Posted on 01/18/2016 8:03:53 AM PST by St_Thomas_Aquinas
I just got today's Hotline from National Journal. It is behind a pay wall, but it is worth noting their top story confirms what I have been seeing and hearing. Josh Kraushaar writes,
It's the $64,000 question for establishment-minded Republicans: Would they rather see Ted Cruz or Donald Trump win the Iowa caucuses, assuming none of the more moderate candidates prevail?The Establishment thinking is that if Trump beats Cruz in Iowa, they can then beat Trump with Rubio, Bush, or Christie.In an informal survey of senior GOP strategists, the clear winner was Trump. Their arguments were reasoned but underscored: a) how they're still underestimating Trump; and b) how much they personally hate Cruz to the point where emotion is trumping strategy.
(Excerpt) Read more at redstate.com ...
They’ve been out to get Trump since the beginning and nothing stuck. They are out of bullets. The notion that they are holding back until Trump gets in a position to win is ludicrous. If he is the nominee, it is too late. They would have taken him out a long time ago if they could.
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I’d love to support either Ted Cruz or Donald Trump for POTUS ... and I’m a staunch Ted Cruz campaigner.
Why ?
We all want a BIG Wall with Mexico.
We all want to cancel ObamaCare.
We all want to scrap the Iran Deal.
We all want to rebuild the U.S. Military.
We all want to ship Syrian Islamic Terrorist Refugees back to the Middle East.
We all want to protect the Second Amendment.
We all want to fix the Veteran’s Admin health care system.
We all want to delete Common Core.
We all want to exterminate ISIS.
We all want to stop Islamic Visas into America until we get a better handle on accurate screening processes.
Need I continue ?
The acrimony between political camps at Free Republic is downright assinine (sp) and stupid.
How about we just let the Iowa and New Hampshire voters do their primaries ?
Thank GOD that neither Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Lindsay Graham, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney or John Kasisch will win ANY 2016 GOP state primaries.
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“The acrimony between political camps at Free Republic is downright assinine (sp) and stupid.”
Not if you consider that there’s a fundamental difference between the two. Believing a politician based solely on the forcefulness of his rhetoric vs his history has been a loser for us. That people who willingly nullify their senses to support a conman have overrun FR is incredibly frustrating. Many of Trump’s supporters want those things, but Trump, in his own words, just before running for the nomination, is against all of those things.
Cruz is my guy, but will most certainly vote for Trump if he is the nominee.
A concern I have about Trump is how enthusiastic will evangelical Christians be in going out to vote for him in November.
Why would the Democrats try to destroy Trump before he is the nominee? Why not hold onto damaging information and unload when Trump is the nominee and the Republicans would have little or no chance to respond or change courses? The Democrats have been masters of that eleventh hour surprise. Instead of being complete, the vetting process on Trump is just now starting.
How can you assert that they are out of bullets? Do you know everything that there is to know about Trump? Do you know all his business dealings? Do you know all his personal information? Do you know all the ways he has "worked the system" to get what he wanted? It has only been in the past few weeks that the Democrat establishment has seemed to realize that Trump might be the Republican nominee. Opposition research on Trump by the Democrats has probably only recently started in earnest.
Nobody ever gets taken out during a general election due to scandal. Show me where that happened. Even Richard Nixon cruised to a landslide even as Watergate scandal and coverup was starting to break around him.
Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 in all likelihood due to the revelations about the drunk driving. It could be argued that Romney was defeated by the 47% remark which was secretly taped and then released late in the election cycle.
Thomas Eagleton was definitely taken out by a scandal during the general election cycle.
The cover-up didn't really become common knowledge until 1973. Even had the cover-up been known earlier, Nixon wins anyway because he was running against perhaps the weakest candidate ever nominated.
I answered your questions. Again, how do you know that the Democrats are "out of bullets" with respect to Trump?
Thomas Eagleton? McGovern was losing in a landslide no matter what.
Mitt Romney lost the last election on his own. No fire in the belly. The 47% comment had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Romney was not a fighter and his "nice guy" act did him in.
Okay, you're wrong but they're better than the non-existent answers I have gotten to my question.
The drunk driving thing on Bush had no effect. That race still would have come down to Florida. If anything, the third party run of Ralph Nader saved Bush's bacon in that election.
How do you know there was no effect? Of the 15 major polls in 2000, 11 of them had Bush leading prior to the drunk driving revelation, 2 had Gore leading, and 2 had ties. Gore carried four states with 30 EVs by less than 1%. A slight movement is going to affect that election. The fact that Ralph Nader was in the election is totally irrelevant to the question of whether the revelations had any effect.
Thomas Eagleton? McGovern was losing in a landslide no matter what.
You said that no one is taken out in an election due to scandal. I stated Thomas Eagleton as a counter-example. I agree that it wouldn't have affected the election but you missed the point altogether.
Mitt Romney lost the last election on his own. No fire in the belly. The 47% comment had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Romney was not a fighter and his "nice guy" act did him in.
I agree that Romney was a lousy candidate but that doesn't mean that the 47% comment didn't cause further harm to him.
Even if courts invoke the 14th Amendment, that was debunked, not a genuine intepretation by Greetings Puny Humans:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3384380/posts?page=68#68
So while Cruz might win in the courts, he and strongest supporters will be made vulnerable to bipartizan criticism as ‘anti-constitutionalist’.
I admire Cruz as a patriot and would support amending the constitution to vindicate him completely. But I hope we don’t have to support him until this is cleared up.
One corrupt organization should be handled through constitutional excoriation, not through empowering big-bucks media to have even more influence over elections.
And while we’re at it, we should try to excoriate NAMBLA, ACORN leaders [former or otherwise], and tyrant-justices.
Constitutional Excoriation
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3225815/posts
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