Thursday roundup

File this one under "if only":

Mike Lee had the plane ticket, the Miami hotel suite, and the buy-in. All he needed was for Marco Rubio to show up.

In the week before the Florida Republican primary in March, Lee headed early to the GOP presidential debate there with a mission: to convince one Senate friend, Rubio, to ally with another, Ted Cruz, and form a unity ticket to block Donald Trump from winning the Republican nomination.

But at the last minute, as Lee prepared to board his plane, Rubio backed out of the meeting.

That's another revelation in "Unprecedented: The Election that Changed Everything," CNN's upcoming book on the 2016 race that comes out December 6. It was written by CNN's Thomas Lake with reporting from Jodi Enda, Susan Baer and CNN's political team.

'Unprecedented': Clinton worried about striking balances in debates

"Cruz was serious enough about the alliance that he authorized Sen. Mike Lee of Utah to go to Miami ahead of the CNN debate there on March 10 to help work out a deal," the authors write.

"I think the two of them as running mates would have been unstoppable," Lee later told CNN. "They would have united the party."

In the final weeks before the election, I was unsure about exactly where Larry Elder was coming from. His columns contained little indications that maybe he had joined the genuinely-enthusiastic-about-Squirrel-Hair camp. Alas, today, he reassures us that he has his head on straight:

Donald Trump is still a populist, not a fiscal conservative or a states' rights federalist.

Trump's waffling on minimum wage is as disturbing as him saying, as he did on "60 Minutes," that we should keep "the strongest assets" of Obamacare -- coverage for pre-existing conditions and "children living with their parents for an extended period." Insurance, by definition, guards against unknown risks, not known ones.

And what's the difference between Donald Trump's proposal for "infrastructure investing" and President Barack Obama's "stimulus"? I'm old enough to remember when we called it "pork." President Ronald Reagan had no such spending program, and when President Bill Clinton attempted a "stimulus," Congress stopped him. Government spends. It does not "invest."

As a percent of GDP, we already spend more on infrastructure than does the European Union. And Trump wants to "invest" more?!

Recall Obama's "stimulus" lament, "There's no such thing as shovel-ready projects." Calling it "infrastructure investment" -- rather than "stimulus" -- doesn't change the fact that it's not the fed's job to do the states' work.

There have been a number of essays and columns over the past several months on the theme of the actual makeup of the Republican party - with the conclusion that three-pillared movement conservatives aren't as big a component as is often assumed. The most classic of these is still Matthew Continetti's "Revenge of the Radical Middle," which he wrote in the summer of 2015. Today at NRO, Yuval Levin parses where conservatism stands in relation to the other elements of the GOP:

Donald Trump’s campaign, even before he won the election, demonstrated that this understanding of the Right’s grassroots—the understanding on which the work of various tea-party activist groups, the House Freedom Caucus, and Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, as well as the responses to these from establishment Republicans, were based—was in error in some important ways, and in any case is no longer operative. Trump showed that much of the base of the party was driven far more by resentment of elitist arrogance, by a rejection of globalism, and by economic and cultural insecurity than by a commitment to conservative economic or political principles. And he thereby also made the base of the party even more traditionally populist.

This is surely part of the reason why most members of the House Freedom Caucus and many prominent conservative talk-radio hosts didn’t stand athwart Trump’s candidacy in the primaries, even though he showed contempt for much of what they have always championed. Trump demonstrated that the people they claimed to represent were not quite who they had imagined they were.

He made this explicit soon after clinch­ing the nomination. “This is called the Republican party, it’s not called the Conservative party,” Trump said in an interview in May. It was an extraordinary thing for a Republican presidential contender to say. 

Levin goes on to say that this can be a good thing, a "spur to sharpen, strengthen and modernize our ideas. Okay, but let's proceed carefully with that. Free-market economics is a set of immutable principles. Ditto the behavior of nation-states. Ditto gender relations. Let's make sure we don't muddy the waters in the name of "outreach."

As leaders of NATO member states go, Turkey's Erdogan is surely the most troublesome:

President Tayyip Erdogan could govern Turkey until 2029 with expanded executive powers under proposals the ruling AK Party hopes will go to a referendum next spring, officials who have seen the latest draft told Reuters on Wednesday.

Erdogan and his supporters argue Turkey needs the strong leadership of an executive presidency, akin to the system in the United States or France, to avoid the fragile coalition governments that hampered its development in the past.

Opponents see the proposed change as a vehicle for Erdogan's ambition, and fear it will bring increasing authoritarianism to a country already under fire from Western allies over its deteriorating record on rights and freedoms, especially after widespread purges in the wake of a failed military coup in July.

The AKP, founded by Erdogan a decade and a half ago, is aiming to hold a referendum on the issue next spring and is seeking support from the nationalist MHP opposition order to win parliamentary approval for such a vote.

Under the latest draft, presented to the MHP on Tuesday, Erdogan could assume the position of "acting" executive president immediately after the referendum if the changes are approved. A presidential election would then be held, as scheduled, when his term expires in 2019.

Under the constitution's current two-term limit and provided he wins the 2019 election, Erdogan would be able to rule until 2024 only. But under the proposed executive presidency, the clock would reset, allowing him another two terms.

More on present-day Turkey:

Devoid of a free homeland or autonomy, Assyrians (Chaldeans-Syriacs) -- who have resided in the Middle East for millennia -- are being subjected to widespread persecution at the hands of the Turkish state and local Muslims.

The continued discrimination is so intense that even dead Assyrians and their cemeteries cannot escape it.

Miho Irak, an Assyrian Christian from Turkey, lost his life on August 20 at age 77 in Belgium, where had been living for 22 years. A father of eight, Irak was a member of the funeral fund of Turkey’s Presidency of Religious Affairs, the Diyanet. He regularly paid membership fees.

His daughter Nezahat Irak says that Diyanet officials gave up on their plans of taking her father’s dead body to Turkey after they learned he was a Christian.

According to its regulations, the Diyanet is to take the dead bodies of its members that lose their lives outside of Turkey to their home country. It is also to give consultation to the family members and provide them with burial services.

When Diyanet officials registered my father as a member, they did not ask him his religion. After he died, we requested them to hold his funeral in Turkey. They accepted our request and started the procedure, but before we sent my father’s dead body to Mardin, our hometown in Turkey, we wanted to hold half hour funeral ceremony at the church in the city of Machelen, where my father lived. Then the attitudes of the Diyanet officials completely changed. We were shocked.

We have all the records. The moment they heard the word "church", they immediately changed their minds and told us that they do not serve Christians due to some article in the regulations of the Diyanet.

[T]he funeral fond of the Diyanet must serve all Turkish citizens regardless of their religious affiliation.

…

We are citizens of Turkey. And the article the officials referred to does not mention that they do not serve Christians.

We were already deeply saddened by our father’s death. Bur after we were exposed to this discrimination by the Diyanet, we were devastated. They do not respect even dead Christians.

Let's go out on a positive note:

The U.S. divorce rate has fallen for the third consecutive year, to its lowest level in more than 35 years, according to data released Thursday.

Meanwhile, marriage is up a bit, at 32.3 marriages for every 1,000 unmarried women age 15 or older last year, from 31.9 in 2014. It was the highest since 2009, suggesting that, after a plunge of several decades, matrimony could be stabilizing.

“The decline has stopped,” said Wendy Manning, co-director of the National Center for Family & Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University.

Noteworthy cultural harbinger? Could be.