From a political perspective the GOP began a year ago pushing reliable old Jeb! as the presumptive nominee of the party. He’s not that bright, would do as he’s told and he has the pedigree. Personally Jeb! was “Hillary Lite” in the sense that from a practical sense, there would be very little practical difference between a Clinton presidency and a Bush presidency from the perspective of the man on the street.
Tough times descended on the Beltway types as Jeb! imploded, goaded on by Trump, who drives them absolutely nuts! When it became clear that Jeb! was so incompetent that he couldn’t boil water, they shifted to Rubio. Here was a broke first term Senator for sale and he could recite talking points just as well as Hillary. Rubio was glib, he was young and provided an interesting contrast to the aging harridan on the other team. And he could be bought. In fact, they had to buy him if they wanted to put him in as the presumptive nominee.
And then Rubio imploded, goaded on by Trump who beat him by 20 points in his home state. The mainstream GOP had/has a problem. Money is not it. They can buy whatever they want to buy and Trump wasn’t interested in their money. He ran a 5 person campaign out of a small, spartan office in Trump Tower while Hillary had 700 employees in the Brooklyn office alone. The difference was that Trump spent his own money. What a dangerous precedent.
Then came Cruz, an unpopular prick that said what the conservatives wanted to hear. In terms of platform there was no functional difference between Trump and Cruz. The delivery was very different. The GOP elites see their meal ticket (Party) being stolen right out from under their feet by the vulgar New Yorker and they feel helpless and afraid. I get it. But they don’t want Cruz because he’s oily and not one of their kind. Kasich is a political gadfly, being funded to filter even a few delegates away from Trump, and they don’t want him either. Trump holds rallies at stadiums. Kasich can attract fifty people at an event so his are town hall meetings and you can get a hug.
The GOP elite need to protect what they own – and if you are a Republican, they feel that they own you and your loyalty. Thus the Machiavellian maneuvering to get somebody other than Cruz or Trump as their candidate at the Convention. Mitt Romney wants it to be him, but it won’t be. Paul Ryan says no, but the Party would draft him in a New York Minute.
The migration of support that started with Jeb! won’t end with Cruz. That’s not who the GOP elites want and the only reason that they’re attacking Trump is that he’s in the lead. They’d be just as belligerent toward Cruz if he was doing better than he is.
Adrienne’s source says Colin Powell for Pres/Huntsman for V-Pres. I doubt that combo for a number of reasons. I don’t think that they’ve settled on anyone at the moment because they are in disarray. Colin Powell (just left of Hillary politically) is reliably bought, is a friend to Saudi Arabia, etc., but at age 80, he’s just a bit long in the tooth and isn’t acceptable to the GOP electorate. A nod to Powell would mean a Trump/Cruz independent party run.
Colin Powell??!! Why not prop up ol' Bob Dole at the podium, and strap a drool bag on him, he'll rally the base for sure. And for veep, Alan Simpson is still alive and kickin', why not.
It sure seems to me that Reinz is bound and determined to ensure that the GOP holds its last convention in Cleveland. I don't see the GOP as a party anybody can believe in anymore.
I second Fredd.
I'm not happy with the GOP right about now and I feel like venting. If your last name is Priebus, you should never, ever name your son Reince. Actually, if your last name is Smith or Jones, you should never name your son Reince.
If you do, he might grow up to be an idiot.
I had to Google Alan Simpson. I thought that he'd died, but you're absolutely right – he's alive, and not that much older than Bernie Sanders. At 92, Bob Dole's best days are behind him – but he might get some votes in Florida?
The GOP is working diligently to insure that everyone knows that it's "their party", and not "our" party.
I find Cruz's drop in the national polls among Republicans interesting. I find Kasich's rise in the national polls bewildering, though I've never disliked the man. And the glee with which the elites in the GOP want to push things to a contested convention so that they can install "their man" to supplant Cruz, Trump and Kasich is depressing in the extreme.
We need to find something to rally behind, but the GOP is depressing and the Dems have gone full collectivist/socialist/national socialist worker's party.
Rein Priebus hasn't ever been elected to a public office. He's a lawyer who has made a living being a "party boss", first in Wisconsin – one of the few states to go for the now defunct Rubio – and then as a national party boss.
I'd feel a bit more comfortable if the GOP had picked somebody who actually had a REAL job at some point in his life besides "party boss". And that's part of the problem isn't it? Reince belongs to the political class. He's a whining sissy who has made a career of pandering to big donors, promising to deliver purloined public money or to have his friends change laws to suit – in that endless pay-to-play that speaks to the political machine.
Except that's not what the public wants and these guys are having their pants pulled down around their ankles this election cycle and we can see them for who they are – and it's none too impressive.
Not that it matters, but I'm voting for my candidate of choice, which at the moment is the only one that actually knows how to run multiple companies. So is mom, God rest her soul…
Whoever wants to be leader of the free world, should have some job experience beyond being a political parasite.
The presumption of either party is that it "knows" better than the American people what we need or want. The GOP implosion over Colorado shows just how out of touch the party is with the people.
Unfortunately, we as Americans have succeeded in dumbing down the population to a point where even Bernie sounds reasonable instead of as an ignorant socialist who couldn't generate a dime out of the economy.
Trump, Hillary, and the rest are all just reflections of just how ignorant we have become. They are not the problem, they are merely symptoms.
The same can be said of Obama. He's a symptom of a dangerous and powerful ideology.
Thereby goes an overpaid idiot.
I concur with the proposition that we've dumbed down the population. We're in deep doo doo as a result.
From the very beginning of the current clown-circus, I was only interested in either Trump or Cruz.
Now some "interesting" things have come out about "TrusTed", I've finally decided that I'm going to vote for The Donald.
He can't be bought (that we know of), and he knows how to run huge enterprises, which is what the USA is.
So as of today, I'm officially a Trump supporter.
LL,
JEB! didn't implode, his problem is that he is a '82 Yugo running on one cylinder, plugs that need gapping and bad gas. A Ferrari Daytona pulled up next to him with a new paint job running Avgas. With Melania in the right seat.
Voila, what is your 14 year old staring at?
His name is RINSE PREPUCE , I looked it up.
And if you don't you get smegma, his brother.
As I've noted before on this blog – a population that can't find Canada or Mexico on a map should not be able to vote (or reproduce). I'm drifting toward the Robert Heinlein standard for citizenship – everyone must serve and earn it.
How do we reverse the curse?
I dont TrusTed. I think that Trump means well and can learn. He's been successful at making decisions in the past and made himself rich. We need people with that sort of background to be in charge. Obama is evidence of what happens when we don't make that sort of pick.
Good analogy regarding Bush and the '82 Yugo. He spent $100 million and earned 4 delegates…which, while better than earning no delegates, is telling. Trump has spent on the order of $10 million and has over 800 delegates as of this evening.
He's like a jelly fish that is swept up with this current and that up-welling, scarfing down whatever fish come his way. It's not the sort of tag line that one would expect from a party boss of his stature, but it's who we have.
As a long time Blue Dog Democrat, I've nowhere to go. GOP with the likes of Karl Rove and Grover Norquist? Hell no. Last two times I voted against Obama while holding my nose. This time around, anybody but Shillary and industrial strength nose clips.
The Republicans have managed to give us a long list of tepid candidates. Maybe another party? What we have and who we have does not bode well for the future.
Swimming upstream here, I wouldn't trust Donald the crybaby to do anything in office but what he wants for himself. Gild the White House and logo it, too.
Not a conservative. Ever.
You dis Cruz. Thank him for Heller.
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