RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Anyway, Sort-of-Super Saturday confirmed my feeling that while it is late, it is not yet too late. From where I sit, the candidate who has the best chance of derailing the Trump Express is Ted Cruz. He performed far better than predicted on Super Tuesday and Sort-of-Super Saturday. His talk at CPAC was a masterly performance, full of humor, insight, and sober political analysis. Watch it. Unlike Mitt Romney in 2012, he has a superb ground game. And Donald Trump’s not-so-slow-motion implosion gives Ted Cruz some momentum of his own. It’s by no means a sure thing. It will be an uphill struggle. But the most savvy candidate is also the one most committed to returning the country to its tradition as a constitutional democracy governed by the rule of law and a deep respect for individual liberty.”

Impressions

The great Ace of Spades captured the essence of last night in a headline:
Rubio Collapsed, Cruz Surged, Trump Stable

Peeking behind the headline, however, Ace shows that Trump’s “stability” is anything but stable. First, the math. Cruz scooped up 64 delegates last night. Trump took 49. In Kentucky, Trump’s narrow win gave him 17 delegates to Cruz’s 15; in Louisiana, it was even closer: 18 for Trump, 18 for Cruz. In Kansas, by contrast, Cruz walked away with 29 delegates while Trump took 9. In Maine, it was Cruz 12, Trump 9 [NOTE: these figures and those below have been updated since this morning.]

Getting out the abacus and doing the sums that gives us:

Trump: 382 delegates

Cruz: 300 delegates

382 – 300 = 82

So, now Trump, who was supposed to win everything, is only 83 delegates ahead of Ted Cruz. At the moment, Marco Rubio has 128 delegates.

During the most recent Detroit debate, even a reformed “inclusive” and “presidential” Donald Trump still was crass and vulgar. (Has a candidate ever crudely referred to the size of his phallus, and in our sick world is that a Freudian admission of doubt, or a macho reassurance in LBJ fashion?)

Trump gave more than enough evidence that his positions are liquid and change as often his perceptions of his flatterers and critics. He is a blank slate, who as president could build or tear down a southern wall with equal ease, depending on the dynamics of the political deal of the moment. Has there ever been a Republican candidate that Republicans feared was too liberal and Democrats too reactionary? Planned Parenthood advocates usually do not wish to build a wall on the southern border. Trump’s perceived danger to the Republican Party is that he would move not only to the Left, but do so in an especially crass and crude way—expanding the party by not being of the party, winning as a Republican precisely by not being a Republican. To the degree that he would succeed as a president, liberals would applaud his conversion to liberalism; to the degree that he would fail, they would cite his innate conservatism.

In the debate, in passive-aggressive fashion Trump pouted and pounced, furious that others had broken the Golden Rule and done unto him what he has done unto others. His entire moral universe is predicated on a preteen morality of liking those who praise him, and hating those who criticize him. For Trump, to the extent that Megyn Kelly or Bill O’Reilly is or is not a good journalist depends entirely on his own transitory perceptions of how obsequious or prickly each was to Trump in their last encounter. All politicians operate like that; Trump’s great strength or weakness is that he is not shy in expressing it. (And that he knows most journalists wish to be liked rather than respected, and so make the necessary adjustments for Donald J. Trump.)

All that said, I doubt Trump will lose much of his 35-45% support in the next rounds of elections. It does no good for his critics to point out that he never reaches 50% margins in either elections or polls, when he can still win primaries well enough without gaining half the electorate. His genius so far has been to turn his third of the electorate into proof he’s a winner because his opponents never united to marshal a majority against him. In other words, Trump counted on the egos of his opponents to outweigh their concerns for their establishment party. His 35% is unimpeachable, and the anti-Trump 65% is at this late date still hopelessly fragmented. The more candidates talk about “uniting” around an anti-Trump candidate, the more they sound like medieval proverbial mice who dream of someone else putting a warning bell on the marauding cat.

Donald Trump supporters believe that they’ve got a novel candidate whose ideas have never been tried. They might be disappointed to learn that Mr. Trump’s political playbook is right out of 20th century Latin America. If he should become president, the country is likely to be about as successful as the region has been under this kind of leadership.

As Latin America has learned the hard way over the last 100 years, capital goes, and stays, where there is a rule of law that treats it well. It’s why the U.S. has developed and most of the rest of the hemisphere has been left behind.

Mr. Trump believes the rule of law is for pansies. His fans adore him because he promises to override institutional inertia and simply decree whatever is on his mind, like a caudillo. This won’t end well.

If elected, Mr. Trump would inherit a country where the rule of law is already under attack by President Obama. Long-winded and ruling by decree whenever Congress—the constitutionally coequal branch of government—does not accommodate him, Mr. Obama is a classic Latin American demagogue.

Conservatives despise the 44th president’s refusal to acknowledge the pluralistic traditions of the republic and its constraints on the executive. Yet there was a time when the loyal opposition viewed this abuse of power as an anomaly, a blip in an otherwise institutionally robust nation.

Now the Republican Party is host to another faction and it is asking for its own mano dura. Far from restoring respect for the Constitution, Mr. Trump is promising to be more Obama than Obama. His supporters are fine with that; it’s their turn. Which is to say, we’re becoming Bananalandia. CONTINUE AT SITE

Saturday night’s four nominating contests provided little clarity as to who has the edge in the race for the Republican nomination. But at the end of the night one thing was clear: It was a bad night for Marco Rubio.

Ten days before the Florida primary — the most important contest of the primary season for him — Rubio finished poorly across the board. Coming on the heels of a disappointing Super Tuesday, this lent ammunition to his opponents’ contention that the establishment spoke too soon in anointing him the best challenger to take on Donald Trump.

Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Maine all held nominating contests Saturday. Ted Cruz handily won the Kansas and Maine caucuses. Donald Trump beat out Cruz for narrow wins in the Louisiana primary and the Kentucky caucuses. In all of those contests, Rubio was a distant third — except in Maine, where he came in a distant fourth, behind John Kasich. In Louisiana and Maine, Rubio finished so far behind that he failed to meet the threshold necessary to receive any delegates at all.

To be sure, these four states were not expected to be Rubio strongholds. But he fell short even in areas where he ought to have done well. Kansas Republicans, for instance, expected that Rubio would win in Johnson County, the area around Kansas City. Instead, Cruz bested him there nearly two to one — 42 percent to 22 percent. Maine Republicans predicted that Rubio would finish behind Trump and Cruz in the state, but they expected him to perform more strongly in the Portland area. Instead, he finished in fourth place in the Portland-area caucus, trailing Cruz, Trump, and Kasich.

It’s the third night this week that headlines have proclaimed a disappointing night for Rubio. On Super Tuesday, he fell to Trump and Cruz in all but one state: Minnesota. On Thursday, he had a disappointing debate performance: Hoarse and fighting the flu, he climbed down into the mud pit to fight with Trump, and did not always emerge the victor. He earned criticism for contributing to the mayhem and was outshone by both Cruz and Kasich, who came off, by comparison, as the adults on the stage.

I love and admire Joan Swirsky but this is not a matter of ” ballots not bullets”…..it is more a matter of “bullies and blowhards”…..Trump is a liar and a cur….rsk

Donald Trump’s success represents a peaceful “overthrow of the government” and that the Republican establishment should be glad it’s being achieved with “ballots not bullets.”
Sure enough, presidential candidate Donald J. Trump racked up impressive statistics in his Fox News debate tonight, effectively trouncing the competition that included Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Once again, however, Fox’s Megyn “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” Kelly ambushed Mr. Trump by falsely stating that the Better Business Bureau had given Trump University a D-minus rating, when in fact it’s rating is, as Trump asserted, an A!

Below is the Better Business Bureau report, with an “A” grade for Trump University.

The same trouncing happened last week when Trump’s victories in the primaries garnered him the lion’s share of electoral votes by winning Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Virginia, which, according to Philip Bump of The Washington Post, “no Republican has ever won…going back to 1960.”

Both pundits and pollsters attributed the massive turn-outs to Mr. Trump’s having excited, inspired and therefore mobilized the electorate—in some cases well over 100% increase above the 2012 midterms. In one instance, Mr. Trump beat Sen. Cruz by 450,000 votes; in another he beat Sen. Rubio by over a million votes! According to writers Bill Barrow and Emily Swanson, Trump had “significant support across educational, ideological, age and income classifications.”

In his victory speech last week, looking and sounding presidential, Mr. Trump accurately proclaimed: “We have expanded the Republican Party.”

This ought to have been music to the ears of Republicans everywhere, especially “establishment” types who constantly seek to attract influential voting blocs comprised of African-Americans, Hispanics, and young people, all of whom—mysteriously, incomprehensibly, self-destructively—have huddled under the Democrat tent for decades, gaining not a micrometer of progress in their personal lives, wages, schools, crime rates, the pathetic list is endless.

If a state doesn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, it’s racist.

That’s the label that poor New Hampshire, the state just too white to appreciate the virtues of a white woman with dyed blonde hair who occasionally puts on a bad fake southern accent and switches from loving the Yankees to hating them, was stuck with after turning her down.

Sensing trouble up the road in Nevada, Clintonworld tried to accuse Nevada, a state with a sizable Latino population, of also being too white for Hillary. Then once Nevada voted the right way, its was suddenly just right enough.

Ex-Salon boss Joan Walsh suggested that Hillary Clinton was losing white voters because of second-hand racism from her time working for Obama. She’s losing men because they’re sexist and she’s losing women because, according to Gloria Steinem, they’re going ”where the boys are”. It won’t be long before the handful of black people who vote for Bernie Sanders are accused of “acting white”.

Hillary Clinton has turned into Tonya Harding; an obnoxious criminal who can’t stop making excuses, while towing around Bill Clinton as her Jeff Gillooly to kneecap her opponents with awkward attacks. After trying and failing to run on experience, the only thing she’s running on now is identity politics. And her campaign has tapped into the most repugnant and obnoxious politically correct smears.

If you don’t vote for Hillary Clinton, you’re a racist. If you’re a woman who doesn’t vote for her, you’re going to hell. If you ask her about her illegal email server or her speaking fees, you’re sexist.

Donald Trump’s fortunes rise as the fortunes of the US seem dimmer, as the image of the US political establishment is deflating, and as the self-confidence of the US working and middle classes is eroding.

In 2008, the US electorate was driven by a sense of urgency to snatch America from its economic and social crises, and therefore approached the inexperienced presidential candidate, Barack Obama, as the “Light Worker,” possessing mythical capabilities to heal the country. In 2016, a growing segment of the US electorate has lost its confidence in the political establishment, looking for a strong man on a white horse to stop the slippery slope trend of recent years.

Trump reverberates the intensifying frustration of the general constituency with career politicians, and GOP voters’ disillusionment with the GOP party machine and GOP legislators on Capitol Hill, who have failed to stifle President Obama’s implementation of his goal to fundamentally transform the US landscape internationally and domestically, socially, educationally, medically, economically, legally, ethnically, diplomatically and even militarily.

Trump is leveraging the growing gap/rift between the working and middle classes and the economic-intellectual-media “elites;” between the growing number of state and federal-supported/employed people and the rest of the population; between voters in the major urban centers and the “flyover” Americans of Middle America (not only “Joe Six Pack” and “Lunch Pail Mabel”); and between Metropolitan (“Wall Street”) and Micro-politan (“Main Street”) America.

Trump capitalizes on the significant erosion – especially since the 2008 economic meltdown – of America’s self-confidence, optimism, patriotism and conviction in its moral, economic, scientific, social and military exceptionalism, compared to the rest of the world.

On Thursday night, live in front of nearly 17 million Americans watching on national television, Donald Trump abandoned a central plank of the hawkish immigration platform that has helped propel him ever closer to the Republican presidential nomination.

The H-1B visa program makes it easier for employers to import highly skilled foreign labor, and has been widely abused to undercut American workers. Trump has declared himself against such abuses, stating in the immigration platform available on his website that, if president, he would require employers using H-1B visas to hire American workers first. Just last Sunday, Trump highlighted two former Disney IT workers replaced by foreign workers.

But by Thursday night, the front-runner had changed his tune. When moderator Megyn Kelly cited his previous waffling on the subject, Trump announced that he was “softening” his website’s hard line. “We need highly skilled people in this country,” he said. “And if we can’t do it, we’ll get them in.”

Yet one flip-flop was not enough. Just after midnight, Trump’s campaign announced that he was reversing his reversal in a statement that promised to “end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.”

Well, then. Will the real Donald Trump please stand up?

A few years back, I began reliving, in reverse, the most treasured part of my upbringing. On sunny summer Sundays, my son, age seven and falling in love with baseball, would curl up next to me on the couch to watch the game. The great American ritual of a man passing on to his boy not just the national pastime but a cultural heritage; the odd bits of hard-knocks wisdom sprinkled around the infield-fly rule. There was even symmetry across the decades: The Mets providing just enough drama to break your heart in the end.

There was, however, a vexing intrusion on the ritual: the remote control. And not because we didn’t have a remote control for our black-and-white RCA TV set in the Bronx circa 1966; it was because we didn’t need a remote-control back then. And not because there were only six other channels, as opposed to today’s 600; it was because, as his wide-eyed seven-year-old was taking it all in, my dad wasn’t worried about having to switch off Viagra commercials between innings.

So what is the natural progression from turning the campus and pop culture over to Amerika-hating radicals, to the vigorous years-long media defense of Bill Clinton’s right to turn the White House into a cathouse, to the inability of a father to watch baseball with his young son at one o’clock on a Sunday afternoon without being ready to address erectile dysfunction?

It is the cretinous Donald J. Trump campaign.