Thursday Open Thread [3.3.16]
Mississippi—Magellan Strategies–Trump 41, Cruz 17, Rubio 16, Kasich 8, Carson 5
Mississippi—Magellan Strategies–Clinton 65, Sanders 11
Michigan—FOX 2 Detroit/Mitchell–Trump 39, Rubio 19, Cruz 14, Kasich 12, Carson 9
Michigan—FOX 2 Detroit/Mitchell–Clinton 61, Sanders 33
Michigan—EPIC-MRA–Trump 29, Rubio 18, Cruz 19, Kasich 8, Carson 7
National—CNN/ORC—Clinton 52, Trump 44; Sanders 55, Trump 43
National—Rasmussen Reports—Clinton 41, Trump 36
Donald Trump is a humble man and our media are paragons of integrity. Donald Trump gave an interview to Time in which he declared, “I am the most successful person ever to run for president.” His secret: “I go on one of these shows and the ratings double. They triple. And that gives you power. It’s not the polls. It’s the ratings.” On winning the GOP nomination: “I have always been a winner. If we have the delegates at the convention, there is nothing they can do about it.”
Donald Trump trademarked his slogan “Make America Great Again” in November 2012, shortly after President Obama was re-elected, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Washington Post: “The Republican Party was in a state of pandemonium Wednesday as a clutch of independent groups scrambled to throw together a last-ditch effort to deny Donald Trump the presidential nomination, even as some party figures concluded it was now too late to stop the billionaire mogul.”
“In a flurry of conference calls and meetings, top Republican donors and strategists laid plans for a multimillion-dollar assault on the front-runner in a series of states holding contests on March 15. Ground zero is Florida, where home-state Sen. Marco Rubio, the leading establishment candidate, is going all in to defeat Trump, who leads in the polls there.”
New York Magazine says Rubio has lost Fox News: “In his role as the donor class’s darling, Marco Rubio has enjoyed support from the Republicans’ media arm, Fox News. Throughout the primary, Fox provided Rubio with friendly interviews and key bookings… But this alliance now seems to be over. According to three Fox sources, Fox chief Roger Ailes has told people he’s lost confidence in Rubio’s ability to win.”
Said Ailes to one host: “We’re finished with Rubio. We can’t do the Rubio thing anymore.”
“Ailes was already concerned about Rubio’s lackluster performance in GOP primaries and caucuses, winning only one contest among the 15 that have been held. But the more proximate cause for the flip was an embarrassing New York Times article revealing that Rubio and Ailes had a secret dinner meeting in 2013 during which the Florida senator successfully lobbied the Fox News chief to throw his support behind the Gang of 8.”
First Read notes that Donald Trump’s rivals have some good opportunities pick up delegates over the next five days: “And before the March 15 contests, it’s also worth noting that many of the upcoming contests are closed off to non-Republicans, meaning that the independents and outsiders who have been helping Trump at the ballot box won’t be able to participate.”
March 5
Kansas (40 delegates): Closed (Caucus)
Kentucky (45): Closed (Caucus)
Louisiana (47): Closed (Primary)
Maine (23): Closed (Caucus)
March 8
Hawaii (19): Closed (Caucus)
Idaho (32): Closed (Primary)
Michigan (59): Open (Primary)
Mississippi (40): Open (Primary)
“Trump is leading in the polls in Michigan, and he should do well in Mississippi (if the Alabama/Georgia results from Tuesday are any indication). But the other closed contests are opportunities for his rivals. Can they take advantage?” If they have good campaign orgs they should. That is how Obama won.
White House vetting judge from home state of @ChuckGrassley for Supreme Court Seat. That should be interesting. https://t.co/W05Bqr1PnL
— jennifer steinhauer (@jestei) March 2, 2016
Nope. No racism here. Move right along. Simply another unprecedented move from a few Republicans.
On days when the House of Representatives does not have much to do by way of work, the body names post offices. Usually these are fairly mundane affairs, the body will unanimously vote to approve the naming of a post office no matter what member puts the request forward.
That was the case today when a vote to rename a post office in California to “Medal of Honor” post office passed 381-0.
However, it was not for the next vote, cast to rename a post office in Winston-Salem, N.C. after Civil Rights icon Maya Angelou. That measure passed with only 371 votes.
Nine Republicans voted against the Maya Angelou bill and one voted present.
Matt Yglesias says that after Super Tuesday, only a Democrat can stop Trump.
Donald Trump’s ongoing evisceration of the Republican Party establishment has earned him a reputation in some circles as a Teflon-coated magician, a politician whose mind meld with the American people is so strong it makes him immune to attack.
He’s not.
[…] The fact is that Trump has triumphed in Republican Party primaries because the Republican Party is incapable of mounting effective resistance to him, not because effective resistance is impossible. Their strategies have failed because highlighting his real weaknesses would put them on ground that is too uncomfortable given the ideological rigidity of the GOP structure and the biases of rank-and-file Republicans. But the plain, obvious truth is that Trump is running a racist campaign based on an unimpressive record in business and bad public policy ideas.
Yet the pathologies of the Republican Party make it impossible for them to mount this argument in an effective way. That’s why to stop Trump, his opponent is going to have to be a Democrat — realistically, Hillary Clinton though in principle Bernie Sanders or someone one would work.
Go read the whole thing. Yglesias lists all the reasons Trump is a horrible candidate that will be beaten. Should we underestimate him? No. Should we be complacent? No. But Trump is not some unstoppable juggernaut. He is the most flawed Presidential candidate ever to (presumptively) garner a major party’s nomination in all history.
The New York Times reports that “a small but influential — and growing — group of conservative leaders are calling for a third-party option to spare voters a wrenching general election choice between a Republican they consider completely unacceptable and Hillary Clinton.” Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol says he will work actively to put forward an “independent Republican” ticket if Donald Trump was the nominee: “That ticket would simply be a one-time, emergency adjustment to the unfortunate circumstance (if it happens) of a Trump nomination.”
The hope is that the Independent Republican will not only deny the Presidency to Donald Trump, but also to Hillary Clinton by keeping her electoral vote total below 270, in which case the election will be thrown into the House of Representatives, which the Republicans presumably would somehow still control despite the absolute chaos inside the GOP an Independent Republican ticket would bring. This thinking is batshit insane and flawed. Indeed, having a Independent Republican ticket will divide the conservative and Republican vote in all states, allowing Hillary Clinton to win all the states, everywhere. Well, maybe not Utah.
Can Trump be stopped? Dozens of articles say he can; just as many say it’s too late. The truth is, nobody knows. After Tuesday, he is far ahead of his rivals in the race for the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination; their best hope is not to overcome him but to prevent him from getting a majority, so that they can fight it out on the floor of the Republican convention in July.
Over the past week, the Trump resistance began in earnest, an anguished outpouring of fed-up conservatives who swore they’d had enough and would block him at all costs. A Trump nomination, they said, would be the end of everything they had worked for and believed in. “A generation of work with African Americans—slow, patient work—I can’t tell you how great it is that we’ve pissed that away because of Donald Trump in one day,” sputtered Rick Wilson, a Florida admaker who had been agitating for months that Trump needed to be stopped.
Saddam and ISIS could kill one million Iraqis sometime soon.
Well, that’s pleasant.
WaPo headline: Romney calls Trump a ‘fraud,’ says he is playing voters for ‘suckers’
Well.. Ain’t that the pot calling the kettle black.
If anyone has experience with an alternate residential electricity supplier (other than Delmarva), I would appreciate some recommendations. The market for electric competitors is a nightmare of sleazy broker-type companies. There seem to be cheaper rates available, but there is no exchange or even a decent rate comparison website, and searching them out on the web invariably leads down a rabbit hole. I’m currently with NextEra, but their price has slowly drifted up until it is now higher than Delmarva. Which is of course the business model for these companies.
I’m with Delaware Cooperative. I get a chicken dinner every year. LOL. But really, they are reliable with little to no outages and people tend to cooperate a bit more with power usage during peak periods.
I don’t actually shop for power providers. I’m too lazy and unless there is the potential for real money and not loose change I don’t have a reason to shop around.
“the more proximate cause for the flip was an embarrassing New York Times article revealing that Rubio and Ailes had a secret dinner meeting in 2013 during which the Florida senator successfully lobbied the Fox News chief to throw his support behind the Gang of 8.”
Ah, good ol’ self-preservation… Ailes dumps Rubio because the word is leaking out to the Fox News rubes that the FOX News chairman may have supported a form of immigration reform that didn’t begin and end with “Deport them all, NOW!”
I have talked to many people around the county (Sussex) and mostly they seem to be Trump supporters. He wasn’t their first choice but now that he is the choice they are on board. I didn’t spend a lot of effort talking the liberal side of the county because I kinda already know what they are going to do. I just wanted to see how much disgust there was with Trump on the right.
Short story, not much disgust, they would rather have Cruz or Rubio, but since the can’t, they will take Trump over Clinton.
Good thing Sussex doesn’t matter. 🙂
so you talked to all 12 people in Sussex that arent on the beach side?
LOL, Ben! Dave, get out of Sussex – the Christine O’Donnell will WIN county – more. I haven’t run into a Trump supporter yet. They’re almost mythical creatures up here.
Don’t laugh yet, pandora. For all we know Christine will be Trump’s running mate.
“Bill Kristol, your country needs you and your idiotic plan.”
..is a sentence I never though I’d ever write.
Geezer, I keep running the numbers and keep running out of conservative white men. If you guys have a different set of numbers…
That Mitt Romney speech was a thing of beauty.
^^^Things I never thought I’d ever say.
pandora: Lindsay Graham noticed the same thing.
So far on record as anti Trump… Mitt Romney, Michael Hayden, Christine Todd Whitman, Bill Kristol, 22 diverse conservatives in the National Review, 60 Republican foreign policy experts including Niall Ferguson and Max Boot, Senators Ben Sasse (R-NE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) are explicitly or implicitly on record… and on and on… and it’s only March.
Now I understand that these establishment types have only a small amount of sway with Hayseed Nation (if even that much), but how can a Republican nominee win a general election like this?
Christine Todd Whitman is still alive?
Still… when the 2012 candidate is attacking the 2016 candidate – there isn’t enough popcorn in the world.
I forgot Governor Baker in Mass. By summertime this’ll be a full cluster fuck.
(CTW is only 69 years of age and still breathing. Heard her on NPR yesterday morning.)
Those Republicans will come around when Trump is the nominee, and nobody will be any the wiser.
The media and the public have short memories. Nobody today remembers Christie excoriating Trump 3 weeks ago.
Christie was excoriating Trump when he was Trump’s opponent. Context is key.
On the other bit, I mean you could be right. Nobody knows. It just seems to me that the wave of anti Trump GOP people coming out will actually increase.
Whitman says she will vote for Hillary rather than Trump. I suspect many Republican establishment types will find Hillary to be an acceptable alternative.
That is an interesting observation, and ironic also since the corporatism and hawkish foreign policy proclivities of HRC that leftist, so-called progressives, etc. dislike about her may well sell to some establishment Republicans.
@DG: It’s also a clue to the upcoming reshuffling of the parties over the next cycle or two.
This is a dangerous time for the Democratic Party, which already has a greater rate of centrists in office than in the base. Adding the centrist Repubs to the ranks will hurt progressives more than anything those centrists could do by staying in the Republican Party.
I think there is about to be a grand realignment, but what needed to happen first was the absolute destruction of what it means to be a Republican. Trump is doing that right now. That Party is falling apart. I think we may actually see the nomination denied to Trump. So what happens then? He bolts and forms the Nationalist Party, and runs as an independent this time. In the short term, that means that Hillary wins the 2016 election with something like 500 electoral votes. In the long term, who the hell knows what will happen. The GOP may further break apart into two more parties: Conservative Libertarians and the Theocrats. If the Democrats stay the way it is right now, then it will dominate politics in this new era for 50 years. If the Democrats move to the right, it will break apart too, as Progressives will bolt. If it moves too far to Socialism, then it is possible that the GOP could reform, or that the Conservative Libertarians or Nationalists could take advantage.
“He bolts and forms the Nationalist Party, and runs as an independent this time.”
Trump may well run as an independent, but I don’t think he has any ability or interest in forming a party. If he did it would be called the Trump party. Trump is sui generis; he has redneck crediblity because of his wealth and his media celebrity. If you put some other nationalist up there with the same policies, he wouldn’t get traction.
“That Mitt Romney speech was a thing of beauty.”
The irony is that it was almost certainly a paid speech.
And how many of the cited negatives could be applied to Romney, himself???
I just rolled my eyes listening to this…
I really thought he was going to announce his candidacy.