Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Rush Limbaugh thinks Trump's too unpopular to win, but forgets how unpopular Reagan was in 1980

Gallup presidential polls 1980
Composite of polls by John Sides
Reagan sweeps with 90% of the electoral college vote

On March 11th, Rush Limbaugh bought Michelle Field's version of the story hook, line and sinker, but today . . .

"Me and my big fat mouth"
. . . he's going to clam up about it.

You can't unfire the gun, Rush.

Ralph Kramden Limbaugh, March 11th, here:

"She was nearly thrown to the floor and told to essentially to be quiet, no questions, get out of the way, Trump is leaving, what have you.  And she claims that it was Trump's campaign manager who did it, a guy named Corey Lewandowski.  There are witnesses.  There's audio.  There's video.  She's got the bruises on her arms. ... So it happened."

Marco Rubio proves he's a bad faith Republican just like John Kasich

Kasich, who has no chance to win, remains in the race to prevent Trump from getting enough delegates.

Rubio, who "suspended" his campaign after losing to Trump in Florida, might as well be doing the same thing because, contrary to standard practice, he's trying to bind his delegates to himself instead of releasing them.

From the story here:

"No one has ever really tested this, the idea has always been that when you suspend, you're out," said a senior Republican in Washington, D.C., who did not want to publicly discuss a contested convention.

"No candidate has ever said, 'I want to suspend — but I also want the delegates,'" according to the source. ...

While Rubio is going to great lengths to hold onto his delegates, there is no doubt he has stopped competing in future primaries. This week he sent a signed affidavit to have his name removed from the ballot in California, which awards 172 delegates on the last voting day in June.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Roger in Detroit runs circles around Rush Limbaugh, gets him to admit he doesn't think Trump can win


I don't think it's possible for a candidate's negatives to be as high as they're reporting Trump's to be and the guy winning. 

Hence Rush's ongoing, thinly veiled support for the closest thing to Reagan, which is Ted Cruz, who can't win enough delegates outright but will have to win enough delegates to be an acceptable alternative to Trump at a brokered convention. Which is why Roger in Detroit opened his attack on Rush by accusing Rush of wanting a brokered convention. That goes hand in hand with support of Cruz at this late stage of the game.

A brokered convention is what Rush is really hoping for, otherwise Rush wouldn't keep emphasizing Kasich's self-absorbed spoiler role in bleeding away the anti-Trump vote from Cruz. Kasich isn't stopping Trump, he's stopping Cruz from making a respectable enough showing to warrant the establishment taking the nomination away from Trump and giving it to Cruz at convention.

Trump's the winner no one with a microphone has the courage to want.

Flashback to Romney in 2013 taking the opposite position he takes now: Let the people decide the nominee, not conventions and caucuses

Quoted here:

“I’m concerned that there’s an effort on the part of some to move toward caucuses or conventions to select nominees. I think that’s a mistake. I’m concerned that that kind of approach could end up with a minority deciding who the nominee ought to be. And that I think would be a mistake. I think we should have a majority of the party's voters decide who they want as their nominee."

Battery charges against Corey Lewandowski "utterly pathetic"


Hey Rush! Scott Walker's endorsement won't much help Ted Cruz in Wisconsin where Walker's approval has fallen 20% since 2014

Reported here at the end of February:

The poll found 39 percent approve of [Scott Walker's] job performance, compared with 55 percent who disapprove. ... In a composite of the four Marquette polls taken before his 2014 re-election, his job approval rating was 48.6 percent. In a composite of the last four polls since August, excluding Thursday’s, his job approval level was 38.2 percent.

Hey Rush! America is trying to destroy Trump like Wisconsin tried to destroy Walker . . .

. . . and you're helping them.

Monday, March 28, 2016

Best comment on Trump interview with Wisconsin's Cuckservative Charlie Sykes: "Jeffrey Dahmer was from Wisconsin"


Yeah, "neighbors heard the sound of sawing at all hours".

Call it the Robert La Follette effect: socialism you can really sink your teeth into.

Hey Levin, forget Trump, TED CRUZ isn't growing HIS support

1528 delegates have been allocated. Cruz has just 30% of them, Trump 48%.

Wake up and support the leader, or you will be just as responsible for a debacle as #neverTrump.

Rush Limbaugh, expert in European history: "Belgium has never been a real country"


Belgium seceded from the Netherlands in 1830 and has been an independent country ever since. My father helped liberate it from the Germans in 1944. Idiot.

This guy lost his job because of NAFTA, along with 4.5 million other Americans since 1993: He just voted for Trump

From the story, here:

Randall Williams and his wife, Brenda, were two of those workers. For three decades, they helped assemble the hermetically sealed motors that power air conditioners sold all across America. At the end, they were each making $16.10 an hour. That kind of money’s just a dream now: Randall fills orders at a local farm supply store; Brenda works in the high school cafeteria. For a while, he said, their combined income didn’t even add up to one of their old factory wages. ... He voted for the billionaire in Kentucky’s Republican caucus this month. So did many of his neighbors. In Allen County, a collection of eight towns strewn along the Tennessee border, Trump dominated his rivals, racking up 42 percent of the vote on his way to a narrow victory that night in Kentucky.


Sunday, March 27, 2016

Gaydar alert: Fag for Trump gets over 11,000 comments on his op-ed, reminds us Liz Mair is "mannish"


The first point to be made is that Trump didn’t start the wife-baiting. Make America Awesome, a Trump-opposing PAC founded by the mannish Liz Mair, started circulating a particularly raunchy image of Melania Trump, urging GOP primary voters to back Cruz.

If I want to be lectured about my religion by Glenn Beck, I'll answer the doorbell


These are your manufacturing jobs lost under Bush and Obama

4.331 million lost under Bush and Obama still net down 523,000

Saturday, March 26, 2016

P. J. O'Rourke was more right about John Kasich than he knows

According to careful vote counting by FiveThirtyEight, "Kasich could lay off winner-take-all states where only Cruz has a chance to beat Trump: Wisconsin, Indiana, Nebraska, Montana and South Dakota" in a last ditch strategy with Cruz to divide and conquer Donald Trump's march to 1,237. "Kasich and Cruz’s choice is simple: wage war on Trump on two separate fronts, or lose."

But Kasich is having none of it, in keeping with his previous refusal to work with Marco Rubio in Rubio's quest to keep Florida out of Donald Trump's column. John Kasich is "all in" to the convention, convinced he's the party's savior from the so-called outsiders Trump and Cruz. Kasich already has four events planned in Wisconsin between now and April 1 leading up to the primary there on April 5.

The reason? He is convinced he's a better candidate everywhere than is Cruz, but especially in the Midwest, insisting he wants the presidency and is not interested in "a parlor game of who gets this or who gets that". And as Rush Limbaugh has observed, John Kasich takes himself way too seriously. The man is delusional.

"We don't want to work with those people [Democrats]. We want to defeat them politically, and here comes Kasich! It's all about him. That whole thing, saying that he would be way open to choosing a Democrat? Kasich is taking the occasion here to try to sell himself as something unique and special."

Of course Kasich's not unique and special. The party's problem is that it's given us such Republicans too many times before, candidates whose vision of politics is nothing more than white flag bipartisanship. John McCain was infamous for it in 2008, and his lackey Lindsey Graham also puked out that line this time around, before ignominiously crashing and burning.

It's conventional wisdom out there that Donald Trump is destroying the Republican Party as we know it. But the truth is closer to what P. J. observed last fall, that it has simply killed itself.

John Kasich is just the Republicans' two word suicide note.

Small animals like him


Some endorsements for president are all about the money: Scott Walker to support Ted Cruz?

Scott Walker's spendthrift ways campaigning for president infamously put him more than $1 million in debt, according to The Wall Street Journal, here:

Mr. Walker’s FEC report shows he spent $6.4 million between the mid-July launch and the end of September. But those figures don’t include $200,000 in Mr. Walker’s reported outstanding bills or debts the campaign pushed past Oct. 1 – a number that raises the Walker debt to more than $1 million more than his cash on hand, according to the people familiar with Mr. Walker’s campaign finances. ...

When Tim Pawlenty ended his presidential campaign in August 2011, his campaign was $435,000 in the red. Mr. Pawlenty endorsed rival Mitt Romney, whose family and top campaign supporters and aides helped the former Minnesota governor retire his campaign debts by the next April.

Candidates who lose races can owe debt for years. Newt Gingrich still owes $4.6 million from his 2012 campaign. Al Sharpton owes $925,713 from his 2004 White House run.


Hillary Clinton infamously took until the end of 2012 to pay off $12 million she owed from her failed 2008 run for president. The $13.2 million she borrowed from herself she had to eat.

Friday, March 25, 2016

The John Kasich vote is the Rorshach for the "Obamacon" vote, owns about 14% of the GOP primary vote so far

"I ought to be running in a Democrat primary", he said in New Hampshire.

"Just because someone happens to be a Democrat doesn't mean they're disqualified", he said about his possible choice of a vice presidential running mate.

"Well, you know, he received you know overwhelming support, I think even from Senator Hatch, so of course we'd think about it," he said about possibly naming Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court himself, Obama's current pick to replace Scalia.


The Daily Beast reports Marco Rubio camp is source, not Trump, for Ted Cruz cheatin' regularly on Tuesdays and Thursdays story


Breitbart News, the notoriously Trump-friendly conservative outlet, was also pitched the story of Cruz’s extramarital affairs, according to a source close to the publication. That source said an operative allied with Marco Rubio—but not associated with his official campaign—showed the publication a compilation video of Cruz and a woman other than his wife coming out of the Capitol Grille restaurant and a hotel on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But the outlet opted not to report on the video, which demonstrated no direct evidence of an affair.

“We got it from a Rubio ally,” said the source. “It was too thin, so [Breitbart’s Washington political editor Matt Boyle] decided not to run it. There was no way to verify the claims.”

"Trump Spokeswoman Katrina Pierson: Media Ignores That Cruz's PAC Started Fight Over Wives"

Uh, yeah.

Hey Mexico! Let's see some effigies of El Chapo, or Enrique Peña Nieto, or Vicente Fox!

Cowards.

Hey Mollie Hemingway! Why aren't you demanding that Ted Cruz denounce the anti-Christian statements of his supporter Glenn Beck?

Hey Rush! Why did Ted Cruz' surrogate think a wife photo was fair game in the race in the first place?

Melania Trump isn't running for anything.

Hey Lyin' Ted Cruz! It's a TED CRUZ ad, dummy!

"The sleaziest dirty tricks campaigner of modern American history." -- Conrad Black

Hey Vinnie from Long Island! Cruz supports TPP and massive expansion of H-1B visas and green cards!

Don't tell me he's not establishment!

Ted Cruz is a phony conservative, which is why Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney and Lindsey Grahamnesty are now lining up behind the guy.

Obama still can't get it up: Seven years without GDP even close to 3.0, lags Bush average by 33%

Bush average 2.1125% v Obama average 1.4%

John McCain proves once again what a P.O.S. he is, salutes a commie in The New York Times


Are there so few communists left that they need the help, Senator?


Thursday, March 24, 2016

Man up, Liz!


Scammer Alert: Calls from Utica, NY (315)-327-2778 trolling for donations for Trump campaign gotta be a scam

He's got a website folks, if you want to donate or buy a hat. He doesn't need to call you for money.

Trump's low favorables today match Reagan's exactly in March 1980

2016 candidates' current favorables averages, according to Real Clear Politics:

Sanders: 48.7
Kasich 43.2
Clinton: 40.7
Cruz: 33.4
Trump: 30.4

Like Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan 36 years ago tomorrow was very unpopular in this country

L.A.Times poll 3/25/80 Favorables:

John Anderson 68% (0 electoral votes in November, Independent party)

Teddy Kennedy 60% (lost primary to less popular Carter even though winning 11 states & DC with 7.3 million popular votes)

Jimmy Carter 51% (49 electoral votes in November)

Ronald Reagan 30% (489 electoral votes in November). 

Republican establishment desperately endorses "outsider" Ted Cruz, including Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney

From the story here:

“These guys look like all desperation and as if they have really no means, or ability, to speak to the core constituents who are supporting Donald Trump,” said Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. “At this last minute, it’s, ‘Now we support Ted,’ after you spent the best part of a year telling America how much you hate him.”

“It’s disingenuous,” Steele added. “People aren’t stupid. They see it for what it is.”

Neocon Iraq war enthusiast and Bush adviser Eliot A. Cohen to vote for Hillary Clinton if Trump is the GOP nominee

Go ahead!

Quoted here:

“What’s happening is you have a lot of people who are desperate to get anybody in there other than Trump. ... People are going to go for Cruz, because at the end of the day they think he’s considerably less bad than Trump,” said Eliot A. Cohen, a former Jeb Bush adviser who also served in the George W. Bush administration.

Cohen, along with Bryan McGrath, organized an open letter opposing Trump that was signed by more than 120 members of the Republican foreign policy establishment. The letter declared that Trump is unfit to be president because his views of American power are “wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle.” ...

“I’ll never support Trump, period. If the only choices I’m offered is between Hillary and Trump, I’ll go for Hillary,” said Cohen, who said he’s hoping for a third possibility or a write-in. 


Romney adviser Bryan McGrath, CDR USN (ret.), of the Hudson Institute trusts Hillary's judgment on foreign and defense policy, you know, like at Benghazi

Quoted here:

“Donald Trump is not a Republican. ... He is a caricature of classless wealth. ... He is a caricature of the ugly American,” said McGrath, the deputy director at the Center for American Seapower at the Hudson Institute who is now working with the Cruz campaign. ... 

McGrath said he would vote for Clinton if he “got a gun held to my head” and was forced to choose only between her and Trump. He added that in reality, however, he would write in a name. 

But, he added, “on foreign and defense policy, I at least trust Hillary’s judgment.” 



---------------------------------------------------------

Do you think he'd like Trump better if Trump had high class wealth? Or how about just normal classless wealth? Kinda giving it away there, Bryan.

McGrath served as Navy Policy Team Lead, Romney for President (2011-2012).

Laugh of the Day: If Reagan were president, ISIS would be . . .















. . . WASWAS.

Emerson poll is showing Cruz by 1 in Wisconsin, but . . .

. . . Emerson got Iowa wrong by 430%, predicting Trump by 1 when it was Cruz by 3.3.

In New Hampshire Emerson got it wrong by 30%, predicting Trump by 15 when it was Trump by 19.5.

And in South Carolina Emerson got it wrong by 41%, predicting Trump by 17 when it was Trump by 10.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Laugh of the Day: Ted Cruz actually lifted the lines from "The American President"


Maybe Ted's not as smart as everyone makes him out to be.

Time for Ted to release his transcripts.

Matt Cover thinks Donald Trump is talk radio's Frankenstein

Here, saying Trump is the by-product of an ignorant expectations farce deliberately played on the public by the scheming, self-serving jibber-jabberers Limbaugh, Hannity and Levin:

However, by organizing the GOP base around this fictional system of legislative combat, Movement leaders would lay the groundwork for the ignorant populism of Donald Trump.

Voters, having been told that Congress just lacked strong leaders willing to fight for principle, would flock to a figure who embodied exactly the kind of fiery machismo they had been told was needed.


That's almost amusing, but blindly discounts the "non-ideological" character of the Trump phenomenon's success with the illegal immigration and trade issues. These are conservative issues with a long and storied history but, unfortunately, are not granted legitimacy by today's current crop of so-called conservatives, for whom "principles" and ideology are paramount because they are at heart libertarians, not conservatives.

Trump's immigration and trade crusade may eventually come a cropper, but it won't be because he and the people don't believe in it. It'll be because it has no support from the establishment which runs a "system" organized around antithetical ideas, but also because it has no support from the "anti-establishment" either.

Represented by Limbaugh, Hannity and Levin on the radio, the preferred element of the contemporary demagogue, the anti-establishment has been just as much for open-borders and free-trade as the establishment has been. None of them can even imagine a limited, small American federal government starving from its very beginning on the measly tariffs, excises and land sales with which the founders stuck it. And none in the establishment even wants to.

Laura Ingraham has been waging the lonely battle against illegal immigration almost single-handedly for years on her little radio program in the mornings, with great success, while Michael Savage has had to beat the dead horse for almost twenty-five years as a misunderstood New York Jew.

But the cool thing about 2016 is that New York values are finally getting some respect in the rest of the country for a change, thanks to one Donald John Trump.

"Anti-establishment" talk radio has yet to catch up.

Rush Limbaugh says things are still fluid for Ted Cruz














Wake up conservative talk radio: After yesterday, Trump needs just 52.8% of remaining delegates, Cruz 81.8%

And Rush Limbaugh keeps saying, among others, that it ain't over for Cruz.

Explain to us how Cruz goes from winning 30% of delegates so far to 82%.

Tea Party class action against the IRS certified, goes to discovery stage

From the story here:

Certifying the class allows any of the more than 200 groups that were subjected to the criteria to join the lawsuit. But until the IRS complies with the appeals court’s ruling this week, the list of those groups is secret.

Now that the class has been certified, the case moves to the discovery stage, where the tea party groups’ lawyers will ask for all of the agency’s documents related to the targeting and will depose IRS employees about their actions.

The lawyers hope they’ll be able to learn details Congress was unable to shake free in its own investigations.

Reports that Utah caucus results are a complete sham


Again, no credential check, no ID check, NOTHING.

Caucus system, more or less over after North Dakota on April 1, has been favoring Cruz over Trump 1.5 to 1

I'm counting 148 delegates awarded to Cruz in Iowa, Nevada, Alaska, Minnesota, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Hawaii, Wyoming and Utah.

For Trump I show 99 delegates in Iowa, Nevada, Alaska, Minnesota, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Hawaii, Wyoming and Northern Mariana Islands.

Colorado has 37 delegates yet to be allocated, the US Virgin Islands 9, Wyoming 18 and North Dakota 28.

Hey Ted, you dumbass! Forget Utah, even Sanders beat you in Arizona!

161,720 to 130,762

Hey Ted, you dumbass! Forget Utah, Clinton just beat you like a drum in Arizona!

234,713 to 130,762

But Trump won with 248,383

Ted Cruz accepted Jeb Bush's endorsement as easily as . . .

. . . George Herbert Walker Bush accepted the Democrats' Profile in Courage Award for breaking his 1988 No New Taxes Pledge.


Speaking of the failed GOP administrations of the past, Jeb Bush endorses Ted Cruz


Shut your big fat pie hole, Nancy, you've never paid for doodly squat


Good news: Trump foreign policy team excludes those in senior positions from previous GOP administrations


Cruz wins big in Mormon Utah, but Trump still gets more votes in AZ and UT combined than Cruz in UT and AZ combined

Trump: 246,543 + 23,984 = 270,527
Cruz: 118,904 + 129,429 = 248,333 (Cruz actually received more popular votes in Arizona than Utah)

Dead ringer for Erick Erickson


Tuesday, March 22, 2016

In 2013 Ted Cruz wanted 1.35 million green cards issued per year, 325,000 H-1B visas per year

Plans pushed by GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz under the immigration reform debate in 2013 would have jumped the number of immigrants, including those from Muslim nations, by doubling green card caps and boosting temporary worker visas five-fold.

Read the rest here.

Sanders hits new high 43.8% nationally in Real Clear Politics poll average


Your choice America: Donald Trump and The Wall or open borders and a Brussels-style police state


Trump hits new high 40% nationally in Real Clear Politics poll average

Trump never shared the lead with anyone except Ben Carson last November.

John Kasich voted for the assault weapons ban in 1994

The Roll Call is here.

click to expand

By the way, Queen Noor of Jordan never renounced her US citizenship

Discussed here.

This perfect running mate for Ted Cruz will be 35 in June, so he's just as qualified too, no?

Prince Hashim of Jordan
Educated at St. Mark's, Fay School and Maret School, he's probably got the needed residency of 14 years. Throw in his time at Duke and Georgetown if there's any doubt, and I'd say he's a lock.

Monday, March 21, 2016

If true Politico story means Ted Cruz is soft enough on illegal immigration to unite with Gang of Eighter Marco Rubio

Politico reports here that Cruz' people have been pursuing an alliance with Marco Amnesty Rubio for weeks, and more than that:

Over the last week, according to a person familiar with the Cruz team's internal deliberations, the campaign has conducted polling in forthcoming contests — including ... the one on Tuesday in Utah — in which questions are posed about the two running side-by-side.

Trump delegate total rises to 680, which is really 692 at minimum with 12 from Missouri not yet distributed

bloomberg.com/politics
That means Trump now needs 52.2% of the remaining 1044 delegates to get to 1237. See the latest Missouri delegate story here.

A number of other delegates also are not yet distributed from races already held, among them:

Oklahoma: 3
Louisiana: 5
Mississippi: 3
Illinois: 2.

With 424 delegates, Cruz now needs almost 78% of the remaining 1044 to get to 1237.

Conservative talk radio won't tell you Cruz is finished, but he was finished already a week ago.

John Kasich, Supreme Court squish, would consider Obama's nominee Garland

Quoted here:

"As someone who's talked about unity, would you take a look at Mr. Garland...if you were elected president?" host John Dickerson asked Kasich.

"Well, you know, he received you know overwhelming support, I think even from Senator Hatch, so of course we'd think about it," Kasich replied.

In other words, expect more liberals on the court from President John Kasich.

So winter's over . . . where are the indictments of Hillary Clinton?

Hm?

If Ted Cruz joins a Donald Trump ticket, Erick Erickson says he won't vote for it!

In the last segment on the Laura Ingraham Show.

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Sean Hannity will never live down his endorsement of a pathway to legalization after Romney's loss in 2012

He gives forgiveness to Marco Rubio for the Gang of Eight Bill because he wants forgiveness for this:


Dark pools of money spew out bluenoses against Trump

Registered Democrat Obama voter Michael Goodwin, writing here:

For his chutzpah, tens of millions of dollars are being poured into attack ads against Trump, and the urgent blue-nosed concerns about dark pools of money in politics have vanished. As long as he’s the target, all is fair.

Often, the avalanche of sludge against Trump looks and sounds like a reactionary confederacy fighting to keep its power and privileges. Naturally, the mainstream ­media is slashing away.

A Washington Post editorial claims that stopping Trump is the only way to “defend our democracy.” In other words, those troublesome voters are the problem.

A New York Times columnist raised the prospect of assassination. Sure, it was a joke. Make that joke about Obama or Clinton and see who laughs.


It was the Dowdy yellow journalist who said "Nein", not Trump


I wondered about ex-wife Ivana telling her lawyer, according to Vanity Fair, that Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bed. Or the talk in New York that in the ’90s he was reading “Mein Kampf.” Nein, he said. “I never had the book,” he said. “I never read the book. I don’t care about the book.”

See Rich Lowry in 20 years: Still hiding in the jungle resisting Donald Trump


LOWRY: We will be like the last Japanese soldier in the jungle resisting this guy.

Ranking the candidates by credit scores of supporters: Kasich's have the best credit, Sanders' the worst

Nearly 60% of Kasich's support comes from people with excellent credit (FICO 720-850).

Half or more of supporters for all candidates have excellent credit, including supporters of Trump (who brings up the rear at 49.8%).

Compiled from the story here.

Combined percentages of supporters with excellent and good credit scores / combined percentages of supporters with fair and bad credit scores:

Kasich 86 / 14
Rubio 69 / 31
Trump 69 / 31
Cruz 68 / 32
Clinton 67 / 33
Sanders 66 / 34.

Rubio's in second because of the difference between 68.65% of support coming from from the good side for himself and 68.6% for Trump. Before rounding Cruz trails Trump in each category by 0.5 points.

Flashback: In 2006 Barack Obama sounded just like Donald Trump on illegal immigration


Make sure to click the speaker icon at the link to hear Obama himself recite these and other relevant lines in the audio version of his book.

Famous libertarian takes test, finds out he's a LEFTIST

Yet more evidence that conservatives should dump the libertarians, who belong in the Democrat Party, not the Republican.

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson took the test at isidewith.com, reported here by CNBC:

"The candidate that most paired up with my beliefs is (Vermont Sen.) Bernie Sanders at 73 percent," the 2012 Libertarian candidate told CNBC in a phone interview this week from New Mexico.

Funny he needed a test to figure out where he really stands. How un-self-aware can you be? Apparently liberalism is more of a mental disorder than we knew, and marijuana-induced hallucinations less revelatory than he knew.

Johnson received almost 1% of the popular vote for president in 2012 running as a libertarian, but continues to insist "that the vast majority of the people in this country are libertarian".

Uh huh. 


Friday, March 18, 2016

Trump's net favorable rating surges 340% from 5 to 22 since February 29th, Cruz up 62% from 13 to 21, Kasich up just 12%

Gallup, here.

NYT: Hillary needs a black opponent to win Democrat white men

But to win the white Republican establishment all she needs is Donald Trump.

Here:

While Mrs. Clinton swept the five major primaries on Tuesday, she lost white men in all of them, and by double-digit margins in Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, exit polls showed — a sharp turnabout from 2008, when she won double-digit victories among white male voters in all three states.

She also performed poorly on Tuesday with independents, who have never been among her core supporters. But white men were, at least when Mrs. Clinton was running against a black opponent: She explicitly appealed to them in 2008, extolling the Second Amendment, mocking Barack Obama’s comment that working-class voters “cling to guns or religion” and even needling him at one point over his difficulties with “working, hard-working Americans, white Americans.”

USA Today: Congress had a right to access Hillary Clinton’s emails as part of their investigation regardless of motive


Nevertheless, members of Congress, like reporters and the public, had a right to access Clinton’s emails as part of their investigation regardless of motive. And were it not for the dogged partisanship of Republicans and the actions of a hacker, Clinton’s private email system might never have come to light.

Nine days after the Benghazi attack, Congress asked for any State Department emails related to the subject. It took two years before Congress was given access to a single email from Clinton’s private account. By then, four House committees and two Senate committees had already issued their reports on the issue.

Ted Cruz has at most 423 delegates and NO path to 1237

Ted Cruz needs 814 more, almost 77% of the remaining 1059 delegates, to get to 1237.

Ain't gonna happen.

Update:

Cruz has won not quite 30% of the 1413 delegates already allocated.

To win 77% of the remaining delegates means improving his performance to date by 156%.

Trump needs at most 559 delegates: That's 52.78% of the 1059 remaining

Trump has accumulated at least 678 of 1413 delegates awarded so far, 47.98%.

Trump's current total of 678 will rise (to 690?) after Missouri is adjudicated, so he actually needs fewer than 559 delegates (547?).

Missouri expects to award Trump an additional 12 delegates on top of the current 25, as reported here:

On Wednesday, the Missouri Republican Party announced Trump had won 37 delegates, and Cruz won 15.

About only one third of remaining delegates come from states with proportional contests. The rest are in winner take all states.

The combined popular vote for Trump & Cruz is beating Rubio & Kasich by 2.1 to 1


Bonehead Erick Erickson should stop with the kooky Rick Perry shtick already

Noted here:

[A] meeting among a small group of “GOP operatives” and “conservative leaders" ... included talk of a third-party alternative to take on Trump in the general election. 

One of the meeting’s participants, conservative radio host Erick Erickson, told Fox News on Thursday that the idea of a third-party bid was proposed at the meeting as a “final fallback option” to stop Trump.

... Earlier this year, Erickson publicly and privately pitched a potential third-party bid by former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose presidential campaigns in 2012 and this cycle did not catch fire. The effort became serious enough that a group of donors contacted Perry directly a few weeks ago, asking him to consider it, but he would not entertain the idea.

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Hey Mark Levin: There's nothing unconstitutional about a compact between the executive and the people . . .

. . . against a judiciary run amok and a congress which no longer represents the people.

It was done in England between the king and his subjects. It can be done here between the president and the voters.

The founders were wiser than you. 

Let me translate this Ted Cruz statement for you

Cruz: Every Day Kasich Stays In The Race, It Benefits Donald Trump

Translation: Every day Kasich stays in the race hurts me.

Kasich isn't too smart: Neither Trump nor Cruz can win a general election


“Neither of those guys can win a general election,” he told reporters after a town hall-style event outside Philadelphia.

Oh yeah?

Ohio results from Tuesday:

Trump: 727,585
Clinton: 679,266

Missouri results from Tuesday:

Cruz: 380,367
Clinton: 310,602

Marco Rubio drops primary ballot challenge to John Kasich in Pennsylvania: Kasich short of the needed 2,000

So it wasn't a matter of principle at work to Rubio, just self-interest while he was still a candidate. Dropping the challenge now that he's out ensures that Rubio's spoiler strategy continues in the person of John Kasich. Denying Trump delegates is still the mission.

Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity keep misrepresenting Marco Rubio as a conservative. Little Marco's actions even now prove otherwise.

From the story here:

The Kasich campaign's lawyer had agreed that Kasich's paperwork was eight valid signatures short of the 2,000 required, but he maintained that the challenge was invalid because it was filed after the deadline.

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Florida's Rick Scott joins three other governors endorsing Trump

Noted here:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott is calling on the Republican Party to come together and support Donald Trump. ... Trump has earned the endorsements of current governors Chris Christie of New Jersey, Paul LePage of Maine, and Jan Brewer, the former governor of Arizona.

Told you so: Trump needs only to maintain his current level of support to win, not increase it

The New York Times, here:

If Mr. Trump maintains his current level of support in the remaining races, he would almost certainly secure the nomination.

With delegate allocation still incomplete at Real Clear Politics after yesterday's primaries, Donald Trump needs to garner less than 53% of the remaining delegates to win, a level consistent with his actual performance at the beginning of March (see here).

Trump has consistently needed between 50% and 54% of outstanding delegates to win throughout the period to date since February contests ended.

With his wins yesterday the percentage needed is moving back toward 50%, indicating his momentum is increasing.


Good news, Trump pulls the trigger: No more Republican debates

Story here.

His first executive order.

John Boehner voted for Kasich yesterday, calls Cruz "lucifer" and wants Paul Ryan if no one wins the primaries


"If we don't have a nominee who can win on the first ballot, I'm for none of the above," Boehner said at the Futures Industry Association conference here. "They all had a chance to win. None of them won. So I'm for none of the above. I'm for Paul Ryan to be our nominee."

Trump crushes previous nominees' performance yesterday and Limbaugh talks John Kasich, Marco Rubio and a shooting story

speech last night by Marco Rubio suspending his campaign proves to Limbaugh that Marco is the real deal while his one accomplishment in an otherwise feckless Senate career proves otherwise, that's what you should be thinking about.

Maybe Rush is waiting for the drugs to kick in. 

Trump 2016 handily beats both McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012 in OH, IL, FL, MO, NC primaries by 39% (but not Romney in NC)

Ohio: McCain 636,256 Romney 460,831 Trump 727,832 (Trump by 14% over McCain)

Illinois: McCain 426,777 Romney 435,859 Trump 548,528 (Trump by 26% over Romney)

Florida: McCain 701,761 Romney 776,159 Trump 1,075,094 (Trump by 39% over Romney)

Missouri: McCain 194,145 Romney 63,882 Trump 382,093 (Trump by 97% over McCain)

North Carolina: McCain 383,085 Romney 638,601 (both were May cleanup primaries by the defacto nominees), Trump 458,151

Overall Trump by 39%: McCain 2.34 million Romney 2.37 million Trump 3.2 million 

Republican primary turnout in 2016 up 52% from 2008 in OH, IL, FL, MO and NC, Democrat enthusiasm in 2008 still beats by 9%

2008: 5.05 million
2016: 7.66 million

In the five states mentioned Republicans are voting in numbers 17.5% higher than Democrats in 2016.

In 2008 Democrats had all the enthusiasm: Democrats turned out in numbers 65% higher than Republicans.

Democrat turnout in these states in 2008 still beats Republican turnout in 2016 by 9%.

Democrat primary turnout down 22% overall from 2008 in OH, IL, FL, MO and NC combined

2008: 8.35 million
2016: 6.52 million

Missouri Primary 2016 turnout up 50% among Republicans, down 25% among Democrats compared to 2008

With Missouri still officially too close to call but with Trump in the lead by 1,726 votes in the Republican primary over Ted Cruz, turnout in 2016 is running 0.9 million v 0.6 million in 2008, up 50%.

Democrat turnout is down 25% at 0.6 million in 2016 v 0.8 million in 2008 with Hillary Clinton leading Bernie Sanders by 1,531 votes.

North Carolina Primary 2016 turnout about equal for both parties, just like in 2012

Republicans turned out 1.1 million in 2016 while Democrats turned out 1.08 million, rising just 13% and 11% over 2012 respectively.

In 2012 each party turned out 0.97 million in North Carolina (Obama of course was the Democrat incumbent president that year; Romney swept with almost 66% of the vote).

In 2008 Republicans turned out only 0.5 million (McCain swept with 74%) while 1.6 million Democrats duked out their contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Clinton lost to Obama by 230,000 votes in 2008, but in 2016 she has beaten Bernie Sanders by 156,000.

Trump's victory over Cruz in 2016 is by less than 40,000 votes.

Florida Republican Primary 2016 turnout up big as homeboys Trump and Rubio duke it out

Democrat turnout fell slightly from 1.75 million in 2008 to 1.66 million in 2016, about 5%.

Florida's closed Republican primary saw 2016 turnout rise to 2.27 million from 1.95 million in 2008 and 1.7 million in 2012, up 16% and 34% respectively.

Illinois Primary 2016 turnout up 53% among Republicans, unchanged among Democrats

Democrat turnout in the primary in 2016 was about the same as in 2008: 1.97 million v 2 million.

Republican turnout was considerably higher in 2016 over prior years. In both 2008 and 2012 Republicans turned out 0.9 million voters, but this year it's up to 1.38 million, 53% higher.

The reason?

Well it ain't Ted Cruz.

In Ohio it looks like independents came out big for John Kasich yesterday

Democrat primary turnout in 2008 in Ohio was 2.2 million (in 2012 0.5 million for the incumbent Obama), but in the 2016 contest last night it struggled to round off at 1.2 million.

On the Republican side, turnout yesterday in Ohio was 2 million in contrast to 2008 and 2012 when turnout was 1.1 million and 1.2 million respectively.

Since Republicans and independents only could vote in the Republican primary in Ohio, not Democrats, it looks like independent support for the Ohio governor carried the day for John Kasich yesterday.