Insurgency Candidates

"A building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. Alone, a symbol is meaningless. But with enough people, blowing up a building can change the world."
--V (V for Vendetta)

On his radio show yesterday Sean Hannity argued, as these pages have, that the two GOP presidential candidates rising to the top of primary ballot boxes reflect an overwhelmingly anti-establishment voice coming from Republican voters. He called Ted Cruz and Donald Trump the 'insurgency candidates.'

Cruz, he said, is an insurgent because he would make changes to better align political action with constitutional principles. Significant movement toward the Constitution threatens today's Right (and Left) establishment to no end.

Trump, he said, is an insurgent because of his 'outsider' status and his demonstrated disdain for political correctness. After several conversations with Trump, Hannity is convinced that he will keep his promises about making major changes and has little doubt that Trump would do his best (paraphrasing here) to 'blow up the government' if need be.

Whether either Cruz or Trump would actually be insurgents if elected as president is certainly debatable. But I do think Hannity has captured the essence of these two candidates' appeal with many voters.

These voters are saying that they believe that the country is headed in a very wrong direction and that incremental attempts to alter the course, which these voters backed in the past, have not worked. Thus, many citizens are now thinking outside the box that defines Washington orthodoxy. Outsiders, they believe, are the best bet for turning this thing around.

But who's to say that the replacement apparatus crafted by insurgents will be an improvement, you say? Well, to many people, perhaps that's tomorrow's question. Today's question is how do you shut down the existing machine before we're over the cliff's edge?