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Donald Trump, the undoubted Republican front-runner after winning the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, is — there is no way to sugarcoat this — a liar, an ignoramus, and a moral abomination. I have never previously described any presidential candidates in such harsh terms — not even close — but there is no other way to accurately describe him. There simply isn't. This past week, the week culminating in his big South Carolina win, provided yet more evidence, as if any were needed, of the validity of all these words to describe him. Start with the lying. Trump has...

The latest polling data shows solid support in North Carolina for Donald Trump with less than a month to go before the March 15th primary. The Elon University poll finds Republican registered voters and Independents who describe themselves as leaning Republican favor Trump over all other candidates vying to be the GOP's presidential nominee. The real estate mogul was favored by 28% of those voters surveyed, compared to 19% for Ted Cruz, 16% for Marco Rubio, and 10% for Ben Carson. Trump v. Clinton Donald Trump: 41 percent Hillary Clinton: 47 percent Neither/Someone Else: 9 percent Don’t Know: 4 percent...

Donald Trump was so unhappy about the Cruz Campaign's "Supreme Trust" ad that he sent a "cease and desist" letter demanding that the Cruz campaign immediately stop running the ad featuring Trump currently running in South Carolina. During an epic press conference Sen. Ted Cruz rejected Trump's frivolous demands. In its response the Cruz campaign said the ad is not an attempt to mislead the public: The objective of the ad is precisely the opposite - to provide the voters of South Carolina with important and accurate information so that they can make an informed decision when they go to...

The most recent propaganda angle with Team Trumpster has been that 'a vote for Cruz is a vote for an open convention in Cleveland... where the 'Establishment' is going to ram-through Paul Ryan on the 2nd ballot.  'So you gotta vote for Trump- don't you see?' Except that Paul Ryan is running out of ways to say 'I'm not running'.  Yes, the strategy in gaining his current position as Speaker of the House was 'Aw shucks, I'm not interested'... waiting until the demands for him grew louder and wider... then -reluctantly, of course- accepting the will of the people and a...

Front-runner’s adult children huddle with their father as staff divides among three competing aides. Donald Trump’s campaign overhaul has inflamed an internecine struggle among three of his closest advisors, creating an atmosphere that multiple sources likened to a political “Hunger Games.” According to interviews with more than a dozen people on or close to the campaign, staffers are increasingly dividing themselves into competing factions aligned with Trump’s three top officials – embattled campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who still commands deep loyalty among many of the people he hired; deputy campaign manager Michael Glassner, who has a growing group of supporters;...

Those in the know are now spreading the word. Read it here first! Earlier I had a different Note, and different stuff written. Now I can tell you that Ted Cruz is the winner, I can prove it for most people. Yes read it again, Ted Cruz has won the nomination. Trump is letting people go as we all know. Florida, Ohio, and other battleground States have seen most positions slashed. Staff in his Headquarters have been let go as well even when they were performing critical roles. Trump did not even have a New York Team until last week....

When Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz came to the Bronx to campaign in the run-up to the New York primary, ridicule was not far away. After all, what is a Republican candidate doing in the staunchly Democratic, minority-majority northern part of New York City? What is he doing in New York State at all, when Donald Trump is nearly certain to carry the most votes and, according to market-based forecasts, has an 85 percent chance to win more than 50 percent of the vote? Why would Ted Cruz campaign in the Bronx? For someone like Cruz to campaign exactly...

Senator Ted Cruz went off on Donald Trump during an interview Tuesday with host, Glenn Beck. Cruz called the New York businessman a "Cosa Nostra" mobster...insulting all Italian-America with his contiuing, hate lie telling!!! First Cruz insults all New Yorkers, now, he, insults all Italian-Americans. Who is next, Irish-Americans, Jewish-Americans, African-Americans, etc. My....what a low life bigot...Mr. Ted Cruz is. Certainly not POTUS caliber material. I might remind the ignorant bigot, Cruz that New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, California have vast numbers of Italian-Americans...who will not take kindly to his hateful remarks. I think Cruz...

In 1980, Ronald Reagan campaigned on a four point economic recovery plan. First, reduce tax rates, to increase incentives for job creation, investment, business start-ups and expansion, and wage growth due to the resulting increased demand for labor and increased productivity. Even liberal Keynesian economics holds that tax cuts are pro-growth. Two, reduce regulatory costs and barriers to business, which can act as further tax cuts. Three, reduce federal spending, to reduce the government’s drain on the private sector. And four, restrain monetary policy to restore a stable value for the dollar. After Reagan led adoption of those policies in...

From his career in New York real estate to his extraordinary campaign for the White House, the court of Donald Trump has operated much like that of Louis XIV of France: everything revolves around the imperious, bouffanted Sun King. “He is a total narcissist, and what you see here is the way he’s always been,” said a source intimately familiar with Trump’s way of working, who declined to be identified criticising a potential president. “This, between you and me, will be the destruction of the United States.”

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers spoke at the International Monetary Fund on Wednesday, warning against austerity measures amid a tepid economy. Yahoo Finance sat down with him to get little more color on the economy and to find out what keeps him up most at night. “I think the prospect of Donald Trump being President would be the gravest threat to our prosperity, our security, and our freedom in my adult lifetime,” Summers said. “That's the thing I would worry most about.”

‘Gestapo tactics.” That’s how Donald Trump’s recently installed campaign manager, Paul Manafort, characterized the Ted Cruz campaign’s successful effort to win all 34 of Colorado’s pledged national-convention delegates at the long-scheduled Republican congressional-district and state conventions. “Today winning votes doesn’t mean anything,” Trump complained. “It’s a corrupt deal going on in this country and it’s not fair to you people.” Such complaints typically come from people who are not, in one of Trump’s favorite words, “winners.” Trump conspicuously refrains from complaining about the fact that, even though he has won just 37 percent of the votes cast in Republican primaries...

Via Red State, not a huge deal but worth flagging in case there’s another poll this weekend showing his numbers dipping a bit in New York on the eve of the primary. That would suggest a trend, and that would be a big deal given what’s at stake. To be clear: Trump’s going to romp in NY on Tuesday night, winning by 25 points or better, and will pick up something like 75 delegates even in a worst-case scenario. But since his path to 1,237 is so difficult, it matters a lot whether he ends up with 75 in New...

The conventional wisdom is that though Ted Cruz can excite the conservative-activist base of the Republican party, he can’t beat Hillary Clinton in a general election. But the recent head-to-head polling tells a different story. Unless your name is George W. Bush, it’s tough to win 270 electoral votes without winning the popular vote. And Cruz is hanging in there against the Democratic front-runner. The RealClearPolitics average puts Clinton at 46.4 percent and Cruz at 43.9 percent; the most recent McClatchy-Marist survey has it a tie. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the current Republican front-runner, hasn’t led Clinton in any national poll...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/04/14/ben-carson-could-trump-spoiler-new-york-primary/83036318/

He won a big victory in Wisconsin. He pierced the Donald Trump mystique. He even got some of the Capitol Hill lawmakers who regard him as a revolutionary and renegade to slink cautiously into his corner. By all logic, this should be a Ted Cruz moment — if only the next primary weren’t in New York. But on Tuesday, New Yorkers go to their polling places, and though Cruz has been the beneficiary of the calendar before — his performance on Super Tuesday helped force out of the race Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a demographically identical and philosophically similar...

Donald Trump's final push for the GOP nomination starts Tuesday in New York, where the front-runner is heavily favored over rivals Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. The burning question is not whether Trump wins New York — if he doesn't, it will be among the biggest polling surprises ever — but whether Cruz and Kasich can pick up enough delegates to derail his nomination before July's convention in Cleveland. Since Trump's last victory in Arizona's March 22 primary, Cruz has won a competitive race in Wisconsin, as well as a series of sweeping victories in North Dakota,...

To refresh your memory: Washington State has 44 delegates, winner-take-most (majority takes all) proportional primary (20% threshold), with statewide and CD delegates. Closed primary (deadline to switch is next week; deadline for first-time voters is next month), but it’s all mail-in. …And, just think! Five months ago, I would have had to write another three or four sentences to explain all of that. Now I can just assume that most of you folks will be able to follow along. It’s an ill wind, huh? Anyway, it turns out that Ted Cruz has already done the work – before the deadline...

Marco Rubio won Minnesota decisively on March 1, but the 17 delegates he was awarded are now up for grabs, free to vote for any candidate they like on a first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. In a hotly contested Republican primary that looks increasingly likely to culminate in a contested convention this summer, those delegates will be critical. The battle for them is essentially throwing states such as Minnesota, which have already held their nominating contests, back into play as they elect delegates at state conventions. And Ted Cruz’s campaign, which has run circles around Donald...

AUDIO LINK (40 MINUTE SEGMENT) “Cruz's roots: Asked by (Anderson) Cooper if he was more a product of the Northeast or Texas, Cruz chose the Lone Star State. "When I went off to Harvard Law School my dad jokingly referred to it as missionary work," Cruz said. Cruz had completed his undergrad studies at Princeton University by then, becoming the first member of his family to attend an Ivy League school. "To be admitted to Princeton was an extraordinary thing," he said. "It was a world, frankly, that I didn't know. When I arrived there it was a scary place....