With Winds Like These, Who Needs Cyclones?

Somehow -- I don't really recall how, but I'm promiscuous like that -- I ended up on Erick Erickson's mailing list. I usually don't open the emails because internal Republican hair-pulling just isn't my thing, but this one caught my eye:

The Winds Appear to Have Shifted In Ted Cruz's Favor

Why did it catch my eye? Well, it's usually just not the kind of thing you see about someone who went oh for five in primaries three days ago. So I wondered what Erickson had on his mind.

I have to admit, Erickson turns quite a trick by fashioning two things -- one, that everyone who's talking about Cruz hates him; two, that most people (including Drudge) aren't talking about Cruz at all -- into a case for CRUZMENTUM.

And he seems to attribute this massive shift, of which the symptoms are that nothing at all seems to have changed in any way, to one thing: Cruz picking a failed CEO who got beat like a red-headed step-child in all three elections she's ever contested (California for US Senate, Iowa and New Hampshire for the GOP presidential nomination) as his running mate.

I'm not convinced.

Random Election 2016 Thoughts (Clinton and Bush)

Hillary's done for all intents and purposes. Once Biden jumps in, she will slide to a distant third place behind him and Sanders, and maybe even down into O'Malley/Webb/Chafee 1% territory.

But she's never gone gracefully, and never has Bill. Every scandal, they start by denying it, then grudgingly admit it but say there was nothing wrong with it, then say they "take responsibility" but still pretend they didn't really do anything wrong, then pout when there are consequences. Obama beat her in 11 straight primaries in 2008 and she still waited to concede while her gang talked up the possibility of breaking the Democratic national convention and pulling out a win. She'll drag it out, at the expense of her party's chances of holding the White House, taking back a Senate majority, and gaining seats in the House.

Her stubbornness in the face of defeat (not the possibility of defeat, actual defeat) is one of her problems. The other two are related:

• Nobody likes her; and
• Nobody trusts her.

At least nobody who hasn't been on her payroll forever. The left Democrats don't like her because she's a centrist. The conservative Democrats don't like her because she's a centrist. The centrist Democrats don't like her because she makes centrists look bad.

Nobody trusts her because she lies like a rug, thinks she's above the law, acts surprised when she's told that's not the case, and is sort of like Mitt Romney when it comes to actually taking a position on anything -- she is always saying whatever she thinks people want to hear, except when it means saying she was wrong or she's sorry.

Yes, she raised big money at the beginning of her campaign, but that was because the big money Democratic donors bought the trademark Clinton "inevitability" hype. Now they're noticing it was BS and looking for another horse to back; that's a fourth problem.

Which brings us to Jeb Bush, who has two of the same four problems.

Bush isn't really unlikable. Watch him some time. He's sort of modest, self-effacing, wonkish. Those qualities may not make for a great candidate when you've got a self-promoter like Donald Trump blocking your path to the White House, but he doesn't personally make my gorge rise like Clinton does.

Nor is he likely to prove as stubborn, to the detriment of his party, as Clinton. When and if he reaches a point where it's clear he isn't going to get the GOP's nomination, he'll pack it in, endorse another candidate, and soldier on for the party. I do predict that he won't do so until after the New Hampshire primary at the soonest, though, and then only if Kasich or Christie is the one pulling ahead, or likely to do so on the strength of his endorsement. If one of the "not a chance in hell of winning the general election" candidates (Trump, Carson, Fiorina, Huckabee, et. al) is still surging, he may stay in on the reasonable supposition that that is what's best for his party.

He does have a similar trust problem -- because of his last name, his brother's disastrous presidency and his father's tendency to go weak-kneed as president when pushed by Democrats in Congress.

And he does have the problem that the big money he raised as "inevitable" has probably dried up (3rd quarter FEC reports aren't due for nearly a month) based on him being back in the pack so far.

But his prospects are far better than Clinton's, because he at least has prospects. Hillary Clinton will never be president.

What Carly Fiorina can do for America

Carly Fiorina is running for US Senate in California. She's also the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, and she's facing questions about the sale of HP printers and such in Iran.

These questions are being spun as potentially damaging to her campaign, and maybe they are. But there's one thing Carly Fiorina could say right now that would do America a lot of good, and it would go something like this:

You're damn right HP worked to find legal ways to work around the idiotic US embargo of Iran. Selling HP products in Iran is a good thing.

It's good for the company, good for the company's shareholders and good for the company's employees because it produces a profit and creates jobs.

It's good for our American customers because the more units we produce, the lower the unit cost, and therefore the price, goes.

It's good for our Iranian customers because we can offer them a better product at a better price than other companies can.

And it's good for America because the single best way to turn enemies into friends is to trade with them.

Embargoes don't work. They never have worked and they're not going to start working now, at least not if the objective is peaceful relations among people and nations. Sooner or later, as Bastiat reminds us, if goods don't cross borders then armies will.

Under my leadership, Hewlett-Packard went to great lengths, at great expense, to ensure that it remained in compliance with the letter of US law regarding export of our products. As to the wretched, un-American spirit of that law, I offer no apologies for repudiating it in thought and practice at every opportunity.

Such a statement might scuttle her Senate aspirations. Or it might not. Either way, it's something that needs to be said, and to be effective it will take someone like Carly Fiorina to say it.