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.
Trump would have to spend 8 years with a VP trying to backstab and undermine him.
No way Cruz picks Trump for VP.
All depends on where the count stands after California.
Now you’re quoting Mark Shields? You’ve pretty much hit bottom with this one.
“Then we could all be FRiends again!”
LOL I agree. Can’t believe the Trumpers and Cruzers have shown more hatred against each other than what we SHOULD show Klownie the Kenyan at the White Hut. I’m still shaking my head at the stupidity..
Political careers that Trump has ruined.
Bush, Rubio, Cruz, Walker and it’s debatable if he ruined Paul.
Ruined as in these political franchises are finished.
Months ago, I thought a great solution would be if Cruz & Trump had a truce and Trump would offer him a Supreme Court nomination. Cruz could leave the Senate where he’s not wanted anyway and the Texas governor would appoint a good conservative to fill the remainder of his term.
Seemed like a win-win to me but then things went downhill. I don’t see how that could happen now with Trump labeling Cruz “Lying Ted”. Sadly, I don’t see a truce of any kind happening. God help us but the stubborn candidate egos and their die-hard supporters may very well cause us to end up with Hillary.
I think trump needs to quit
He clearly does not understand or respect the process
I suspect though, that if Trump snapped his fingers, and called off his poop-flinging, flying monkey brigade, they'd do whatever he asked, even if it were to pretend Trump's war on Cruz never happened and to support the "team".
There is no way in Hell. I would walk away from cruz as VP. How can you have LYIN’ TED as VP . That will never ever ever happen. Trump is too good an American.
LOL
I'm just saying..... if Trump doesn't stop all the whinning... there is no way Cruz will ask him to be his VP. We can't have a whinner as VP in this country....
Teaming up might slow demRATs efforts to impeach either after the election.
Trump wants someone to help with congress...and I think the last person for that would be the haTED Cruz.
Agree. Cruz isn’t even in the House of Representatives to start with. Maybe Trump should be schmoozing Paul Ryan.
are you kidding? How could a canadian be on the Trump ticket? Trump was one step away from a lawsuit vs the ineligible canadian.
Cruz needs to be with hookers dressed as rats,
protected by blackmail-paid FiorRINO,
and funded in jets by Goldman Sacs and the UN,
as his entitled Wife (entitled by HIS WHORING, like Clinton)
continues her medicated dreams
about her future coPresidency.
Why play the game when the outcome is fixed?
With the Bush connections........no way.
Ditto. I’d say close to impossible.
I read your posts and you are very clear-minded about what is going on. I support Cruz but am not Never-Trump. Cruz is a young man and is doing a very strong job building his case. I could see him taking all the support he has built to the convention and playing his way onto the ticket either as the nominee, or running mate, or into a place that strongly positions him for the future. I totally agree with your Kennedy / Johnson analogy from 1960. When power is at stake, deals are made, and Cruz is in a powerful position.
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