the primary

When I give talks about the Benedict Option, I tell people that the signal event was not Obergefell, but the Indiana RFRA debacle a couple of months earlier. That was when Big Business took sides in the culture war in a very big way — and did so against social conservatives, who lost massively.

A reader sends in this Politico piece about how the RFRA loss shattered the GOP coalition in the Hoosier State. The hook? Ted Cruz’s failure to connect with locals regarding his socially conservative message. Excerpts:

As the make-or-break Indiana primary looms for the GOP establishment, Ted Cruz suffered a develishly-dismal day. First, as Gallup reports, Cruz's favorability has utterly collapsed in the last few days (blame Carly?) with 45% unfavorable to 39% favorable (a negative spread for the first time in his campaign).

Andrew Sullivan is back, with a long piece in New York Magazine about how Donald Trump’s campaign is evidence of the decadence of our democracy and a harbinger of its possible end. I’m glad to see he’s his usual level-headed, temperate self. He concludes as follows:

An Arizona poll worker has testified in court that the recent presidential primary election was completely rigged – with computer systems giving some Democratic voters the wrong ballots, whilst listing other voters as belonging to the wrong party.  Dianna Post told a courtroom that the machine she used during the elections to check voters at a Maricopa County location, failed to give at least 36 voters the proper ballot. Ktar.com reports: “Every single time it happened to me it was a Democratic voter who wasn’t able to access a Democratic ballot,” she said.