With the Bush clan comes, an army of entrenched political consultants—people who have made lucrative careers off the family name, working for the father then the first son and now the second son, and the whole network of operatives connected to them—and a whole generation of politicians who have risen up to the national level as part of the Bush network.
The most prominent of these, of course, at this time is Jeb Bush’s protege Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). Rubio has come forth to challenge his mentor on the field of political battle, and the two thus far having dueled to a draw with a slight advantage to the elder. Student almost overtook teacher after Iowa’s caucuses, but mentor regained control of his part of the Republican Party in New Hampshire’s primaries and the move to bring out the big guns—the former U.S. president himself—couldn’t come at a more crucial time for Jeb Bush.
In any ordinary election year, this internecine battle between Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio—student attempting to become teacher, Padowan takes on Jedi Master—would be the story of the century. But in 2016, two and a half decades after George H.W. Bush famously repeatedly called for a “new world order” in presidential addresses—a mission his son President George W. Bush carried on in the early 21st century after eight years of Democratic President Bill Clinton split between them—the story is entirely different as voters nationwide have begun formally rejecting the establishments of both political parties.
The story this year is the American people’s complete and entire rejection—via the ballot box—of failed political dynasties. Iowa Republicans selected Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a thorn in the side of the Washington establishment and the Bush apparatus for the entirety of his national political career. Iowa Democrats ground their race to a stalemate between Democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) of Vermont, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—Bill’s wife, and the former First Lady. New Hampshire Republicans further rejected politics as usual by selecting billionaire Donald Trump as their candidate, while Democrats there overwhelming picked Sanders.
“We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations,” George H.W. Bush
saidin a nationally televised presidential address on the first Gulf War on Jan. 17, 1991. “When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U.N.’s founders.”
The phrase “new world order” has taken on a life of its own over the past couple decades since, as conspiracy theorists have repeatedly used it to describe some vaunted overarching mysterious Illuminati-or-Bilderberg-like global elite that controls everything like a puppet master pulls strings of a doll. While that meaning of it is far-fetched, and indeed conspiracy-theory level, there is an element of truth to the idea that the Bush family has obtained control over Republican politics over the past two decades—and similarly the Clintons over Democratic politics.
Americans, this election cycle, are repeatedly rejecting what they see as failed royal rule by a pair of high-profile political families and those closely associated with them—turning instead to outsiders they see as pure from the political corruption with which the Bushes and Clintons are so commonly associated. It’s why Iowa went to Cruz and a contested election on the Democratic side, and New Hampshire went to Trump and Sanders. It’s also why in South Carolina GOP presidential primary polling Trump and Cruz are so solidly ahead of their opponents in recent surveys. The RealClearPolitics
polling average has Trump up 20 points over the field, with Cruz in a solid second place up another 3 percent over the next best candidate.
Rubio, Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich combined in the polling average still lose to Trump alone. Throw in Cruz and Dr. Ben Carson, another outsider, and the non-politicians reach nearly 60 full percent—landslide territory—in South Carolina.
Perhaps that’s why the
RNC and other elements of the GOP establishment decidedon Saturday evening to make one last ditch effort to throw the kitchen sink and more at Trump and Cruz—a desperate ploy—by stacking the debate audience in Greenville at the Peace Center with donor class pro-amnesty establishment hacks. Incredibly, the crowd cheered as Bush and his protege Rubio repeatedly made the case to grant amnesty to illegal aliens—and booed as Trump and Cruz eloquently debunked them.
It turns out that out of the 1,600 plus tickets handed out to the debate audience, only 600 of them were distributed to the six remaining candidates to provide to their supporters. The rest were split among distribution by the RNC and the state and local parties—which basically handed them out to a bunch of donors, as the local GOP chairman admitted on local television. What’s more, rumors continue to swirl thatSen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)—a onetime candidate himself who endorsed Bush upon dropping out—and Gov. Nikki Haley packed the audience with anti-Trump and anti-Cruz activists. It’s no secret that Graham and Haley both despise Trump—and Graham equally despises Cruz.
Sanders’ rise has establishment Democrats as panicked as establishment Republicans are at the rise of Trump and Cruz. And just like the RNC seems to have engaged in questionable tactics designed to tip the scales in favor of the establishment backed Rubio, Bush and Kasich, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has engaged in questionable tactics designed to bolster Clinton over Sanders. Despite Sanders’ blowout victory in New Hampshire, for instance, the DNC—thanks to so-called “super delegates”—has awarded the same amount of delegates from that state to Clinton as were given to Sanders.
The Bush dynasty’s control of GOP politics in many ways comes down to what happens in South Carolina. The Greenville News’ Amanda Coyne ran a post-debate story with the headline: “Without strong showing, SC could be end of line for Bush.”
In it, Coyne
writes that Bush’s decision to come right after Trump in Saturday’s debate comes amid lagging poll numbers for the man who was supposed to easily become president.
“Faced with poll numbers that have him in fourth place, Jeb Bush came out swinging against GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump at Saturday night’s debate in Greenville,” Coyne wrote. “Bush needed to change strategies if he is to vault to at least second place in South Carolina’s primary and get out of the Palmetto State alive, some experts say. In a packed event room at the Anderson Civic Center last week, Bush asked South Carolina to switch the trajectory of the Republican presidential race by choosing him in next Saturday’s primary.”
Never count the Bushes out until the clock stops, though. They’re ferocious, tough fighters—and they’ve proven throughout history that they are not only more than capable of winning but they have actually won the presidency three times. They’ve also led the CIA, held two governorships of major U.S. states—Florida and Texas—and built a global presence that stretches from Washington, D.C., throughout the world. The same goes for the Clintons, who have won the presidency twice, held a governorship, a U.S. Senate seat and the Secretary of State position and have similarly built a worldwide presence through the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative and more. In other words, these two families are the most powerful people in the world.
What happens in the days, weeks and months ahead is going to be one of two stories: The comeback of one or two of America’s most powerful political dynasties, or the death of one or both of those dynasties and the birth of a new power structure in either or both party’s politics.
That new power structure will leave several—really, most if not all—players from the old power structure, the Bush and Clinton apparatuses, behind. Most GOP political consultants fighting Trump and Cruz right now are doing so for self-preservative purposes. If either wins the GOP nomination, and the presidency afterwards, most of them will be out of jobs. As the legendary pollster Pat Caddell so astutely noted on Breitbart News Sunday in late January, Cruz and Trump are the only campaigns who haven’t hired from the pool of recycled failed political consultants. That signals to the electorate and to the political class alike that things will be different—and new leadership will take over at all levels of government—if either is elected president. The same hacks who have promised voters they’d fight President Obama’s executive amnesty or Obamacare or liberal judges or overregulation or higher taxes or giant omnibus spending bills—and then didn’t do anything to do so—won’t be in positions of power under a Cruz or Trump administration. And the political class—the lobbyists, the consultants and politicians—know that, and it’s why they’re terrified of what might happen next. Their cushy deep-into-six-figure salaries, evening cocktail circuit tours, high-class parties rubbing elbows with high-level officials, and their television appearances and self-glorification in media are all in jeopardy. So, naturally, what they are doing is using their positions of influence and power in any way they can to protect their control of things—to keep the good times rolling for the “in crowd” in Washington.
Much of the same can be said for what’s going on on the left, in the Democratic party. It would have been unfathomable just a few years ago to see someone who is proud of his self-identification with socialism even getting close to winning a presidential election. Now, though, Sanders nearly beat Clinton in Iowa and crushed her in New Hampshire. Thanks to her race card ploys, Clinton still holds a significant lead in South Carolina over Sanders—but she’s hardly done with him yet after this state votes a week after Republicans.
In Nevada, where Democrats caucus on Saturday while Republicans here vote in the South Carolina primary, Sanders is quickly gaining on Clinton. Jon Ralston of Ralston Reports, writing in the Reno Gazette Journal, detailed how this is now a razor-thin race.
“It seems like yesterday. The Hillary Clinton juggernaut arrived in Nevada last spring, making all the right moves,” Ralston
wrote. “She hired Emmy Ruiz, a skilled operative who worked for Clinton and Barack Obama here in 2008 (Clinton won the popular vote but lost the delegate fight), to helm her effort. Ruiz brought a Nevada-centric team together, people who knew the state and its burgeoning Latino community, which made up 15 percent of the caucus universe eight years ago. And in May, Clinton held a memorable event, a roundtable with DREAMers, who just recently endorsed her for the nomination. Nevada was Clinton Country, mostly because of her organizational strength designed to construct a firewall should Bernie Sanders do well in New Hampshire. Indeed, Sanders apparently couldn’t place Nevada on a map – he had no offices, no staff, no footprint at all. Race? What race? Now, one week before Nevada Democrats break the tie between Iowa and New Hampshire and decide if the Sanders Surge is real, yesterday has vanished and Hillary Clinton can’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”
Both the Bush and Clinton campaigns in their respective primaries have done everything right—by the book—in terms of hiring staff, orchestrating events, conducting speeches, fundraising from big donors, and amassing heavyweight political campaigns. But that’s just not what the voters have wanted.
This is post-party politics. Voters aren’t falling into traditional Republican and Democrat lanes. It’s hard to see the entire GOP base show up to support Bush, Rubio or Kasich in a general election—and it’s hard to see the Democrat base show up for Clinton. Voters feel extraordinarily disenfranchised, and question whether a distant Washington, D.C.—which, again, is enriching itself at the expense of the rest of the nation, as evidenced by the fact the D.C. metro area is one of the only economically growing regions in America—has their best interests in mind.
Globalist trade deals, like the George H.W. Bush negotiated and Bill Clinton ratified North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico saw many factories across the United States—including many in the textile industry here in the Carolinas—close down and reopen in Mexico. As the Clinton years dragged on into another Bush presidency, and now Obama’s presidency with the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) front and center, the process of the hollowing out and transferring of America’s middle class and manufacturing sector—among other job fields—to foreign countries has only accelerated.
One of the most egregious examples, Carrier Corporation in Indiana,
just emerged this week as cell phone video of a company executive en masse laying off more than a thousand workers in Indianapolis—and informing them the company was moving its operations to Monterrey, Mexico, as a cost-cutting measure that will leave most if not all of them unemployed—was posted online.
It’s not just trade policy where Americans feel like the Bush and Clinton dynasties have them down. Immigration is another prime example. Now 30 years after Ronald Reagan, who agreed to an amnesty for illegal aliens in 1986 only if it came with border security, the U.S. border with Mexico remains entirely insecure. Reagan’s border security pledge would have needed his vice president, George H.W. Bush, to follow through on it as the nation’s next president. He failed.
A national security and economic risk, both President Bushes, President Clinton, and Obama and his Secretary of State Clinton left the border wide open. In addition, while both political parties used to fight for lesser immigration to America because of the known impact high levels of imported foreign workers have on American workers’ job prospects—like simple supply and demand, an increase in the labor supply leads to decreased demand for labor which means lower wages and higher unemployment and joblessness among Americans—under the Bushes, Clintons and Obama, both political parties have moved away from nationalist populism when it comes to immigration. The last time now Senate Minority Leader
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), for instance, backed reducing immigration—something he once supported strongly, but no longer does—
was in 1993, just after George H.W. Bush’s only term as president and as Bill Clinton began his first term as president. That was before the establishment of both parties officially veered away from protecting American workers toward the bitter–and often meaningless–partisan bickering on Capitol Hill, back when Congress used to represent Americans not special interests.
Open borders style trade and immigration combined are a double whammy against American workers. While many jobs are being lost nationwide due to companies relocating overseas, the establishment backed immigration policy brings hundreds of thousands if not millions more workers into the U.S. economy from foreign countries to compete for what few jobs Americans still have a shot at.
Somehow, during the Clinton, Bush and Obama years, seemingly every politician except a handful including most prominently Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) have lost that America-first worldview that used to be prevalent among elected officials. The Middle East, since Reagan’s administration, has tumbled into chaos—getting ever-so-worse with each successive administration since the late 1980s. George H.W. Bush, of course, as he laid out in that “new world order” speech, began much of this with the first Gulf War. Since then, things have spiraled worse and worse out of control in the Middle East where during the Bill Clinton administration Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations formed—then they attacked the United States during the George W. Bush administration—in the wake of which the U.S. invaded Iraq again. Under Obama’s administration—which including Hillary Clinton at the helm of foreign policy—the region has devolved even further as the Islamic State has risen from the ashes of failed U.S. nation building in Iraq and elsewhere like “Hillary’s War” in Libya. That’s not to mention that while this has all been going on, Muslim migration to the United States hasn’t just not stopped: It’s increased over the past two plus decades—and increases in H-1B visas and other visas designed to import foreign workers into U.S. jobs.
Meanwhile, the size and scope of the federal government has rapidly increased over the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama years. The national debt is now more than $19 trillion. The government keeps spending more and more of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars on meaningless minutia while Congress—and complicit presidents—continues passing several-thousand-page-long omnibus spending bills that only serve to exacerbate and perpetuate the problem. Now there’s imminent worry of a serious financial crash, as analysts begin to fret over the potential of a market meltdown.
The only candidate who has consistently and repeatedly hammered all of these points home is Donald Trump. It’s clearly why he’s winning so decisively in polling—skyrocketing higher and higher almost every time. Cruz, meanwhile—who’s in second place—has hit some of these topics but hasn’t been as laser-focused as Trump on the campaign trail. His somewhat of a focus on these matters, however, is clearly paying dividends for him.
Sanders, on the other side of the aisle, has hit some of these issues.
The differences between the Bushes and the Clintons—and both of their close allies, like Rubio—are minimal at best. All of them, the whole lot of career politicians who have spent their lives suckling on government while amassing as much power and money as they possibly can for themselves, represent the same thing: Continued trudging of America down the same tired pathway. No change. Nothing different. Business as usual.
But if Trump, Cruz or Sanders wins, as Trump has implied by
essentially appropriating The Beatles’ classic “Revolution” into his campaign, there’s a revolution under way. And that means a new world order—newer than what George H.W. Bush pushed for as president—takes over government. And not sadly to many ordinary Americans, this newer world order can’t co-exist with the previous one.
What his time at the FTC suggests about how he’d run the White House.
