The Establishment’s Last Stand

The good news for anti-interventionists out of Iowa is that Bernie Sanders
has defied
the conventional wisdom
and effectively delayed the coronation of Hillary
Rodham Clinton. In spite of a ramped up effort
to isolate
the Vermont socialist from the Democratic mainstream, Hillary
is in for a bruising fight that will only get bloodier when Sanders smashes
her in New Hampshire, as
seems likely
.

On the Republican side of the aisle, the news from Iowa is decidedly mixed.
There are glad tidings in the fact that the two candidates not wholly-owned
subsidiaries of the neocons came in first (Cruz) and second (Trump). Yet the
unexpectedly strong third place finish by the War Twink Marco Rubio has
the War Party celebrating.
Not that we didn’t know Rubio was going to come in third all along: that’s what
the polls told us, and they were right. Yet we were being primed in the run
up to the actual balloting with
the narrative
that third place was actually a “victory” for the Cuban Bombshell.
And we have the “mainstream” media chiming in with the usual neocon suspects
when it comes to pushing this line.

Ideologically, Rubio is the perfect neocon vehicle. He is not only opposed
to the Iran deal, he has also suggested war with Tehran is practically
inevitable
. He avers that we should’ve been arming
the Syrian Islamist rebels
from the very beginning, a view he shares with
Hillary Clinton. He has run ads complaining
that the US spies on Israel
– but hasn’t said a word about extensive Israeli
spying on the US
. He wants to add
$1 trillion to the military budget
: he wants to shoot
down Russian aircraft over Syria
and confront
Moscow in Ukraine. And his dog whistle to the neocons is his campaign theme:
he touts “a new American century,” limning the battle-flag of the old Project
for a New American Century that did so much to give us the invasion of Iraq.

 

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