Posted on 02/03/2016 12:30:30 PM PST by Kaslin
So, looks like I got another prediction wrong. I wrote back in December that if and when Trump lost, he would claim that the vote was rigged. Incorrect. As it turns out, he ended up claiming that Cruz cheated.
This is the single dumbest thing he’s done since he got into the race, including his decision to skip the Fox debate — which even he thinks might have hurt him.
Ted Cruz didn't win Iowa, he stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2016
During primetime of the Iowa Caucus, Cruz put out a release that @RealBenCarson was quitting the race, and to caucus (or vote) for Cruz.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2016
Many people voted for Cruz over Carson because of this Cruz fraud. Also, Cruz sent out a VOTER VIOLATION certificate to thousands of voters.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2016
The Voter Violation certificate gave poor marks to the unsuspecting voter(grade of F) and told them to clear it up by voting for Cruz. Fraud
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2016
And finally, Cruz strongly told thousands of caucusgoers (voters) that Trump was strongly in favor of ObamaCare and "choice" – a total lie!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2016
Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2016
Let’s go in reverse order. Cruz comparing ObamaCare to “TrumpCare” is a garden-variety political attack based on Trump talking about universal health care and getting government to pay for it. Marco Rubio insists every day that he doesn’t support “amnesty,” yet his critics, me included, attack him as the amnesty candidate relentlessly based on the substance of his proposals. That’s politics. The “Voter Violation” mailer that Trump refers to was indeed a sleazy, aggressive bit of pressuring by Cruz, but Cruz didn’t pioneer it and it’s certainly not illegal. (The reason candidates use it, in fact, is because it works.) Given the heat he took for it online, even among some conservatives, it’s an open question whether the mailer ended up costing Cruz more votes than it won him.
As for Cruz playing dirty tricks on Ben Carson on caucus night, Cruz apologized yesterday for what he claimed was an innocent mistake. When CNN tweeted out that Carson was headed home to Florida after Iowa instead of on to New Hampshire and South Carolina, Team Cruz told its precinct captains that “Dr. Ben Carson is taking time off from the campaign trail after Iowa and making a big announcement next week” and that they should encourage Carson supporters to caucus for Cruz. Team Cruz wasn’t the only one to draw the mistaken impression that Carson was quitting from CNN’s bulletin. Various other people did too. When Team Carson clarified that he wasn’t quitting the race, Cruz’s staff didn’t relay that information to the captains. The question: Could that erroneous impression have led so many Carson fans to switch to Cruz at that last minute that it denied Trump his rightful victory?
Well, for starters, Carson actually outperformed his final polling average, finishing with 9.3 percent of the vote after being predicted to finish with 7.7 percent. If there had been a mass exodus to Cruz, you’d expect him to have underperformed unless Carson was on track to finish way, way better than anyone expected. The final margin between Cruz and Trump was a bit more than 6,000 votes; Carson ended up with 17,000+ votes, meaning that roughly a quarter of his supporters would have had to defect at the last minute based on the erroneous news from CNN, which Team Carson rapidly corrected — and every last one of those defectors would have had to go to Cruz. Realistically, though, defecting Carsonites would have split between Cruz, Trump, and Rubio, meaning that an even higher percentage of his total support would have had to break away at the last second to create that 6,000-vote margin for Cruz. Does anyone think the CNN bulletin instantly caused, say, 50 percent of Carson fans to dump him? Trump blithely insists in his tweet that “many people” switched from Carson to Cruz. Where’s the evidence?
And another thing, via Ben Shapiro: If Cruz performed better than expected because he cheated, how do we explain Carson performing better than expected and Rubio performing much better than expected? Did they cheat too? One of the weirdest things about Trump’s outburst this morning on Twitter about being cheated is that he’s already cycled through various more plausible explanations for his loss. As a Twitter buddy noted, on caucus night he was gracious in his concession speech. The next day he retweeted a fan who said losing Iowa was meaningless, which isn’t quite true but will look pretty good if Trump romps to victory in New Hampshire. Then, last night, he admitted that his ground game in Iowa wasn’t as good as it should have been, which is almost certainly the real reason why he lost. And now, as if he’s going through some sort of sore-loser version of Kubler-Ross, he’s reached the stage where he insists that Trump can only be defeated through nefarious means. Why he would want to do this when he’s 20 points ahead in NH and late deciders are wondering whether they can trust him to be steady and even-tempered as president, I can’t imagine. Philip Klein thinks he’s imploding in real time:
Every other time Trump said something controversial, or insulted an opponent, he was doing so from a position of strength. He looked like the alpha male toying with his pathetic oppnents. His whole brand is based on the idea that he’s a “winner” — being not just a loser, but a “sore loser,” is greatly damaging.
In this case, Cruz pulled off an impressive win in Iowa. Trump validated that win by giving a gracious — for him — concession speech, even congratulating Cruz. But now, he has unleashed a temper tantrum…
It’s true that many of Trump supporters are so loyal, that as Trump joked, he could shoot somebody and they’d still support him. The problem Trump faces is that to win the nomination, he’ll have to win over a lot of people who don’t currently support him. And there are already indications that he’s having trouble doing this.
He sounds like a baby, which is the opposite of how he should be trying to sound this week. One theory popular on social media as I write this is that Trump is setting up the “fraud” in Iowa as his excuse to drop out of the race and run as an independent, which makes lots of sense … until you remember, as Ed Morrissey did, that he’s already on the Republican ballot in various states and “sore-loser laws” bar him from appearing later as an indie. Another possible explanation is that he’s trying to galvanize Trump fans in New Hampshire to turn out by giving them a stark example of the system being rigged against them, but hardcore Trump fans are already likely to turn out. What he needs, as Klein notes, is to try to hold Rubio’s and Cruz’s margins down among late deciders. Whining will make that harder, not easier. Even as a tactical matter it makes no sense: Trump should be focused this week on stopping Rubio, the man most likely to finish second in New Hampshire and very likely a more formidable opponent for Trump in a two-man race once establishment money is solidly behind him. Instead he’s attacking Cruz with sour grapes. Does he want Rubio to finish far ahead of Cruz?
The only way I can make sense of this is to think the answer to that question is yes, and that Trump is trying to engineer a three-man race in South Carolina and beyond. If so, that means that even he doesn’t think he can win a two-man contest with anyone, including Cruz. That’s an enormous bet he’s making, though: If he lays off Rubio this week and Rubio comes all the way back to win New Hampshire, Trump will be on life support. One more loss in South Carolina to either Cruz or Rubio and he’ll be written off. If I were him, I’d nuke Rubio and then pivot back to Cruz before SC. I don’t know what he’s doing here, apart from pure ego preservation.
I’m so sick of Trump’s Twitter!!! WE NEED TO FOCUS ON OTHER STUFF!!!
QUICK POST ANOTHER STORY ABOUT IT!!!!
I’m sure the little baby Cruz supporters who cry about how MEAN Trump is would be just fine if it had been done to them.
Acting like a spoiled ten year old is the only way he knows how to act.
Lola
So typical of Trump.
Can an apology give back Carson the votes he might have garnered? Nope! And those votes might have cost Trump his win so no, Trump is right! Cruz is Dirty! But that’s OK, Trump Cruz Cruz Trump it’s all good at the end of the day:-)
I tend to agree with your “Ted is a nice guy and apologized”, but that is not “all he needs to do”. His campaign guy, Rick Tyler, was on Morning Joe and was asked if the email that went out was “deceptive”. He answered by saying that he could show them more deceptive emails. That means “yes, it was deceptive”. Cruz needs to also talk to all his campaign staff and make it VERY CLEAR that those are not his values and that if they want to continue to work for him, there will be no more dirty tricks. THEN, I would consider this a done deal.
His ego is big, but very fragile.
It’s fascinating watching it all unfold as if the script writes itself.
Just pathetic.
CNN said he was going home to Florida and not continuing on to NH and SC. They said his next appearance would be at the Prayer breakfast in DC. They also said that this was not the behavior of a candidate who was still trying to win and strongly implied that he was about to suspend his campaign. Watch the CNN video I posted on the breaking news bar yesterday.
And he needs to fire Steve King.
If someone can get Trump to calm down long enough to tell him about God... they should.
Supposing the worst — that the polling absolutely revealed skulduggery. He can pout and act like the devil, or he can humble himself before the Lord and ask for help.
The Lord does not respect persons. Cruz being this big evangelical honcho would not mean squat to God except maybe a larger degree of responsibility compared to one who does not know gospel.
You didn’t provide statistical analysis showing that Cruz benefitted more than Rubio. Besides there would have needed to have been a 25K vote swing for Carson to come in third. Trump is just upset he didn’t come in 1st and is threatening to sue (which is a long road to go down for one measly delegate). This Carson issue has nothing to do with him, except he can try to make it about him. Look at me!
Do you actually think he’s serious? He made the MSM all about him again today that’s all. A marketing genius:-)
I agree with you that he should give his staff a firm talk about stepping back from any questionable tactics. I was not happy with the fliers that went out in Iowa, I wasn’t bothered by the Carson flap because I thought their press release was an acceptable interpretation of the breaking CNN story. However, you are right that he needs to talk to his staff about staying away from questionable tactics since honesty is a major theme of his campaign.
And this is how it is going to be in every primary state when Trump doesn’t get his way - a social media Trumpertantrum and personal attacks.
Check out his Campaign Chairman’s wife. Oh I am speaking of Chad Sweet not Steve King
She just ain’t any lil’ ole’ thing
Works for this company
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/companies/accenture-plc/
http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=4306447&privcapId=972190
Is it just me, or does Dana Bash have a face made for radio??
I have seen the video numerous times. He was leaving Mon. night early to beat the storm going to Florida and then he was going to be in Washington, D.C. Thurs. MORNING for the prayer breakfast. So he had ONE DAY before probably leaving Wed. to get to BREAKFAST Thursday MORNING. Hardly what I call suspending a campaign or taking a break! I’m sure it was important to him to make the National Prayer Breakfast since that’s what put him on the political scene to begin with. So you put big faith in what the political pundits on CNN think a candidate should do?
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