You know, it just dawned on me who The Architect most closely resembles: Arnim Zola, Hydra's chief scientist in Captain America: The First Avenger....
Twin sons from different mothers, aren't they? And in Tea Party minds, far more than metaphorically, no doubt.
I'll leave that determination to y'all. What I will say is that with the following pot-stirring comments, Dubya's deputy White House Chief of Staff ably animates the axiom that no situation is ever so bad that it still can't be made worse:
HH: Who is the most electable Republican, obviously, John Kasich could be on the list, but of people who could be available to run?
An irrelevant question that I'm surprised Hugh Hewitt asked. Everybody knows that Marco Rubio was the most electable Republican in the field. But he lost and dropped out (although cannily isn't releasing his delegates in order to deny them to Trump). Of the (technically) three candidates remaining, Kasich tops the electability rankings, but his nomination is mathematically impossible. That leaves Ted Cruz or Donald Trump, and Cruz is clearly the more electable of the two. How is that even a matter of opinion?
Wait a minute - "available TO run"? Uh-oh....
KR: Yeah, look, I don’t know. I mean, I think we’re going to, we are not going to be able to be, and shouldn’t be guided simply by polls on this.
Okay.....
I mean, we do need to understand the polls with regard to what the people are thinking about, the people who might be prospective candidates. But in terms of being able to match somebody head to head against Hillary Clinton, that’s going to be difficult to do.
Well, yeah; it's difficult to game out the electability of people who have not been and are not candidates. Doesn't that rather strongly suggest that if they wanted to be, they should have run from day one, and have no business parachuting into the chaos now, which can only render it even more chaotic? Did this conversation really happen?
We’ve got numbers on Kasich. And he is tending to, in most of the polls, beat her. And Ted Cruz runs a lot closer to Hillary than does Donald Trump, tends to, I’ve seen in some polls beat her, but mostly slightly behind her. I think, though, that let’s say this. If we have somebody who we think has, has been battle-tested....
Which, by definition, they have not been in this campaign.
....and has strong conservative principles and the ability to articulate them....
That was Marco Rubio, Karl. How'd his run turn out? Ditto Rick Perry's and, much as I hate to say it, Scott Walker's. If Trumpmania has taught us anything, it is that a large number of Republican voters don't want conservatism, well-articulated or not. They want on a silver platter the buns of people like you. And you're absolutely gorging them with ammunition that is undercutting all the advice you're attempting to render with this doggerel. Can't you see that?
In the words of Red Skull, "Evidently not".
and they are nominated at this convention....
Having neither sought nor earned a single primary/caucus vote.
....there will be a lot of acrimony from the people who were seeking the nomination.
Ya think? And not just the actual candidates, either. Which renders the earlier hypothetical about "alternative candidate" electability pretty much moot, dontcha think?
But if it’s somebody who has, you know, has those convictions that they can express in a compelling way, we could come out of the convention in relatively strong position....
Who cares how compellingly your parachuter can "express those convictions" when not only would nobody else in the party be listening to them but would be trying to find and run them through with rusty pitchforks? You DO realize that that candidate would have your stink all over him/her, don't you, Karl? Why would anybody take that role knowing all of the above that apparently you alone cannot deduce?
....because we do have, you know, look. Donald Trump excites a lot of enthusiasm. But he also excites a lot of anger within the Republican Party and outside of the Republican Party. And a fresh face might be the thing that could give us a chance to turn this election and win in November against Hillary.
You think Trump incites a lot of anger? And, rest assured, he does, just as you describe. But think of it this way: If Trump is the nominee, we #NeverTrumpers walk, and either way his defeat at the hands of Hillary Clinton is a historic massacre. Trump loses, our congressional majorities are history, and the GOP "brand" is garbage for years to come. Whereas if Cruz is the nominee, Trumplicans will bolt, Cruz will lose, but the GOP's identity as the party of conservatism will remain intact, perhaps with at least retained control of the House, and the possibility of rebuilding (yet again) will still exist. But sweeping both of them aside and dropping an "establishment" flunkie - patsy, really - in their place? You'd go from a third of the party sitting out the election to pretty much all of it. If Trumpmania is a five-alarm structure fire, that would be dropping a bomberload of napalm on it.
Even Millard Fillmore....
....the destroyer of the Whigs, is saying, "Whoa, dude, learn from my mistakes" right about now.
The irony - and proof that Rove is BSing - is that if he's looking for a candidate who can "articulate conservatism," he's already got one in Ted Cruz. A fact that a lot of "establishmentarians" like Lindsey Graham and even John McCain have grudgingly acknowledged, because at least they realize that, however much they may detest the Texas juuior senator, he is a bona fide Republican, unlike the New York liberal conman, into whose hands - or, rather, his unwitting mistress, Hillary's - Rove is playing with this lunatic nonsense.
Allahpundit evidently thought about it long and hard and tosses out a method to Rove's madness that my imagination isn't wide enough to encompass:
If you’re going to alienate one part of the base or the other no matter what you do, why not pick the most electable guy you can find and then hope that Democrats will so roundly piss off Republicans of every stripe before November that everyone will put their butthurt aside and vote for the GOP nominee anyway? If the establishment wants Ryan, they could nominate Ryan, let Trumpers and Cruz fans spend the next three months screaming that they’ll never vote Republican again, and then pray that the sheer amount of day-to-day irritation they endure from watching Hillary Clinton campaign finally leads those people to say in October, “F*** it, Ryan it is!” That’s a Hail Mary pass, but nominating Cruz after he’s been weakened by Trump attacks and embittered Trump fans by “stealing” the nomination through delegate chicanery [i.e. knowing the rules better than Trump] is a Hail Mary pass from your own twenty [yard line]. And nominating Trump, given his radioactive unpopularity with the wider electorate, is a Hail Mary pass from your own end zone.
Both true. But an "establishment"-imposed candidate would be akin to Black Sunday....
....and mine might be the only vote that Paul Ryan (and what is it with everybody trying to give the poor guy promotions he doesn't want?) would receive.
Because at least he'd be better than Hillary Clinton. You know, the next President of the United States.
What a clusterbleep.
In happier news (i.e. a contested convention, not the brokered one the Architect is trying to foist upon us), Trump's blowing off the RNC loyalty pledge might cost him South Carolina's fifty delegates, and it's growing increasingly clear that his viability in Cleveland won't survive past the first ballot.
And Senator Cruz's double-digit lead in Wisconsin has now been confirmed.
Now back to your regularly scheduled fratricidal mayhem.....
UPDATE: Add Trump's reneging on the loyalty pledge possibly forfeiting RNC support in a fall campaign to that list.
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