How She Runs Against Herself

This is a curiosity, or maybe not. Think of it this way: Former Secretary of State, United States Senator, and First Lady Hillary Clinton is not, in her presidential election campaign, running against Donald Trump. She is, instead, running against any number of ideas, some about being a Democrat, some about being a woman, and some about being a Clinton, though I’m uncertain about the order of priority, and the fundamental question of whether we, the People, think she deserves to be president. No other presidential candidate has ever run in this context.

Consider the basic proposition: Hillary Clinton is so widely recognized as a potential president that people hold this fact against her; Bernie Sanders would pretend to disrupt Clinton’s “coronation” as nominee, but it turns out the movement didn’t have a platform.^α Now Donald Trump must disrupt Hillary’s (ahem!) coronation as president. And that’s how this election is being fought and judged:

▸ Donald Trump is not qualified to be president.

▸ Hillary Clinton is qualified to be president, but we’ll give the job to Trump unless she satisfies us as no candidate before her ever has.

Republicans, who have spent the last two terms saying and doing everything they can think of to maintain the pretense that Barack Obama’s presidency is somehow illegitimate, are already looking past Mr. Trump’s defeat, considering how to delegitimize Hillary Clinton.

The Ben Carson Show (Falter)

It is well enough to note how strange it is we might find some object of utility at the intersection of Rush Limbaugh and World Net Daily, but Joe Kovacs reports on what could be a milestone in the 2016 Republican presidential nomination contest:

Front-running GOP candidate Dr. Ben Carson is “probably not” equipped right now to be president, according to talk-radio star Rush Limbaugh, but the top-rated host in America says he’d “absolutely” vote for the former neurosurgeon over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

There will come a point at which Republican voters driving Mr. Carson’s standing in the polls must necessarily confess to themselves what pretty much everyone else knows. And there really isn’t any way of sugarcoating it:

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Limbaugh was asked by host Chris Wallace to comment on some of the major players in this election cycle’s hunt for the White House.

When Carson’s name was mentioned, Limbaugh said Carson is “one of the most decent human beings in this country. He’s one of the finest men. I’ve met him. The things he has done, the places he’s come from … and I cringe when I see that they (the media) are trying to destroy him.”

Wallace asked Limbaugh if Carson is “equipped to be president.”

“Probably not at this stage,” said Limbaugh, “but any of these Republicans running would be better than Hillary or better than anything we’ve got now. So, based on that comparison, yes. I would vote for him if it was up to him and Hillary. Absolutely! Without a doubt.”

The idea that Republicans hate Hillary Clinton so much they would see the nation wrecked before supporting her is hardly new. Still, though, at a strange nexus of FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, and World Net Daily, the fact of Dr. Carson’s incompetence unquestionably rises toward prominence.

Only time will tell what such a notion does to Dr. Carson’s standing; perhaps his core support doesn’t care, and it’s simply the conservative remainder who hear or read Limbaugh’s words and nod at the feeling that it sounds about right.

____________________

Image note: Host Chris Wallace, left, and guest Rush Limbaugh talk on FOX News Sunday, 22 November 2015.

Kovacs, Joe. “Limbaugh: Ben Carson not equipped to be president”. World Net Daily. 22 November 2015.