* Hillary Clinton, coughing, wheezing, barking like a dog, trafficking in national secrets, whose only qualification seems to be the possession of a little-used VaJayJay, narrowly defeats the bumbling, inept, economically incoherent Bernie Sanders in the state where people go to throw away the wages that can no longer buy them a decent standard of living.
I’m not sure what there is to say. It sure isn’t “God Bless America.”
* If these two – a communist open borders enthusiast and a liberal capitalist open borders enthusiast – are the so-called cream that has risen to vie for the presidency, it truly damns the system with faint praise.
The best thing to emerge from the Democratic nominations process has been Larry David’s Sanders impersonation.
* The best thing about this election is that the establishment candidates have felt a little whiff of grapeshot (or however that goes). About a year ago I assumed it was going to be Hillary/Jeb and that’s it, and the parties would go on in clueless momentum.
Might still be thus, more or less, but Bernie and Trump have pointed out the Emperor’s new clothes.
I’m rooting for the bloodiest election in decades. (And I hope Brooks, Friedman, et all die from pearl clutching. Thanks for nothing guys.)
* Hillary creaks across the finish line in Iowa, gets clobbered in New Hampshire, and wheezes across the finish in line in Nevada mere moments ahead of Karl Marx’s 187-year-old nephew. Why there’s no stopping this hero of the people! She’s inevitable! She’s indomitable! She’s indubitable! The GOP would never want to make the mistake of nominating anybody but the best, most time-tested, most certifiably HIV-free Latino buttboy of the GOP establishment we can possibly find.
* Deep down even the most doctrinnaire, feminazi dimocrat has a sinking feeling that only an utter collapse of the stoopid party can possibly assure Hilary Rodham Clinton of the presidency. Even if the witch squeaks through the next several state primaries, I suspect that there will be a growing realization within their party that the dimocrats need to come up with an alternative. I hope they don’t but if they do I suspect that it will be Biden/Warren.
The stoopid party establishment has the opposite problem. They cannot accept that the strongest candidate they can field is Donald Trump even though he is sweeping their primaries. I’d love to see a Trump vs Sanders or a Trump vs Clinton contest. The first because for the first time in a long time it will give the American people a genuine choice between authentic individuals. I fear a Trump vs Biden/ Warren contest because it will likely give the dimocrats sixteen years to wreak havoc on the country, starting with a stacked Supreme Court dictatorship. Anything else and I’ll stay home and stock up for Armegaddon.
* I follow Anne Applebaum’s Twitter feed just to enjoy her reactions to the worm turning.
* A Sanders-Trump contest would’ve been the most interesting thing to have happened in my short existence, but with some of the polls coming in from South Carolina and with this Nevada win towards Hillary, my hope that …actual patriots would contest each other in the Presidential elections is fading.
* According to the NY Times Bernie Sanders won 53% of Latino vote in Nevada but only 22% of the Black vote. So it looks like Sanders is winning the young, white liberals, and Latinos. Hillary Clinton will narrowly win the nomination by racking up a super-majority of the Black vote in every state. If Bernie gets even 30-35% of the Black vote Hillary is gone. BUT that’s a huge IF.
This points to Trump’s strategy in general; election. If Trump can get 15-20% of the Black vote with an increase in working class White turnout, the Democrats are toast. Democrats win swing states by getting 95+% of the black vote. Anything less is a disaster.
* Blacks aren’t big fans of the Jews. In fact, they don’t like them one bit. Why would anyone expect Sanders to take more than a small portion of the black vote from Hillary?
* I’m not even sure most people are aware Bernie is Jewish. He has a Brooklyn accent, but his name isn’t particularly Jewish sounding, and he never talks about being Jewish.
It’s not like Lieberman, whose calling card was constantly talking about being Jewish.
Hillary will win blacks because the entire black political establishment is behind her.
* You wanna really rile up a Jewish leftist? Casually mention that blacks-hate-Jews thing.
* Foxnews is reporting that 73% of the gop voters in exit polling supported a ban on muslims. Megyn Kelly seems shocked over those stats. Now the anchors are bringing up Trump saying 911 was Bush’s fault and he lied to get us into Iraq. They cannot believe a bunch of red staters just voted for trump!
* I started watching Fox (or listening) around 5 pm. The early indications they were giving was that the race was tight among Trump, Cruz and Rubio, based on exit polls. When the polls closed at 7 pm, Fox started the election night coverage by announcing it was too early to call, but the race was tight among the top three. A half hour later, at 7:30, Fox called it for Trump but stated that his winning margin was going to be less than the polls had indicated. In the meantime, early returns shown on the bottom of the screen (1%, 2%, now 21% of the vote counted) were showing consistently Trump in the 30% range (34-35%) while Rubio and Cruz were around 21%. So I got the distinct feeling that Fox was deliberately playing down Trump to increase TV ratings for as long as possible. It now looks that Trump is going to win every Congressional district which would give him every delegate in SC. The more the TV coverage goes on the more it looks like a big victory for Trump. I guess his condemnation of GWB and the Iraq War at the last debate (which took me aback) did not hurt him the way everybody (including me) thought it would. But, as another poster said on another site, Trump’s strong stance against GWB and the Iraq War might have slightly depressed his polling numbers in SC but caused them to rise across the country. So it looked like a well calculated gamble by Trump, which he appears to have won.
* Rubio isn’t the big winner. He lost and will continue to lose despite the Faux News propaganda. At this time, the pressure needs to build on the right for Cruz to get out of the race and endorse Trump. Cruz has no path to victory. Trump will do very well in the South on March 1st and be much more competitive than Cruz in the Northeast, on the West Coast, and in Rust Belt states. All Cruz can do now is serve as a spoiler and help Rubio. The base may not forgive him if he ensures Rubio gets the nomination. If he exits quickly enough, there is some possibility that his relationship with Trump can be repaired enough for him to get a VP spot. Even if he doesn’t, he may have another shot in 2020 if Trump does not prevail….but that depends on retaining the good favor of the grassroots by not helping the establishment.
* I was watching the SNL cold open of the “Democratic Presidential Debate.” Whoever played Anderson Cooper seriously gayed him up, Alec Baldwin was playing Jim Webb, and Larry David was the Bern. “Jim Webb” kept demanding Cooper actually include him in the debate, so “Anderson Cooper” would throw questions at him meant to embarrass him. One of the questions he asked was about Webb’s statement that affirmative action was racist against whites. It was meant to be a laugh line.
* Cruz needs to start focusing on becoming the attorney general in a Trump regime. I think he would be pretty good. And if Trump wins, he will need guys working in key positions like AG to ensure his agenda gets pushed through.
With that in mind Cruz should start to figure out how to graciously withdraw and get his supporters to move to Trump, the only other anti-establishment candidate. The main goal should be to ensure the establishment does not get the nomination.
* 57% of “anti-establishment” Rafael Cruz’s campaign funds come from Wall Street. You really think he has any scope to make strategic decisions about where to direct the support that money bought? I guarantee you those guys didn’t spend all that money for the sake of furthering the personal development goals of one Rafael Cruz, and they certainly didn’t spend it to help get Donald Trump into office.
* Trump already has the support of Dennis Rodman, Mike Tyson, Terrell Owens, and Herschel Walker.
* Ann Coulter has written about how pathetic the anti-amnesty lobby is.
Instead of putting a laser focus on immigration issues and just scoring the votes on those issues, they care about the full buffet of conservative issues. As a result, Democrats who actually vote the right way on immigration issues don’t get rewarded for doing so, and Republicans who vote the wrong way never get punished.
This is a totally different strategy from the NRA, which will endorse a black, transgender, atheist, lesbian union organizer as long as she votes the right way on gun control issues.
* Last week alone Trump took on Pope Francis, Apple, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the Bush dynasty and the neocons and still won. This guy is Napoleonic in magnitude.
* I think he has Napoleon beat as well. After all, I think he is 6’4″ and would tower over that cheese-eating surrender monkey.
* Honestly I don’t think deep down they care if he goes third party. I think the GOP establishment would rather lose in November than allow Trump to be their nominee. If he is the nominee, some of those establishment guys have already stated they’d support the democrat.
Their main goal is to first not lose control over the party. Their second goal is to win the White House. But if losing the White House means they still have control over the party, they’d take that.
Trump threatens to create the long awaited (for me at least) white oriented party. This would be a party that appeals to white democrats (my neighbor is a supporter) and pretty much all whites that aren’t SJWs. It would be nationalist, protectionist and would reduce immigration levels. Needless to say the establishment of both parties fears this. And the donor class behind the GOP would rather lose to the democrats than allow this to happen.
But I think no matter what happens, the wheels are now turning towards this type of party.
* I have a hard time fathoming what would motivate anyone to vote for Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, so it’s hard to imagine them switching to Trump.
To date, he hasn’t spent much on advertising. FOX was saying that he only spent $1.8 million on campaign ads in S.C. (and got about 33% of the vote) to Rubio’s $12 million (for only 22% of the vote). However, he should start advertising more on TV. He should pump out ads informing people about all the financial backing that Rubio has received from liberal billionaires like Paul Singer. Singer was a major backer of gay marriage legislation; perhaps Rubio’s evangelical supporters would find that interesting.
* People who actually serve in the military aren’t really crazy about being sent off to pointless, unpopular wars. Bacevich noted that when Congress approved W’s adventures, the fewest number (or percentage, can’t remember) of veterans was serving in Congress.
* Trump and Cruz are both running on a Pat Buchanan platform – enforce America’s immigration laws, not Syrian “no fly zones”.
Their combined totals:
Iowa 52%
New Hampshire 47%
South Carolina 54.9%
Rubio, Bush, Kasich, Christie and Fiorina, on the other hand, are/were running on a George F. Will platform – enforce Syrian “no fly zones”, not America’s immigration laws.
Their combined totals:
Iowa 27.5%
New Hampshire 48.9%
South Carolina 37.9%
The establishment candidates can’t break through the “neocon ceiling”, especially not in states with a large percentage of White evangelicals.
For the good of America, Cruz should drop out of the race and endorse Trump, citing his immigration platform and his opposition to the Syria “no fly zone”. This would put an end to the farcical hopes of the thoroughly discredited establishment, and earn Cruz a place in the history books as the man who saved America, Europe, and Middle Eastern Christianity.
Trump, for his part, should recruit a running mate who reassures and motivates the evangelical base, and balances the ticket by silencing the most common criticisms leveled against The Donald. He needs a running mate who is a well spoken, intelligent, polite, young, honest, churchgoing family man from the heartland with a long history of conservative activism, who is willing and able to defend Trump’s immigration platform in intense debate with Hillary’s likely running mate – Rhodes scholar Corey Booker – , and who is untainted by neocon foreign policy fiascoes.
Trump needs Kris Kobach.
* I think the optimism/triumphalism of many of the commenters here is completely misplaced. The results in SC seem profoundly depressing to me. Trump got 32.5%, far below what he polled. “Anti-establishment” candidates together got 54.8%, if you count Cruz as anti-establishment, which I would not. That means the establishment candidates got almost half of the votes in SC, which should have been one of the toughest states for them. Trump needed to poll near 40% in SC to keep the momentum going. I don’t see things getting better for him from here, especially with the Republican party and every mass media outlet pulling out all the stops to beat him. The odds are very high that Rubio will be the nominee, the doors will be thrown open for third-world foreigners to flood in and they will swamp the historic American nation, which will disappear forever.
* I have pointed out before that there are two aspects to the Trump personality: the carnival barker who appears at the debates and the crowd meetings and the serious, thoughtful, calm person who you see in interviews. On Friday evening at 7 pm, Greta Van Susteren had Trump on for a 20-minute interview during which she respectfully asked him tough questions and he responded in a calm, thoughtful and serious manner that, I am sure, must have impressed any viewer who happened to tune in. If you are able to track down a video of that interview, you really should. Every time I have seen him in the context of a person-to-person interview he has behaved in a very Presidential manner. I happen to believe that he wouldn’t be nearly as successful without both aspects of his personality. I believe Machiavelli talked about a successful Prince needing to have the qualities of a lion and a fox. Without the outrageous behavior of the carnival barker, I don’t think Trump would be nearly as successful as he has been.
