RUTHFULLY YOURS

Donald Trump won’t debate his Republican rivals again but he will continue to argue on Twitter. On Thursday the businessman demanded an apology after we—“the dummies at the @WSJ Editorial Board”—accurately noted that Hillary Clinton has received about a million more votes than he has. The truth hurts, though Mr. Trump would rather walk down Fifth Avenue shooting the messenger.

Mr. Trump says his numbers can’t be compared to Mrs. Clinton’s because “she had only 3 opponents—I had 16.” Actually his rise has been cleared by the large and fractured GOP field. Of the 20.35 million GOP primary votes cast so far, he has received 7.54 million, or a mere 37%. Despite the media desire to call him unstoppable, Mr. Trump is the weakest Republican front-runner since Gerald Ford in 1976.
After Reagan, George H.W. Bush in 1988, Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000 romped to nomination victories with only minor early setbacks. Mitt Romney and John McCain faced protracted challenges beyond Super Tuesday like Mr. Trump. The primary calendar and delegate allocation methods change from cycle to cycle, but at roughly the same stage of the campaign, both were performing far better.

In 2012 Mr. Romney was in a three-way race with Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, with Ron Paul also nabbing votes. Yet by mid-March Mr. Romney had carried the popular vote in 21 states and won 57% of the allocated delegates, according to our calculation. Mr. Trump has 18 wins and 47% of allocated delegates. Mr. Romney swept the remaining primaries by convincing margins. Mr. Trump hasn’t won 50% in any state. CONTINUE AT SITE

Donald J. Trump has received the endorsements of conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Something doesn’t make sense here.

Schlafly has always been a realist on the matter of the aggressive foreign policy of the old Soviet Union and now Russia. On the other hand, as noted [1] by Josh Rogin at Bloomberg View, Trump has a “pro-Russian foreign policy” that could have something to do with the businessman’s history of trying to do business in Russia.

Trump is threatening riots if he doesn’t get the Republican nomination. But rank-and-file conservatives who make up the Republican Party could themselves protest if Trump walks out of the Cleveland convention with the nomination. Indeed, they could walk out on Trump and back a third party conservative candidate. It’s not just Trump’s pro-Russian views. It’s how his support for Russia and Putin threatens Israel.

The Forward has run an article [2] claiming that Trump has the strongest Jewish ties of all the GOP candidates. He has raised money for Jewish causes and members of his family are Jewish. But none of this can justify his support for Putin’s Russia. It is Russia that is backing Israel’s enemies in the region, most notably Iran.

Trump can’t have it both ways by supporting Russia while attacking Iran. The two regimes are engaged in a military alliance.

The Israeli left as a democratic political movement is dead. That piece of bad news was delivered by a recent survey which shows that only 8% of Israeli Jews identify with the left, 55% with the center and 37% with the right.

In the last election, the establishment Labor Party had to dress up as a wolf in Zionist centrist clothing by renaming itself the Zionist Camp (it still lost). The left had to create two other fake centrist parties to stop Netanyahu, but just ended up having to roll them into his center-right coalition.

The Israeli left still controls the usual undemocratic elitist outposts of the Deep State, media, academia, popular culture and the judiciary, but it can no longer even call itself the left and still hope to win. All it can do is undermine the will of the people and sabotage the country out of selfishness and spite.

The situation in Israel stands in sharp contrast to the United States where 49 percent of Jews lean to the left, 29 percent tend to the center and only 19 percent identify as conservative.

It’s a popular and simplistic conclusion on both the left and the right to attribute this split to terrorism. But if Muslim terrorism made people move to the right, New Yorkers would all be Republicans. And until the latest Knife Jihad, the Israeli right’s policies had ended Islamic terrorism as an everyday problem.

Or perhaps I should say “momentum” in scare quotes. For that, I suspect, is what Donald Trump has now: “momentum,” in quotes.

More on that in a moment. First, a word or two about the math. According to the current RCP delegate count, Trump now has 661 delegates, a little more than half the 1237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination. Cruz has 406.

661 – 406 = 255

Hmmm. But note that Rubio, who finally dropped out last night after his humiliating defeat in his home state of Florida, has 169. Tigger, aka John Kasich, has 142. John Kasich apparently hasn’t yet acknowledged it, but this is now (and has been for a while) a two-man race. More math.

406 + 169+ 142 = 717

Which leads us to:

717 > 661

i.e., hope for Ted Cruz.

At least, that’s how I see it, and how the Cruz campaign also is reported to see it.

“Throughout this race,” Daniel Horowitz writes at Conservative Review, “the polls and exit polls have consistently shown that Cruz would beat Trump head-to-head in almost every state, winning by wide margins in many of them. In most states Trump has a floor of about 35-38%, but he has an impervious ceiling in the low 40s.” Which means, Horowitz continues, that in a two-man race, “Cruz should be able to catch Trump in delegates and very likely come close to the magic number of 1,237.”

The current election cycle was shaping up as a difficult one for Republican senators even before Donald Trump became the leader in the battle for the GOP presidential nomination.

Just as Democrats were exposed in 2014 and lost nine Senate seats and their majority, Republicans have 24 seats to defend in 2016 versus only 10 for Democrats. And this is a presidential year, when Democratic turnout is usually far stronger than for midterms. In 2008 and 2012, the last two presidential election years, Democrats picked up Senate seats (a net of 10), while Republicans had substantial gains from the last two midterms in 2010 and 2014 (a net of 15).

In 2014 Republicans had many targets, as Democrats were defending seats in seven states Mitt Romney won in 2012: North Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas, West Virginia, South Dakota, Montana, and Alaska. Republicans also picked up an open seat in Iowa and won Colorado, two Obama states from 2012.

In 2016, the picture is almost reversed. Republicans are defending seats in seven states Obama won in 2012: New Hampshire, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa. One big difference between 2014 and 2016 is that six of the Democratic seats Republicans won in 2014 were in states Romney had won by 14% or more (only North Carolina had been a narrow Romney victory by 2%). In 2016, only one of the Republican seats — Mark Kirk’s in Illinois — is in a state that is deeply blue, a 17-point Obama win in 2012. In the other six states, Obama won by 7% or less.

Which are the five most endangered Republican-held Senate seats? Most of the serious political analysts have rated Kirk’s and Ron Johnson’s in Wisconsin as the two most vulnerable in 2016, and regard both as, at best, toss-ups or as races leaning to the Democrats.

There is a fashionable argument going around in the conservative legal world which holds that, for all his faults, Donald Trump is preferable to Hillary Clinton because he would appoint more conservative Supreme Court justices.

There are several points to be made in response.

First, no one, including Trump himself, has any idea who he would appoint. He could appoint Judge Judy or Jeanine Pirro because he’s seen them on TV. He could appoint his sister, who is a liberal Clinton appointee on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. It’s pretty certain that Trump, who thinks that judges sign “bills” rather than opinions or rulings, has not the foggiest conception of what qualities to look for in a judicial nominee.

Today, I talked to a conservative lawyer who put the pro-Trump case this way: “There is a 5 percent chance Trump would appoint someone good to the court — but there’s a 0% chance Hillary would.” Fair enough. But is a 5 percent chance of a good Supreme Court appointment really worth running all the other risks that a Trump presidency poses?

Let me remind you that Trump is a candidate who has not evinced the slightest regard for the rule of law or the basic norms of democracy. He routinely threatens anyone who opposes him with dire consequences — “be careful” he always says in the manner of “The Godfather.” He just as routinely threatens physical harm against peaceful demonstrators.

Last Wednesday, at a North Carolina rally, he said, as protesters were being led out, “They used to treat them very, very rough, and when they protested once, they would not do it again so easily,” before lamenting “we’ve become weak.” Asked on Friday about a physical altercation at one of his rallies, he said: “The audience hit back, and that’s what we need a little bit more of.” On “Meet the Press” on Sunday, he offered to pay the legal fees of a white supporter who sucker-punched a black demonstrator and later threatened to kill him — an offer that Trump soon denied making but that was televised around the country (For links to these incidents and others, go here).

It is ludicrous to argue that, because the hard Left is primarily responsible for the outbreak of chaos and violence that caused Donald Trump’s Chicago rally to be canceled last night, it is wrong to condemn the thuggery Trump often encourages at his appearances.

Trump has encouraged physical battery at his campaign events, even telling supporters he’d pay their legal fees if they get arrested for assaulting dissenters. (See, e.g., Iowa event: ”So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of ‘em, would you? Seriously. Okay? Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise”; see also Las Vegas event: regarding an unruly protester removed by security, Trump tells crowd, “I’d like to punch him in the face. He’s smiling, having a good time.”) Trump has continued to fan these flames even after it has become obvious that some of his supporters are acting on the invitation to resort to violence. Incitement to violence is a crime; incitement to violence at a large rally is incitement to riot — a crime that can get people badly injured or even killed.

And it’s about more than incitement. As David has been chronicling, Trump’s top campaign guy, Corey Lewandowski, has been credibly accused of manhandling Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields. In case you haven’t noticed, one of the main tactics that has transformed Turkey, before our very eyes, from a reasonably democratic society into an authoritarian Islamist state is Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s green-light to his underlings to intimidate, assault, shut down, imprison, and trump up prosecutions against members of the press. Trump is not a conservative, so it is perhaps unknown to him that media hostility is something conservatives in a free society learn to deal with — even to become more effective communicators because of. What should really frighten people is that Breitbart is Trump-friendly media. It is unlikely that, at the time of the alleged assault, Mr. Lewandowski even knew for whom Ms. Fields worked … but it is highly likely that he knew she was a reporter. (And even if he didn’t, campaign officials don’t get to rough up non-media rally attendees, either.)

Miami — “I loved watching Michael Jordan play basketball, because he could do things with the basketball that were not teachable,” Whit Ayres, a highly regarded Republican pollster, said in between sips of coffee in a downtown D.C. hotel conference room. “Marco Rubio is the Michael Jordan of American politics.”

It was March 31, 2015, just 13 days before Rubio, long considered the GOP’s brightest star, would launch his campaign at the Freedom Tower here in his hometown. Ayres, Rubio’s polling guru, had written a book with detailed, data-driven prescriptions for Republicans to take back the White House in 2016. He met on that March morning with a few dozen reporters to make his case — not just for the book and its blueprint, but for Rubio, whom he did not hesitate to hail as the party’s messiah.

Ayres was not alone in his assessment of Rubio’s unique talents. The 44-year-old son of Cuban immigrants became a celebrity in 2010, when he toppled Florida’s popular governor, Charlie Crist, en route to winning a seat in the U.S. Senate. His victory epitomized everything the then-ascendant Tea Party stood for — disrupting the established order, cleansing the landscape of Republicans perceived as too moderate — and he became a refutation, in the flesh, of charges that the party was a home only for old, wealthy, white men.

Though he ran as an outsider, the young senator wasted no time forging connections with Washington heavyweights and surrounding himself with skilled campaign operatives to help plot a path to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. After wisely sitting out the 2012 race, in which Mitt Romney won just 27 percent of Latino voters after a primary filled with harsh rhetoric about illegal immigration, Rubio and his team were convinced that spearheading a comprehensive, bipartisan immigration-reform effort would earn him the party’s goodwill and position him as a 2016 front-runner. They were wrong. The conservative grassroots revolted at Rubio’s co-authorship of a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, the Senate “Gang of Eight” bill collapsed, and by the summer of 2013 Rubio had become persona non grata to the same Tea Party movement that had carried him into office just three years earlier.

His star was dimmed — but hardly diminished. In a tribute to both his resilience and the stubbornness of elite impressions of his aptitude, the Florida senator found himself a top-tier contender at the outset of the 2016 race. There were reasons it should not have been so: his misreading of the base on immigration; his standing with conservatives, who had defected in droves to Ted Cruz, another charismatic Cuban-American senator with designs on the presidency; and the looming presence of friend and former mentor Jeb Bush, who was the first Republican to announce his intention to enter the race. Yet Rubio and his team began the campaign in April 2015 convinced of his unmatched talent, and bullish — bordering on cocky — about his prospects of winning the nomination and the White House.

Those dreams came crashing down Tuesday night when Rubio lost the Florida primary in a landslide to Donald Trump. The bombastic real-estate mogul, whom Rubio spent most of the campaign ignoring in hopes that he would implode, took 46 percent of the vote to Rubio’s 27 percent. After an atrocious 3-for-26 start to the primary season — the wins coming in Minnesota, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C. — Rubio’s campaign had hoped his home state and its 99 delegates could save him. Instead, his defeat here dealt a death blow to what will likely be remembered as one of the most underachieving campaigns in modern Republican history.

“It is clear that while we’re on the right side, this year we will not be on the winning side,” Rubio told a crowd of several hundred supporters at Florida International University. Having foregone reelection to the Senate to focus on his presidential bid, he now faces an uncertain political future. With an eye on 2020, convinced that Trump will be devastated in a general election, Rubio used his closing remarks Tuesday night to condemn the GOP front-runner in harsh terms — though not by name — for using “fear” to “prey upon” the insecurities of voters.

RUBIO WAS THE BEST GOP CANDIDATE AND MOST LIKELY TO TROUNCE HILLARY….HE ASKED HIS SUPPORTERS TO VOTE FOR KASICH IN OHIO, BUT CRUZ WOULD NOT DO THE SAME IN FLORIDA….SHAME ON ALL OF THEM…..RSK
Marco Rubio was the Julius Caesar of the 2016 campaign. For months, other candidates saw him as the most effective debater, one of the strongest candidates for November, and a benchmark by which to judge their own success. When the candidate of hope and “a new American century” finally succumbed, it wasn’t just due to Donald Trump — it was a whole host of candidates who did him in.

Rubio targeted too wide an audience, earning him too many foes who each considered him competition for their “lane” of the Republican primary. Rubio was seen as establishment, Tea Party, social conservative, and even slightly libertarian. That made him the perfect punching bag for every other candidate.

Furthermore, as he picked up endorsements from leading Republicans in the last months of his campaign, Rubio seemed all but coronated as the “establishment” nominee — something as toxic to the Republican party this cycle as being presented a crown by the Roman people was to the senators who decided to murder Julius Caesar.

Here is PJ Media’s list of Republican candidates who attacked Rubio, stabbing him in the back before he finally suspended his campaign on March 15, the same day Julius Caesar collapsed under the knives of his fellow Romans.
1. Jeb Bush
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush was the first to attack Rubio. George W. Bush’s brother saw Rubio as a threat early on, and spent heavily to derail his campaign. On Sunday, the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol estimated that Bush’s super PAC, Right to Rise, spent $25 million in attack ads against Rubio, while it only spent about $5 million attacking Trump. Kristol said that “if Rubio is going to lose on Tuesday,…part of it is because the Bush campaign dropped $20 million of negative ads on him in Florida.”

As Slate’s Jim Newell put it, “Jeb Bush’s super PAC, Right to Rise–after burning through $40 million already–has made a $1.4 million buy in…Iowa? To go after Sen. Marco Rubio? Yes, the same Rubio who currently polls at a distant third in the first caucus state, one that no one (including Rubio) expects him to win.” Bush attacked Rubio for being too inexperienced, for his use of a charge card for personal expenses, and for switching his position on immigration.

Attacking Rubio only made sense because every campaign — besides Trumps, of course — bought into the false idea of “lanes.” Instead of focusing fire on the front-runner, Bush and his unconnected PAC directed their ammunition on Rubio, the greatest threat in the “establishment” lane. There may be some truth to the idea that their bases overlapped, but it was a huge mistake to overlook the polls, despite the unreliability of polling. Had Bush’s campaign thrown its weight against The Donald, how different would 2016 have looked?
2. Chris Christie
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie also threw punches at the Florida senator, and his blows hit home. Christie attacked Rubio and Cruz as inexperienced time and time again, touting his experience as governor.

Most famously, Christie hit Rubio hard in one of the debates, saying that Washington elites attack using a “15-second speech” to demonize opponents and come out on top. Rubio played right into Christie’s attack, repeating himself three times with a stock quote: “Let’s dispel with this fiction that Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

This is just getting creepy.

Donald Trump’s campaign blocked a Politico reporter from attending the candidate’s victory rally on Tuesday night, continuing a troubling trend of denying access to reporters who write critically about Trump and his campaign.

Ben Schreckinger, who has been covering Trump for more than six months, was denied access to Tuesday night’s “press conference” — Trump did not actually take any questions — despite the fact that the campaign had already given press credentials.

In blocking Schreckinger, the Trump campaign appears to have been following through on a threat it made last week to exclude Politico reporters from campaign events because it did not approve of their coverage.

Schreckinger and his colleagues also reported Tuesday morning that Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski — who was recently accused of assaulting a female reporter — had a “quick temper and heavy-handed leadership,” which was becoming a source of concern among fellow Trump staffers.

In a statement to CNNMoney, Trump called Schreckinger “a dishonest, third-rate reporter with a failing outlet that will soon be out of business, hopefully.”

Of all the seemingly impossible things this mercurial Trump candidacy has accomplished, the biggest may be that he’s actually making me feel sympathy for members of the MSM.