At one point yesterday, every major news outlet in the United States and London was claiming Alaska would choose Trump for President, but Brad and I were committed to voting a certain way, so we showed up at the Fairbanks Presidential Preference Poll and voted sanely, rationally, with our gazes firmly fixed on our principles.
I’d like to say that Alaska voted wisely, because Cruz is much more sane than Trump and possibly electable in the general (which Trump is not), but the Fairbanks districts were the ones who swung the vote by slightly more than 3% to Cruz. The rest of the state appears to be confused about what a Republican looks like.
For the record, Barack Obama won both of his general elections by less than 2% of the vote, so the Cruz Alaska win margin is not insignificant. If we were Democrats, we’d be calling this a “wide” margin and hailing it as a mandate.
Ben Carson will actually get some delegates because he cleared the 10% mark that Alaska has set for apportioning delegates in Cincinnati. Kasich, another actual conservative, did not win enough to get delegates from Alaska. I feel good about the way I voted. I think a message has been sent to the Alaska GOP. Enough said on that.
And Super Tuesday doesn’t settle the matter. It will be interesting to see how Kasich and Carson do in the Midwest, though I don’t think either of them is going to take the nomination. If Cruz and Rubio stop fighting each other, there is a chance Cruz could take the nomination. A Fox News analyst last night suggested that a Rubio-Cruz ticket could compete against Hillary in the general. Since Cruz has more delegates, that seems like a sketchy ticket with whiffs of John McCain and Mitt Romney about it — put a moderate (meaning “progressive”) Republican in the lead position with an actual conservative “consolation” vice presidential candidate playing second fiddle and hope conservatives will mistake the VP pick as a promise that their preferred candidate will get a chance to run in eight years. That way you keep the conservatives in the stable without actually giving them what they want.
I hope we’ve gotten smarter than that, conservatives, but I know too many people who claim to be conservatives who are voting for Trump, so I’m starting to think conservativism is a dead concept and my anarchist friends are right — the electorate is too manipulated to vote with their heads.
But Alaska did just give me some hope (at least some Alaskans are still looking at the issues) … though I still expect to vote Libertarian in November and to watch Hillary take the White House, maybe I won’t have to.
For the record, if Cruz is the nominee for President, I will vote GOP in the general. He’s not a perfect candidate and I did not vote for him in the primary, but he’s conservative enough that I could convince myself to do it. I don’t know if I would vote for Rubio-Cruz — I doubt it. And, I will not vote for Trump, ever, for anything, no matter who his Veep candidate is. When a Democrat runs as a Republican, conservatives should vote against him by casting a vote for a 3rd Party that is to the right of the GOP.
I have a conspiracy theory or two about that, but that’s for another post.
What's Your Opinion?