Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Get ready for possible anti-Trump ‘last stand’

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Nevada has weighed in.

Donald J. Trump scored big. Yuuuuge! He won the state’s Republican caucus last night. He’s now being touted by some in the media as the “presumptive” GOP presidential nominee.

Not so fast.

We’ve got a big election date coming up. I won’t predict how it all shakes out, but this could turn out to be the “last stand” of the party’s brass that seeks to derail the Trump Express.

Twelve states are going to the polls. Republicans are taking part in all the primaries. They’re going to award a huge trove of delegates to this summer’s GOP convention in Cleveland.

Oh yeah. Texas is one of them.

The states are mostly scattered through the south and east. Alaska’s voting, too.

So, what happens if Trump runs the table on March 1?

Game over. That’s what the “experts” say.

An interesting debate occurred this morning on one of the cable news shows. It involved discussion over why U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — one of the three leading contenders for the nomination — won’t unload on Trump. He instead aims his political fire at U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. The question being kicked around was whether Rubio is either afraid of how Trump would respond or if he’s angling for a vice-presidential spot in the event that Trump actually wins the presidential nomination.

I cannot pretend to get into the mind of the young man from Florida.

It’s do or die for two other candidates: Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. That’s a given and hardly qualifies as a huge scoop here.

As an interested observer of these things, though, I am going to await the GOP result with decidedly mixed feelings.

I told a friend of mine this morning in an e-mail message that I shudder to think that Republican primary voters have devalued the “essence of the presidency” so much that they actually would nominate a crass, callow, foul-mouthed blowhard to represent their party in an election to elect our head of state.

I won’t predict what they’ll do next Tuesday. Whatever it is, we’d better prepare ourselves for a major political eruption.

 

Ex-CIA boss trashes Trump, Cruz

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No one, as far as I can tell, ever has accused Michael Hayden of being a squishy moderate or liberal.

The retired Air Force general led the Central Intelligence Agency during the George W. Bush presidential administration. He knows foreign policy as well as anyone.

Gen. Hayden thinks very little of the credentials of two of the leading Republicans running for president. Imagine that.

Hayden has ripped Donald Trump and Ted Cruz for differing reasons, but the common thread lies in their misunderstanding of what it takes to conduct foreign policy.

The general was critical of Trump’s pledge to bring back waterboarding as an interrogation technique to use on terror suspects.

Trump said: “Believe me, it works. And you know what? If it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing. It works.”

Hayden’s response is that the United States doesn’t use certain techniques on suspects because they “deserve it.” He calls Trump’s view of waterboarding a gross misunderstanding of how and why U.S. employ certain tactics against individuals suspected of doing harm.

And what about Sen. Ted Cruz’s pledge to “carpet bomb” Islamic State targets? Hayden calls it “inhumane” and not in keeping with U.S. principles. Cruz once vowed to see if he could get “sand to glow in the dark.”

These tough-talk pledges from individuals seeking the presidency need to be revealed for what they are: reckless bravado aimed at firing up people’s anger and fear.

Gen. Hayden has been at the center of the very issues that candidates such as Trump and Cruz use as political rally applause lines.

 

 

Rove: Trump has ‘peaked’

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Let’s be sure to take any political prediction by Karl Rove with a generous dose of salt.

Not just a grain, mind you.

I’m not willing to bet the ranch that Donald J. Trump has “peaked,” which Rove has suggested. Trump’s peak was supposed to be at the mid-20 percentage point mark. He’s now at 30-plus percent in most Republican presidential polls.

Now we hear from Rove — who “predicted” that Mitt Romney would win the presidency in a landslide four years ago — suggesting that Trump’s support isn’t going to grow.

This election cycle has produced the most maddening series of events imaginable. I cannot remember a presidential campaign that’s been weirder than this one. Not 1968, or 1972, or 1980, or 1992, or 2000.

As a friend and former colleague told me this morning at Amarillo College, we are seeing the effects of “popular culture” on the American electorate.

I don’t know if I want Rove to be right or wrong. If he’s wrong, then Trump will get the GOP presidential nomination this summer. If he’s right, then who rises to the top? To whom do Republicans turn?

Is this guy, Rove, the final authority on these things?

His recent track record isn’t so great.

 

GOP fears its presidential frontrunner

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So help me, I cannot remember the last time a leading major-party presidential candidate has stoked so much fear among those within the very party he wants to lead into the next election.

Donald J. Trump’s emergence from the ranks of unthinkable presidential nominee to a possible nominee has been a sight to behold — not that I have enjoyed beholding it.

Fellow Republican, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, has tossed out an idea that (a) won’t go anywhere but (b) has some within the party actually considering it.

Ticket formation could come early.

Graham suggests that Ohio Gov. John Kasich and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida ought to declare themselves a “ticket” to head off a Trump nomination. Graham — once a presidential candidate himself — doesn’t care which of them would head the ticket. He just wants two of the remaining five GOP presidential candidates to form an alliance to blunt the Trump charge.

There have been other “insurgencies,” to be sure.

Did the Democrats conspire against the candidacy of Sen. Eugene McCarthy and then Sen. Robert F. Kennedy when they challenged President Johnson in 1968? What about the 1976 GOP insurgency of former Gov. Ronald Reagan, who sought to wrest the nomination from President Ford?

This is different.

The very idea that the Republican Party could actually nominate someone with Trump’s background — as a reality TV celebrity, real estate mogul, and someone who’s boasted about his sexual exploits with women who were married to other men is sending the GOP “establishment” into apoplectic spasms.

As someone said only recently, the Party of Lincoln is becoming the Party of Trump.

Take a moment. Roll that around for a bit and consider what it really means to a once-great political institution.

 

Trump gets nailed … from the right!

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I don’t know much at all about Matt Walsh, other than he writes a pretty good essay.

He’s a conservative writer and blogger. He has written a lengthy treatise for The Blaze, a conservative website.

Here it is.

I want to encourage folks to read it.

The subject of the blog is Donald J. Trump. It’s a sort of open letter to the Trumpsters who just love the reality TV personality/real estate mogul/newly minted politician/Republican presidential frontrunner.

Trumpsters say they admire Trump because he “tells it like it is.” Well, according to Walsh, Trump is as much of a liar as all the rest of Planet Earth he’s branded with that epithet.

The crux of Trump’s lies can be found in his supposed embrace of conservative principles. Walsh has called him out on it. He’s also called him out for all the hypocrisy that Trump has demonstrated throughout his adult life.

He blasts him for his grotesque language, his behavior, his callowness, his hideous assertions about anything and just about anybody.

Walsh is speaking as a conservative. Indeed, conservatives have been none too bashful about expressing their distaste for the idea of Donald J. Trump carrying the Republican Party banner into battle this fall against likely Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

To be blunt, the idea of a Trump nomination has me torn. It’s pulling me in many directions.

Am I inclined to support any of the leading candidates for the GOP nomination? Probably not. The only Republican still standing that I would consider voting for, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, isn’t likely to make it to the finish line.

But of all the leading candidates seeking the GOP nod, Trump is the most dangerous, the most ill-suited, the most repulsive candidate at any level. He’s also the least likely to win the election this fall.

Do I want the party to nominate him? No. Why? Because I believe in a strong two-party system and the Republican Party needs to come to its senses in a big hurry.

Am I a huge fan of Hillary Clinton? Not really. However, considering my own bias and my own presidential voting track record, she is likely to get my vote this fall — particularly if the Republican nominee is Donald Trump.

I do not want Trump anywhere near the White House, near The Button, near the levers of government. He doesn’t know the first thing about how any of it works.

Indeed, he seems to embody the very thing that one of his vanquished foes, Jeb Bush, talked about when he ended his own presidential campaign this past weekend. Bush talked of how presidents are one of us. They serve the people and are not our “masters,” he said.

Matt Walsh has laid it out there for all of those Trumpsters to ponder.

My hunch — and my fear — is that they won’t ponder a thing. It’ll just make them love their hero even more.

For my money, though, he offers a blistering — and much-deserved — critique of someone who’s making a mockery of a once-great political party.

 

The Birther in Chief strikes again

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Here we go … one more time.

First, the target was Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States. He was born somewhere other than the United States, the allegation went.

Second, the target was Ted Cruz, junior senator from Texas, who actually was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father.

Now it’s Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida, who was born in the Sunshine State, but whose parents immigrated there from Cuba.

All three men allegedly are constitutionally ineligible to run or serve as president.

The man making the assertion? Donald J. Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination.

Trump now says Rubio might not be eligible. His parents’ aren’t American, Trump said. Oh, wait. Rubio was born on U.S. soil. U.S. law says he’s a citizen automatically. Doesn’t matter, Trump asserts. He questions the eligibility, just as he has done with Cruz, even though U.S. law granted young Ted citizenship because Mama Cruz is an American citizen.

And the president? Well, he was born in Hawaii. Trump hasn’t stopped questioning his eligibility, either, even though the president’s late mother also was a U.S. citizen.

Trump is relying on others’ assertions. He’s using social media to send out the doubts that he denies planting. Sure thing. He’s adding plenty of irrigation to the doubts, though, by continuing to provoke needless discussion and unfounded questions about one of his opponents.

Will this latest specious assertion do any damage to Trump? I’ve noted before that I am done predicting such things. This campaign has entered a parallel universe where the normal rules of decency and decorum no longer apply.

 

Trump earns evangelical support … how?

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One of the many — countless, it seems — confounding features of this presidential election cycle concerns the support that Donald J. Trump appears to be gathering from a most unlikely bloc of Republican “base” voters.

I’m referencing here the evangelical voters, those folks who describe themselves as devout, “born again” Christians.

Trump’s victory in the South Carolina GOP primary this weekend came in good measure from the support he got among evangelicals.

I don’t pretend to understand all the nuances of every voting bloc in America. Nor will I jump to many conclusions about any demographic group.

What I know about those who adhere to evangelical Christianity is that they take their Scripture quite seriously. They also prefer that others believe as they do.

So, what does Trump believe? How has he lived?

He’s on his third marriage; he’s been divorced twice. More to the point is that Trump has actually boasted — in writing — about the extramarital affairs he’s had with women who were married to other men. Doesn’t the Bible frown on marital infidelity?

He’s on record at one time as supporting abortion. I haven’t actually heard him say he supports partial-birth abortion, but many of his critics have said as much and I haven’t heard Trump actually deny he ever favored such a thing. I believe evangelical voters vehemently oppose abortion. Isn’t that correct?

Trump has made a lot of money building hotels — and casinos, where people go to gamble away lots of money and, perhaps, engage in activity that is, shall we say, a good bit less than righteous.

The man’s lifestyle over many decades has featured a flaunting of vast material wealth. Again, I won’t presume to know what is in the hearts of those who believe in the principles espoused in Scripture, but I doubt seriously that Trump’s opulent lifestyle fits the bill.

And when I hear Trump talk about the Bible and its contents, he sounds for all the world — to my ears, at least — as though he’s talking about a paperback novel he bought off the used-book shelf. Am I wrong or does he sound to anyone else as though he doesn’t have a clue as to what the Bible actually says — about anything?

But here we are. We’ve been through three contested Republican political events; Trump has finished first in two of them. The South Carolina primary took place in a state where New Testament religion plays a major role in the lives of many of those who call themselves Republicans.

This has been a confounding electoral process so far. Donald Trump’s appeal among evangelical voters within the Republican Party base might be the most perplexing development of all.

What in the name of all that is holy am I missing?

 

Another Bush vs. Clinton? Not any longer

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reacts as she is introduced to speak at the Massachusetts Conference for Women in Boston, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

It seems like eons ago.

Pundits on the left and the right not so long ago were talking — some of them bemoaning — about the idea of another race involving presidential candidates named “Bush and Clinton.”

Well, as of Saturday night that dream/nightmare went out the window.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush dropped out of the Republican primary race after getting battered in South Carolina.

The “Clinton” in this scenario? Hillary Clinton won the Nevada Democratic caucus by a comfortable — if not overwhelming — margin and has returned as the prohibitive favorite for her party’s presidential nomination.

I was not one of those who dreaded another Bush-Clinton matchup. I thought then, and I still do, that Jeb Bush could have made a strong case for his own candidacy. He has executive experience and did a good job as governor of a growing state. He’s not the squishy lefty that hard-right conservatives say he is.

Donald J. Trump drew a bead on Bush early on and beat his brains in.

Then we have Hillary Clinton. I refuse to refer to her as “Hillary,” as so many others have done.

She’s got some baggage. Her own legislative and foreign policy experience will be a plus as she plows her way to the expected nomination.

Clinton has that authenticity and likability matter she’ll need to resolve.

You know what they say about any span of time being a “lifetime in politics.” It could be a day, a week, a month — perhaps even an hour, or so it seems.

A year clearly is a lifetime.

What once was seen as quite probable is now gone. Vanished. Jeb Bush could’ve been a contendah.

It didn’t happen. Now, it’s on to the next round of unpredictable finishes.

 

Trump breaks all the rules

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It’s become almost a cliché these days to note how Donald J. Trump has broken all the standard political rules.

He has gone on record as supporting abortion on demand, single-payer health insurance, he’s given money to Hillary Clinton’s previous campaigns, he calls the Iraq War a “huge mistake.”

The Republican Party primary base of voters would seem to oppose him on every one of those issues.

They love the guy. He won again tonight in South Carolina’s Republican primary.

Another rule — generally speaking — is to pay some kind of tribute to a vanquished foe. Tonight the foe was former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who bowed out of the campaign. Bush congratulated “the other candidates” who fared better than he did; I presume he included Trump among them.

Did the victor of tonight’s South Carolina primary return a compliment to Bush? Umm. No.

He ignored Jeb Bush. He passed over any mention.

Another rule of good manners … broken!

Will it matter to those who just adore Trump? Hardly.

This has become a campaign where all the standard norms of decent behavior have been tossed aside.

Go … bleeping … figure.

 

 

 

Well, I’ll be dipped …

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Dear old Dad had a saying he would use whenever he was mortified, surprised, confused or amazed.

“Well, I’ll be dipped in sesame seeds,” he would say.

Tonight, my dad is being dipped and covered in ’em. I don’t have any other way to describe the news out of South Carolina that TV celebrity/real estate mogul Donald J. Trump has rolled to another Republican Party presidential victory.

The fight is on at this moment for second place. The combatants are U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida.

I’ve admitted already, but it’s worth another admission, a confession, a mea culpa: I was wrong about Trump’s staying power. Many times along the way I thought he’d said something that would doom him.

It started with his denigration of Sen. John McCain’s status as a Vietnam War hero. “He’s a hero because he got captured,” Trump said. “I like people who aren’t captured, OK?”

There would be many other instances of profound crassness. None of them mattered in the eyes of those who continue to support this guy.

I am no longer going to make such predictions as they relate to Trump.

This campaign has become a case study in weirdness.

The insults keep piling up — right along with the victories this individual keeps winning.

He’s two-for-three at the moment. Cruz won the Iowa caucuses, barely. Trump rolled to victory in New Hampshire and appears to be rolling in South Carolina.

If the Republican National Committee still harbors any hope of stopping Trump, of denying him the party’s presidential nomination, my advice is simple and straightforward.

Y’all have to get real busy. Like right now!

Oh, and Dad? Wherever you are, I’m just as baffled as you might be.