The Twilight of the Elites

It strikes me that the “elite” of both of our political parties are showing signs of being out of touch with their bases.

Democratic Party insiders have cruised along these past several years assuming that 2016 will be a Hillary Clinton coronation; no other candidates need apply. Odds are still high that HRC will get the nomination, but Bernie Sanders is making her work for it.

But the Dems long have been out of touch with the base; I’ve said for years that the Dem establishment acts as if it doesn’t want to be seen with actual progressive activists in public. The vast chasm between the Republican establishment and the schmos who vote for Republican candidates is a relatively new thing.

Right now I’m seeing all kinds of headlines from right-wing sources and mainstream media saying that the Trump campaign is toast. As I wrote yesterday, and as Josh Marshall writes today, the elites may be in for a shock.

Let’s not forget: these are supporters who have cheered Trump as he’s called Mexicans rapists and criminals and all the rest. They don’t have delicate sensibilities. Let’s also not forget that these kinds of attacks on McCain (actually considerably uglier ones) have a long history among hard-core base Republicans, just the folks Trump is spiking with. They claim he had a lackluster career before his capture (some real truth in that) and they hint he may have been turned in some way by captors or betrayed his fellow POWs during his captivity (zero evidence for this). But even beyond the hard-core fringe that believes those things, McCain is just really not popular with base Republicans, especially not those who define themselves around the immigration issue. He’s the ultimate RINO. All of which is to say, if you’re someone who’s cheered to Trump’s clown car of aggression and derp over recent weeks, I see little here that will make you reconsider your enthusiasm. In fact, I see a lot that will make you see this as more of a brash truth-teller who won’t take any crap from the Republican establishment, the media or its favored leaders.

At the risk of stating the obvious, resurrecting Mitt Romney to denounce Trump or having Jeb or the increasingly hapless Reince Priebus do so is unlikely to shift this perception of what’s going on.

This might shock Reince Priebus, but I doubt many of the hard-core rightie base know who he is. See also Steve M’s roundup of rightie reaction to Trump’s McCain bashing.

Ten and more years ago, the people directing Republican politics could play their voters like a fiddle. About ten years ago I thought I saw the beginning of some fissures regarding the issue of immigration, but that was about it.  Now, nobody seems to be in charge. The Wall Street Journal and National Review are denouncing Trump in no uncertain terms. But who the bleep reads the Wall Street Journal and National Review? Not the GOP base, I don’t think.

See, the base likes its assholery pure and undiluted. The elites are more sensitive, at least when one of their own are being slimed. Other people, not so much. But with the elites, selective hate speech is a means to an end. With the base, the hate speech is the end.

Can the GOP Bring Down Trump?

In another bravura performance of Peak Assholery, Donald Trump slammed John McCain for getting himself captured in Vietnam. The Republican establishment and most of the other candidates — Ted Cruz being the exception — ran to the microphones to condemn him.

Nate Cohn writes,

Mr. Trump’s candidacy probably reached an inflection point on Saturday after he essentially criticized John McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War. Republican campaigns and elites quickly moved to condemn his comments — a shift that will probably mark the moment when Trump’s candidacy went from boom to bust.

His support will erode as the tone of coverage shifts from publicizing his anti-establishment and anti-immigration views, which have some resonance in the party, to reflecting the chorus of Republican criticism of his most outrageous comments and the more liberal elements of his record.

Yes, that’s probably what will happen. But I’m not certain that’s what will happen. Because the section of the Republican base supporting Trump wrote off McCain as a RINO a long time ago and probably don’t care what Trump says about him. To verify this I went to Jim Hoft’s site Gateway Pundit, and sure enough, the mouth breathers were cheering Trump for insulting McCain. Representative comments:

It seems lately the more Trump opens his mouth, the more truth emerges. Refreshing in the stale crypt of RINO pablum.

Trump is right, McCain is a do nothing Progressive yes man. He works for the money men.

Trump is right – all of McCain’s actions have been actions of Treason and Rebellion and of Dishonorable Conduct, it is a deep Wrong to our nation that he was not tired when he returned from Vietnam. It is a Deep, Incredible Wrong that he was ever elected to the office of a Public Servant.He committed strings of Treason while in Office and only ONE of them is the Treason of his co-authoring and promoting SHAMNESTY, both in America AGAINST OUR CONSTITUTION and in Mexico, Central and South America, and for all practical purposes, WORLD WIDE…. FLOODING OUR NATION TO DEATH. There is no longer an Punishment for McCain’s Felonies that is too severe so that anyone has GROUNDS to say, “That is too harsh.” Anyone who does say it has REFUSED to look at what McCain has done to others, the MILLIONS dead due to his DIRECT ACTIONS with willful knowledge aforethought. …

That last one goes on and on and was written by a woman. Be afraid.

Of course, it’s also not clear exactly who the Trump Supporter is. Cohn continues,

His support does not follow ideological lines, as Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight has observed. It is not even clear that he has more support among immigration hard-liners than other Republicans. A Politico article titled “The Mystery of the Trump Coalition” struggled to identify which issues or demographics drove support for Mr. Trump. There might not be any.

Or, it might be that the assholery is what’s driving the support. He is the asshole’s candidate.

The Republican establishment has the vapors today over Trump’s comments about McCain. They didn’t mind so much when he was spewing demented hate speech against entire population demographics, but insulting another Republican will not stand. However, I suspect Trump is riding a wave that Republicans created but which got away from them some time back.

The GOP establishment ought to be grateful to The Donald, I say. He’s making the rest of their candidates seem almost human.

The Growing Anti-Capitalist Movement

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m seeing more open grumbling about capitalism than I used to. There was a time one could not say that, maybe, capitalism really doesn’t work in the long run without being shouted down. But now I see people grumbling about capitalism almost every day. Even the Pope is running around saying that the unfettered pursuit of money is the “dung of the devil.”

The problem, of course, is that capitalism doesn’t work for the masses unless you regulate the hell out of it, which the high priests of capitalism will not accept. Ironically, the past 30 years of deregulation (while celebrating the triumph of capitalism over communism) have done a bang-up job demonstrating that Karl Marx was right about one thing, at least — capitalism carries the seeds of its own destruction.

I don’t have to persuade you “regulars” why this is true, but those of you who wandered in late can read A Wealthy Capitalist on Why Money Doesn’t Trickle DownCapitalism Simply Isn’t Working and Here Are the Reasons Why, and More Compelling Evidence That Free Market Capitalism Doesn’t Work Without Government Regulation.

If the true believers of capitalism had the sense God gave cucumbers they’d be at least considering re-instating some of the old safeguards, such as the Glass-Steagall Act, to save capitalism from complete collapse someday. But they won’t. It’s against their religion. See this commentary from a blogger whom I doubt it all that wealthy —

[Sen. Bernie] Sanders moronically said to John Harwood on CNBC, “What I think is obscene [is] when you have the top one tenth of one percent owning almost as much as the bottom 90.”

That’s capitalism.  That’s our history. That’s why  we are not Vietnam or Cambodia.  We are not the old USSR or Tiananmen Square in China.  We are successful because success is not legislated, but achieved.

And I’m sure this guy genuinely and fervently believes that allowing the nation’s wealth and resources to be hoarded by people who really don’t work for it, whom we did not elect, cannot control, and possibly wouldn’t even like much if we met them makes America strong, and he will continue to believe that as long as he is able to cling to a middle-class lifestyle. But if the nursing home dumps him on the street some day because Medicaid has been scrapped to pay for more tax cuts for the rich, he may be in for a shock.

As the current system works for fewer and fewer of us, I’m seeing more people, younger people especially, say out loud that capitalism doesn’t work. It’s not really a movement yet, but if current trends continue I think it will be in three to five years or so.

I’m seeing suggestions that government should encourage profit sharing and more stock ownership among employees. I see the Birkenstock crowd is big on something called the “sharing economy,” which I take it means you can rent out your stuff when you’re not using it. But it seems to me these are band-aids, not cures.

On the other hand, economic adviser Jeremy Rifkin says that capitalism is about to experience  “the most exquisite of deaths.”

“We are seeing the final triumph of capitalism followed by its exit off the world stage and the entrance of the collaborative commons,” Rifkin predicts.

This is not socialism but an entirely new economic model. That sounds exciting, but what the hell is it? I’ve read the piece and cannot make sense of it. But maybe some of you will.

Stop David Brooks Before He Expresses Himself Again

It was bad enough that The Cabbage was caught on video opining that Bernie Sanders “doesn’t get the working class.” As I wrote on my Facebook page, “Next we’ll hear Donald Trump complain that Joaquín Castro doesn’t get Latinos. Or Richard Dawkins will lecture us that the Pope doesn’t get Catholicism.”

But today Brooks has outdone himself. His column lectures Ta-Nehisi Coates on racism. Someday, when somebody builds the Museum of Clueless White Privilege, this column should be the first exhibit.

Responding to Coates’s new book Between the World and Me about the experience of being a black man in America, Brooks actually whitesplains to Coates that racism in America just isn’t as bad as he thinks it is. At one point he assumes that Coates doesn’t always mean what he wrote literally and accuses Coates (whose main strength as a columnist, IMO, is his masterful and well-researched presentation of American history) of distorting American history. It’s embarrassing. Someone at the New York Times would have done Brooks a favor by killing this column before anyone else saw it.

A big part of Coates’s problem, Brooks thinks, is that he doesn’t appreciate the American dream.

In your anger at the tone of innocence some people adopt to describe the American dream, you reject the dream itself as flimflam. But a dream sullied is not a lie. The American dream of equal opportunity, social mobility and ever more perfect democracy cherishes the future more than the past. It abandons old wrongs and transcends old sins for the sake of a better tomorrow.

Oh, let’s not be patronizing or anything, Mr. Brooks.

This dream is a secular faith that has unified people across every known divide. It has unleashed ennobling energies and mobilized heroic social reform movements. By dissolving the dream under the acid of an excessive realism, you trap generations in the past and destroy the guiding star that points to a better future.

I like the “acid of excessive realism.” Does that mean “what people experience in the real world,” by any chance?

Brooks concludes,

Maybe you will find my reactions irksome. Maybe the right white response is just silence for a change.

Ya think?

In any case, you’ve filled my ears unforgettably.

But not head head, apparently. But cabbages aren’t known for their mental acuity.

See also Helmut Monotreme at Sadly, No and Scott Eric Kaufman at Salon.

A Global Disaster

Paul Krugman is calling the European summit agreement on Greece “the sacking of Athens.” He said, gloomily, “So we have learned that the euro is a Roach Motel — once you go in, you can never get out. And once inside you are at the mercy of those who can pull your financing and crash your banking system unless you toe the line.”

See also Krugman’s blog posts “Faithocrats,” “The Pause of 2014,” “An Unsustainable Position,” and “History Lessons for Euro Debtors,” which together make about as good a primer on the Greek situation that there is. See also Ivan Krastev, “A Greek Farce.”

The immediate impact of the Greek agreement is calmer markets, defeated Greeks and skeptical Germans. So should Europe celebrate? Do European leaders expect Greece to be transformed by the accord as Central Europe was transformed in the 1990s? Is it possible that the whole referendum episode — a resounding public “no” followed by Mr. Tsipras’s climb-down with the creditors — could serve not to humiliate Greek voters but instead to re-educate them?

While many in Brussels are hoping that the Greeks have learned, it is more than likely that the new reform package agreed to on Monday will result in further radicalization of certain segments of the European left and the spread of apathy in Greece.

Mr. Tsipras’s leftist populism failed to win Greece a better deal. Instead, the real political winner is most likely to be not the moderate center but the anti-European right. And while European leaders can congratulate themselves on keeping the Union going, the price that Europe will pay for saving Greece economically and losing it politically is the transformation of the Union from a project sustained by hopes and aspirations into one surviving on shared fears and confusion.

Krugman says in “Faithocrats,”

But let me note, as I have before, that what Europe calls technocrats aren’t people who know how the world works; they’re people who subscribe to the approved fantasies, and never change their minds no matter how badly wrong things go. Despite the overwhelming evidence that austerity has exactly the dire effects basic textbook macro says it will, they cling to belief in the confidence fairy. Despite a striking lack of evidence that “structural reform” delivers much of a growth boost, especially in an economy suffering from a huge output gap, they continue to present structural reform — mainly in the form of disempowering workers — as a sovereign remedy for all ills. Despite a clear record of past failure, they continue to push for asset sales as a supposed answer to debt overhang.

In short, what Europe usually means by a “technocrat” is a Very Serious Person, someone distinguished by his faith in received orthodoxy no matter the evidence.

Structural reform in the form of disempowering workers sounds pretty much like what the Republicans want to impose on us, here.  Faith-ocratism will be our doom.

The Deal

First, what are the conditions of the nuclear deal with Iran? Charles Pierce explains:

This is the biggest gamble yet for an administration that appears to be reacting to its lame-duck status by ignoring it entirely. An administration that, as we have pointed out previously, has upturned its big bag of fks and discovered that it has no more there to give. The Republicans — especially those running for president — are going to go indiscriminately up the wall, and Benjamin Netanyahu nearly beat New Horizons to Pluto after having given it a nine-year head start. …

… (Strumming the same tune on this side of the world is Senator Huckleberry J. Butchmeup, who has hit the fainting couch with the impact of an anvil dropped from an airplane: “You’ve ensured that the Arabs will go nuclear. You’ve put Israel in the worst possible box. This will be a death over time sentence to Israel if they don’t push back…You put our nation at risk.” And the alternative is another war, somewhere down the line. You first, senator.)

Central to the knee-jerk dismissal of any agreement with Iran regarding nuclear weapons is the belief that the Iranian regime is fundamentally suicidal, that its leaders actually would commit themselves to a course of action that would result in the complete annihilation of their country. In 2012, at a campaign event, Rick Santorum said this flat-out, that the Iranians would launch a nuclear exchange, which they surely would lose, because they don’t fear such cataclysm based on their belief that it would bring about the arrival of the 12th Imam. Santorum — and have I mentioned recently what a colossal dick Rick Santorum is? — was not laughed off the stage. This is exactly the same kind of nonsense we heard during the Cold War when the nuns assured us that the Russians didn’t fear nuclear war because they were atheists anyway.

OK, that doesn’t exactly explain what’s in the deal, but it’s damn funny.

You know that the Right would denounce any deal made between President Obama and Iran, because it’s President Obama and Iran.  It’s hard to say whom they hate and fear more — an Islamic republic or their own President.  In any event, Republicans wasted no time rushing to microphones to denounce the deal they hadn’t had time to study.

Andrew Rosenthal:

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who reportedly has been getting briefings on foreign affairs because he’s the governor of a Midwestern state with no actual experience in the area, announced: “The deal allows Tehran to dismantle U.S. and international sanctions without dismantling its illicit nuclear infrastructure — giving Iran’s nuclear weapons capability an American stamp of approval.”

Actually, no. It requires Iran to dismantle a great deal of its “illicit nuclear infrastructure” before sanctions start to be lifted, would restore them and impose more if Iran cheats, and keeps in place many sanctions based on Iran’s human rights record and its support for terrorist organizations.

“Shame on the Obama administration for agreeing to a deal that empowers an evil Iranian regime to carry out its threat to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ and bring ‘death to America,’” said Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor.

Mr. Huckabee, like the rest of the G.O.P. field, offers not a clue as to how he would prevent Iran from doing those things, which don’t actually require a nuclear weapon, which the United States and Israel have, by the way.

Just go read all of Rosenthal’s piece; it’s one of the snarkier things I’ve yet to read in the New York Times, outside of Krugman’s blog.

Miss … I mean, Senator Lindsey Graham — may have won the competition by declaring the deal was “akin to declaring war on Israel and the Sunni Arabs.” It’s still about a year before the nominations, and LG alone has just about depleted the global supply of hysterical hyperbole.  Where can they go from here?

The runner up is Scott the Power Tool, who is not running for President. And why the hell not? He called the deal “Munich for our time,” which by itself is depraved enough to win him a place in the GOP debates, candidate or no.

Ian Black of the Guardian says the winners of the deal are Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani; President Obama; Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin. The losers are Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS; King Whoozitz of Saudi Arabia (I wish they’d all go back to being all named Abdullah) and Binyamin Netanyahu. Mostly a win, I’d say.

Here’s a roundup of reactions from all GOP candidates. Oh, and here’s a fairly clear walk-through of the agreement.

The GOP Needs a Better Base

Do y’all remember William Bennett, the guy who made a good living as a public morality scold until it was discovered he had millions of dollars in gambling debts? He hasn’t entirely gone away, but he gets less attention than he used to.

You might remember that Bennett was so disappointed that the American people weren’t more outraged by the Clinton-Lewinsky that he wrote a whole book about it, The Death of Outrage. He saw President Clinton’s popularity as a sign that the American public was morally depraved. (Big Bill averaged a 61 percent approval in his second term, and his high point in December 1998 was 73 percent, according to Gallop.)

I thought of Bennett this morning when I saw this piece at National Review, whining about the Republican base. Kevin Williamson calls that part of the base that is putting Donald Trump at the top of the GOP polls the WHINOS, because they whine about the Republican establishment.

What’s generally misunderstood on the left is that the tea-party movement did not arise as an alternative to the Obama-Reid-Pelosi Democrats but as an alternative to the Bush-McConnell-Hastert Republicans, who were judged to have spent too much, warred too recklessly, and — most significant — to have been too ready to make themselves complicit in the bailouts. …

…You know the RINO — Republican In Name Only — but you may be less familiar with the WHINO. The WHINO is a captive of the populist Right’s master narrative, which is the tragic tale of the holy, holy base, the victory of which would be entirely assured if not for the machinations of the perfidious Establishment. Never mind the Democrats, economic realities, Putin, ISIS, the geographical facts of the U.S.-Mexico border — all would be well and all manner of things would be well if not for the behind-the-scenes plotting of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and their enablers, who apparently can be bribed with small numbers of cocktail weenies. The WHINO is a Republican conspiracy theorist, in whose fervid imaginings all the players — victims, villains — are Republicans. Barack Obama? Pshaw. The real enemy is Jeb Bush….

…Which is to say, the WHINO loves Trump not because Trump confounds the Democrats or because he constitutes a serious threat to a Democratic victory in 2016, but because he confounds the Republicans and constitutes a serious threat to a Republican victory in 2016.

Williamson manages to write this whole column without dealing honestly with the one issue that is earning Trump so much WHINO love, which is immigration. I well remember even during Dubya’s first term, when he was still coasting on the false impression that he actually knew what he was doing about terrorism, there was grumbling on rightie blogs that he was soft on immigration. The fact is, the Republican base is cemented together with a whole lot of nativism, along with racism and resentment of anyone comfortable with diversity. It was the Right, not liberals, who lashed out and killed Dubya’s immigration reform efforts.

The GOP establishment thought the baggers were grand when they could be mobilized to shut down town hall meetings about Obamacare. Then they ran Jeb up the flagpole, and the baggers failed to salute. Instead, they are flocking to Trump, who is speaking their language and throwing them red meat in quantity. Because, ultimately, that’s all baggers want. They aren’t interested in actual government policy. They want leaders and spokespeople who will validate their bigotries and give voice to the howling, ugly hate and demented envy that gnaws at their souls.

And now, having chased anyone who actually cared about governing, or even America, out of the party, the GOP is faced with a base that no longer understands, or cares, how the game is played. And the GOP establishment is beginning to realize they no longer control the Frankenstein’s monster they cultivated all these years.

Stuff to Read

A couple of articles to read together — see “An Opportunity Gamed Away” by Chico Harlan and “The Dream World of the Southern Republicans” by Howell Raines. The first article in particular illustrates how deeply entrenched racial segregation and discrimination in the deep South is still impacting the region.

Paul Solotaroff asks “What’s Killing the Babies of Vernal, Utah?” A fracking boomtown in Utah is experiencing a spike in stillbirths and birth defects. Is the fracking to blame? Correlation ain’t necessarily causation, but the political powers that be are blocking a serious inquiry. And the midwife who raised the alarm is getting death threats.

Papa Francisco is mincing no words, calling out the excesses of global capitalism. He’d better hire more bodyguards and stay in the Popemobile, if they still have it.

The Smarter Brother Reveals Serious Family IQ Deficit

Anyone who harbored the thought that Jeb might be a better man than Dubya by now should have evicted that thought and changed the locks. Raw Story:

In an interview with the Union Leader, aspiring 2016 Republican presidential nominee Jeb Bush took a slap at the foreign policies of President Barack Obama, stating that the leader of the  free world uses too many big words and wastes his time at conferences with world leaders instead of forging ahead.

In video captured by C-SPAN, Bush criticized the White House’s nuclear negotiations with Iran calling it, “the Clinton-Kerry-Obama foreign policy playing out.”

Bush then advocated for more blunt and simple type of statesmanship — reminiscent of the style of his brother, former President George W. Bush as well as Vice President Dick Cheney — in dealing with world.

“You don’t have to be the world’s policemen, but you have to be the world’s leader and there’s a huge difference,” Bush explained. “This guy — this president and Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry – when someone disagrees with their nuanced approach where it’s all kind of so sophisticated it makes no sense. You know what I’m saying?”

Bush continued, “Big syllable words and lots of fancy conferences and meetings and – We’re not leading. That creates chaos. It creates a more dangerous world. So restoring the alliances that have kept the world safer and our country safer – getting back to a position in the Middle East where there’s no light between Israel and the United States.”

One wonders whom the Bushies hire to help Jeb use a fork and tie his shoes.

NY Times Catches On to Rightie Book Scam (Updated)

Righties are apoplectic because the New York Times is not putting Ted Cruz’s book A Time for Truth (cough) on the best-seller list.

The New York Times informed HarperCollins this week that it will not include Ted Cruz’s new biography on its forthcoming bestsellers list, despite the fact that the book has sold more copies in its first week than all but two of the Times’ bestselling titles, the On Media blog has learned.

Just going by number of copies sold, ATfT ought to be #3 or so this week.  The New York Times, however, says that it has standards that include analysis of sales patterns, not just units sold. In other words, the NYT is looking out for bulk sales. It’s going to be harder to cheat your way onto the best-seller list by having organizations buy up your book in bulk.

Or, as Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy explained,

“In the case of this book, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases,” she wrote.

This is a scam that’s been going on for a long time, and I’m glad the Times is calling it out, finally. As you probably know already, here’s how it works: Somebody writes a book titled Liberals Are Awful and Will Eat Your Baby. Conservative “book clubs,” think tanks, and other organizations buy up tens of thousands of copies in bulk, making the book a “best seller.” Then they either re-sell copies at a steep discount or give them away at conferences or as part of a promotion for something else (sign up for our newsletter and get a free copy of … ). It’s a variation of “wingnut welfare,” in other words.

Eventually, most of the copies will end up in landfills, unread. But the book is on the  best-seller list, which earns the author a lot of publicity and interviews and television guest spots to promote right-wing nonsense.

Back in 2007, five Regnery authors realized they weren’t being paid royalties for all the tens of thousands of copies that allegedly were sold, and they sued. Regnery was selling the books at a steep discount to its own affiliates, giving books away as premiums to newsletter subscribers, and donating them in bulk to like-minded organizations. Obviously, the authors weren’t making any money on all these books. Regnery called this a marketing strategy.

Sarah Palin boosted sales of her own books with $64,000 in bulk purchases made by her own political action group, SarahPAC. The books were offered free to anyone who made a donation of $100 or more. Awhile back Mitt Romney cranked up sales of his book No Apology by asking institutions to buy thousands of copies in exchange for his speeches

The hosts ranged from Claremont McKenna College to the Restaurant Leadership Conference, many of whom are accustomed to paying for high-profile speakers like Romney. Asking that hosts buy books is also a standard feature of book tours. But Romney’s total price — $50,000 — was on the high end, and his publisher, according to the document from the book tour — provided on the condition it not be described in detail — asked institutions to pay at least $25,000, and up to the full $50,000 price, in bulk purchases of the book. With a discount of roughly 40 percent, that meant institutions could wind up with more than 3,000 copies of the book — and a person associated with one of his hosts said they still have quite a pile left over.

For a while, the Times was marking “bulk sales” books with an asterisk, but now they’ve gone the extra mile and simply are not listing them. If more “best seller” compilers do this, it could kill right-wing publishing.

Getting back to Ted Cruz’s book — HarperCollins is part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, note. So far I haven’t been able to find out who the bulk purchasers were. Cruz does have his fans who no doubt bought his book legitimately. But do any of them read?

Update: Here’s another way to scam the system I didn’t even know about.

In essence, The Times accused Cruz’s publisher of trying to buy its way onto the bestseller list by having a firm like Result Source hire thousands of people across America to individually purchase a copy of “A Time For Truth,” in the hope that some of those retailers are on the secret list of booksellers who report their sales to the Times, or that the aggregate purchasers will simply be too high for the Times to ignore.