Posted on 04/16/2016 6:29:19 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In addition to winning more primaries, more convention delegates and 2 million more votes than any other Republican presidential candidate running this year, billionaire developer Donald Trump has won a significant national following with his repeated pledge, as a shrewd negotiator, “to beat China, Japan and Mexico at trade.”
Trump offers a simple explanation for the problem: “Their leaders are much smarter than our leaders.” But they’re not smarter than the no-nonsense negotiator Trump: “I beat China all the time.”
If that is true, then why has candidate Trump been so publicly and griping about his campaign’s having been cheated by the unfair delegate selection rules of the Colorado Republican Party?
“The system, folks, is rigged. It’s a rigged, disgusting, dirty system,” Trump complains.
Let’s get this straight: The previously unintimidating Colorado Republican Party — which in the past 42 years has managed to elect exactly one GOP governor and which twice lost to Democrat Barack Obama — by simply awarding its 34 national convention delegates to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, has hoodwinked Trump, the man whose election, he himself has assured us, would be guaranteed to make both Beijing and Tokyo go nervous in the knees.
To be fair, Trump’s criticisms of the delegate selection rules are not without merit. In Colorado, far less than 1 percent of the state’s 900,000 registered Republicans even were able to participate in the arcane process.
In both South Carolina and Georgia, where Trump won solid primary victories, GOP insiders have been organizing efforts to drop support for Trump after the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
None of this is new stuff. Treachery is no stranger to American party politics. But Trump, the self-styled no-nonsense tough guy, could never get rolled, let alone victimized, by these minor-league party bosses, could he?
After all, if you can’t outsmart a Republican county chairman in Durango or Kankakee, why should we ever believe you would be able to go toe-to-toe with the wily Mexicans, Japanese or Chinese?
But all is not lost for the Trump candidacy. My onetime political sparring partner Patrick J. Buchanan — from whose 1992 campaign platform, especially on trade and immigration, Trump has borrowed — offered one imaginative solution to confound the Republican establishment, which, in the political equivalent of a shotgun marriage, now backs Cruz, whom it actively dislikes, against Trump, whom it both loathes and fears.
Buchanan’s answer: an alliance between Trump and Cruz. Between them, he says, they should control a solid majority of the Cleveland delegates, and because there is a GOP rule that prevents a candidate from being nominated at the convention unless that candidate has won at least eight primaries or caucuses, no “white knight’” sponsored by the party establishment could be nominated in Cleveland — only Trump or Cruz could be the nominee.
And on Sean Hannity’s show on the Fox News Channel, Buchanan added a wrinkle for the 2016 ticket: “Go with Trump and Cruz ... I think that ticket would set the country on fire.”
More unlikely political unions than Trump-Cruz have probably been arranged, but I’m frankly at a loss to recall one.
a winning team
Are you kidding? Odds are better that it’ll be Rubio if Trump feels he needs the delegates, and, right now, he doesn’t need the delegates.
Cruz needs to stand down, then we can talk about things.
Cruz isn’t working toward understanding. He is working to send this to the GOPe for yet more establishment nonsense.
Stand down Cruz. You are not going to win this, and your continued presence is damaging the GOP for all of us.
Then we could all be FRiends again!
Cruz is scum.
detesTED !!!!!
Trump/Palin
I hope not! I’ve seen nothing from Cruz in the past month that I’d like to support. Plus, he brings nothing to the ticket.
No F’n way.
Trump/Cruz would blow out the election. The dims wouldn’t know what hit them.
I don’t see it. I think they dislike one another too much.
Mark Shields I suppose, to the right of David Brooks on trade and immigration.
Probably Kennedy/Johnson I think they hated each other
Mr. Trump will know to do the right thing.
All we need to do is to trust and believe him whatever he says.
Cruz flip flops too much.
Trump particularly on this trade stuff which is immediate. Blocking TPP is the immediate question compared to all other issues.
Mark Shields is such a jerk. The only reason the MSM loves him is he faithfully repeats the ‘rat line.
More than Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson? I doubt it.
Cruz can't work with anyone....
Mark has been saying.....Trump will never succeed since day one.
That’s a good point. Johnson was dislikable (and vice-versa) on the order of Trump, and Kennedy was all superior Eastern-college guy like Cruz.
However, Johnson had long-time government experience and connections that were useful to Kennedy, especially in operating the nationwide Democrat election-fraud machine. Trump has fervent followers, but he doesn’t have anything to contribute to the nuts and bolts of a national campaign.
Reward that scum Cruz for stealing more delegates all over the place? Hell, no.
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