Tag Archives: GOP

Calls for Trump to quit race are mounting, but …

donald

The Deseret News of Salt Lake City has joined a growing chorus around the country in demanding that Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, quit his campaign.

The editorial is attached here:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865664336/In-our-opinion-Donald-Trump-should-resign-his-candidacy.html

He probably won’t quit, although I hate to predict anything at this point of a growing scandal that only promises to get worse.

My own sense is that Trump is thinking about it, considering at some level to call it quits, to hand this presidential nomination over to VP nominee Mike Pence.

He has vowed to go the distance.

Frankly, I want him to stay in the race. It’s not that I want this man to redeem himself. I believe that politically speaking he is beyond redemption.

Republican Party primary voters very well could have known this kind of news would splatter itself all over the campaign. Yet they punched their ticket next to a man who “tells it like it is,” who eschews “political correctness,” who has promised to “build a wall” to keep out the Mexican “rapists, drug dealers and killers” and who has pledged to ban all Muslims from entering the United States of America.

Oh, the personal stuff? The three marriages and his boasts about all his sexual conquests, the language he uses to describe women? Pfftt! Doesn’t matter, man.

Trump “isn’t a politician,” the mantra goes. Well, actually he became a politician the moment he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his campaign for the presidency.

The media are largely complicit, too, in allowing this man to get to this point. They didn’t call him out immediately for the lies he told about seeing “thousands of Muslims cheering” the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11, or for the phony excuses he gives for refusing to release his income tax returns.

The Deseret News has taken a bold step in calling for Trump to quit the race. I get that it dislikes Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, too, and cannot endorse her candidacy.

There will be more of this kind of demand in the days to come before the election.

Let us not kid ourselves, though. The Republican Party’s primary voters have made their choice. It’s Donald J. Trump. They now must swallow what he fed them on his march to their party’s presidential nomination.

What might happen next with Donald J. Trump?

A woman holds signs depicting the head of Republican presidential candidate businessman Donald Trump as she waits to enter the auditorium to hear him speak, Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2015, at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, N.H.  (AP Photo/Mary Schwalm)

Let’s roll out a few notions about what could happen to Donald J. Trump’s crumbling presidential candidacy.

Here’s what we know:

* Trump was caught on tape saying some unbelievable, hideous and profane things about women. We’ve all heard the tape.

* Many Republicans in both houses of Congress are calling for Trump to step down, to quit as their party’s presidential nominee. I’m waiting, however, for my own congressman — Republican Mac Thornberry — to issue a statement of any kind regarding his party nominee’s conduct.

* House Speaker Paul Ryan was going to appear with Trump at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, then he disinvited the nominee.

* Trump has issued a Twitter statement that vows he “never” will quit the race, that he will not let his supporters down.

* Polling after the first “debate” with Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton has shown Trump slipping dramatically; the revelation revealed in this horrific audio recording are sure to accelerate the polling free fall.

I refer occasionally to my trick knee. It’s acting up this afternoon just a bit and it’s telling me something I thought I’d never hear.

It’s telling me that the probability of a Trump withdrawal is increasing. How do I know this? I don’t.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pressure-mounts-on-trump-to-step-aside/ar-BBxaPaB?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

The pressure is building from within the Republican Party. Key Democrats don’t want Trump to pull out; they see him as their ticket not only to retaining the White House, but getting control of the Senate and possibly making serious inroads in trimming the GOP majority in the House of Reps.

That’s what is driving the Republican big wigs to persuade Trump to pull out.

He’s not going to be elected president. Indeed, he well now could lose the race in a huge fashion on Nov. 8. The bigger the margin of victory for Clinton, the greater chances of a Senate flip back to Democratic control.

Am I predicting a Trump withdrawal? No. I’m out of the predicting game, remember?

But if this guy has any sense — at all — of the disaster that awaits him and the party he only recently adopted as his own, then he ought to rethink that pledge to “never drop out” of the campaign.

In fact, when a politician is forced to say he’ll never do something, then we know he’s at least thinking about it.

Hits just keep coming for Trump

bbx9hr9

This link is worth your time. It’s from the Washington Post. It contains a video of Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump talking about — what else? — women.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in-2005/ar-BBx95Fw?li=BBnb7Kz

It’s extremely disgusting. It’s lewd. It’s vulgar. It’s contains language that includes what my late father used to call the “functional four-letter word.”

It was recorded in 2005, just 11 years ago, when the future presidential nominee was not quite 60 years of age. He was a grown man, on the cusp of senior citizenship when he was heard saying some remarkably vulgar things about women.

I just do not know how many more of these examples of hideous conduct many voters in American can tolerate from a major-party candidate for president of the United States.

Someone will have to explain to me how this does not disqualify someone serving as head of state of the greatest nation on Earth.

Looking ‘presidential’ doesn’t erase the record

Clinton-and-Trump

The Sunday-morning news talk show chatter is full of speculation about one of the major-party candidates for president of the United States.

Will the Republican, Donald J. Trump, look “presidential” when he faces Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton in their first joint appearance Monday night?

Looking “presidential,” I feel compelled to add, does not erase the record of profoundly non-presidential moments in the campaign to date.

The endless list of insults does not vanish simply because the deliverer of those insults looks presidential.

The hideous mocking of a disabled reporter? The bizarre back-and-forth with Marco Rubio that centered on the candidates’ manhood during a Republican primary debate? Trump’s awful response to a journalist’s question about how he treats women? His stream-of-consciousness policy changes on immigration?

Whether the GOP nominee “looks presidential” during this highly anticipated event with the Democratic nominee will not wipe away the lengthy demonstrations to the contrary.

What if roles were reversed?

clinton and trump

Do you want a good idea of the lunacy attached to this year’s presidential election campaign?

Try this on for size.

It’s making the rounds on social media, but I’ll share it here.

Just suppose Hillary Rodham Clinton was mother to five children from three husbands. Suppose, also, that she had cheated on two of her husbands and then bragged about it. What do you suppose would be the reaction from conservatives?

They’d be outraged. They’d vilify the Democratic nominee for flouting the very “family values” to which conservatives adhere.

Why, then, aren’t political conservatives as outraged that the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, has produced five children with three wives, cheated openly on two of them and then boasted about it in public?

Gosh. There’s that terrible “double standard” so prevalent these days.

Trump keeps assailing Hillary Clinton’s husband because of his own alleged indiscretions — and the Clinton haters cheer him on while ignoring the amazing irony in Donald Trump’s attempt to grasp some kind of moral high ground.

Where is the outrage? Where is the indignation?

Someone has to explain to me how this guy gets away with this astonishing hypocrisy.

Kasich: the last principled GOP ex-candidate standing

kasich

John Kasich and Ted Cruz took Donald J. Trump’s march to the Republican presidential nomination down to the wire.

They finally conceded this summer that the real estate mogul/reality TV celebrity would be their party’s nominee.

Sen. Cruz, R-Texas, attended the GOP convention in Cleveland and received a torrent of boos from delegates for encouraging them to “vote your conscience.” He declined at that moment to endorse Trump.

Kasich, who governs Ohio, didn’t attend the convention in his home state. He still hasn’t endorsed Trump.

Whereas Cruz’s initial refusal was based on Trump’s repeated insults against Heidi Cruz, the candidate’s wife, and his father, Rafael, Kasich has kept his distance because Trump — in Kasich’s view — simply doesn’t represent the tradition of a once-great political party.

Cruz swilled the Kool-Aid and today announced he would vote for Trump in November. Kasich hasn’t said anything of the kind.

I had hoped Sen. Cruz would remain on the sidelines. Now it’s up to Kasich to demonstrate that at least one Republican leader has the stones to stand on principle.

Gov. Kasich remains my favorite Republican presidential candidate. Indeed, had he been the nominee instead of Trump, there stood an excellent chance that I would have voted Republican for president this year — for the first time since I began voting in 1972.

I’m still wrestling with what I’m going to do this year.

Kasich should have been the nominee, given his record of success as a leader in Congress and his cooperation with President Bill Clinton in achieving a balanced federal budget.

Sadly, none of that seemed to matter to the red-meat carnivores who comprise the base of the Republican Party.

My hope remains that Gov. Kasich will remain at arm’s length from this year’s GOP nominee.

I’ve noted all along that Kasich was the rare grown-up in this year’s GOP presidential campaign. He hasn’t let me down yet.

Sessions invokes Reagan … while crowing about Trump

doanld

Jeff Sessions is arguably Donald J. Trump’s best friend in the U.S. Senate.

The Alabama Republican was on board early in Trump’s campaign for the presidency. Now he is upset that members of a big-time GOP family have turned their backs on Trump, the party’s presidential nominee.

Here’s the best part, though, of Sessions’ rant against former Presidents George H.W. and George W. Bush, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

He said, according to columnist Byron York: ” … millions of Americans, including this one, worked their hearts out for the Bushes in 1988, 1992, 2000, and 2004. And it wasn’t Bill Clinton that helped the Bushes get elected. It was the same voters, in large part, that elected Ronald Reagan and stand to elect Donald Trump.”

I am amused that Sessions would invoke Reagan’s name, suggesting that today’s Trumpkins mirror those who backed the Gipper all those years ago.

There’s another part of that calculation that needs a bit of scrutiny.

I cannot prove this, but my strong belief is that President Reagan would be aghast at Donald Trump’s ascent to the pinnacle of GOP power.

If only the president were alive today to weigh in.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-sessions-on-bushes-trump-snub-theyve-forgotten-who-elected-them/article/2602526

The former presidents Bush and Jeb Bush haven’t forgotten a thing. They are dedicated Republicans who have seen their party hijacked by a con man/entertainer/hustler/narcissist.

They, too, were loyal Reaganites. Indeed, George H.W. Bush was so loyal to the president that he tossed aside his long-standing pro-choice view on abortion to become a pro-life vice president during the Reagan administration.

Is Trump the true-blue conservative who would have earned the Gipper’s endorsement? Hardly.

He is an ignorant imposter seeking high public office for reasons that remain a mystery. He wants to “make America great again”? He has insulted the very people who continue to maintain America’s greatness in the world.

I refer, of course, to the men and women in uniform who fight every day to protect us.

Ronald Reagan would have nothing to do with this charlatan.

Don’t give in to endorsement pressure, Sen. Cruz

trump_cruz_jpg_800x1000_q100

It pains me to say something positive about U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

I don’t like the guy. He appears in my view to be far more interested in self-aggrandizement than service to Texans. He’s a loudmouth, a showboating self-promoter.

But shoot, man, I have been happy to see him stand by his principles — even if I disagree with them — in his dispute with GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.

Cruz hasn’t endorsed Trump’s bid for the presidency. Why? Because he believes — as I do — that Trump is a fraud, a charlatan, a con man, an unprincipled opportunist, a phony.

Now, though, I hear reports of Cruz reportedly warming up to Trump. He said some nice things about Trump recently.

Dammit, Ted! Don’t go there, young man!

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/09/22/the-brief/

Trump inserted some amazingly harsh innuendo into the GOP primary campaign as he sought to vanquish Cruz’s challenge. He actually implied that Cruz’s father, a Cuban immigrant, had been seen in the company of Lee Harvey Oswald, the guy who murdered President Kennedy. The suggestion was that the elder Cruz was somehow, in some way, complicit in that act.

Plus, let’s not forget how Trump insulted Heidi Cruz, the senator’s wife, with that unflattering Twitter photo. Sen. Cruz was rightfully outraged by that tactic and called Trump a coward.

Against that backdrop, are we now going to believe that Cruz is going to make nice with this guy? That he’s going to say “Hey, let bygones be bygones” and endorse Trump’s bid for the presidency?

I happen to share Cruz’s previously stated outrage at Trump’s behavior, which I believe firmly would carry over into a Trump presidency.

Let’s not forget, either, that Cruz urged his fellow Republicans at the party’s nominating convention to “vote your conscience” this fall.

Stay true to your own conscience, Sen. Cruz.

Kasich stands by his principles

kasich

Ohio Gov. John Kasich is demonstrating once again why he was my favorite Republican candidate for president of the United States.

He has just told GOP chairman Reince Priebus, effectively, to stick it where the sun don’t shine.

Priebus chided many of the former foes of GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump for failing to back the candidate. He threatened them with political repercussions if they decide in 2020 or 2024 to run for the White House again.

According to Politico: “Thankfully, there are still leaders in this country who put principles before politics,” said John Weaver, Kasich’s adviser, adding, “The idea of a greater purpose beyond oneself may be alien to political party bosses like Reince Priebus, but it is at the center of everything Governor Kasich does.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/kasich-priebus-trump-228343#ixzz4KiEL6VXD

Kasich was one of the thundering herd of GOP candidates who signed a non-binding pledge to back the party nominee. He did so early in the campaign. Then, as the field began to shrink — and Trump’s insults piled up — Kasich began having second thoughts about Trump’s fitness to become the next president.

Kasich finally dropped out of the race and has declared his refusal to endorse Trump’s candidacy. He declined to attend the GOP convention in Cleveland, Ohio, where Kasich serves as governor.

Principle matters more to Kasich than fealty to a deeply flawed political candidate.

Priebus, meanwhile, comes off as a partisan pipsqueak.

Bush, Perry are right about in-state tuition issue

dream

Two former Texas governors, both Republicans, have become targets of the righter-than-right wing of their own party.

First it was George W. Bush, then it was Rick Perry who said that children who were raised in Texas by undocumented immigrants deserves to be allowed to public colleges and universities by paying in-state tuition.

No can do, says the state’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who now plans to seek to remove that perk when the Texas Legislature convenes in January.

Bush and Perry were right. Patrick is wrong.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/09/09/dan-patrick-will-try-again-end-state-tuition-undoc/

These students are Texans. They have been raised as Texans — and Americans. They came here as children when their parents fled their home countries south of us. They grew up to become fine citizens, good students and are able to achieve great things for their adopted home country.

Why deprive them of the chance to further their education by removing the in-state tuition opportunity?

Perry was pilloried by the TEA Party wing of the GOP when he ran for president in 2012 and again this year simply because he supports the long-standing tradition of granting in-state tuition privileges to these young Texans.

As the Texas Tribune reports: “Passed with near-unanimous consent in 2001, the policy allows non-citizens, including some undocumented immigrants, to pay in-state tuition rates at public colleges if they can prove they’ve been Texas residents for at least three years and graduated from a high school or received a GED. They must also sign an affidavit promising to pursue a path to permanent legal status if one becomes available.”

Regular readers of this blog know I’m no fan of Gov. Perry or of Gov. Bush.

On this matter, though, they showed a humane side to their conservatism that has gone missing in action.