Handicapping 2016

In the wake of the whole let's-not-default escapade, I don't see Cruz as the nominee of the Republican Party in 2016. He might be a nominee, though, in a fractured-party context. In much the same way that the Democrats had three nominees in 1948. Cruz would be a Henry Wallace type figure.

The Bush family remains powerful in the Republican Party and I think they'll back somebody. This could mean Jeb, portrayed above, but if he doesn't want the job (and he might be rational enough not to want it) it'll mean some family associate. The Bushie to be named later (TBNL) will be the Henry Truman type figure in my '48 analogy.

There may also be an outlier, a regionally-limited figure who nonetheless wants a spot at the table, like Strom T. in the 1948 Democratic context. In the 21st century Republican context, though, the regional outlier will be a northeastern Republican who will be open to the charge that he's a damned liberal.

So this gives us our line up in the primaries: Cruz, a Bushie TBNL, and Chris Christie.

THAT will provide the context of the fracturing of the party, because none of them will back down. Certainly with the bitterness they are all putting in the bank now and with that they may yet deposit in months to come. By Labor Day 2016, each will have managed to persuade himself that he is the legitimate nominee, of the Republican Party or of the part of it that counts.

This is where the 1948 analogy limps, though. There is no very Trumanite Bushie in prospect. Their connections and history will carry their guy through to the nomination of what is left of the 'established' party, but their guy won't be able to do what Truman did, to marginalize each of the other two.

So Hillary (I am certain it will be Hillary on the other side, if she stays healthy, although she might want to send Biden some flowers, or a cabinet pick of his choice -- he surely thinks he's been a good soldier and deserves something more consequential that the Veephood) Hillary will have the cakewalk that much of the country wrongly expected Dewey would have, and the rest of the scenario I laid out in my previous blog entry unfolds naturally.

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