A few observations coming off this week's national political developments:
The Dave Brat upset of Eric Cantor in the 2014 Republican primary in Virginia foreshadowed much of what we are seeing now, with Republican primary voters just totally fed up with the Washington "establishment" or "donor class" or "Wall Street" party. Trump and Cruz, who have been getting lots of votes, are more in tune with that "throw the bums out" sentiment than Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush or even Marco Rubio. The 2016 primary season is Brat versus Cantor translated onto the national stage. It doesn't seem to have deterred any voters that Mr. Brat hasn't been any more effective than Mr. Cantor was in rolling back or even obstructing President Obama's agenda from the perch of the House of Representative. These voters are using their "voice" mechanism in the "voice or exit" scheme.
The most chilling and perhaps incisive comment on last night's Trump victories came in a tweet from conservative writer and stay-at-home mom Bethany S. Mandel: "It lasted 240 years. Not a bad run." This raises the prospect of "exit" in the "voice or exit" scheme. I've cautioned elsewhere against the excesses of anti-Trump alarmism, and as a Northerner to me secession and even "states rights" have extremely negative associations connected to the Civil War and the opposition to civil rights. But that said, the regional variations in political outlooks visible on maps — Sanders is winning in the North, Clinton in the South; Bloomberg could have been president of New England — suggest a conversation may be in order about whether it makes sense for the union to remain together, or, at the very least, whether it makes sense to devolve more powers and responsibilities and decisions to state and local levels to avoid the gridlock resulting from trying to resolve irreconcilable differences in Washington.
There has been a lot of talk about the conservative intellectuals who oppose Mr. Trump. There has been less attention to the conservative intellectuals who have supported him, or who at least have been open to him. The bitterness between the anti-Trump and not totally anti-Trump conservative intellectuals — running mainly, so far as I can tell, in the direction of the anti-Trump folks criticizing the less-than-totally anti-Trump folks as "enablers" or borderline fascists — is quite bitter as far as these things go, at least as far as I can recall. For reading in the not totally anti-Trump camp, I recommend American Spectator editor R. Emmett Tyrell Jr.'s column ("I am for the candidate with a sense of humor, of showmanship, and a proven record for getting things done") and New York Post editorial page editor Mark Cunningham's interview with Abby W. Schachter in CapX.
Both Cruz and Trump and Sanders and Clinton have scapegoats to blame for the economic (and in some cases even personal, like drug addiction) woes of American voters. Cruz and Trump blame Mexicans, to some extent Muslims (more Trump than Cruz on that one), and the politicians in Washington. Sanders and Clinton blame Wall Street, the drug companies, and the fossil fuel industry or "Big Oil."
