. Victories for a billionaire iconoclast and a self-designated socialist.
Both are “players” in their distinct ways: the former a publicity-minded entrepreneur who boasts of having been a briber of politicians, the latter as a long-term senator with a consistently pro-government-growth voting record.
But both are plausibly outsiders, too. Trump speaks off the cuff and in an entertainingly anti-PC manner, and Sanders proclaims a love of government so strong that he willingly embraces a label with a very negative record throughout the last century.
Indeed, Trump’s many words and Sanders’s One Word serve to negate these two candidates’ “establishment feel.”
But if elected, would either rock the Establishment boat?
Based on his voting record, Sanders is liable to continue the bipartisan “War, Always War” strategy abroad, along with the same domestic policy of “Spend, Always Overspend.”
That is Establishment.
Trump is less of a warmonger than Sanders, oddly enough: The Donald has criticized the Iraq War, argued that Russia should take care of its nearby Syria problem, and offered that China should worry about North Korea … in other words, he can conceive of foreign areas being outside of American purview.
But Trump is as protectionist as Sanders, and loves taking property from private individuals (with “just compensation”) and giving it to developers … like himself. You cannot get more Establishment than that.
Still, New Hampshire voters know something, and that something is undoubtedly that something must change.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
2 replies on “Establishment, Always Establishment”
Still, New Hampshire voters know something, and that something is undoubtedly that something must change.
Are you sure? How many of those Trump voters were ‘Republicans for a day’ and have every intention of voting for the Democrat in November, regardless of who it is? How many of Berne Sanders’ supporters will have no problem voting for Hillary in November? The NH voting rules which allow people who are ‘undeclared’ to register to vote in either primary and then revert to ‘undeclared’ status before they ever leave the polling place can distort the election. I no longer trust New Hampshire results. It’s an interesting story, but it means nothing. New Hampshire and Iowa are yesterday’s news. Let the real campaign begin.
.… New Hampshire and Iowa are yesterday’s news .…
Iowa, yes — but NH projects the future. For, by giving the egos of Kasich and Bush a stroking, New Hampshire’s voters kept them in the field when their elimination was urgently needed. Team them with “Remainderman,” La Raza Rubio, who just doesn’t “get it” that his Gang of Hate escapades forever disqualified him from national office and then add in Trump’s 60+% Unfavorable rating and you are, come November, looking at a sure-fire Missus Clinton victory.
Unless the “also-rans” retire, they so dilute the primary vote that the unelectable Trump becomes this cycle’s Dole, McCain or Romney.
Brian Richard Allen