The Implosion of Ted Cruz

I find the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency to be frightening.  That said, Ted Cruz in the White House is just as frightening given his loathsomeness and bigotry - and willingness to utterly prostitute himself to the Christofascists in the GOP base as underscored by his ongoing anti-transgender lies.  In deed, Lindsey Graham described the choice between Trump and Cruz as akin to deciding whether to be killed by a gunshot or poisoning.  Now, with Indiana voters going to the polls today, it appears that Cruz has begun to implode.  A column in the Washington Post looks at "Lucifer's" decline.  Here are excerpts:

In a case of exceptionally bad timing, Fiorina hitched herself to Cruz at precisely the moment his candidacy began to implode, as polls showed him fading in must-win Indiana before Tuesday’s vote. Fiorina’s previous criticism of Cruz and her checkered record at HP were again in the news.

It’s not Fiorina’s fault that news broke just after her “nomination” was announced that former House speaker John Boehner, still a popular figure in nearby Ohio, had called Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh” and a “miserable son of a bitch.” Nor was it Fiorina’s fault that Indiana Gov. Mike Pence on Friday gave Cruz such a tepid endorsement — he said that he “will be voting for Ted Cruz” but that “I particularly want to commend Donald Trump” — that Pence attempted a do-over in the form of an op-ed in the Indianapolis Star.

But if Fiorina picked investments the way she picked her candidate, you can see why HP stopped requiring her services. She bought Cruz at the peak, when polls showed him close in Indiana. But an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll Sunday found Trump up 15 points.

And now Cruz and Fiorina have to explain all those things she used to say about him: that “Cruz is just like any other politician”; that “there’s no honor in charging a hill that you know you can’t take, only casualties, although Ted Cruz maybe got name recognition and money”; and that it was “odd that Senator Ted Cruz did not renounce his dual Canadian citizenship until 2014.”

Cruz now also has to defend Fiorina’s record at HP, where she let go thousands and sent jobs to India and China. “Will the Cruz-Fiorina team do the same thing to Indiana that she did to Hewlett-Packard?” Fox News’s Chris Wallace asked Cruz on Sunday.

Fiorina was not standing at his shoulder later Monday, when he waded bravely into a group of Trump supporters outside his event. Cruz bravely tried to engage them in calm discussion. “Donald Trump is deceiving you. He is playing you for a chump,” Cruz said.

The Trump supporters taunted Cruz: “Do the math. . . . Time to drop out. . . . You are the problem, politician. . . . Where’s your Goldman Sachs jacket? . . . Lyin’ like you always do. . . . Are you Canadian?” America, one said, would be a better country “without you.”

If Cruz hadn’t established himself as a singularly unlikable candidate, one could almost have felt sorry for him in that moment. He needed urgently for Fiorina to sing more Ethel Merman . . . 

Being Trump's VP Choice - Like Buying a Ticket on the Titanic?

For the better part of three decades or more the Republican Party has coddled, pandered to and embraced Christian extremists and those most motivated by hatred of others being it based on race, national origin, or sexual orientation.  The goal?  Short term election victories based on voters motivated by animus towards others.  Yet now, the so-called GOP establishment continues to display revulsion toward the natural outcome of the seeds that it sowed: Donald Trump.  In a column in the New York Times George Will - who seems to be becoming a slightly milder version of Pat Buchanan - is urging Republicans to do all they can to keep Trump out of the White House while striving to minimize the potential down ticket carnage he and others fear Trump would bring in November. Indeed, Will even speculated on who would be the best VP choice for Hillary Clinton to insure a Trump defeat (he likes Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio).

Now, a piece in the Times looks at the manner in which many in the GOP are fleeing from the prospect of being Trump's vice presidential running mate - something Senator Lindsey Graham equates to "buying a ticket on the Titanic."  Will in his column states that any Trump VP choice will be inherently unqualified because no one qualified would want the position and electoral doom.  Perhaps I am too much the cynic, but I am finding great pleasure in seeing the GOP reap the whirlwind of its own creation.  Here are highlights from the New York Times piece:

It’s a time-honored tradition for politicians to deny any interest in the vice presidency. But this year, with the possibility of Donald J. Trump as the Republican nominee, they really mean it.

“Never,” said Chris Schrimpf, a spokesman for Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who is still running against Mr. Trump. “No chance.”

Or, as Senator Lindsey Graham put it, “That’s like buying a ticket on the Titanic.”

A remarkable range of leading Republicans, including Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, have been emphatic publicly or with their advisers and allies that they do not want to be considered as Mr. Trump’s running mate. The recoiling amounts to a rare rebuke for a front-runner: Politicians usually signal that they are not interested politely through back channels, or submit to the selection process, if only to burnish their national profiles.

But Mr. Trump has a singular track record of picking fights with obvious potential running mates like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who has indicated a lack of interest in the vice presidency generally and has yet to reconcile with Mr. Trump publicly. Ms. Haley and another potential pick, Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico, have sharply criticized Mr. Trump at recent party gatherings and do not want to be associated with his sometimes-angry tone, according to advisers and close associates who have spoken with these Republicans.

Several Republican consultants said their clients were concerned that Mr. Trump’s unusually high unfavorable ratings with all voters and his unpopularity among women and Hispanics could doom him as a general election candidate and damage their own future political prospects if they were on his ticket.

A cross section of leading Republicans agree that his most sensible choice would be an experienced female governor or senator, given that he would most likely face Hillary Clinton in November and need support from a majority of white women to offset her strong support among blacks and Hispanics. Yet Mrs. Clinton is currently ahead of Mr. Trump with white women by double-digit percentages, according to a recent CBS poll.

The pool of Republican women in major offices is relatively small, and Mr. Trump has already alienated some of them. Governor Haley denounced him for not quickly disavowing support from the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and Governor Martinez has criticized his remarks about Hispanics.

Is Donald Trump Suffering From Delusional Senile Dementia?

Donald Trump set off his latest firestorm by saying that women who have abortions need to be punished.  He quickly tried to walk back the comment with little success, and deservedly so.  Since the beginning of his campaign, Trump has demonstrated that he speaks and thinks later.  The question is, whether he does so deliberately to merely excite his low education, low knowledge base of support or whether his rash behavior is a symptom of something else.  Something call delusional senile dementia.  If it is the later, as a piece in Daily Kos argues, the specter of a Trump presidency is truly frightening.  Here are column excerpts (read it and share your thoughts):

Watching the very public meltdown of Donald Trump over the past few months could serve as a useful tool for academic research into dementia and brain disease. When looking objectively at the symptoms commonly associated with dementia it is hard not to consider Trump a likely candidate for such a diagnosis. What follows is an exploration of the three most prominent symptoms of dementia and their relationship to Trump's behavior.

Impaired judgment

From the very beginning of his of campaign for the Republican nomination for president, Trump engaged in outbursts that were hostile and irrational. His assertion that the immigrant population in the U.S. was the result of Mexico sending over rapists and murderers was untethered to reality. And that was just the first day. Trump went on to disparage Sen. John McCain, saying that he was not a war hero; he charged that Megyn Kelly's questions during a Fox News debate were unfair because she was menstruating; he proposed a ban on all Muslims from entering the country; he had a prominent Latino journalist ejected from his rally; he told a reporter that he isn't bothered by comparisons to Hitler . . .

Trump's birtherism with regard to President Obama is another illustration of a severe mental failing. There has never been a single bit of information that showed anything other than that Obama was born in the U.S. to a U.S. citizen. Nevertheless, Trump continues to doubt the truth of this.

These are all examples of behavior that is inconsistent with rational judgment. They have no basis in fact and cannot be portrayed as constructive methods of expressing oneself. Those who would argue that Trump's showing in the polls validates his conduct are missing the point. Regardless of the result, these actions are not indicative of a rational mind.

Loss of Memory

Trump has frequently bragged that he has"one of the best memories of all time." However, that boast has been utterly demolished by his own words and actions. One notable example was his insistence that he had seen television reporting of "thousands and thousands" of Muslims celebrating the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. That was an invented memory because there is no evidence that it occurred, despite the fact that television footage of such an event would be easily retrievable.

Trump's memory was also noticeably deficient when he recently began hammering Ted Cruz as a "nasty guy" and "the single biggest liar" he ever met. Just three months ago he was lauding Cruz and floating him as a possible VP pick. Similarly he once praised Hillary Clinton as a “terrific” woman and a great Secretary of State. Now he is saying that she was the “worst Secretary of State in history.” . . . 

Childish Behavior

This is perhaps the symptom least in need of elaboration, but here goes anyway. Trump is the most juvenile presidential candidate in this nation's history. He lashes out with infantile insults about people's looks and character. If he is criticized he will punch back with baseless, often unrelated, rebuttals. And that's when he isn't throwing tantrums like when he ditched the Fox News debate. Everyone who doesn't exhibit unrestrained adoration is an enemy who is out to destroy him.

Trump has the ego of four year old who believes the world revolves around him. The parts of his campaign stump speeches that aren't attacks on his rivals are comprised primarily of bragging about how great he is at everything and how high his poll numbers are. The rest of his rhetoric, when put through the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, scored at the third grade level. Of course, that’s probably still somewhat higher than most of his Tea-vangelical supporters.

His immature outbursts, his brazen narcissism, and his faulty cognition, are all indications of senility.

National Enquirer Claims To Have A Scoop On Ted Cruz Sex Scandal

Just when you thought the circus that is the Republican Party presidential primary could not get any more bizarre and ugly, the National Inquiry is about to drop a story about Ted Cruz's supposed mistresses.  Some think the story a little bit too convenient and smell the sent of Donald Trump mischief.  Personally, I don't know why anyone of either gender would want to have sexual contact with Cruz - he is repulsive!  The thought of him naked makes me want to vomit.  That said, it should be noted that it is ALWAYS the "family values" Republicans who wear their religiosity on their sleeves and condemn gays that are the ones caught having affairs themselves.  Crooks and Liars looks at the National Inquirer story.  Here are highlights:

The National Enquirer is dropping a big story which claims to have dirt on Ted Cruz and his alleged extramarital affairs with women, some of who are colleagues and others who are not.

According to the tabloid:

“Private detectives are digging into at least five affairs Ted Cruz supposedly had,” claimed a Washington insider.

“The leaked details are an attempt to destroy what’s left of his White House campaign!”

The ENQUIRER reports that Cruz’s claimed mistresses include a foxy political consultant and a high-placed D.C. attorney!

How conveeeeeeenient.

The pictures they weakly disguise are pretty easy to match up with people. The image above suggests that Katrina Pierson is one of his so-called mistresses, as well as others.

It feels to me like Trump dropped a whole lot of garbage over at the Enquirer to discredit Ted Cruz, and that sense is backed up even more by the fact that one of the lovely ladies is supposedly Donald Trump's spokeswoman. That's just a little too convenient.

Still, it certainly seems to have lit up the right wing blogosphere a bit, particularly those who reside in the Trump camp.

Here's the thing. As much as I discredit almost anything coming from the National Enquirer, they are occasionally right when they report this stuff. They were correct about John Edwards, for example.

It's hearsay at this point, but it leaves a nice pile of grist for the rumor mill.

And of course, everyone who goes to the supermarket and actually believes these rags will see that headline splashed across the checkout line while waiting to pay for their groceries.  That could make for an interesting back and forth between Trump and Cruz.

This is the kind of innuendo the right wing usually reserves for the left. Like the story Michael Savage amplified about Scalia being murdered in his bed, for example. Whether or not it's true, they'll just shrug and say, "It's out there!"

The imploding Campaign of Marco Rubio

Given the implosion of his campaign and disastrous performance in the last round of Republican primaries/caucuses, it is ironic that Marco Rubio, a/k/a Marcobot, for a time was seen as potentially the biggest threat to Hillary Clinton.  As has so often has happened in this campaign cycle, pundits and members of the GOP establishment must be asking themselves WTF was I thinking.  At least one article in the Washington Post tracks the full on implosion of Marcobot to his decision to engage in childish insults and immature behavior in attacking Donald Trump which proved that Rubio is anything but presidential material.   Here are highlights:

Marco Rubio had suffered three electoral thumpings in a row when the senator from Florida and his image-makers abruptly shifted strategy. The aspirational candidate, whose presidential campaign was built on a promise of generational change and Republican unity, would morph overnight into Donald Trump’s chief assailant.

Rubio launched what he and his team felt was an imperative assault on the front-runner at the Houston debate on Feb. 25. The next morning at a Dallas rally, he mocked Trump mercilessly. Rubio whipped out his iPhone and, with boyish glee, read aloud the billionaire mogul’s misspelled tweets. He made fun of Trump’s makeup and “sweat mustache,” and suggested the mogul had wet his pants.

For the next three days, Rubio’s crude schoolyard taunts continued: over Trump’s made-in-China suits, his “horrible spray tan” and his small hands — a quip that, as Trump would later explain on the debate stage in Detroit, implied something else was small, too.

Rubio’s benefactors were aghast to see their candidate practicing Trump’s gutter politics. “Everyone went, ‘What?. . . Why are you going down to that level?’ ” recalled one fundraiser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly. “You might as well support Trump.” 

Looking back, Rubio’s supporters see these fateful days as central to his unraveling. A strategy designed to get under Trump’s skin and force him on the defensive instead backfired on Rubio, diminishing the 44-year-old senator who had spent years trying to demonstrate presidential gravitas. At rally after rally, Rubio was unintentionally personifying the caricature that Trump was perpetually drawing of him: “Little Marco.”

The results were not pretty. Rubio lost 18 of the next 20 contests,  . . . The ultimate humiliation came on Tuesday, when Rubio performed so poorly in four states — he got just 5 percent in Mississippi — that he was shut out from gaining any delegates.

A  cloud of fatalism now hovers over his campaign. Aides on Wednesday tried to beat back rumors he would quit the race — perhaps before Thursday’s CNN debate in Miami. Donors exchanged grim messages about Rubio’s fate in Florida, where his campaign, short on cash, is running no advertisements. New polls showed him trailing Trump here badly.

Supporters in the small and subdued Hialeah crowd all but conceded defeat. “I’ve been around for a long time,” said Sal Pittelli, 70. “And you can smell the flop sweat.

Rubio’s backers on Capitol Hill tried to show a united front of optimism amid the negative chatter. . . . . Other Rubio associates were downright despondent. They were reticent to speak openly because they did not want to damage their friend’s prospects, but one confessed privately, “I don’t see how this campaign continues.”

There are a multitude of reasons to account for Rubio’s collapse: . . . .  another reason is that Rubio has no natural base. In the sprawling field, he was never the most experienced establishment-friendly candidate (that was Bush), nor the most conservative ideological warrior (Cruz), nor the rebellious outsider (Trump).

I can't feel much sympathy for Rubio who has demonstrated that he will say and do anything in an effort to win and to pander to the ugliest elements of the GOP base.  Perhaps Marcobot needs to go back to dancing at foam parties in gay clubs.  He might be more believable. 

Stopping the GOP Apocalypse

But for the danger posed to the country, the hand wringing among Republicans over the Party's descent into insanity and the rise of Donald Trump might be almost humorous.  Certainly well deserved misfortune.  A piece in The Daily Beast joins the chorus of those lamenting the situation and proposing a means to block a Trump nomination.  The piece which equates the GOP with European powers bumbling their way into World War I fails, however, to concede that the current state of affairs was self-created and is the result of years of pandering to lunatics and extremists, not some chance mistake.  Here are column highlights:. 

These are, as the Chinese curse goes, interesting times. In a Republican presidential debate, the leading candidate defends the size of his penis and attacks the Constitution, asserting that he will order the U.S. military to commit war crimes. A few days earlier the same candidate said on national television that he had to “do research” on the KKK, David Duke, and white supremacism before he could take a position. During the week, the frontrunner threatened Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, because the Post had dared write articles he thought critical. “And believe me, if I become president,” Trump said, “oh, do they have problems. They’re going to have such problems.”

Welcome to Donald Trump’s world. Trump isn’t the first ridiculous character to run for president—Al Sharpton ran for the Democratic nomination in 2004—nor the first openly bigoted candidate—George Wallace ran for president three times. But Trump is the first ridiculous, openly bigoted candidate who stands a very good chance to win a major party’s nomination.

How did this happen? 

It’s everyone’s fault and no one’s fault. There were some who welcomed Trump onto the presidential scene, confident that he could help scold an out-of-touch establishment slow to grasp the problems of a troubled America. In a July 2015 Politico piece, National Review editor Rich Lowry wrote that Trump had hit “on an important truth that typical politicians either don’t know or simply fear to speak. “When Mexico sends its people,” Trump said, “they’re not sending their best.” That’s obviously true,” wrote Lowry who compared him to “Herman Cain squared—an early-nominating-season phenomenon with a massive media megaphone.”

By January, Lowry’s magazine was dedicating an entire issue to the urgency of stopping the threat of Trump, who “would destroy the conservative movement.” And I was just as wrong, if not more so. I wrote that facing a loss in Iowa, Trump’s ego would tilt him toward leaving the stage before being proven a loser. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

For various reasons, the Republican candidates have enabled Trump’s rise, slow to launch a concerted attack, largely giving him a clear path. Each candidate seemed more obsessed with this currently popular but insane notion of winning a “lane” rather than winning a race, while Trump was focused on winning a race.

Logic dictates that the remaining candidates should focus on holding Trump as far below 1,237 as possible, with the goal of pushing the convention to a second ballot. While some speculate a second ballot might be a scenario for a new candidate like Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan to enter the race, that strikes me as unlikely. The far more plausible outcome would find two candidates joining together to form a ticket, pooling delegates to get over 1,237.

There are rules for securing the nomination, and as long as the rules are adhered to, the game has been played fairly. In 1976, the great conservative Ronald Reagan took his fight to the convention and came within one delegation (Mississippi’s) of defeating a sitting Republican president, Jerry Ford. Surely if a convention strategy is good enough to challenge a Republican president, it’s good enough to challenge a major Clinton donor like Donald Trump.

As the process moves into a slate of winner-take-all states, the key to the convention strategy—call it the Reagan Strategy, not the brokered convention strategy—is for Rubio and Kasich to win their home states. But in what strikes me as a bizarre move, Ted Cruz is moving resources to Florida and attacking Marco Rubio on the air. Why? Does Cruz think he can win Florida? It seems the longest of shots. Much more likely is that he helps hand the state to Donald Trump. That will all but finish any chance Cruz has of becoming the Republican nominee.

So the madness and miscalculation apparently continues. The Republican Party is lurching toward the Somme, where death and destruction will replace hopes for a November victory. Dig your trench. Get your gas mask. The boys aren’t going to be home by Christmas.

The GOP's Growing Desperation

As noted in a post yesterday, Donald Trump represents the end result of the Republican Party's years of fear mongering against blacks, gays, non-Christians, Muslims and anyone else the largely lily white GOP base deems to be "other."   Now, these authoritarian loving sheeple are looking for a dictatorial strong man to protect them from the many menaces that the GOP has fabricated and preached against for years.  Now, having created the atmosphere for the rise of someone like Trump - or Hitler in 1930's Germany - the GOP is desperate to find someone who can defeat the Frankenstein monster that has been created.   As a column in the Washington Post notes, there seems to be no one up to that challenge.  Here are column highlights:

The Republican Party is on the verge of being taken over by an egomaniac who appeals to the nation’s darkest impulses. Yet Donald Trump’s foes are splintered, tactically but also philosophically.

It doesn’t help that each of his three serious challengers is a flawed alternative. None is sufficiently dominant to force the others aside.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has the most legitimate claim as a Trump-slayer. He’s now beaten him in four contests. Yet Cruz is so disliked by so many party leaders that they have refused to rally behind him. Indeed, many in the GOP view Cruz as being nearly as vulnerable to Hillary Clinton as Trump is. 

The Republican establishment plainly prefers Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), but voters have not gone along. Rubio did manage to win the Minnesota caucuses. But he ran third in eight of the other 10 states that voted Tuesday and has lost 14 times since the nomination battle began.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich may well be the party’s strongest potential general-election candidate. But his relative moderation has marginalized him in an increasingly right-wing party.

But the difficulty Republicans have in identifying a single candidate to take Trump down speaks to a deeper problem. Its leaders have yet to decide whether Trump’s greatest sin is that he exploits bigotry or that he fails to bow to conservative ideological orthodoxy.

While conservatives such as Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) have brought the two strands together, there is ambivalence about how to go after Trump because the party itself has often played at backlash politics around race and immigration — and because, throughout President Obama’s tenure, it has embraced Trump as an ally in stirring resentment on the far right. 

Moreover, some of Trump’s most extreme positions have won wide approval from the Republican rank-and-file. For example, exit polls reported by CNN and The Post found broad backing for his temporary ban on Muslims from entering the United States: It was favored by 78 percent of Republican primary voters in Alabama, 67 percent in Texas and 63 percent in Virginia.

It’s true that anti-Trump Republicans found common ground in excoriating Trump for his equivocation in condemning the Ku Klux Klan and the racist leader David Duke. “This party does not prey on people’s prejudices,” insisted House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) . In fact, the party has subtly and not so subtly played on racial resentment — birtherism, the claim that Obama is a Muslim, Ronald Reagan’s famous “welfare queen” reference — for decades. Trump is just cruder about it.

And blocking Trump now would enrage his army of followers and prove to them that the party is every bit as distant from their concerns as their hero has been saying.

Donald Trump and the Hypocrisy of Evangelical Christians

Trump and possible First Lady Melania Trump - Trump's "family values"

As regular readers know, I hold a very low view of Evangelical Christians who, in my opinion, are best defined by their lies, hypocrisy, bigotry and selfishness.   The reality of what these people are in fact versus they image they try to project.  Now, with evangelicals flocking to the banner of Donald Trump, we are seeing just how phony their claims of supporting "family values" are in fact.  Just as they have the highest divorce rate in America (funny how they ignore Jesus' admonition on divorce but cling to anti-gay passages in Leviticus).  Trump is twice divorced, doesn't attend church regularly and is crass and vulgar in his speech, all of which underscores the real attraction for evangelicals: his strident bigotry, racism, and xenophobia.  The New York Times looks at Trump and his evangelical supporters.  Here are excerpts:

In speeches, including one in Oklahoma City on Friday, Mr. Trump almost never talks about issues that politicians seeking evangelical support thunder about: abortion, religious liberty and, recently, the appointment of a conservative Supreme Court justice.

Practically the only part of a Trump stump speech aimed at faith-driven voters is a promise that shopkeepers will again be able to say Merry Christmas. It is one of his most reliable applause lines.

Mr. Trump is winning with evangelicals, as he does with other Republican primary voters, by promising uncompromising immigration and trade policies and a hard-driving leadership style. “Evangelicals see all that’s going down, and they just like somebody to be strong and stern and consistent on issues,” said J. Hogan Gidley, who was a senior adviser to Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas and onetime Baptist pastor, before Mr. Huckabee quit the race.

A CBS News poll of Republican primary voters nationally this month showed Mr. Trump leading Mr. Cruz among evangelicals 33 percent to 22 percent.

In South Carolina, where Mr. Trump won a commanding victory, earning all 50 delegates, he carried evangelicals by six percentage points over Mr. Cruz and 11 percentage points over Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, according to exit polls. 

After Mr. Cruz’s brutal South Carolina loss, his campaign manager, Jeff Roe, re-emphasized a Southern strategy, the cornerstone of Mr. Cruz’s campaign since he announced he was running. “We’re going to have a big night on March 1 in an electoral map that favors us,” Mr. Roe said.

But even though Mr. Cruz won a plurality of evangelicals in the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1, he faces uncertain prospects in Oklahoma and other Bible Belt states that will vote on Tuesday. Polls show him trailing Mr. Trump in Oklahoma, Georgia and Alabama.

“Not everybody is going to follow just because we say this is what we suggest you do,” said Bob Vander Plaats, a leader of the Christian right in Iowa who is a national co-chairman of the Cruz campaign.

He expressed frustration that so-called values voters were giving Mr. Trump a pass on issues about his character, such as his mocking of women, as well as his conservative credentials. Mr. Vander Plaats suggested that they were “either hypocritical or uninformed or maybe not interested.”

“It’s not just three marriages,” he said, listing what he called Mr. Trump’s breaks from conservatism. They included donating to Democrats in the past and once suggesting that his sister, a federal judge who struck down a ban on partial-birth abortions in New Jersey, could make a good Supreme Court justice.

Again, how do you explain his appeal to the supposed "godly folk"?  He is peddling open racism, nativism, and a gospel of greed.  Plus, he provides the authoritarianism that the sheeple of the Christian Right love: someone who will tell them what to do and think whle disingenuously playing them for fools..   .  

GOP's Scott Rigell - Vote for Anyone Other Than Trump

I hold no love for retiring GOP Congressman Scott Rigell - who in his first campaign was endorsed by an anti-gay hate group leader, but even Rigell seems to understand that the Republican Party has become akin to a dangerous rabid dog that is best personified by the rise of Donald Trump.  Hence Rigell's "Open letter to Virginia Republicans" which urges voters to vote for anyone other than Donald Trump.  The tipping point for Rigell seems to have been Trump's refusal to disavow David Duke and the KKK.  Despite Trump's attempt to pretend he did not know who Duke is, old interviews reveal that Trump knows exactly who Duke is and what he stands for.  Here are highlights from Rigell's denunciation of Trump: 

Never before have I grabbed a word like catastrophic to make a political point.  It's like pulling a fire alarm; if you do it, there had better be a fire.  There is a fire and it's raging within our Republican party.  I am convinced that if Donald Trump becomes our nominee, the harm done to our party would be nothing short of catastrophic. 

I reject Trump as our nominee based on his judgement, temperament and character, all of which point to a reckless, embarrassing and ultimately dangerous presidency.   

Just this past Sunday, Trump's poor judgment was on display.  He failed not once, not twice, but three times to denounce the KKK and its onetime leader, the infamous racist, David Duke.  Looking a bit confused when asked about the KKK and Duke, Trump pleaded ignorance.  What void must exist in the heart of a person who when asked about the KKK has to struggle for even a moment as to what his position is?  And what void must be present in the mind of a would-be president who is unapologetic in quoting Mussolini and states publicly that he admires Putin? 

Perhaps it is because Putin is a dictator.  Trump's pledge that he will build a wall and make Mexico pay for it certainly reflects a dictator's mindset.  Mexico will not pay for a wall, nor should it, and it's reckless for Trump to make that claim.

 

Through these and other bizarre statements we have come to know Trump.  We have seen how he draws from a putrid well in making his case for his candidacy.  He rarely debates but chooses instead to belittle. On the trail he caricatured the physical challenges that a respected reporter has to overcome every day of his life.  The terms he used in reference to a female news anchor cannot be printed here, nor are they uttered in my home.

 

So what kind of role model would Trump be to the next generation of Republicans?  Short on ideas?  Belittle your adversary! Need an edge on the disadvantaged?  Mock them!  Want others to think you're a strong leader when running for a party leadership position?  Just keeping jabbing your finger in your opponent's face!  Have differences with a veteran?  Challenge his honor and service to our country!

 

It all leads to one clear, irrefutable conclusion:  Trump is a bully, unworthy of our nomination.  My love for our country eclipses my loyalty to our party, and to live with a clear conscience I will not support a nominee so lacking in the judgement, temperament and character needed to be our nation's commander-in-chief.  Accordingly, if left with no alternative, I will not support Trump in the general election should he become our Republican nominee.

Everything I have learned in life about leadership, about business, and about our incredible country tells me to pull every alarm in the house.  A con man is among us.  With great respect I implore you, my fellow Republicans, to vote for any candidate but Donald Trump. 

 Wow!  I must admit, this makes me have a respect for Rigell that I never had previously.  One can only hope that sane Republicans will follow his lead and oppose Trump should he win the GOP nomination. 

Has The Republican Party’s Implosion Arrived?

A number of years ago I was a member of the Republican Party of Virginia Beach city committee and precinct chair for the Alanton precinct, historically a Republican bastion.  I held these positions for nearly eight (8) years.  On top of this activism, I grew up in a family of Republicans that stretched back to my grandparents or longer.  In those days, being a Republican meant one respected knowledge, respected science and education, sought a fiscally conservative government and had no desire to police other peoples' bedrooms. Then something began to happen: far right Christians who wanted to police everyone's bedroom and force their religious beliefs, including biblical literalism, on all members of society - I call them Christofscists - began to be elected to the city committee.  Next racist comments began to become more acceptable.  Then white supremacy became acceptable.  Slowly and steadily, the Republican Party ceased to be what it had once been.  When the fusion of far right religious extremism and party positions began to become complete, in revulsion, I resigned from the Republican Party.  

All of this occurred quite a number of years ago and in the intervening years things only got worse. Now, with the rise of Donald trump and to a lesser extent, Ted Cruz the perversion of the GOP has become nearly complete. Hate, bigotry, and ignorance are embraced and we are on the tipping point where Republicans have held their noses and voted Republican may be no longer able to so do. When their exodus begins, the GOP may finally implode and finish its self-destruction that cynical elites allowed to happen as they chased short term, cynical electoral gains.  The cancer has spread and metastasized.  The Frankenstein monster that is now the party base can no longer be controlled.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this coming implosion.  Here are highlights:  

The implosion over Donald Trump’s candidacy that Republicans had hoped to avoid arrived so virulently this weekend that many party leaders vowed never to back the billionaire and openly questioned whether the GOP could come together this election year.

At a moment when Republicans had hoped to begin taking on Hillary Clinton — who is seemingly on her way to wrapping up the Democratic nomination — the GOP has instead become consumed by a crisis over its identity and core values that is almost certain to last through the July party convention, if not the rest of the year.

A campaign full of racial overtones and petty, R-rated put-downs grew even uglier Sunday after Trump declined repeatedly in a CNN interview to repudiate the endorsement of him by David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Trump had disavowed Duke at a news conference on Friday, but he stammered when asked about Duke on Sunday.

The fracas comes as the presidential race enters a potentially determinative month of balloting, beginning with primaries and caucuses in 11 states on Tuesday. As the campaign-trail rhetoric grew noxious over the weekend, a sense of fatalism fell over the Republican firmament, from elected officials and figureheads to major donors and strategists.

The choice for voters is not simply one of preference but rather a fundamental one about the direction they want to take the country, with the insurgent Trump promising utter transformation.

“For many Republicans, Trump is more than just a political choice,” said Kevin Madden, a veteran operative who advised 2012 nominee Mitt Romney. “It’s a litmus test for character.”

Madden, like some of his peers, said he could never vote for Trump. If he is the nominee, Madden said, “I’m prepared to write somebody in so that I have a clear conscience.”

More splintering came late Sunday when freshman Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who has been a vocal Trump critic, declared on Twitter that if the reality TV star is nominated, he will “look for some 3rd candidate — a conservative option, a Constitutionalist.”

“It’s scary,” South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has endorsed Rubio, said on ABC’s “This Week.” She added: “I think what he’ll do to the Republican Party is really make us question who we are and what we’re about. And that’s something we don’t want to see happen.”

Then there’s the question of whether Trump’s fiercely loyal base of backers would shift their allegiance to Rubio or one of the other candidates — Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Ohio Gov. John Kasich or retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson — were Trump to lose the nomination.

The GOP base is now uncontrollable.  Indeed, the party base looks frighteningly similar to those in Germany who flocked to the Nazi banner as  Adolph Hitler vowed to make Germany great again after its disastrous defeat in World War I and the post war aftermath - even though Germany had brought that disaster on itself by going to war in a war that was avoidable.  If America is no longer great, it is because of the GOP's failed policies, a senseless and avoidable war in Iraq, and a financial market melt down spurred by GOP favored deregulation.  Obama gets blamed by Republicans, yet he has done a remarkable job in turning the country around in the face of Republican obstructionism fro day one of Obama's presidency.  

Far Right Leaders Hedging on Support for Ted Cruz?

There's drama on the Democratic side of the presidential contest, but nothing like the circus that continues on the Republican side where focus from various perspectives seems aimed at stopping Donald trump.  From the outset of the GOP contest Ted Cruz has sought to secure the support of the most extreme far right and Christofascist factions.  Now, with Cruz perceived to be faltering, some of the extremists seem poised to bail on Cruz (who I continue to view as creepy and utterly unprincipled).  National Review looks at the rumors of a jump from Cruz to Rubio by these ugly elements.  Here are highlights:

A group of conservative activist leaders that voted late last year to endorse Ted Cruz over Marco Rubio held a conference call Tuesday to re-evaluate their positions based on new developments in the Republican presidential race, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation. 

 

The upshot: If Cruz is not successful on Super Tuesday — by carrying his native Texas at the least — some of his prominent backers are prepared to defect to Rubio. The call was held by members of The GROUP, a secretive cabal of prominent conservatives led by the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins and the Senate Conservatives Fund’s Ken Cuccinelli. The outfit has endeavored since late 2014 to coalesce “the movement” of grassroots activists nationwide behind a single GOP candidate, hoping to prevent a splintering of the conservative vote that would allow a more moderate Republican to clinch the nomination.

Not all members were invited to the discussion, which was apparently guarded from Cruz’s most loyal backers. Perkins, who did not respond to repeated calls seeking comment before this story’s publication, said afterward he was not aware of any conference call, and said there isn’t “a snowball’s chance” that he will support Rubio. (He also said any suggestion of Cruz’s allies abandoning him are “lies from the Rubio camp.” In fact, the call and recent conversations surrounding it were confirmed by multiple sources, including those not aligned with Rubio.) 

 

 The GROUP voted in early December on an endorsement, and after five rounds of balloting Cruz clinched the 75 percent super majority needed for members to publicly support him. 

 

That support, which included an endorsement from Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, helped lift Cruz to a victory in Iowa’s caucuses. But in the weeks since, doubts have arisen about Cruz’s “emotional connection” with the base, his backers say, and concerns have mounted about the “liar” label sticking to the Texas senator. Cruz’s key allies in the conservative movement have gone into damage-control mode, assuring nervous supporters of his continued viability. But even some of Cruz’s strongest advocates, such as GROUP member and longtime activist Richard Viguerie, have in recent private conversations confessed to doubts. 

 

Then came Saturday night. Cruz’s deflating third-place finish in South Carolina — where he unexpectedly lost the evangelical vote to Trump — landed like a thud on his activist allies, many of whom watched the election returns together in California at a weekend-long meeting of the Council for National Policy.

The Texas senator’s poor showing in South Carolina, particularly among evangelicals there — he finished six points behind Trump, and only five points ahead of Rubio — emboldened Rubio backers at the CNP gathering to question Cruz’s prospects moving forward. And Cruz’s own supporters were forced to acknowledge ominous shortcomings for a candidate whose path to the nomination runs directly through states that are ideologically akin to South Carolina.

Cruz supporters conceded that his path forward is suddenly murky, and lamented that Trump — with an assist from Rubio — had successfully upended their candidate’s core message of trustworthiness. They also complained that Cruz has not forged a personal connection with the Republican base, without which they fear his absolutist positions and organizational strength are hollow.

Rubio’s backers inside The GROUP, who by rule have remained publicly silent due to Cruz winning a supermajority of their fellow members, have not yet pushed for release from their vow of non-support. But they are laying the groundwork for a mass defection to Rubio should Cruz collapse on Super Tuesday. Particular attention is being paid to Texas, Cruz’s make-or-break home state, where an Emerson poll Wednesday showed him ahead — but Trump and Rubio within the margin of error.

If Cruz doesn’t at least deliver Texas on Tuesday, sources involved with the discussions say, there is a chance that some high-profile conservatives will begin jumping ship to Rubio and pressuring Cruz to exit the race.

As for Tony Perkins' denails, don't believe them.  The man is a pathological liar in my view and an opportunist looking to further his own interest and that of the hate group, FRC.

 

The End of the Bush Dynasty?

I never have been a fan of Jeb Bush - or any of the Bush clan for that matter, especially the cretinous George W. Bush who brought so much otherwise avoidable misfortune on the nation. After his drubbing in South Carolina, it seems that even whacked out members of the GOP base were unwilling to give the Bush dynasty another chance to harm the country.  Too many of those of an older age remember the contrast between the Clinton White House years and the last Bush's misrule and national disaster.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at how Jeb went down the drain while Hillary Clinton has managed to stay relevant.  Here are highlights:

The Clinton political dynasty is still alive. The Bush dynasty has been routed. Their contrasting fates, to this point at least, tell us much about our two parties, the nature of this year’s presidential election, and the dueling legacies themselves.

The Republican and Democratic contests are very different, beginning with the fact that Hillary Clinton did not have to deal with Donald Trump, who targeted Jeb Bush with a viciousness rarely seen in contemporary politics. For months, the self-contained former Florida governor responded ineffectually to an opponent who flouted all the norms. This only made it easier for Trump to mock him as “low energy” and “weak.”

Bush was also entitled to a certain bitterness as he watched Marco Rubio, his ambitious and impatient protege, seize his natural base in the party: voters who loathe both Trump and Ted Cruz. Rubio’s definition of loyalty did not include yielding to his one-time mentor. . . .  his efforts came too late, and were, in any event, out of tune with so many in a party eager to respond to angry and exclusionary rhetoric.

Clinton now faces only one opponent, and Bernie Sanders, especially in contrast to the often thuggish behavior of Republican candidates toward each other, has been positively courtly. Building a durable progressive wing of the Democratic Party clearly matters more to him than scoring points off Clinton.

In a party whose election victories are increasingly dependent on heavy turnout among younger voters (when they don’t show up, the Democrats lose, as they did in 2010 and 2014), Sanders has overwhelmed Clinton among those under 45. He did it again in Nevada’s caucuses on Saturday.

Endurance under trial is a defining characteristic of a Clinton brand that also has the benefit of being less established than the Bush trademark. The Clintons have been in the public consciousness since 1992. Bushes have been in presidential politics since 1980 and on the national stage since 1952, when Prescott Bush, Jeb’s grandfather, entered the U.S. Senate. If the Clintons aren’t exactly Facebook, neither are they General Motors or Studebaker. 

And while frustration on the Democratic left with Bill Clinton’s pro-business policies has fed support for Sanders, the antipathy to both Bush presidencies on the Republican right runs far deeper.  . . . . Moreover, even some of Bush’s natural allies among Republican professionals worried that public memories of the peaceful and prosperous Bill Clinton years were much fonder than those of a George W. Bush presidency characterized by an unpopular war and a financial meltdown.  

Jeb can console himself that his son George P. Bush , a Texas politician, is already in the family business, and that being scorned by fellow Republicans is part of the family’s tradition.

Heidi Cruz: Nutcase or Pandering Whore for her Foul Husband?

Just when you think things in the GOP presidential nomination contest can't get any crazier, one of the candidates - or in this case, one of their spouses - says something that demonstrates that these folks belong in an insane asylum, not the White House.  Heidi Cruz, campaigning for her sinister looking and sleazy husband, said that the election of her husband, Ted Cruz, would "show the face of the God we serve" to the nation and the world.  Cruz's god, of course, is very terrifying if one is gay, non-Christian, and anyone else deemed"other" by the Christofascists and white supremacists who make up the core of the GOP party base.  Right Wing Watch looks at the batshit craziness  of Ms. Cruz and by extension, her thoroughly nasty husband.  Here are highlights:

Sen. Ted Cruz’s wife Heidi, who has been campaigning for her husband full-time over the past several months, explained the role of faith in the Texas Republican’s presidential campaign yesterday, telling a South Carolina radio host that Cruz is running to “show this country the face of the God that we serve.”

Cruz’s father Rafael made a similar statement last month when he said that Ted, whom he has implied was chosen by God for the White House, was running for president to “share the love of Jesus Christ” with “every person in America.”

Heidi Cruz told South Carolina radio host Vince Coakley yesterday that even if she were not married to Ted, she’d be trying to work on his campaign because “this country is in crisis and this individual has an incredible talent to bring us out of this crisis.”

This is in a large part, she said, because “this Christian God that we serve is the foundation of our country” and people need to be reminded that “Christians are loving people, are nonjudgmental people, but there is right and wrong, we have a country of law and order, there are consequences to actions and we must all live peaceably in our own faiths under the Constitution.” 

[I]t also became clear to me that we are at a cultural crossroads in our country and if we can be in this race to show this country the face of the God that we serve — this Christian God that we serve is the foundation of our country, our country was built on Judeo-Christian values, we are a nation of freedom of religion, but the God of Christianity is the God of freedom, of individual liberty, of choice and of consequence.

And Ted is uniquely able to deliver on that combination of the law and religion.

The last parts are utterly ludicrous given the reality that the Christofascists want their faith forced on all other citizens and a special license to discriminate against those who do not knuckle under to their faith demands.  Perhaps Ms. Cruz needs to get her head out of her ass before she suffocates.