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Steve King Endorses Ted Cruz

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) got a huge boost in Iowa yesterday when Rep. Steve King (R-IA) endorsed him for President, saying he is "a candidate God will use to restore the soul of America." King is an extreme conservative and an immigration hardliner with great influence among evangelicals in Iowa. This is Cruz' second major endorsement in the state, the other being from right-wing talk radio host Steve Deace. Together, these two endorsements could set the stage for Iowa evangelicals to begin deserting Ben Carson for the more electable Cruz. There is one more endorsement in Iowa that matters here: Bob Vander Plaats, CEO of the Family Leader, an evangelical organization. If Cruz can line him up as well, he will get another tremendous boost.

Cruz is making a big effort to win Iowa, in part by lining up conservative pastors in all 99 of Iowa's counties to work for his election. The senator plans to do a "Full Grassley," that is, visit all 99 counties before the Feb. 1 caucuses, just as the state's senior senator does every election. Most Republican officials dislike Cruz and do not think he would be a strong general election candidate because his strategy is to turn out large numbers of conservative evangelicals and ignore everyone else. It is possible that will work in the primaries in the Bible Belt, but less likely in the more moderate states in the North and Far West and not at all in the general election.

Nonetheless, Cruz' rivals are starting to get nervous about him. Unlike the other candidates, who have focused on getting on television as much as possible, Cruz has focused on raising money (his campaign now has more than any other Republican campaign) and building a solid ground operation in the first four states plus the Super Tuesday states in the South. One Republican from another campaign, who for good reasons wishes to remain anonymous, said that Cruz could win the nomination but he couldn't win the general election.

The Iowa caucuses are closer in time than they appear. Starting in about a week, many people will start thinking about turkey—and not because of the Kurds or the Syrian refugees that are fleeing to the country of that name. Then comes Christmas shopping and the New Year. As a consequence, the race in Iowa could get frozen until January, not leaving much time for other candidates to make their moves. (V)

Will the Paris Attacks Really Be a Game Changer?

Some people have suggested that the terrorist attacks in Paris last week could be a game changer for the 2016 presidential election. Certainly the Republicans hope so, because with unemployment now at 5% and dropping, the economy is not likely to be a winning issue for them. However, a piece in the New York Times suggests otherwise. For example, the betting markets didn't change at all as a result of the attack. Also, "game changers" in the past, including Mitt Romney's "47%" remark, the Ebola outbreak, and even the killing of Osama bin Laden didn't last very long.

We have often quoted Harold Wilson's remark that a week is a long time in politics. The election is a year away. That's a very, very long time. Consider: Only two months ago many Democrats were wringing their hands in despair fearing that their chances were essentially destroyed by Hillary Clinton's email practices. Now that news story has completely vanished from the front pages. It is quite possible that a year from now, the Paris attacks will seem as distant in time as the 9/11 attacks or the Oklahoma City bombing. (V)

Words Matter, Part I: Declaring War

Nearly all of the GOP's candidates are trying to capitalize on the Paris attacks, as each attempts to assert himself (or herself) as the one true leader who can overcome ISIS if just given the keys to the White House. The latest salvo comes from Jeb Bush, who on Sunday opined that the U.S. "should declare war" against ISIS.

This seems fairly unambiguous, and so perhaps we should take Jeb Bush at his word: He really wants a formal declaration of war against ISIS. If so, he has a shockingly poor understanding of exactly what he is saying. Among the issues:

1. Only Congress has the power to formally declare war, and inasmuch as senators and representatives do not wish to be on the hook for a war that goes badly, they are exceedingly unwilling to grant such a declaration. Hillary Clinton's vote for the Iraq AUMF has dogged her for 14 years, and that wasn't even a declaration of war. In fact, Congress has declared war only five times in U.S. history (War of 1812, Mexican-American War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II). Even Vietnam was not formally a war. As such, Bush's proposal is a political non-starter. If he were to press the issue as President, he would be putting himself in opposition to a Congress probably controlled by his own party.
   
   
2. ISIS has not actually attacked the United States, as yet, and in the absence of such an attack, the declaration of war would thus be preemptive. None of the five previous declarations was such—each was in response to a specific act of aggression (albeit a tenuous one, in some cases). The American public is not likely to be happy about another Bush War in the Middle East absent an actual attack on the U.S., so again, politically unwise.
   
   
3. Turning to the other side of the equation, a declaration of war is a specific legal instrument, and its issuance immediately triggers certain legal responsibilities, most obviously compliance with the Geneva Conventions. That would tie the United States' hands in many ways—for example, captured jihadists would have to be treated as enemy soldiers, and would have to be given food and shelter (and not tortured). To many Americans, these limitations would be perfectly acceptable and humane, but they have not—in recent years—been in line with Republican thinking on the matter. And in any event, it is rather unlikely that ISIS would abide by the Geneva Conventions, so why would the U.S. want to do something that tied its hands?
   
   
4. More importantly, both established precedent and the terms of the Hague Conventions make clear that war can only be declared by one nation against another nation. As such, declaring war against ISIS would implicitly acknowledge that they are an independent state. Abraham Lincoln, lawyer that he was, understood this concept very well. He specifically avoided even the faintest whiff of a declaration of war against the Confederacy during the Civil War because such a declaration would imply independence from the United States (and from his authority as president), which in turn would mean he had no right to tell Europe not to trade with the Southerners. In any case, surely America and its allies do not want to give any sort of credence to the idea that ISIS is a nation—or, to put it in ISIS' terms, to affirm that a new caliphate has already been established.
   
   
5. Finally, the cessation of a state of war requires a peace treaty. But who would sign the declaration of surrender after we won? ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? We hardly even know what he looks like, given that he has appeared on camera a total of one time, and has met with the leaders of other nations zero times. Further, as someone who believes he is helping to bring the coming apocalypse, surrender hardly seem his style.
   
   

In short, a declaration of war would be a political and geopolitical disaster with no obvious benefits.

Of course, the other possibility is that Jeb Bush doesn't actually want a formal declaration of war, and that he is just saying whatever he can think of in an effort to win the war of words with the other candidates. That is certainly the conclusion of Christi Parsons and David Lauter, writing for the Los Angeles Times. They observe that, outside of the fiery rhetoric, the Republicans' plans for dealing with ISIS are curiously similar to President Obama's plan for dealing with ISIS. It is true, they note, that some GOP candidates (and Hillary Clinton) want a no-fly zone over part of Syria while Obama does not. However, the no-fly zone has nothing to do with ISIS, since they have no planes. Meanwhile, there are calls—from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), among others—for more bombing, but the U.S. is already bombing nearly all of the ISIS sites that the military has been able to confirm. "The main constraint on the number of strikes," as the Times' authors observe, "has been a lack of intelligence on where to aim."

The point is: words matter. And both possible parsings of Jeb Bush's chosen words reveal something unflattering about the candidate (and, perhaps, about many of his fellow candidates). Tomorrow, in Part II, we shall look more carefully at the word 'terrorist.' (Z)

The World Is Not As Dangerous As You Think

After the horrific attacks in Paris, and the Republican candidates' comments on the need to go to war with ISIS, one might get the impression that the world was an extremely dangerous place and death at the hands of a terrorist was a substantial risk. It's not. In fact, one can make a good case that the world is a great deal safer than it was 40 years ago. At that time, if Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev was in a bad mood due to a fight with his wife at breakfast, and he pushed the wrong button at work, he could launch 30,000 nuclear missiles and end all life on Earth within a month. That can't happen now because (1) Vladimir Putin is divorced and (2) Russia's missile collection has been reduced to 7,700. ISIS does not have any missiles, nuclear or otherwise. To get a better idea of the risk of dying from terrorism, here is a list of the odds of dying from various causes and how much more likely they are than dying from a terrorist incident.

Cause of death	Odds of dying: 1 in	Times more likely than terrorism
Heart disease	5	1,860,000
Cancer	7	1,328,571
Stroke	23	404,348
Electrocution	5,000	1,860
Murder	18,000	517
Car accident	18,585	500
Drowning anywhere	79,065	118
Bee sting or snake bite	100,000	93
Choking on food	370,035	25
Being struck by lightning	576,000	16
Drowning in bathtub	685,000	14
Dog bite	700,000	13
Fireworks accident	1,000,000	9
Falling off a ladder	2,300,000	4
Food poisoning	3,000,000	3
Terrorism	9,300,000	1
Shark attack	300,000,000	0.031

For example, the odds of dying from a dog bite are 1 in 700,000, which is 13x more likely than dying in a terrorist incident, based on actual data. Dying in a car accident is 500x more likely than dying in a terrorist incident. Since the beginning of 2001, 406,496 people have died in America due to gun violence vs. 3,380 in terrorist attacks (including 9/11), a ratio of 120:1. For a list of terrorist incidents in the U.S. since 1800, here is a link. There have been many of them, but the chance of dying in one is very small indeed. (V)

O'Malley Reduces Headquarters Staff

In an ominous sign, Martin O'Malley is reducing the size of the staff at his Baltimore headquarters and moving some people to Iowa. The total headcount working on the campaign will be lower after the move. O'Malley is presenting the shift as an emphasis on the Iowa caucuses, which is not really true because that has always been his main focus. This could be the beginning of the end for O'Malley. The reason that most candidates drop out is not that they wake up one morning and suddenly think: "You know, I really don't want to be President after all." It is almost always because they run out of money and it is no secret that O'Malley doesn't have much left. When he made a decision, long ago, to make the run, he was not counting on Bernie Sanders running and soaking up all the donations from the left. O'Malley will probably keep running until after the Iowa caucuses, but if he can't do well there, he'll probably give up. (V)

Poll: Americans Like Old Presidents

A new Marist poll shows that a huge majority of Americans wouldn't mind a President over 65, with 71% seeing age as a benefit because the voters value experience and wisdom. Only 24% think that an old person might not be up to the rigors of the job. This finding is obviously good news for Hillary Clinton (68), Bernie Sanders (74), Donald Trump (69), and Jeb Bush (62), but less so for Marco Rubio (44) and Ted Cruz (44). The poll also found that 92% would be willing to vote for a woman, 89% said a Latino was acceptable, but 50% said they would never vote for a socialist. (V)

Interested in a Sane Horse Race Debate Right Now?

While the general election debates are still 10 months away, A.B. Stoddard of The Hill moderates a completely sane and very interesting weekly debate between two very savvy and pull-no-punches political operatives, John Feehery (R) and Peter Fenn (D). This week they discuss whether Donald Trump and Ben Carson are for real. Even more interesting is that Feehery believes that there is only one Republican who has a chance of beating Hillary Clinton. To find out who it is, watch here. (V)

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