Tag Archives: GOP

national news, political news

This is how you ‘unify’ the GOP? Hardly

don trump

I just heard Donald J. Trump say two things during his rambling stream-of-consciousness rant in Bangor, Maine that tell me he’s declaring war on his political party.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee said (a) that he’s going to tear up the Trans-Pacific Partnership and will renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and (b) that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a gang of goons run by special interests.

Wow!

Standard GOP orthodoxy endorses free trade. Trump does not.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been a traditional, deep-pocketed ally of Republican presidential candidates. Trump has no use for the Chamber.

So, what does this mean?

To me it means that Trump is kicking dirt in the face of the very political infrastructure he will need if he is going to have a prayer of defeating Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

What about this am I missing?

If the GOP’s presidential nominee is going to adhere to party philosophy, isn’t it time for him to at least give some lip service that endorses the views of the architects of that philosophy?

Well, hey, he said he could “go it alone” if he needed to.

It looks to me  as though the nominee is going to have a lonely march toward political oblivion.

 

International news, political news

No ‘new evidence’ found to implicate Clinton …

benghazi

So, do you think the battle has ended in the fight to use “Benghazi” as a tool to derail Hillary Rodham Clinton’s march to the White House?

I wish. It will continue full throttle.

The U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi has concluded its expensive and highly partisan probe of the former secretary of state’s role in that terrible tragedy that erupted on Sept. 11, 2012 at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Four Americans died in a chaotic firefight that night. One of them was Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

Then-House Speaker John Boehner convened this committee to get to the truth behind what happened. The panel, led by Republican U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, called dozens of witnesses, plowed over the same ground repeatedly and then finally concluded that they cannot find any “new evidence” that Clinton did anything wrong.

Sure, they found plenty with which to criticize the administration. The military was ill-prepared to deal with the terrorist attack on the compound, the panel said. The administration didn’t do enough to protect the staffers who got caught up in the frenzy, it concluded.

In the end, though, it has determined that Clinton wasn’t culpable, that she didn’t engage in a cover-up.

Oh, but now she’s running for president of the United States. Rest assured that her foes are going to continue to question the manner in which she responded to the emergency.

And, oh yes, we have those e-mails and Clinton’s of a private personal account to distribute State Department messages. The FBI is investigating that matter.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/house-benghazi-panel-finds-no-new-evidence-of-wrongdoing-by-hillary-clinton/ar-AAhINBW?ocid=spartandhp

This has been an expensive endeavor, costing an estimated $7 million. Many of us — me included — are quite convinced that Speaker Boehner wanted to find something that would implicate Clinton as she sought the presidency. The panel came up short.

But for those who are looking and lusting for more dirt to fling at the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, they likely will take some “comfort” in the knowledge that questions will linger as long as there are enemies of the former secretary of state around to raise them.

Still, I’m glad this select committee’s work is finished.

Finally.

national news, political news

GOP comes down with ‘buyer’s remorse’

donald

Buyer’s remorse must be spreading.

British voters agree to pull Great Britain out of the European Union and now might be regretting that decision.

Now we hear that most Republicans in this country want someone other than Donald J. Trump to be their party’s presidential nominee.

In both cases, I fear that voters will have to live with the consequences of their decision.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/donald-trump-republicans-polls-224853

A poll published by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal say that 45 percent of Republicans want Trump to be their nominee. They want someone else to carry the banner into the fight this fall against Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Democrats.

Sorry, folks. Here’s the thing: Trump has won more primary contests by far than anyone else. He’s collected enough convention delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot. He’s going to be the GOP nominee this summer when delegates gather in Cleveland.

We have a saying in Texas that goes something like this:

“You dance with them that brung ya.”

Sure, Trump has a seemingly endless list of failings as a national political leader. No need to detail them here. You know what they are.

But he’s won a fair-and-square primary fight against a large field of opponents, most of whom were much more qualified than he is to become commander in chief.

He’s your guy, GOP.

Good luck at the dance.

national news, political news

Sen. Warren becomes newest Trump target

warren-trump-1024x682

How does this go?

The man who is set to become a major-party presidential nominee is now going after a woman who is campaigning as a surrogate for the other party’s presumed nominee.

And what is his line of attack? He is calling her “Pocahontas” as an epithet.

Let’s back up for a moment.

The presumed GOP nominee Donald J. Trump is now going after Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who today campaigned alongside presumed Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Why? Well, Warren has declared that she has some Native American heritage in her background. Trump doesn’t believe it. Thus, he has hung the “Pocahontas” label on her.

What’s more, Republicans are now bringing out the man Warren defeated to become the U.S. senator from Massachusetts — former Sen. Scott Brown — to refute Warren’s claims of Native American heritage.

I don’t get this.

Why is that even an issue? Why is Trump obsessing over whether Warren actually has a tiny bit of Native American heritage in her background.

Warren is now being vetted as a potential running mate with Clinton. Rather than challenging her record as a U.S. senator, Trump has chosen to attack her ethnicity.

He calls her a “fraud” because she hasn’t proved that she actually has some Cherokee Indian ancestry in her background.

Let’s be clear here: Elizabeth Warren isn’t running for anything. She’s a surrogate for another accomplished woman, Hillary Clinton.

Shouldn’t the presumptive GOP nominee concentrate on policy differences he has with the presumptive Democratic nominee?

Oh, wait! First, he needs to reveal that he has any policy views in the first place.

national news, political news

McConnell balks at Trump’s ‘qualifications’ to be POTUS

mitch

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sounds like someone with some serious political regret.

The regret concerns a fellow Republican, presumptive presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.

The question came to McConnell today on ABC News’s “This Week.”

Is Donald Trump qualified to be president?

He said he would “leave that for the American people to decide.”

Huh? Simple question, Mr. Majority Leader. He didn’t answer it. He could have said “no,” and made a lot of news this morning by rescinding his endorsement of his party’s presidential nominee. Or, he could have said “yes” and then be forced to look himself in the mirror while his conscience struggles with whether Trump really is qualified.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/mitch-mcconnell-trump-224809

McConnell is not alone, of course, in facing this struggle. Other members of Congress and leading political operatives are having second and third thoughts about the man who’s about to lead his party in the fall campaign against Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

McConnell keeps talking up the party’s conservative principles while agreeing that “our nominee” might not agree with them.

I keep thinking of previous party nominees who had sufficient intraparty opposition prior to launching their fall campaigns.

Republican Barry Goldwater had to vanquish moderates within his party before facing President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Democrat George McGovern had the same struggle with moderates within his party as he faced off against President Richard Nixon in 1972.

They both lost … h-u-u-u-u-g-e!

national news, political news, religious news

Trump crosses yet another line

3 Comments

No-religious-test-of-office-320x1241

I cannot let this one go with just a single post on this blog.

Here I go again. Donald J. Trump has crossed yet another in an endless array of lines one mustn’t cross as he campaigns for president of the United States.

The presumed Republican presidential nominee questioned the faith of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

How in the name of all that is holy does this man have the gall/stones/hubris/guts to question anyone’s religious faith?

This is beyond every possible example of good taste imaginable. Then again, it’s Donald Trump saying it, which makes it OK to those who have glommed on to his candidacy. They, too, question whether Hillary Clinton is an actual Methodist, which she’s been saying for years — decades, actually — was how she was raised.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/284281-trump-questions-clintons-religion

How does this clown profess to know what’s in another person’s heart? How does he get away with this kind of out-and-out pandering?

He spoke today to a gathering of religious conservatives, evangelical Christians who are trying to size this guy up.

Trump took advantage of the forum to question whether Clinton’s faith is authentic.

Unbelievable.

I won’t predict this will be the latest “fatal mistake” of this man’s presidential campaign. He’s made countless other such errors already, only to emerge stronger than before he committed them.

However, so help me, this guy just keeps demonstrating how unfit he is to become president of the United States of America.

national news, political news

Trump’s big pile of cash … isn’t there

trumpdonald_061516getty2

Donald J. Trump keeps boasting about all the money he has earned.

He keeps saying he will “self-finance” his campaign for the presidency.

Well, this is just in: Trump’s presidential campaign has $1.3 million in the bank.

Sure, that’s a lot of money to folks like me. For a presidential campaign in June? It’s pauper territory, dude.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/284214-trump-ends-may-with-just-13-million-in-bank

The presumptive Republican nominee is now facing the possibility of running out of money for a campaign that it plans to wage against a heavily financed, thoroughly staffed and profoundly professional effort on behalf of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democrats’ presumed nominee.

Trump keeps telling adoring audiences that he is worth billions of dollars. He says he won’t ask for money from donors because, well, he doesn’t need it!

Actually, he does.

It is quite true that Trump won many of the primary races while being outspent by his opponents. But that was then. The here and now is quite different.

Trump waged his primary campaign by appealing to the GOP base that comprises primarily the TEA Party wing of the Republican Party. He’s now being forced to appeal to a broader audience. To reach those folks, the man needs money … that he does not have.

It’s time to start pouring some of that vast wealth of his into his bid to become president.

If he has it.

national news, political news

Trump campaign disarray is growing

cory

Campaigning for the U.S. presidency is a complicated and costly endeavor.

That’s just the way it is. These campaigns require cohesive planning, streamlined communications systems, a vast network of field officers running operations in states and congressional districts and it requires leadership from the very top of the pecking order.

Donald J. Trump’s campaign for the presidency is showing signs of, well, coming apart. It’s blowing itself to pieces at just about the worst time possible.

The presumptive Republican nominee canned his campaign manager Cory Lewandowski this week. He fired the guy who engineered his highly unlikely and apparently successful campaign to capture the GOP nomination.

Who takes his place? That’s anyone’s guess.

Moreover, reports suggest that Trump’s children — chiefly daughter Ivanka — had a huge hand in kicking Lewandowski to the curb.

Let me see if this adds up.

Trump is just about a month away from claiming his party’s nomination. He doesn’t have a campaign manager to oversee the state-by-state operations needed. The candidate reportedly has few field offices up and running across the country. He isn’t spending any money — yet — on media advertising in the critical battleground states he’ll need to capture if he has a prayer of winning.

There’s more.

Republicans in Congress are clamming up when media ask them about Trump’s campaign. Some of them are withholding their endorsements; a couple of GOP lawmakers have rescinded their endorsement.

Oh, and then there’s this: The insults keep pouring out of Trump’s mouth, not to mention the egregious innuendo about President Obama and whether he harbors secret sympathies for radical Islamic terrorists.

That’s OK, as Trump would tell his supporters. Not to worry.

He possesses a “good brain.”

national news, political news

Support, yes; endorsement, no

ronjohnson

The political media are starting to ask politicians around the country the question that’s on a lot of our minds: How can you “support” a candidate without “endorsing” him or her?

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican facing a tough fight for re-election this year, might have given us a clue.

It’s a matter of degree, Sen. Johnson told CNN.

“Well to me,” he told Dana Bash, “endorsement is a big embrace. It basically shows that I pretty well agree with an individual on almost everything,” Johnson said. “That’s not necessarily be the case with our nominee, so I’ll certainly be an independent voice where I disagree with a particular nominee. I’ll voice it, whether it’s Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or anybody else.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/ron-johnson-donald-trump-224527#ixzz4C88C246t

It means, in effect, that Sen. Johnson is likely to vote for fellow Republican Donald J. Trump, the party’s presumed presidential nominee, but that’s it.

There won’t be any campaign appearances with him. You likely won’t see Johnson introducing Trump to cheering audiences at campaign rallies. You won’t see him in political ads extolling the virtues of his party’s presidential nominee.

There’ll be a polite handshake or two if they meet somewhere, say, in that battleground state of Wisconsin.

If you’ll pardon the metaphor, there’ll be no political equivalent of a wet kiss exchanged between these two. You get my drift?

This is the kind of tepid “support” Trump is encountering all across the nation, particularly from endangered Republicans such as Johnson, who’s trailing in polls at the moment to the man whose seat he won six years ago, former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold.

Trump has said in recent days he’s able and willing to “go it alone” as he campaigns for president.

My strong hunch is that he’d better get ready for a relatively lonely journey along the campaign trail.

 

national news, political news

As nation grieves, Trump boasts

90

“Temperamentally unfit … ”

We’re likely to hear that a lot during the next few months as Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigns for president of the United States against Donald J. Trump.

Examples? We’ve got plenty of them.

The latest example of temperamental unfitness presented itself in the hours after this past weekend’s slaughter of 49 people at the Pulse, an Orlando, Fla., nightclub.

The nation went into shock at the most gruesome mass murder in U.S. history. Trump’s response was to send out a tweet that boasted about how he predicted that Islamic terrorists were going to strike.

Trump said he called it. He was right. The president of the United States has been “weak” in the fight against terrorism, he said.

Republican insiders now are saying that Trump blew it badly by bragging during this time of national bereavement. “Only an a**hole says ‘I told you so’ the same day 49 people are killed on American soil by a terrorist,” said a New Hampshire Republican, who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously, according to Politico.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/trump-orlando-response-224479

The massacre in Orlando has been generally categorized as an act of terror. The killer — an American — seems to have been radicalized by his fealty to the Islamic State.

It’s also been called the “worst act of terror on U.S. soil since 9/11.” That’s now a given.

I now shall remind us all of what national security officials said in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Almost to a person they predicted then that we’d get hit again. That the terrorists had smelled our blood and they wanted more of it.

It’s also been a given that we would feel this kind of pain.

Trump’s braggadocio was so profoundly inappropriate that it only feeds the narrative that Hillary Clinton is going to recite time and again as she campaigns for the presidency.