The 2016 US Presidential Election

[welshbairn]

 

See when a candidate drops out and endorses someone else, do the delegates the resigning candidate has won revert to whoever he or she endorses?

 

 

The rules vary from state to state but generally the delegate is free to vote for anyone he wants if his candidate pulls out.

[Yank Mike]

Why is Sarah Palin still a thing?

 

She is dreadful. She's the last person I'd want endorsing my campaign.

She's popular with the type of people who would consider both Cruz and Trump.

 

Also, she was quite a popular and successful governor who successfully fought against the local Republican establishment of Alaska. After she was drawn into the Presidential race things started to fall apart for her.

[Yank Mike]

I wasn't referring to you at all... And in fact my post really didn't refer to what you posted at all. That said...

Trump is every bit a part of the Wall Street elite which largely dictates US domestic policy. His position on tax and health care reform indicate he would do nothing at all to detract from the corporate-dominated financial set up which, for all his good intentions, Obama was forced to kow-tow to. Only Sanders seems prepared to antagonise corporate America... Which is precisely what it takes to be anything close to unorthodox in US presidential politics.

Watch through this short speech by his senior advisor from yesterday in Wisconsin if you think Trump is running to continue the establishment policies of corporate America, pop culture, and the political elite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1qOA2PVDS8

 

 

A lot of Americans basically yearn to return to the world of the 1950s when the USA was the dominant global economic power, but don't seem to realise that because North America wasn't bombed flat like most of Europe and large swathes of Asia were in WWII in the 1940s, it enjoyed a decade or two of a level of economic dominance that can never be repeated.

 

That's a bit simplistic. What Trump voters want is economic policy driven by what's best for the average people in the middle who want to work each day for a living, not the corporate elite or the non-working underclass. Too much of our policy over the past few decades seems targeted for the benefit of the rich and the expansion of the government dependent class at the same time.

[P45]

Why is Rubio not releasing his delegates?

 

I'm assume these guys would switch to Cruz.

[paul-r-cfc]

Why is Rubio not releasing his delegates?

I'm assume these guys would switch to Cruz.

Probably same reason he's not officially pulled out of the race. Just 'suspended' his campaign. Whatever he does with them could be very significant come the convention

[pclive]

While regrettable, the prominence of Trump is inevitable in a sense, see the following - 

 

http://moflomojo.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-tin-drumpf.html  

[Paco]

Another win for Bernie, 6 out of 7 now. Probably comes too late but Clinton's unpopularity shines through again.

Trump loses to Cruz by around 13%. Anyone know how Wisconsin was polling around, say, 2 weeks ago? Has the Cruz/abortion/campaign manager stuff actually had as big an impact as the media are claiming? I find it hard to trust any news reports about him. Is this actually the beginning of the end for Trump?

[FlyerTon]

Cruz looks good value at the minute at 12-1.

 

Someone saying it may come to a straight vote off between Cruz and Trump in July and Cruz could sneak it.

 

What would be Cruz' chances against Hilary Clinton?

 

http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics/us-presidential-election-2016/winner

 

Edit to add: I thought Cruz looked in his 50s but he's actually 45.

[Yank Mike]

Another win for Bernie, 6 out of 7 now. Probably comes too late but Clinton's unpopularity shines through again.

Trump loses to Cruz by around 13%. Anyone know how Wisconsin was polling around, say, 2 weeks ago? Has the Cruz/abortion/campaign manager stuff actually had as big an impact as the media are claiming? I find it hard to trust any news reports about him. Is this actually the beginning of the end for Trump?

Cruz was always going to win Wisconsin, but this was a good result for him. This loss significantly narrows Trump's path to a majority of delegates. However, he is  most likely going to win the next 6 states. New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Rhode Island. Cruz has next to zero appeal on the east coast. He's done well with Midwestern evangelicals and Mormons from heavily white areas. Everywhere else outside of his home state he gets crushed by Trump. After that if form holds Cruz will win big in Nebraska, Trump will win big in West Virginia, and Indiana will be interesting. Trump will then win New Mexico, California, and New Jersey. Cruz will win South Dakota and Montana. Washington and Oregon, who knows?

[Yank Mike]

Cruz looks good value at the minute at 12-1.

 

Someone saying it may come to a straight vote off between Cruz and Trump in July and Cruz could sneak it.

 

What would be Cruz' chances against Hilary Clinton?

 

http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics/us-presidential-election-2016/winner

 

Edit to add: I thought Cruz looked in his 50s but he's actually 45.

I still think there's a less than 50% chance Cruz gets the nomination even if the Republican Party steals it from Trump. And then in a race with Clinton I"m not sure which states won by Obama in both elections will flip to Cruz unless there is some major Clinton scandal development. A race against Sanders would be completely unpredictable. As my favorite sports radio host Tony Kornheiser (he would be left of center in his politics) keeps saying we could be facing a choice between a socialist who wants the government to own everything and an anarchist who wants to abolish the government. Lol. The old man is beside himself that such a thing has happened in America.

[P45]

It really has been a shite 2 week spell for Trump. Everyone is out to get him and it's working.

Not that long ago he had a 10+ point lead over Cruz in the WI polls. From that to getting pumped is a big turn around.

In the last week he's also down 10 points in the NY polls.

Public opinion is turning against him.

 

I can see easily see Cruz getting the nomination at a contested convention. I am convinced it won't be Trump. The GOP hate him.

[Yank Mike]

It really has been a shite 2 week spell for Trump. Everyone is out to get him and it's working.

Not that long ago he had a 10+ point lead over Cruz in the WI polls. From that to getting pumped is a big turn around.

In the last week he's also down 10 points in the NY polls.

Public opinion is turning against him.

 

I can see easily see Cruz getting the nomination at a contested convention. I am convinced it won't be Trump. The GOP hate him.

I'm not sure about those poll numbers, but the media was pretty consistant in saying Cruz was favored in Wisconsin ever since the last primary a couple weeks ago. The polls were fair consistant at 5-10% for Cruz during that time. Cruz does well where half of the Republican primary vote consists of evangelicals who live in counties which are entirely white, and that's basically the non-urban midwest. Trump does better than Cruz with white people in more diverse areas, with Catholics, mainline Protestants, and the non-Religious. Most of the states to go will be very hard territory for Cruz.

 

Cruz has zero path to winning the majority of delegates short of a massive Trump scandal, and the Republican Party hates him just as much as Trump. If they can take it away from both of them they will.

[Fotbawmad]

we could be facing a choice between a socialist who wants to take all our money and an anarchist who wants to abolish the government. Lol. The old man is beside himself that such a thing has happened in America.

I'm not exactly sure how Cruz can be "small government" when he's just as big on the military as all of the other candidates. The only genuine small government guy was Rand Paul, but Trump stole all his potential support. 

[Yank Mike]

I'm not exactly sure how Cruz can be "small government" when he's just as big on the military as all of the other candidates. The only genuine small government guy was Rand Paul, but Trump stole all his potential support. 

Yeah. If you are a doctrinaire libertarian then Cruz isn't an anarchist. But from the perspective of Tony Kornheiser (left of center old Jewish man who's lived his entire life in NYC and DC), Cruz is a barbarian from the provinces who wants to burn DC to the ground and abolish government. I suspect lots of people feel the same way about him.

 

I will say that Cruz probably rubs certain types of libertarians the wrong way with his tone and emphasis, but he is a genuine small government guy and a constitutional originalist. I suspect if he had dictatorial power to do as he pleased that he'd get rid of 75% of the non-defense federal government.

[P45]

In Cruz's winning WI speech he said he wanted to abolish the IRS. I'd say that a good step towards small government.

 

I see that some in the media are tipping Paul Ryan to win at the convention. It's maybe a bit early for that but if they are making noises about it then they must think Trump's campaign is starting to yaw.

[EdgarusQPFC]

In Cruz's winning WI speech he said he wanted to abolish the IRS. I'd say that a good step towards small government.

I see that some in the media are tipping Paul Ryan to win at the convention. It's maybe a bit early for that but if they are making noises about it then they must think Trump's campaign is starting to yaw.

I'm not surprised at all by this, he rarely gives a full answer to any question and he is all bluster. Sadly Clinton seems at this point likely to become the next president, I hope to be proven wrong though as she is a truly terrible human being

[Poet of the Macabre]

The only way Clinton isn't the next President is if Sanders wins the nomination. Absolutely no chance Cruz or Trump win a national.

[Yank Mike]

Trump is at 52% in the latest New York poll. Cruz is in 3rd. New York's statewide delegates are winner take all if somebody gets 50%, so this is a big deal for Trump. Other delegates are awarded by congressional district.

[Yank Mike]

Ann Coulter: Moonies for Cruz

 

Congratulations to Ted Cruz for winning his fourth primary! Usually Donald Trump wins the primaries -- where you go and vote, like in a real election. Cruz wins the caucuses -- run by the state parties, favored by political operators and cheaters.

Until now, the only primaries Cruz has won are in Texas (his home state), Oklahoma (basically the same state) and Idaho (where Trump never campaigned).

So now, Cruz has finally won an honest-to-goodness primary. This is great news for him, provided: (1) the general election is a caucus, and (2) the national media universally denounce Cruz's Democratic opponent the same way the Wisconsin media denounced Trump.

In that case, Cruz should do fine.

The Cruz-bots don't care. They don't care that they're being used as a cat's-paw by the Never Trump crowd, and that a brokered Republican convention is more likely to end with Bernie as the nominee than Cruz.

The Cruz cultists don't even care about plain honesty, which I always thought was a conservative value. Republicans used to be appalled by guttersnipe, lying political operators like the Clintons. Now they are guttersnipe, lying political operators like the Clintons.

It's all hands on deck to stop the only presidential candidate who wants to save America from the cheap labor plutocrats.

Cruz has flipped to Trump's side on every important political issue of this campaign -- which only ARE issues because of Trump. These are:

-- Quadrupling the number of foreign guest workers to help ranchers and farmers get cheap labor: Cruz was for it, and now is against it.

-- Legalizing illegal aliens: Cruz was for it, and now is against it.

 

-- The Trans-Pacific Partnership deal: Cruz was for it, and now is against it.

-- Building a wall: Cruz was against it, and now is for it.

These are all positions Cruz has changed since being a senator -- most of them he's flipped on only in the last year. I'm supposed to believe that U.S. senators can sincerely change their minds about policies it was their job to know about, but a New York developer can never change his mind about pop-offs he made more than a decade ago.

Back in 1999 -- 17 years ago -- when Donald Trump was considering a presidential run on the Reform Party ticket, he said this when asked about abortion by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press": "Well, look, I'm very pro-choice. I hate the concept of abortion. I hate it. I hate everything it stands for. I cringe when I listen to people debating the subject. But you still -- I just believe in choice."

Russert then asked him specifically if he'd ban partial-birth abortion. Trump said, "No. I am pro-choice in every respect and as far as it goes, but I just hate it."

A year later, Trump wrote in his book "The America We Deserve": "When Tim Russert asked me on 'Meet the Press' if I would ban partial-birth abortion, my pro-choice instincts led me to say no. After the show, I consulted two doctors I respect and, upon learning more about this procedure, I have concluded that I would indeed support a ban."

Sometime in the intervening 16 years, Trump became fully pro-life.

You can say you don't believe him -- just as you might say you don't believe Cruz has truly changed his mind on amnesty, the wall, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership, etc. But to claim Trump is pro-choice today -- present tense -- is what's known as a "lie."

But that's what Cruz says over and over again, including in a campaign ad -- and not one of those "super PAC" ads that count even less than a retweet. A Cruz ad plays the clip from that 1999 interview where Trump says, "I am pro-choice in every respect," repeats it three times, and then cuts to a narrator proclaiming: "For partial-birth abortion, not a conservative."

These are the kinds of lies that used to drive conservatives crazy when the Clintons did it. Not anymore. All's fair in smearing Trump.

Trump has said a million times that he'd scrap Obamacare and replace it with a free market system (which, by the way, he explains a lot more clearly than Washington policy wonks with their think-tank lingo). Merely for Trump saying that we're "not going to let people die, sitting in the middle of a street in any city in this country," Cruz accuses him of supporting "Bernie Sanders-style medicine."

Yes, because Trump is against people dying in the streets, Cruz says that Trump thinks "Obamacare didn't go far enough and we need to expand it to put the government in charge of our health care, in charge of our relationship with our doctors." Over and over again, Cruz has repeated this insane lie, telling Fox's Megyn Kelly: "If you want to see Bernie Sanders-style socialized medicine, Donald Trump is your guy."

Trump's alleged support for the kind of national health care they have in Scotland and Canada is another big fat lie. Trump was issuing his usual effusive praise before he drops the hammer -- "It actually works incredibly well in Scotland. Some people think it really works in Canada." Then he continued, in the very same sentence: "I don't think it would work as well here. What has to happen -- I like the concept of private enterprise coming in. ... You have to create competition."

Cruz and his cult-like followers lie about Trump wanting a health care system akin to Canada's and Scotland's. They lie about his supporting Obamacare. They lie about his supporting partial-birth abortion. They lie about his ever having been a Democrat. They lie about his campaign manager assaulting a female reporter.

I tried being nice after Florida, when it became clear that Trump was the choice of a majority of Republican voters, nearly choking on a column praising Cruz for his admirable flip-flops to Trump's positions on immigration and trade. I censored loads of anti-Cruz retweets. But -- as with the Clintons -- you offer these Cruz-bots an olive branch and they bite off your hand.

The next thing I knew, the Cruz cult was accusing Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski of criminal battery for brushing past a female reporter. Anyone who claims this video shows a "battery" is as big a liar as the liberals who lined up to say Clinton did not commit perjury when he denied having "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky.

If James Carville and Paul Begala had a baby, it would be a Cruz supporter.

 

They lie about my own tweaking of Trump -- I didn't like the Heidi retweet! -- amid a tidal wave of support. Trump is the only presidential candidate in my lifetime who will build a wall, deport illegals and pause the importation of Muslims. He's the only one who cares more about ordinary Americans than he does about globalist plutocrats. Does anyone really think I'm "tiring" of him because of a retweet?

Apparently, for slavishly devoted Cruz-bots, a normal human making a small criticism of her preferred candidate is unfathomable! That fact alone proves how dishonest they are about their own candidate.

I was under the misimpression that I was dealing with adults and not swine like Carville and Begala, willing to twist someone's words to win a momentary political advantage. Mostly, I was under the misimpression that honesty was still a conservative value.

[P45]

Trump is at 52% in the latest New York poll. Cruz is in 3rd. New York's statewide delegates are winner take all if somebody gets 50%, so this is a big deal for Trump. Other delegates are awarded by congressional district.

A

 

And I thought UK papers were biased.