A bewildered David French just asked in the National Review, “How did Rubio morph—in the eyes of his critics—from tea party to ‘establishment’ in less than one election cycle?” [Emphasis in the original.] And is there anybody on the planet who is more Establishment than Cruz, his name-calling to the contrary? As New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote last month, Cruz attended Princeton and Harvard Law, neither of which has much outsider status. He clerked at the Supreme Court, which almost defines the Establishment. He pumped bilge as a low-level deckhand for President George W. Bush’s administration, perhaps the most Establishment of all Establishments. He belongs to the U.S. Senate, which is practically an Establishment social club…

The Establishment has been best understood as the primary source of power in a society, the implicit organization to which all politically minded people long to join but few will confess to being a member. While an eternal body, the Establishment is never static, collecting and expelling members like a societal ventricle to serve the whole organism. The Establishment cares more about its own continuance than it does its ideology, which makes it a malleable and adaptive beast. In fact, the best way to apply for membership is not to suck up to its leaders—they have all the allies they need—but to attack them and thereby pose a Counter-Establishment that must be placated or otherwise tamed. The person the Establishment needs, to follow Marxist logic, is somebody who wouldn’t want them as a member.