The move
I know you were worried, so let me reassure you: We survived the move. After 20 years on the fifth floor of 1150 17th Street, NW, we’re now two blocks away at 1152 15th Street, NW, on the second floor. Being conservative, we never would have chosen to change offices–but even we realized we couldn’t stay in a building that was being gutted. The good news is we’re now in a nice space in a newer building, sharing a floor with our corporate cousins The Washington Examiner and Red Alert Politics. So there will be more people to waste time talking sports with–oops, I mean more people with whom to have stimulating and useful intellectual exchanges about the important developments of the day….In any case, we’re already reasonably settled, we were able to get the magazine out this week without any major problems, and I look forward to informing you about our next move in 20 years.
Speaking of the Examiner, let me remind you that you should check their website frequently–there’s a lot of good reporting and interesting analysis to be found there, by writers like Michael Barone, Byron York, Phil Klein, Sarah Westwood, Susan Crabtree and many, many more. And speaking also of our new issue, you’ll want to make sure to take the time to appreciate the appreciations of the late Justice Antonin Scalia by Andrew Ferguson and Adam White.
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South Carolina
Meanwhile, when I’ve had time to look up from unpacking books–okay, when I’ve had time to look up from supervising some of my colleagues who’ve “volunteered” to help with unpacking books–I’ve noticed the presidential race is chugging ahead, and not altogether promisingly. Here’s my take on South Carolina, posted earlySunday morning:
Scenario #1: Trump wins.
Why not? He’s been second (Iowa), first (N.H.) and first (S.C.) so far, and no one has ever lost after that kind of start. The only state he’s lost is a caucus, and there aren’t that many more of them. He’s won both of the primaries by 10 percentage points or more; he’ll probably win Nevada easily Tuesday; and he’ll most likely win a strong plurality of the vote and a majority of the delegates when 12 states vote on March 1. Maybe at that point there’s a real consolidation against him and someone, presumably Rubio, starts to defeat him in some states-but that will most likely be too little and too late, sort of like the efforts to stop Jimmy Carter late in 1976 or Bill Clinton late in 1992.
What’s more, Trump won in South Carolina despite committing all kinds of offenses against Republican orthodoxy. He was also massively outspent by at least three other campaigns, each of whom (Cruz, Rubio, and Bush) thought South Carolina was their best chance for a breakthrough. His victory in South Carolina will have a normalizing effect, and strengthen him going forward. Doesn’t his one-third of the vote in South Carolina look more like a floor going forward than a ceiling?
So Trump will have his challenges, but he’s the frontrunner, and frontrunners at this point almost always win the nomination.
Scenario #2: Trump loses.
Here’s the contrary argument: Trump lost ground over the final week in South Carolina, and also did a little less well than he’d done in New Hampshire. He doesn’t have real momentum, and the ceiling at around a third of the vote looks real. Trump also did relatively poorly in the parts of South Carolina that look more like the big voting areas in Ohio, Florida and other major states going forward-he lost Charleston and Richmond Counties to Rubio, despite Bush and Kasich poaching 20 percent of the moderate vote, and only won Greenville narrowly. Bush is finally out of the race, and Rubio (presumably) picks up most of that vote and a ton of money; and as Carson fades further and then gets out afterMarch 1, and Kasich perhaps after that, most of that vote goes to Rubio, some to Cruz, and not much to Trump. So Trump seems likely to fall short when the contest becomes a two-way race, and-based on history-it will become that sooner rather than later. In addition, we still haven’t seen what happens when real money is spent on the air attacking Trump.
So Trump’s vulnerable, and the most significant thing to happen in South Carolina was not Trump’s victory but Rubio’s comeback. It showed candidate skills and resiliency, and it very much increases the odds of a Trump-Rubio showdown. If you allocate the other candidates’ votes in South Carolina, and try to adjust the South Carolina results to the socio-economic demographics of the other states, that matchup looks like a Rubio victory. So “all” Cruz and Rubio need to do is keep Trump’s margins down on March 1-and then on March 15 Trump gets defeated in the big winner take all states, either by one candidate (presumably Rubio) or by a couple of candidates who focus on different states and deny Trump major victories. So at the end of the day, with the field narrowing, money being spent against Trump, and the other states weighing in, Trump is heading toward a third or maybe two-fifths of the vote and the delegates-not a majority.
It’s of course possible that neither of these scenarios will play out-that either Cruz and/or Kasich will re-emerge, and/or that Trump will finally start to collapse because of something he says or is revealed to have done, or that something even more unlikely happens, and the whole race goes in a different direction.
Some version of these two scenarios seems the most likely. Conventional wisdom probably tilts toward scenario #1-but I suspect that it could well be that intelligent and determined efforts by candidates and elected officials and donors could tilt the outcome to scenario #2.
Take a look also at the posts late Saturday night by Mike Warren and John McCormack, and if you’d like take a listen to my Sunday podcast with Michael Graham.
The bottom line is Trump is strong, but still, as I argued in last week’s editorial, beatable. But he’s going to have to be beaten, which means making the case against him (e.g., here), and organizing against him, and also perhaps ultimately getting behind one other candidate. The next four weeks are going to be decisive…so stay on top of developments at weeklystandard.com and wash
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There is hope
I spoke Saturday at the annual meeting of the Adam Smith society, an impressive young organization that’s attempting to do for business schools what the Federalist Society did for law schools. It helps students at B-schools organize chapters where they can sponsor speakers and discuss among themselves political and philosophical issues relating to free markets and a free society. It was a good event–it’s always encouraging to see young people who are inquisitive and open-minded, and also inclined in the right direction. The epidemic of political correctness on campus (and beyond)–discussed by David Gelernter in the current issue–is both a problem and an opportunity, because bright young people are surely inclined to rebel against such heavy-handed attempts to stifle their speech and thought.
Which is one reason I’m now heading into a studio to tape a couple more of the Conversations the Foundation on Constitutional Government produces, which are primarily intended to help educate young people, or help young people educate themselves, beyond the limits of their campuses. And there’s an additional benefit: Doing the Conversations will keep me out of the office much of today, which in turn will allow me to put off coming to grips with unpacking and organizing. In fact, it’s a fairly busy week, with talks to the Hoover Institution annual gathering here in Washington and to Virginia Republicans in Richmond, among other things–so I guess I’ll just have to delegate the book-organizing and paper-filing to others. I know you all join me in wishing them good luck…
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Onward!
Bill Kristol
