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.