“The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It’s come to the point where you almost can’t run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip on each other with big sticks. ”
Thats from Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72 talking about George Wallace, who was also a racist populist and lost because of his lack of campaign organisation compared to the establishment candidates. Sound familiar? Found an excellent blog post comparing Wallace and Trump with many quotes from the good Doctor altered to name Trump instead of Wallace.
Could he extend a letter of credit to his campaign (one that never actually gets cashed), characterize it as a “loan,” and pay himself back from campaign donations?
Well, I know he couldn’t, legally, but is it the sort of thing he’d try to get away with?
Nah, let it slide. Dignity is too much of a burden to spend a lot of time on its upkeep. Besides, if you haven’t already, there is a fair chance that someone, someday, will call you “Dad”. At which point you will have to abandon dignity altogether.
And it’s equally clear that I was just giving a flippant response to your flippant equation of any sort of socially-conscious nationalism with German NS.
There’s no way that plan is workable. Do you think Trump and cabal wouldn’t exploit that for all it’s worth if they thought they weren’t going to get the nomination? You’d have Mouseketeers’ Role Call of Trump-influenced delegates coming up with some BS reason to halt the proceedings. Filibuster in the convention? I don’t see it.
Maybe if you had some compromise position, like that only the state delegations’ spokesmen could interrupt the proceedings, but I don’t see that changing the basic criticism of the GOP process. It would just transfer blame from the convention chair to the spokesmen, and on the other side would still be open to exploitation, though not nearly as much.
One good thing to come out of this is that Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, and a couple other popular firebrands of the angry right have thoroughly discredited themselves with the #nevertrump crowd. Trump is largely a creature of their making, and if he goes down he’s going to take them down with him. They’ll still have an audience with the nativist right, but they’ve lost whatever support they had from moderate Republicans. That’s a good thing.
As for the difference between Cruz and Trump in the general election… If Cruz wins, we’ll likely see normal levels of Republican turnout, even if he loses. But if Trump wins the nomination, a lot of Republicans will stay home, and that will affect all the downticket races. A Trump nomination risks a Republican loss in House and Senate in a way that a Cruz nomination does not.
Cruz is also much likelier to actually win in November, even though you’d have to say he’d still be an underdog to Clinton.
This goes both ways. How many Trump supporters do you think will vote for Cruz? Especially if Trump is kicking and screaming about how the nomination was stolen from him? I’d be surprised if 50 percent of Trump supporters bother to turn up and vote for Cruz.
Will we? Remember, Cruz is not normal, not even by Pub standards. He is not even human. Even Trump more closely approximates a human being (superficially, that is, apart from his mind being controlled by an extraterrestrial scalp-parasite).
Exactly, Trump’s supporters are not particularly religious, they don’t care about abortion or gay marriage. They’re angry blue collar workers mostly. Why would they vote for Cruz? Just because he’s GOP? That’s not how the Trump supporters are thinking.
Since the NY victory I’ve seen more than a few articles on mainstream media suggesting that giving Trump the nomination is inevitable, including on CNN…
Meanwhile Cruz and Kasich are still fighting despite both being mathematically eliminated from getting to 1237:
I think Trump is going to get within 50 delegates of 1237 and he can possibly win enough uncommitted ones over to clear 1237 on the first round. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if it’s that close and the mainstream GOP does pull shenanigans to deny Trump the nomination then it’s going to cause a fracture that lasts beyond this election cycle.