Beating Trump at the Convention Got a Lot More Difficult Last Night
The case for Trump in Cleveland is going to be pretty clear. With last night's sweep, Trump has won 39.6 percent of the total votes in all GOP primary states so far -- well more than Cruz's 27 percent. He's won 26 of the 39 states that have voted. (Cruz won ten, Rubio won two, Kasich one.) Trump will probably win at least 30 states. He's won more votes than Mitt Romney did in the 2012 primary, and is likely to win more votes than any other Republican presidential candidate in a primary. Will Trump finish the primaries with 1,237 delegates or more? Probably not, but he'll be close, maybe really close. John Podhoretz says it's time to face facts, that even if you grant Ted Cruz was never going to be a strong candidate in the northeast, he's faltering: After Trump's astounding five-for-five primary night, by margins that were likely surprising even for Trump fans, it's now Indiana or bust. If Trump wins the primary next week in the Hoosier state, Cruz is toast and Trump will almost certainly be the Republican nominee. There's no putting a lipstick on this pig. Cruz's numbers Tuesday night, like his numbers in New York last week, were beyond horrible. With six weeks to go before voting concludes, the man conservatives are hoping can overcome Trump with his clever delegate game and more serious mien is getting 10 to 15 percent of the vote in major states. I say this as a guy who's pulling for Cruz now -- why is he having such a tough time winning some of these states? Why is he fighting for his life in Indiana of all places, the land of Hoosiers, Dan Quayle, Mitch Daniels? Cruz lost the Evangelical vote in a lot of places. He lost all of the Southern primaries to the previously pro-choice, thrice-married casino and strip-club owner who bragged of his affairs with married women, kissed Rudy Giuliani dressed in drag, defends Planned Parenthood, and says he's never asked for God's forgiveness. Even if you think Cruz was never going to be a natural fit for New England or the usually-blue mid-Atlantic, he's developed this habit of flopping in purple-to-red states that you would figure would be natural fits for his conservative message. Was it reasonable to expect Ted Cruz to finish third in South Carolina? To finish a distant third in Nevada? To lose Tennessee? A distant third in Virginia? Arizona? And Kasich . . . if Cruz was always an awkward fit with the New England or mid-Atlantic region, these states should have been relatively low-hanging fruit for the Ohio governor -- he's the Care Bear sensible moderate, the grown-up in the room, the kind of Republican acceptable to the New York Times editorial board. Kasich only broke 25 percent in one state, Connecticut. Remember when Pennsylvania was going to be one of Kasich's strong states, because it was close to Ohio geographically and demographically? He finished third with 19 percent. An Alliance Built on Convincing People to Vote for What They Don't Want Here's one giant reason the Cruz–Kasich strategic voting alliance is, if not doomed to failure, facing a steep uphill climb . . . Indiana Kasich Voter: Governor Kasich, I think you're exactly what the Republican party needs! We've had so many of these hardline ideologues filibustering and blocking and delaying, it's as if none of them care about actually getting anything done! They've turned "compromise" into a dirty word! You're the experienced hand, the grownup in the room, the man who can hammer out a sensible compromise and listen to all sides. Strategic Voting Guide: That's great. Now we need you to vote for Ted Cruz, who is pretty much the opposite of what you just described. That's it, go ahead, go cast a vote for the guy who led the government shutdown. Indiana Kasich Voter: Wait, what? New Mexico or Oregon Cruz Voter: Senator Cruz, I think you're exactly what the Republican party needs! We've had so many mealy-mouthed moderates and RINOs who refuse to take a stand -- guys who go to Washington or a state capital and are so focused on "getting something done" and winning praise from the liberal media that they don't stand for anything. You're the defiant outsider, the upstart who's not afraid of being criticized by the liberal media, the man who's willing to do the right thing and fight the tough fight, even if it isn't popular! Strategic Voting Guide: That's great, now we need you to vote for John Kasich, who is pretty much the opposite of what you just described. That's it, go ahead, go cast a vote for the guy who expanded Medicaid under Obamacare and was endorsed by the New York Times editorial board. New Mexico or Oregon Cruz Voter: Wait, what? Is This a Cast List or a Census? If you have a few hours, you can read the cast list for the new Twin Peaks series on Showtime. You think I'm kidding; the full cast clocks in at . . . 217 members. Never mind all of the returning cast members from the 1990–91 cult hit, the new cast members could make up a pretty good show by themselves: Monica Bellucci, Michael Cera, Laura Dern, Ashley Judd, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Amanda Seyfried, Naomi Watts, Ernie Hudson, Robert Knepper, Jim Belushi, Tom Sizemore, Balthazar Getty, and David Koechner, A lot of David Lynch's film veterans in there. (Bellucci in Twin Peaks? Take the most beautiful woman in the world that I'm not married to, add her to the renewal of one of my all-time favorite shows . . . the mind reels.) Still, I'll be honest, the dribs and drabs of rumors I hear about the Showtime series have me . . . cautious about my enthusiasm. (POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD) Unlike the original series, which remained almost entirely inside the town (and even the movie, Fire Walk With Me, only departed the Pacific Northwest for a few scenes), the rumor-mill says the new series will have scenes in far-flung locales including the Mojave Desert and perhaps even Paris. Or maybe my nagging concern is simpler -- that Twin Peaks captured the zeitgeist of a particular era and is simply not going to feel as resonant or relevant today. Twin Peaks came along in that short but pivotal transition era between the Reagan years and the Clinton years. (Feel free to observe that this "pivotal transition era" happens to coincide with my own adolescence.) The Cold War had been won, but when America's attention returned to the home front, it didn't always like what it saw. Twin Peaks depicted a community brimming with small-town charm and seeming innocence, almost preserved from a more innocent time -- Reagan's America -- but a shocking murder exposed a long-hidden or consciously-ignored dark underbelly: a drug trade, teenage prostitution, domestic abuse, a serial killer living among them. The kinds of evils fictionalized in Twin Peaks came to dominate the headlines in the subsequent years: the salacious sex scandals of Amy Fisher and Heidi Fleiss; the abuse allegations in the headlines of Lorena Bobbitt and O.J. Simpson; heroin chic; the small-town thuggery reflected in heartland militias and culminating in the Oklahoma City bombing; the unspeakable horrors of Jeffrey Dahmer and Joel Rifkin. Bill Clinton fans would like you to think that the 90s were one big party, but there was something dark and twisted working its way through the American psyche in that decade. (A lot of people find Lynch's work too disturbing and violent, but for what it's worth, he says it makes his films and shows that way because he finds society disturbing and violent.) So . . . what is small-town America today? Dying off from economic change? Gentrifying? Transformed by the Internet and the ubiquitous presence of smartphones? More diverse and grappling with the ramifications? In one of the DVD commentaries, co-creator Mark Frost says that Twin Peaks was "really an examination of the nature of good and evil in people's hearts, and how you don't have to go to a big city or have famous characters to find that kind of divide. The human heart is capable of incredible goodness and remarkable darkness." That's a pretty timeless theme; hopefully it will resonate as much in 2017 as it did in 1990. ADDENDA: Over in the Corner, Jay Nordlinger reacts to my column on Trump supporters who see their candidate as a surrogate father figure -- some of them are quite open about this sentiment -- with this anecdote illuminating the fact that institutions and policies cannot fulfill the parental role: Longtime readers know one of my favorite stories. It stars Phil Gramm, the Texas senator. He was on a program -- MacNeil/Lehrer? -- with a woman who represented the education establishment. The Blob, as Bill Bennett dubbed it. One exchange between them went something like this: Gramm: My education proposals are premised on the fact that I care more about my children than you do. Blob Lady: No, you don't. Gramm: Oh? What are their names?  | 
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