Posted on 04/15/2016 12:43:20 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Give Donald Trump credit for planning ahead. He is preparing to be a sore loser.
Trump’s complaints that he is being undone by a rigged system crafted by a corrupt Republican Party is the dress rehearsal for his campaign’s closing argument should it come up short in Cleveland. Trump will, in his telling, have been stabbed in the back by insiders and be fully justified in wreaking a terrible revenge on the party that he briefly sought to lead.
Facts and logic don’t particularly matter to Trump or his mouthpieces, yet the “rigged” charge is absurd even by the standards of his standard-less campaign.
Colorado occasioned the latest Trump fusillade. Listening to him, you would think that the state is run by a cross of the Pendergast Machine and Tammany Hall (which voted more people than existed in the voting population of New York City in one period of the 19th century). Colorado’s offense against fairness and decency was Ted Cruz winning all of its delegates in the same caucus system it has used for years.
The only change in the state, implemented back in August, before many people took Trump seriously, was canceling its presidential preference poll, which didn’t have any role in binding delegates anyway.
The Colorado system — precinct caucuses electing delegates to district and state assemblies, where they are selected for the national convention — isn’t undemocratic. But it rewards a different, more demanding and engaged sort of participation than a primary.
An accent on grass-roots organizing is not, by the way, a hallmark of establishment politics. In fact, it is the opposite. The classic conservative insurgent excels at organizing as a means to bypass the party’s gatekeepers and to make up for a lack of resources and media attention. Although the Cruz campaign is well-funded, it has the grass-roots DNA of this kind of insurgency, which it began as, and, in significant respects, still is.
Its success at the delegate-selection game is a testament to its ability to connect with and organize the party’s activists, rather than to any unfair advantages lent it by the establishment. If the Republican race had developed along more conventional lines as a razor-tight Cruz-Jeb Bush fight, surely Cruz would be trying to pick Bush’s delegate pocket, and with some success, just the way he is picking Trump’s now.
For understandable reasons, Trump would prefer that every contest be an open primary. The Republican calendar has plenty of those. But it has other varieties of contests as well, reflecting the different histories and characteristics of the state parties. The diverse, patchwork system forces a candidate to demonstrate strength all over the geographical map and in myriad ways.
If Trump is a master at message and free media — both driven by his outsize personality — the delegate game has exposed his campaign’s rank inferiority to Cruz’s. The Cruz team built for the long haul and learned the rules. Whereas Trump’s campaign is in the midst of messy retooling, turning to a longtime Washington fixer to right the ship, Cruz’s campaign hasn’t had a whisper of dissension, let alone had to go to bat for a staffer arrested for battery of a female reporter.
For all of Trump’s complaints, the nomination system was set up to favor the front-runner and get him over the top as soon as possible. It is a symptom of Trump’s weakness that, even as he romped through the first couple of months of the race and accumulated delegates out of proportion to his popular vote (about 45 percent of the delegates on 37 percent of the vote), he still might fall short of 1,237.
Still, the whining serves several Trump purposes. It feeds his psychological compulsion to never admit he’s been beaten or outmaneuvered; it creates something for the media to chew on until he runs away with the New York primary next week; and it sets the predicate for his argument at a convention (it’d be “unfair” if he didn’t get the nomination), and, more importantly, for ditching the party if he loses.
It is hard to think of a major presidential candidate, let alone a front-runner, who has ever had so little regard for the unity or interests of his own party or is so clearly preparing to bring it down, like Samson at the temple of Dagon, if it doesn’t bend to his will. Trump is in open conflict with RNC chairman Reince Priebus and doing all he can to delegitimize the GOP in the eyes of his voters.
Trump portrays himself as a perpetual winner yet also cultivates a sense of aggrieved victimhood that is clearly part of his appeal to his supporters. Most unsuccessful candidates seek to avoid the appearance of being a sore loser, no matter what their true feelings. In another departure from the rules of politics, Trump would embrace the role with gusto. His signature line would go from Make America Great Again to We Wuz Robbed.
What 10 southerners? Cruz finished 3rd in Florida, 3rd in S. Carolina, 3rd in Georgia, 3rd in Virginia. He wasn't even close to winning the South.
well let’s see. how about Perry, Jindal, Paul, Huckabee, Bush, Graham, Rubio, Fiorino and Gilmore, yep and Cruz that makes 10
You know, a wife & at least 5 girlfriends at last count.
...anyway, that's what being repeatedly posted.
Think bigger picture.
#WhineToWin
How can you post this crap! Who do you think you are! Just kidding.
Anyway - while people can argue the merits of whether Trump was robbed by Colorado, from a tactical standpoint, it was a BRILLIANT MOVE by Trump to complain about it - as it stopped his tailspin from the abortion question and put the spotlight (rightly or wrongly) on the efforts of the GOPe to keep him from getting the nomination. Trump turned the polls around and probably gained 5 to 10 points just on this.
It is hard to think of a major presidential candidate, let alone a front-runner, who has ever had so little regard for the unity or interests of his own party or is so clearly preparing to bring it down, like Samson at the temple of Dagon, if it doesn’t bend to his will. Trump is in open conflict with RNC chairman Reince Priebus and doing all he can to delegitimize the GOP in the eyes of his voters.
It is hard to think of a party that has ever had so little regard for its own frontrunner, and has done all it can do to delegitimize him in the eyes of its voters.
Poor Lowry is just such an idiot.
4 more days ...
Naive LurkLongley asked:
“A lifelong, truly conservative person is running and he’d be more of the same?”
When did Bush’s DC Insider Harvard trained lawyer turn into this alleged “truly conservative?
- In 1998, Cruz served as private counsel for Congressman John Boehner during Boehner’s lawsuit against Congressman Jim McDermott for releasing a tape recording of a Boehner telephone conversation.
- Cruz joined the Bush–Cheney campaign in 1999 as a domestic policy adviser, advising President George W. Bush on a wide range of policy and legal matters, including civil justice, criminal justice, constitutional law, immigration, and government reform. There he met his wife, Heidi Nelson Cruz, another policy adviser who works for Goldman Sachs.
- Cruz assisted in assembling the Bush legal team, devise strategy, and draft pleadings in the Florida and U.S. Supreme Courts during the 2000 Florida presidential recounts, winning twice in the U.S. Supreme Court.
- After President Bush took office, Cruz served as an associate deputy attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department and as the director of policy planning at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
Globalists are not conservative. Cruz is a Globalist. Therefore hes not a conservative.
Would a conservative help draft Bush’s NAFTA bill?
Would a conservative vote FOR the patriot Act?
Would a Conservative team up with Ryan to push TPP?
would a conservative vote FOR TPA?
would a conservative try to increase H1B visas by 500%?
would a conservative try to double the number of Muslims?
would a conservative side with BLM protestors against police?
would a conservative hand out gift baskets to illegals at the border?
would a conservative lie to his supporters about the fact the GOPe is providing his delegates and he will not win nomination?
WHAT EVERY VOTER NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT TED CRUZ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXcYCwaBKnQ&app=desktop
Yes Cruz would be more of the same obviously.
That’s some shtick- go learn a thing...or two.
Well done FRiend.
I’m going to modify and repost some parts, if that alright?
Can you imaging having to look at this sleazy creep everyday for 4 years?
With all due respect, Joe, that is so wrong.
We need Donald, an outsider, a brilliant businessman/CEO who knows how to. run things and get things done,a tough pit bull who not ‘owned’ by anyone, is not crippled by PC and has the guts to say what We the People think and attack those responsible for this country being on the brink of disaster.
He has already demonstrated this. No one else has had the guts to do this.
Don’t be afraid of Donald. He will surround himself with equally brilliant people via his cabinet and others and get things done. He understands that he will need this kind of help.
He will keep his promises for he dare not sully the Trump name. He wants to go down in history as one of our greats- and I believe he has the ability and resources to do just that.
He will secure the border, investigate and deport the dangerous ‘immigrants’ Obama has imported and distributed through the U.S- to the point that none of us anywhere are safe anymore.
This is by far the most important thing we need done at the present time.
Our longed for revolution against our corrupt government and politicians is here via Donald.
Finally, We the People have someone in our corner.
He hears and understands our anger and disgust with the GOPe
He is smart enough to know he must be more ‘presidential’ if elected- to clean up his occasional use of ‘potty’ words..
Right now, he is speaking to us in the manner in which most of us speak.
Ted Cruz has proven time and time again that he is owned by the GOPe, and if elected it will be ‘business as usual’. He will not derail their gravy train.
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of having a foreigner as our POTUS. I want an AMERICAN who loves his country in office.
He is our voice.
He is our last chance to pull America back from the brink of total destruction- to make America great again.
What a horrible excuse. If Cruz were strong, he could have won the south with a hundred candidates. Cruz did’t need a majority in the south just a win. Trump had same number and won even the evangelicals. And how do you explain the third place wins? You do know Cruz could win the presidency if the democrats don’t put up a candidate. Your excuse is so weak.
Rich Lowry no less. I guess despite dedicating an entire issue of NR to take Trump down, he realizes that he still can’t do it. The looming Trump wins in NY on Tuesday and a string of victories on April 26 will send Lowry and his self-appointed guardians of conservatism into a deep funk. He is the real whiner.
The biggest negative of Cruz is his inability to get voters to vote for him. Solve that problem then maybe I could feel like he could win in November.
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