Frenzy is developing as the American presidential election cycle is now moving to a result-oriented season. First there will be the Iowa Precinct Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary the following week. From what has gone on in recent months, the 2016 presidential election cycle seems disturbingly different from what Americans have seen after FDR'S New Deal back in the 1930s.
No one could have predicted the current dilemma facing both the political parties. Both Democrats and the Republicans are witnessing worst campaigns of their modern history. The focus of election campaign has moved as far away as it can from the real issues America is facing.
Besides the campaign issues, the establishment and political elites of both sides are in shock and disbelief because the base of each of the two parties is largely rejecting their choices. At least for now!
Hillary Clinton was supposed to be the Democratic frontrunner when she entered the Iowa Caucus. Instead, Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist from Vermont, is leading the polls. The similar thing happened on the Republican side, where expectations of Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and John Kasich doing well in early states, were upended by real estate mogul Donald Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz in the garb of anti-establishment outsiders.
But Republican establishment's worries run deeper than those of Democrats?. The party seems fractured. It is not just the candidates who are trading barbs. Party senators and officials have also taken positions against each another. Republicans are in the middle of a civil war.
Both the frontrunners, Trump and Cruz, terrify the party leadership equally. Trump has an edge among grass-root voters. But he is beyond the control and grasp of the party's elite. Besides managing petty campaign issues with Trump, the GOP is also worried about his ideology, behaviour, tone and elect-ability.
Republican senators have no love lost for Cruz. During and since his 2012 Senate election, Cruz has consistently positioned himself as working against the Republican team in general and his Senate colleagues in particular - something which many among the party conservatives approve. Besides Republican loathing, the lingering constitutional question of whether his Canadian birth might allow him for US presidency continues to hang over his head.
In recent days, multiple Senators have said either they would never vote for Cruz, or they would prefer Trump over Cruz. But interestingly, not a single ranking member of the Republican Party's establishment could come out and declare open support for Trump.
In a new development, more than twenty-two conservative party professionals argued in the new issue of National Review (a Republican mouthpiece) that Trump is "a menace to conservatism" and that he should not be elected president of the United States.
Looking at the situation in depth, there are some fundamental differences in the two factions of the party. The notable is electoral impact and ideology of the party. The National Review is the historic organ of the conservative movement. The party bureaucracy looks at Trump as a fake conservative, but they are also afraid that he has enough power to topple the bandwagon of the conservative movement if he gets elected. They take Trump's current positions at face value, and it's not conservative enough for them. Their doubts are to some extent real if one looks at Trump's record. Previously, Trump has advocated government healthcare, a woman's right to an abortion, an assault weapons ban, and paying off the national debt by forcing wealthy people to forfeit 14.25 percent of their total wealth.
For party professionals and the senators who are showing their continuous displeasure about Cruz, the concern seems quite different. It's not only the personal antipathy that mentioned above, but they believe he is too much of a right-wing. Their experience has thought them that Cruz would not only lose his bid for the presidency, but he would take down other Republican politicians who are either in marginal seats or in generally Democratic parts of the country.
Historically, in America, populists and anti-establishment candidates tend to fade away rather quickly. But, history might change this time, given Trump's grassroots support and the current divide in the Republican Party rank and file. There may be a winner in this civil war, but it doesn't look like it would be the Republican Party.
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