GOP delegate race update: No one can win except Trump, which is why the GOP should embrace him instead of fighting him

According to Breitbart here, it's going to take until about April 15th for the Missouri GOP primary results to be certified by the Secretary of State.

The Missouri GOP shows here that Trump won 37 delegates. Real Clear Politics credits Trump with only 25 from Missouri.

Add those 12 to Trump's current 736, and you get 748, which is 48.5% of the 1541 already allocated:

Trump: has 736 + 12 (48.5%)

Cruz: 463 (30%)

Rubio: 171 (11.1%)

Kasich: 143 (9.3%)

Carson: 9 (0.6%)

Bush: 4 (0.3%)

Fiorina: 1 (0.1%)

Huckabee: 1 (0.1%)

Paul: 1 (0.1%).

That leaves just 931 available, of which Trump needs 489 to get to 1237, or 52.5%:

Trump: needs 489 (52.5% of 931 . . . 1.1 times his current level of support, still very likely)

Cruz: needs 774 (83.1% of 931 . . . 2.8 times his current level of support, nearly impossible)

Kasich: needs 1094 (117.5% of 931 . . . 12.6 times his current level of support, impossible).

The only thing Cruz and Kasich are doing is possibly keeping Trump from making it to 1237.

If they want a needlessly and horribly divided GOP going into the convention, they should continue to play the spoilers. If they do that, they'll be to blame for the catastrophe.

But if they really want to have a chance against the Democrats in the fall, they should unite NOW around Donald Trump.

If Wisconsin is so critical in the GOP race, why have all three candidates traveled away from it this week?

Byron York wants to know, here:

MILWAUKEE — The Wisconsin Republican primary is so critical to Donald Trump that, after having pledged "I'll be here all week" to his supporters, Trump promptly departed to Washington and other destinations for a couple of days off the trail prior to next Tuesday's vote.

The Wisconsin GOP contest is so critical to Sen. Ted Cruz that he took off to California for some fundraising and a guest spot on Jimmy Kimmel, in addition to a stop in North Dakota for its delegate convention, before returning to Wisconsin for a few more days of campaigning.

The Wisconsin primary is so critical to Gov. John Kasich that he headed to New York, where his highest-profile accomplishment was to be photographed eating pizza with a fork.

Students for Trump has 200 chapters in 38 states, began with a Rand Paul supporter

The LA Times reports here:

Students for Trump began as a Twitter account in October in a dorm room at Campbell University in Buies Creek, N.C. Ryan Fournier, a freshman and early supporter of Rand Paul, was drawn to Trump's blunt rhetoric and policies on border control and employment. ... More than 5,000 students in 200 chapters in 38 states are publicly on board. Fifteen chapters have taken hold in California, on campuses including UC Santa Barbara and USC.

Rush has a daydream: The energy out there for Cruz is equal to Trump's

Today's narrative on the show, which is designed, like some of the polling, to make it so, not measure it.

Brad DeLong pretends that taxing the crap out of people isn't an ideology, and blames the voters for disagreeing

Here, where you observe a liberal economist admitting that there is a price to be paid for free-trade:

It is not difficult to see where the blame lies [for what ails America]. As Mark Kleiman of NYU’s Marron Institute points out, the Republican Party’s rigid and die-hard ideological opposition to “taxing the rich [has] destroyed, on a practical level, the theoretical basis for believing that free trade benefits everyone.” ... The responsibility lies instead with politicians peddling ideology over practicality – and thus with the citizens who elect them, as well as those who don’t bother to vote at all.

Now if we could just get the libertarians to admit it.

Erick Erickson's Israel-firster pal Steve Berman thinks everyone who supports Trump should be shunned

Here, where the cultist projects his own cultism onto the real estate magnate:

"Every Trump supporter should be ostracized–especially those in politics, the media, and leadership. Failing to stop the cult of personality is as bad as swearing allegiance to it. Those who play for influence, cater to the Trumpkin crowd to acknowledge their anger, or otherwise make nice with the budding despot must be shunned and called for what they are: cult-enablers. Those who support Trump must be treated as cultists."

Here is an example of the fever from which Steve Berman suffers:

"As Christians, we have a calling to support Israel because it’s God’s desire. As Americans, we have an obligation to support Israel because they represent a free society in a part of the world dominated by oppressive dictatorships. Most importantly, we must support Israel because doing so is walking in the light.  We must walk in the light because we are in Christ."

Mollie Hemingway decides Trump is intentionally sabotaging the pro-life movement

Here.

A version of the argument that Trump is working for the Democrats to get Hillary elected.

Mollie views those who kill their unborn children as vulnerable, weak, victimized mothers:

If Trump knew anything at all whatsoever about the pro-life movement, he would know what the movement thinks about abortion and whether mothers should be punished.

Don't you have to give birth and mother a child to be a mother?

This sentimental view of women in an age of equality insulates women from criticism and consequently from responsibility for their actions, a view most recently on display in the case of Michelle "Corey pushed me almost to the floor" Fields.

Hillary the fascist: Trump's kind of "inflammatory, destructive rhetoric is on the outer edges of what is permitted under our constitution"

Here at 1.37.

Trump is inflaming her in order to collect such statements for later.

The extent of the culture of death is now so deeply ingrained . . .

. . . that conservatives who call into Rush Limbaugh can't even bring themselves to say that the woman who gets an abortion bears any responsibility for killing her own child.

Update:

The caller was Ron in Ft. Wayne, Indiana:

"You wouldn't go after the woman in that situation.  You go after whomever performed the abortion itself."

Yeah right. The drug dealer should be prosecuted, not the addict.

Ring any bells?

The disadvantage Trump has by not being a robot

Looks like we've got another Republican robot folks: Rep. Steve King caught standing behind Ted Cruz delivering lines and gestures they rehearsed

Here:

Ann Coulter correctly says Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election because he lost the white vote

Here yesterday:

[Stuart] Stevens says Romney tapped out every last white voter and still lost, so he says Republicans are looking for “the Lost Tribes of the Amazon” hoping to win more white votes: “In 1980, Ronald Reagan won 56 percent of white voters and won a landslide victory of 44 states. In 2012, Mitt Romney won 59 percent of whites and lost with 24 states.”

Apparently, no one’s told Stevens about the 50-state Electoral College. ...

Romney lost the white vote to Obama in five crucial swing states: Maine (42 percent of the white vote), Minnesota (47 percent), New Hampshire (48 percent), Iowa (48 percent) and Wisconsin (49 percent). He only narrowly beat Obama’s white vote in other important swing states — Illinois (51 percent), Colorado (52 percent), Michigan (53 percent), Ohio (54 percent) and Pennsylvania (54 percent).

Increasing the white vote in these states gives Trump any number of paths to victory.

I made similar observations here at the end of February, noting how Romney averaged under 50% of the white vote in 21 states, losing them all to Obama.

The opposition finally figures out that Trump will use eminent domain to build The Wall

We told you he would weeks ago.

Randal John Meyer, in "The Great Wall Of Trump Would Be the Ultimate Eminent Domain Horror Show":

The Government Accountability Office reports (PDF) that “federal and tribal lands make up 632 miles, or approximately 33 percent, of the nearly 2,000 total border miles.” What of the remaining 66 percent? “Private and state-owned lands constitute the remaining 67 percent of the border, most of which is located in Texas.”

That means that if Trump’s plan to build another 1,000 miles of wall is carried to fruition, thousands more homeowners will see their property destroyed or partially walled-off. ...

The fence built so far goes extends [sic] to Texas, which ... means it mostly covers land that was already federally owned. Trump’s new fencing would be built primarily on state-owned and private lands.

The author never tells you Trump beat Texas home boy Ted Cruz in several of the border counties, and reduced his victory to single digits in others.

The Wall has support in Texas.

Washington Post graphic

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.

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

Here:

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.