The Trump Tryout
So, let's see how presumptive-nominee Donald Trump is doing. A new poll from the Republican firm Civitas finds Hillary Clinton leading Trump in North Carolina, 49 percent to 40 percent. A new poll from the station WSB in Atlanta finds Trump barely ahead of Clinton in Georgia, 42 percent to 41 percent. Trump is ahead, 37 percent to 31 percent . . . among Miami-Dade County Cuban-Americans, traditionally one of the most heavily-Republican demographics in the state of Florida. Trump's share of the vote is the lowest level of support among this group ever recorded. The ORC national poll commissioned by CNN finds Clinton ahead nationally, 54 percent to 41 percent. Other than Rasmussen, every pollster has Clinton ahead, usually by double digits or close to it, in every poll since the beginning of March. But Trump's numbers will improve once the Republican party unifies behind him, right? "Does it have to be unified? I'm very different than everybody else, perhaps, that's ever run for office. I actually don't think so," Trump told George Stephanopolous Sunday. "I think it would be better if it were unified, I think it would be -- there would be something good about it. But I don't think it actually has to be unified in the traditional sense," As for the idea of unifying behind the Trump agenda, that's harder than it sounds because he keeps changing his positions. He's already reversed positions on tax increases, the minimum wage, self-financing, and paying down the debt, and suggested the United States might tell its creditors it needs to renegotiate what it will pay back, despite contractual obligations. We've been hearing from Trump fans for the past year that he's going to beat Hillary Clinton like a drum, that his win is going to be "yuge," that we can't put any stock in head-to-head polling during the primary. They insist "once he goes to work on her" his numbers will rise and her numbers will drop. Well, it's time to go to work. We'll have two months of general election polling between now and the GOP convention July 18. Think of this as an audition. If Trump really is the general-election juggernaut that his fans insist he is, he should have no problem closing the current gap and improving his currently abysmal numbers. If, as we skeptics contend, he's electoral poison, radioactive among women, Latinos, and young voters, and that voter opinions of him are already set and largely intractable, the numbers won't move significantly. In mid-July, the Republican delegates will gather in Cleveland, and they will face the choice about whether to continue on a path that appears disastrous, or whether to choose a different one. The delegates could vote to change the convention rules even BEFORE the first round of balloting takes place. That's right, in the days leading up to the convention, the RNC Rules Committee could recommend rules changes to the Convention Rules Committee. That committee could tweak the recommendations but they they would ultimately have to send the new rules to the floor of the convention for a vote by the delegates. If the delegates vote to change the rules so as to 'unbind' themselves, then they could vote for whoever they wanted even in that first round. If Trump is still down by ten points or so nationally in mid-July, traditionally red states are turning purple, purple states are turning deep blue . . . why shouldn't the delegates alter the rules and choose a new nominee? Why are they obligated to ratify a landslide loss? Rubbing Salt in the Wound: The Cruz-Rubio 'Blowout' That Never Was We just saw Ted Cruz come up painfully short in a three-way race against Donald Trump, with John Kasich hanging around and taking his ten percent or so in state after state. I'd like to think Cruz-Rubio would have proven an unstoppable team-up, but I'm skeptical. The Cruz campaign poll tested a Cruz-Rubio ticket in several states, including Arizona, Illinois and Wisconsin, CNN reported. Campaign sources told the network that the poll results showed a "blowout" for Cruz and Rubio. Cruz won Wisconsin just fine without Rubio. In Illinois, Cruz and Rubio combined got 38.7 percent, Trump finished with 38.8 percent, so perhaps if Rubio had still been in the race, they might have edged Trump. But in Arizona, Rubio's name was still on the ballot and Cruz and Rubio got a combined 38 percent to Trump's 51 percent. However, Rubio reportedly failed to show any interest in being Cruz's vice president and the plan never got off the ground. CNN's Jake Tapper reported a "source familiar with Marco Rubio's thinking" said a concrete offer was never made to the Florida senator, but there were also other "misgivings" about the prospect. "He thought that two senators from Washington D.C. teaming up to go after Trump would only feed into Trump's 'outsider' narrative and . . . that he thought that the nominee really should be able to pick who he thinks is going to be a running mate that will help him win in November and not be stuck with someone he picked in the midst of a heated campaign battle in the primaries." Trump foes could look at that news and fume at Rubio for not being interested in a team-up. But let's also remember how Rubio probably felt about Cruz after the Ides of March by looking at this CNN report, March 4: Cruz's aides and allies are preparing an aggressive effort to keep Marco Rubio from winning his home state of Florida on March 15, a blow they hope would render Rubio's path to the GOP nomination unimaginable and force him to withdraw. A Rubio loss, Cruz's orbit believes, would then set up the two-man race with Donald Trump they believe they are destined for -- and absolutely need -- to win. "Florida's a burning dumpster fire for Marco Rubio," said Cruz spokesman Ron Nehring. "If he doesn't win his own state, it's hard to rationalize going forward." The strategy is not without risk: A Trump victory in Florida puts him 99 delegates closer to clinching the GOP nomination, weakening rivals' hopes of keeping him from reaching the delegate threshold and then defeating him at a brokered convention. And keeping Rubio from climbing is likely to cost millions of dollars. . . . Cruz is planning to spend part of next week in Florida, and in recent days his campaign opened 10 offices across the state. Under the direction of one of the aides who engineered his Iowa win, deputy Iowa state director Spence Rogers, Cruz has 300 county chairs and his campaign is preparing to unveil major endorsements and a list of Cuban-American supporters in coming days. Cruz finished with 17 percent. Was campaigning in Florida in those last two weeks worth it, if it ended up alienating Rubio? It's a free country, and the Texas senator had every right to run in Rubio's home state, knowing the stakes . . . but if he thought he might need Rubio as an ally later on, was it such a wise decision? If Cruz had to do it again, would he have run in Florida at all? The Tired Complaint that Conservatives Have No Influence over Pop Culture A reader calls my attention to this argument from Mark Judge: When liberalism grew ascendant in the popular culture of the 1960s and 70s, conservatives simply reacted to it. To some extent this was understandable: the left's cultural revolution was brought to us, they were (and are) the aggressors, and it was necessary to respond. It still is. The right needs its Michelle Malkins and Ann Coulters, foot soldiers on the front lines. But it also needs Martin Scorseses and Alec Baldwins. It needs artists and dreamers and writers and weirdos. A lot of garbage came out of the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 70s, but so did a lot of worthwhile art. Saturday Night Live changed more people than National Review. Well, gee, who else is surprised that Eddie Murphy's saying "I'm Gumby, dammit" appealed to a broader audience than Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's describing the reality of life in the Soviet Union in the pages of NR? (Both occurred in 1982.) Talk about comparing apples and oranges. No kidding, a sketch comedy show that happens to feature some of the most gifted performers of its generation has a more far-reaching impact than a magazine and web site dedicated to conservative philosophy, policy, and the arts and culture. SNL "changed more people" than NR, but it also changed more people than The New Republic, The Nation, and The American Prospect -- because comedy shows have wider appeal than policy magazines. Lots of people like to laugh; fewer people like discussing tax rates, the proper role of the judiciary, the defense budget, and education policy. Judge's solution is . . . "Imagine if the Heritage Foundation, probably the most visible conservative think tank, had a Chair in Popular Culture, helmed by a passionate and knowledgeable connoisseur of film, television and music." There's a game-changer. A little while back, Matt Lewis wrote in his book, Too Dumb to Fail: Conservatives need to be able to talk about the culture without coming across like the angry old man shaking his fist and yelling, "Get off my lawn!" It won't be easy -- there is a missing ingredient. For this to work, more conservatives will have to ditch their 5-irons, put down their remotes, and infiltrate the intellectual elite. When you lose intellectuals, you lose popular culture and, before you know it, you've lost the culture war. And that's where conservatives have been for a long time. I found that passage infuriating, as well as the "we need a conservative [pop-culture offering]" arguments. Yes, it would be great if there were a conservative Saturday Night Live, a conservative Cosmopolitan, a conservative New York Times, a conservative film studio, a conservative whatever. But there's not much point in sitting around wishing we had one, or complaining that some billionaire isn't just writing us a giant check to start one. Conservatives have known for a long time, and keep discovering anew, that reaching a position of cultural influence is really difficult. Making a cultural creation -- whether it's music, a book, a movie, a television show, art -- that resonates with a wide audience is probably one of the hardest things you can do. Each year, millions of people of every political stripe try it and either fail, or achieve quite modest success. There's no shame in that. Separately, it is almost impossible to be a cultural influencer, particularly in the creative arts, when you have a day job -- and a lot of conservatives who would like to create a work that influences the culture are busy with those day jobs. Just about every cultural icon with influence that conservatives envy -- the movie stars and filmmakers, the rock stars, the bestselling authors, the talk-show hosts, the television stars we invite into our living rooms each week -- achieved their status this because they dedicated themselves to a craft and spent a good chunk of their life honing it. It is their job; it is how they make money (often, a lot of money). From those heights, they command enormous resources to promote their ideas -- massive budgets for movies and insane advertising budgets to bring in an audience. Throw in the largely liberal-mindset in Hollywood and the fear of being blacklisted, and you have considerable obstacles to conservatives reaching a position of large-scale cultural influence. Liberty Island publishing keeps plugging away. Am I crazy for concluding -- with no offense to the fine, fine people at the Heritage Foundation -- that you don't influence popular culture from a think-tank? That the better way to influence the culture is to you know . . . create stuff? ADDENDA: For some reason, Heavy Lifting, my book on the joys of marriage, fatherhood, and the adult life co-written with Cam Edwards, is only $5.75 on Amazon.com today. That's an insanely low price for a hardcover book, and one that I hope isn't affecting my royalties. I don't know whether this is a Father's Day sale, or Amazon has a ton of unsold copies and wants to get rid of them -- but either way, you should grab it while this price lasts.  | 
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