Posted on 04/19/2016 11:12:11 PM PDT by goldstategop
How bad was Cruz’s night? He’s losing to Ben Carson in some places — a guy who hasn’t been in the race in weeks.
Cruz can still win the nomination on the first convention ballot, mind you, but he needs to win about 88.5 percent of the outstanding delegates, bound or unbound, per Daniel Nichanian’s excellent calculations. That's not likely to happen either.
Trump isn’t the only big winner tonight! Congratulations to John Kasich, who will almost certainly end up with his first delegate in more than a month. Can Kasich pull off a come-from-behind victory? No. The end.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
PFFFFFFHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Your talking points are amazingly talky. Isn’t it fun how you’ll grasp at straws in desperation?
Sorry; your boy got his butt kicked in every corner of the country.
Trump carried NY with 60% of the Republicans who voted. Cruz carried Texas with 44% of the Republicans who voted.
Kasich carried Ohio with 48% of the Republicans who voted.
Now what were you saying again?
I agree, Iraq was an absolute disaster. Iraq (yes, along with other failures) led directly to Obama. America has been suffering through almost 3 decades of disastrous leadership, that encompasses both parties. How many nations could survive intact with three decades of the destructive leadership in government that America has withstood? The plethora of terrible decision followed by terrible decision, with the cost heaped upon the people, mostly the middle class, of the nation - the people that truly keep the whole thing afloat?
After three decades of destructive leadership, we need to be practical now - we need to make not only the right decision, but the decisions which a terribly, terminally, over-burdened and demoralized population of productive people can handle.
Reagan used a TelePrompter. Was he similar to Obama, too?
Only Cruz can come in 4th in a 3 man race! Go Trump!
No conservative has ever criticized eminent domain for the Keystone Pipeline. All conservatives agree eminent domain can be used for public infrastructure projects.
Conservatism IS practical...it’s the ONLY practical political philosophy there is. It’s about common sense and getting results, not about dogma and ideology, the way that liberalism, socialism and libertarianism are.
RINOs didn’t get elected because they were RINOs. Conservatives weren’t energized to campaign for them.
You seem to believe Trump can win. What makes Trump different from a “dogmatic” conservative? Hasn’t he campaigned in the primary on virtually every conservative position? The only differences in positions he’s taken from any more conservative candidate is that abortion should have exceptions and that he’s more supportive of opening relations with Cuba (not a big issue outside of Miami). His immigration positions are certainly as hard-line as anybody else’s. So what is it that makes Trump’s platform more electable than a “dogmatic” conservative’s platform?
I can only answer for my own part. I am by no means certain can win or be successful if he does. Many of his positions are indeed “conservative” to what is deemed the conservative grass-roots. However, they are also pragmatic from a more nationalist or populist viewpoint. Most office holders who campaign as conservatives do see conservatism differently: they are by-and-large open borders, cheap labor, “free” trade, internationalists. Or in other words, they have been well bought by the big money interests that desire to control western governments.
And I guess at the end of the day, that’s the point. Conservatism has become a caricature - defined by the beholder but in the end meaning very little. It has also not been successful as a governing philosophy, largely because conservatism has not been implemented as a governing philosophy for at least 90 years.
If Trump wins it will not be because voters vote for conservatism. They’ve had decades of people like the Bushes, Dole, McCain, Romney, Graham et. al. talking about how they are true conservatives. They will vote for Trump, if the do, because they want to rip the reigns of power from the entrenched, closed Oligarchy that has ruled America for decades. If they do it, it will be to create a revolution that throws out current rulers out. It will not be to enact a conservative platform per se.
I think the conservative position has always been for border security. It’s not a knock on conservatism if someone like Rubio gets in and changes his position to the liberal one afterwards. That only underlines the correctness of the conservative position. I don’t think anyone’s running on cutting back legal immigration, other than refugees/Muslims.
Free trade, I’ll agree is a generally conservative position that Trump departs from. Conservatives are always against tariffs. Reagan and G.W. Bush both upset conservatives by enacting some.
If you’re just talking about ‘better trade deals,’ that’s one of those vague promises that everyone will agree with. Trump doesn’t seem to be arguing for no trade deals at all.
Trade agreements are at the bottom of the list of issues I care about. I have no concept of how many potential voters out there care about them or which party they usually vote for.
I don’t think you can analyze the history of conservatism as a governing philosophy in absolute, purist terms. We have certainly had governments that were MORE conservative than others and which have a good case to make that they got better results. Namely Reagan’s administration and Newt’s reign as Speaker.
Just as importantly, the Democrats themselves used to be more conservative on taxes, the military, marriage, religion, etc. Conservatives will argue that it’s the decline of conservatism in both parties and in the country as a whole that has led to the country being worse off. And we will also argue that to the extent the U.S.A. is performing better than other countries, it’s due to us governing in a more conservative way than those countries.
Yet Reagan got taken to the cleaners on domestic spending because he wanted the military buildup to bankrupt the Soviets, so went the horse-trade with Tip...he was acting pragmatically, not conservatively in that instance. And Newt’s day in Congress was the time when the first economic bubble was created (the DotCom) and the Congress gave birth to the second bubble (the Housing Market). So even a part of the government being more conservative does not give us very good test of the more vs. less assumption. Conservatism never had its day in modern history...and now it has been co-opted by those with other agendas. In part that is undoubtedly due to conservative thought being overwhelmed by modern society. Very few conservatives actually exist today, certainly not enough to enact policy on a national level in a society rapidly becoming socialist.
And that’s the rub in the end, even if a pragmatist took power, it would be fleeting likely in socialist dominated world where internationalism is the rule of the day.
That’s too defeatist. The way the left radically changed public opinion on same-sex marriage, and influenced the government to allow it, shows that a small movement can grow and achieve major change. Being relentless, believing in your cause, never giving up but also being strategic and cautious at times is all a part of succeeding at that.
I don’t think conservatism promises that an economy will not go through ups and downs on its own. That is the natural cycle. I don’t think the dot-com bubble was government-caused. It also wasn’t a huge devastation...it was a manageable dip. The housing bubble certainly was government-caused, but it was NOT because of conservative policies at all. That was entirely a result of Fannie and Freddie running the housing sector, something that was not created by conservative government. No conservative government has been very successful at ripping down many existing social programs. We did get welfare reform in the ‘90s and saw good results from that.
Well, it likely is defeatist to some extent, yes!
Fannie and Freddie was in fact passed with tremendous Republican support...and it started under Newt’s watch. Should Newt have been perfect? No, but my point is that even under governments with a conservative mix in them like as you mentioned, Reagan and Newt’s times, the leftward march went on steadily in America. The conservatism of those days really changed nothing at all in the course of the nation.
I don’t think the Left’s movement is small - or even starts small in the manner of pursuing its issues. It is a world-wide internationalist movement...socialism is the paradigm of the world right now. Post World War 2, Europe went hard left rapidly into what we called soft-socialism and America began a similar but much slower transformation into a socialist society. We are catching up with the where the rest of the west has already gone. The west was dominant post-WW2 and has developed the world system we now largely operate under, the Soviets were there for awhile but they were much weaker overall and Russia has always had trouble creating wealth.
America’s fall into socialism has been coming for 75 years. But maybe we shouldn’t curse it too much...there seems to be a rising new power in the face of the very weak, rudderless west mired in the sclerosis of its socialist paradigm. Islam and Shariah may be the new force that dominates the world, if the west is as corrupt, craven and ignorant as it appears to be...and that will be a very dark age indeed.
I don’t disagree that international socialism and Islam are the two strongest global ideologies right now. But capitalism and free markets are still in the game. Lots of Asian countries have become more capitalist even as Europe became more socialist.
Reagan and Gingrich did not control the whole government. That’s why the leftward march went on. So, it’s still not a knock on conservatism. Yes, conservatism has hard a time getting elected in big enough numbers to enact complete change. But that should still be the goal.
Stepped-up executive regulations under Clinton which used Carter’s 1977 Community Reinvestment Act as their basis were the main drivers of the housing crisis, not anything Newt enacted.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-cra-debate-a-users-guide-2009-6
How could a piece of 1977 legislation be significant to the deterioration of mortgage standards 25 years later?
The CRA was not a static piece of legislation. It evolved over the years from a relatively hands-off law focused on process into one that focused on outcomes. Regulators, beginning in the mid-nineties, began to hold banks accountable in serious ways. Banks responded to this new accountability by increasing the CRA loans they made, a move that entailed relaxing their lending standards.
NY is a closed Primary but open General Election. Democrats and Independents were not ALLOWED to vote for Trump last night, but they will be allowed in November.
Reagan won NY with cross over votes and it wasn’t even his home state.
There are just not enough crossovers.
Primary voters are much more motivated to vote for their particular candidate. I cannot logically believe that somebody that voted for Clinton or even Clinton 2:1 in a primary is suddenly going to vote for Trump. IMHO its not going to happen.
I remember the Reagan race in 1980. The major criticism of Reagan was that he was was a light weight actor from California even though he’d been governor of California for 8 years and he was to old and wasn’t presidential. It was the debates when he won telling Carter he would not take advantage of his youth and inexperience.
There is no comparison between 1980 and 2016. Trump is not facing a sitting president, and even if he was there is no way he can match the presidential demeanor of candidate Reagan.
Reagan got respect because it was easy see he was a true gentleman and Patriot. Trump on the other hand claims to be a patriot and if you don’t believe him he is gonna sue your ass...
Trump will get stomped in NY in November.
I don’t know about that. Aren’t there millions of Independents that didn’t get to vote in NY last night in either GOP or DIM primaries ? Aren’t there a lot of Bernie voters who are anti-Hillary and anti-Establishment and anti-system ?
Hillary is certainly not going to promise to bring businesses back. I am not sure what she has to offer Bernie supporters or even blue collar workers. If Trump can continue telling Bernie supporters that Hillary’s super-delegate farce cheated them of their votes, they may vote anti-DNC.
So if Trump brings all these Dims to vote for him is that good? These are the same folks who have voted for the Clinton husband, Gore and Obama for the last 25 years.
They are not Conservatives as I understand the term, they just want a change which in today's world is certainly understandable.
I don't think a change in party affiliation affects your core belief's. The so called crossover vote will dilute the conservative message.
The only message coming from those voters is that they are tired of corrupt government, corrupt elections, and outsourcing our industries. Those are the points Bernie or blue collar workers have in common with Trump. I don’t see those points as a dilution of the conservative message.
They are not going to be claiming they voted for Trump because he was promising amnesty, or welfare, or $15/hr minimum wage, or abortion on demand, or Muslim tolerance, or free college, or banning school prayer or homeschooling, or mandatory union membership. Because he has not promised those things.
I don’t think Trump is electable either. You CANNOT win without women, and his negatives are as high or higher than Cruz’s negatives with that group. Neither will make any dent in Hispanic or black voters either, like W did. I tried to be realistic about Romney’s chances and got trashed by my feloow conservatives. Sometimes being pragmatic is a onely place to be.
I agree with your post about the failure of the GOP, they have been despicable under Boehner and McConnell’s leadership. Shouldn’t we ask ourselves who was funding McConnell keep him from losing to Bevin in his last primary? Shouldn’t we acknowledge that empowered McConnell’s actions in Mississippi to keep Cochran in office?
I believe that we should understand that Trump played a very big role at the time. His donations to McConnell during the primary fight with Bevin empowered the same GOP that you described in your post.
“One example: Eminent Domain is necessary to get the Keystone pipeline through - don’t knock it.”
I question that necessity. If the pipeline is going to be privately owned, and I believe that it should, then the proposed corporate owner should work with the land owners to acquire the land in the market.
However, I will acknowledge that an argument could be made that the pipeline should be publicly owned.
Yes, I “knock” eminent domain. Along with 42 of the 50 states that passed laws in opposition of the use of Eminent Domain to take land for private use. It was the right thing 10 years ago and it is the right thing today.
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