Comments

Cruz and Kasich: let’s get together — 61 Comments

1. Even worse than the open primaries, is the movement to have states award their electoral college votes to the person who wins the national majority of votes. This is like suicide for smaller states in flyover country, but I’m sure Trump would like it.

2. Even at bad political moments, I remind myself that there is a lot of ruin in a nation. Meaning that I and most of my fellow citizens will be going to work the morning after the election, soldiers will be manning their stations, the markets (for stocks and for groceries) will open, millions of Americans in coffee shops and bars will feel perfectly free to express their opinions, etc.

3. Neo,

   I have written it before, and probably will in the future- the Republican Party as it was constituted was playing a losing coalition at the national level. It simply didn’t have enough voters win a national election any longer. At some level, I know you realize that- how else can one explain your disappointment after 2012?

   Trump was the only candidate in the field bringing in new voters to the Republican Party. That is why he is winning the nomination, and closed/open primary has literally nothing to do with it. New York state has probably the most restrictive primary voting laws, and Trump crushed the field. Like it or not, Trump is the agent of that change that is needed. He may well lose in November, but his path will be followed by other, more capable candidates. That is my hope.

4. Trump is a good argument for reinstituting poll taxes.

5. Yancey Ward:

   The Republican voters who voted for Trump in NY are not new voters, and they’re not the least bit conservative. Republicans in NY (as I believe I discussed in a previous post) are basically liberals who are less liberal than the Democrats in New York (who are very liberal or leftists).

   That’s why Trump got such high figures in NY. If that’s the new Republican Party that Trump is creating, it sure looks a lot like the old one that conservatives hated, and that a lot of the “burn it down” people were trying to destroy—although this new one is a lot less concerned with piddly things like truth and/or the rule of law.

   Congratulations.

6. I have another idea, Kasich could simply drop out! Which seems to me to make MUCH more sense than this stupid arrangement.

7. I think I now want Trump to win the nomination. Not because I support him or would vote for him (if I had a vote) but because we have to think about what comes next.

   I think Cruz would make an excellent president as would other now departed candidates (Walker, Rubio, Fiorina) but I think that after this primary season Cruz will lose the general. Trump will likely lose too so the question is who would I rather lose with. I think the GOP (and the conservative movement within it) have a better chance of surviving losing with Trump than Cruz.

8. Neo, I thoroughly understand your frustration, and share it. However, open primaries are not the problem. It may allow some Democrats to cross over, but it also allows those not stating a party preference to vote. There are many reasons NOT to state a party preference. Government employees, teachers, and even non-partisan elected officials often decline to join a political party for fear of losing job advancement or being unable to even get hired.

   As much as I dislike Trump it would be a shame to go back to the days of party bosses deciding elections. Unfortunately, that is what Cruz and Kasich are engineering. They are only empowering Trump all the more.

9. The Other Chuck:

   Why would it be “a shame” if we went back to the days of party bosses deciding elections?

   Seriously. I keep hearing people say it would be, as though it’s a self-evidence truth, but I guess I’m really not a populist because I don’t see that it is.

   In parliamentary systems, the party usually picks its own head, and although that of course has some drawbacks (like everything) I don’t see the results as a bigger problem than the results here with the primary system in a non-parliamentary situation. I don’t see that a party picking a certain candidate as the head or leader of a party—rather than a party’s voters, plus Independents, plus even quite a few people from the opposing party, deciding who should be the party’s standard bearer—as necessarily a terrible thing. Is the latter system so obviously better than the former? I don’t think that’s at all clear.

   For example, prior to the late 60s (when primaries became dominant), were the candidates for president better or worse than they were after primaries became the way to do it? I haven’t noticed “better” to be the case.

   I’m not saying I want to go back to the smoke-filled rooms (minus the smoke), but I think it might be better and probably would be no worse. For example, if the GOP had chosen Jeb Bush (whom I don’t like and didn’t want) or Rubio (whom I think a great deal more highly of) I think it’s highly likely Hillary Clinton would have gone down to defeat (particularly with Rubio), and although both Bush and Rubio are flawed they both would have been okay presidents and far far better than Hillary. I think Trump, if nominated, will go down to defeat.

   I doubt my opinion of the relative virtues of the “smoke-filled room” vs. today’s primaries are shared by the majority of people. But that’s the way I see it. I think that populism has taken over the Republican party’s voters almost as much (maybe even more) than the Democratic party’s voters these days. So maybe this declaration by Cruz and Kasich will indeed “empower” Trump, as you say. But doesn’t everything, these days?

10. The GOP, conservatism, and the right are all facing an existential crisis.

    The first problem is associating GOP with conservatism. GOP=/= conservatism. The party is not run by conservatives and we should’ve learned our lessons on this since since the presidential nominations of bush sr til now. Most, if not all, the nominees have been conservative in name only. Congress, for the most part, is the same way. The “right” is quick to cave at every opportunity despite their words.

    So I don’t see open or closed as the problem. Its the voters who keep voting the same trash in year in, year out.

    I agree with sentiments of the other chuck and Yancey. These charades being played will only piss the voters off even more.

    Cruz and kasich (and the rest of the party) are acting like the jilted jealous girlfriend. The people want trump.

    All this happens only with our consent…

11. And by “the people” what you mean is 38% of the people.

12. c:

    Who said they are the same? No one. In fact, what I wrote implies the opposite: “the GOP, conservatism, and the right are all facing an existential crisis.”

    If they were all the same, why would I bother to make a list? All three are different, and (as I said) in my opinion they are ALL facing an existential crisis.

13. c:

    “The people” want Trump? What a strange comment. As Matt_SE says, only about a third of “the people”—and actually only a third of “the people” who vote in GOP primaries, which probably means something between 15% and maybe at most 25% of “the people” as a whole.

    Unless you’re also including “the people” who “want Trump” because they want Hillary to be president and who think he’s the weakest opponent for her. Those people “want Trump,” too, I suppose.

14. The whole primary idea was another progressive idea to help the big city bosses run the show. State and regional conventions are democratic in a good sense. The problem with primaries is that when you have a
    Number of good candidates you easily end up with a trump like guy in the lead. We used to worry about 3 candidates not 10+. Yes the local guys get entrenched but term limits will solve that better than any Donald

15. Matt_SE, I really doubt it’s even 38%.

16. since 1832 the preferred mechanism for nomination has been a national convention…

    Progressive Era reformers looked to the primary election as a way to measure popular opinion of candidates, as opposed to the opinion of the bosses. In 1910, Oregon became the first state to establish a presidential preference primary, which requires delegates to the National Convention to support the winner of the primary at the convention. By 1912, twelve states either selected delegates in primaries, used a preferential primary, or both. By 1920 there were 20 states with primaries, but some went back, and from 1936 to 1968, 12 states used them.

    They were originally for show… not binding in any way a kind of public confirmation that the bosses were doing what the people wanted.

    The impetus for national adoption of the binding primary election was the chaotic 1968 Democratic National Convention. Vice President Hubert Humphrey secured the nomination despite not winning a single primary under his own name. After this, a Democratic National Committee-commissioned panel led by Senator George McGovern — the McGovern—Fraser Commission — recommended that states adopt new rules to assure wider participation. A large number of states, faced with the need to conform to more detailed rules for the selection of national delegates, chose a presidential primary as an easier way to come into compliance with the new national Democratic Party rules. The result was that many more future delegates would be selected by a state presidential primary. The Republicans also adopted many more state presidential primaries.

    Given neo point about how it allows one party to play with another, is it any wonder it started with progressives and its conversion from show to real and the influence the Dems have used it since explains the rest. (see the wiki of which party controlled what, and since the 1968 period they dominated, the period before that was dominated mostly by republicans post civil war)

17. I’m in agreement that today, open primaries are, at best foolish and potentially suicidal. That said, I suspect they’re a hold over from a time when honesty was expected and generally the norm.

    The rationale in those simpler and more honest of times, might have been that an independent or even a democrat voter would be, in a particular time, more agreeable to voting for a Republican nominee, if they had been able to participate in the earlier nomination process.

    The great majority of prior generations never would have agreed that it was morally admissible to vote in an opposition party’s primary with the intent to derail the opposition. So any counter argument that the other party’s activists could infiltrate and derail the nomination process probably would have been dismissed, if it was even expressed at all.

    Nor would they have agreed that ‘ganging up’ on a candidate was morally admissible either because the end doesn’t justify the means. Today, the norm is that if its legal, it’s accepted as morally admissible. Especially, if the end is important enough. It appears that we’ve all been infected with that particular philosophical virus.

    So while tactically it’s a smart thing to do, strategically it is another indication of how far culturally and morally, that we’ve fallen.

18. “I think the GOP (and the conservative movement within it) have a better chance of surviving losing with Trump than Cruz.”

    That may well be true but does presume that the country will be recoverable after 4 years of Hillary. I find the prospect of the electorate denying the FIRST WOMAN President a second term to be as impossible as denying the FIRST BLACK President a second term.

    The meme is that America must PROVE that it isn’t racist or sexist… regardless of how long it takes or how great the sacrifice.

    Look to Europe to see how suicidal a society can be…

19. “Why would it be “a shame” if we went back to the days of party bosses deciding elections?” neo

    Today’s GOPe is not our grandfather’s GOPe, that’s why. The proof is the GOPe’s support for illegal immigration, Muslim migration, transgender access to women’s bathrooms, crony capitalism, and unlimited national debt, etc., etc.

20. Geoffrey Britain:

    I disagree.

    The GOP has been torn between its moderate and more conservative wings for a long long long time, sometimes supporting more moderate viewpoints. This is not a new phenomenon. You have to go back to the Coolidge years (almost 100 years ago) to find a more conservative GOP that was consistently conservative.

    And even the Coolidge years were somewhat of an exception in terms of their conservatism. What about Teddy Roosevelt, for example? Not so conservative, split off and formed the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party. You’ll find the history of it here, and some of it will sound a bit familiar.

    By the way, this is what happened in the 1912 election:

    [Taft’s] administration was filled with conflict between the conservative wing of the Republican Party, with which Taft often sympathized, and the progressive wing, to which Roosevelt moved more and more. Controversies over conservation and over antitrust cases filed by the Taft administration served to further separate the two men. Roosevelt challenged Taft for renomination in 1912. Taft used his control of the party machinery to gain a bare majority of delegates, and Roosevelt bolted the party. The split left Taft with little chance of re-election, and in Wilson’s victory won only Utah and Vermont.

21. Learn to live with the fact that there are homosexuals– and that their rights under the law are the same as anyone else — and mind your own business –and everything will be fine. Chill.

22. Nyomythe,

    Learn to live with the fact that your rights stop where another’s begins.

    You facilitate pedophilia and willfully deny the predictable harm that awaits the innocent. Which makes you fully complicit in that monstrosity. Loathsome is too kind a label to which to attach to you.

23. neo,

    In times of peace, there has never been consensus. Even in the civil war there was northern opposition to Lincoln’s actions. Nevertheless, yesterday’s GOPe was not willing to sell out the country but open borders and unlimited Muslim migration (approved by a Republican dominated Congress) DO sell out the country and today’s GOPe are facilitating it. Which is why they are collaborators and not yesterday’s compromisers.

24. Neo:
    “For example, if the GOP had chosen Jeb Bush (whom I don’t like and didn’t want) or Rubio (whom I think a great deal more highly of) I think it’s highly likely Hillary Clinton would have gone down to defeat (particularly with Rubio)”

    Unlikely. The Trump phenomenon has been a fitness test for the “GOP, conservatism, and the right”. The GOP campaigns, deprived by the Right of the activism needed to compete for real, that have proven incapable versus mere “jayvee” Left-mimicking alt-Right activists were unlikely to defeat a campaign supported by varsity Democrat-front Left activists.

    Republican campaign strategists prepping for 2016 should have focused first and gone to school on the social activist movement that’s principally responsible for the Obama victory over Romney, instead of convincing themselves that electoral devices such as “data driven ground game” were the chief takeaway from 2012.

    Neo:
    “populists and Trump voters”

    The alt-Right activist redefining and carving away of “populists” and “nationalists” from their traditional orbit with conservatives on the Right was a crucial play – and much too easily done.

    First, the GOP candidates’ incorrect response last May, starting with Jeb Bush’s pathetic pratfalls, to the Megyn Kelly “knowing what we know now” hypothetical was a clear signal of GOP weakness and an open-season invitation to attack. Then, more than any other maneuver, the alt-Right’s ease in redefining and taking away “populists” and “nationalists” from conservatives demonstrated definitely that the leftist tactics proven in the main for the sake of the Left’s Gramscian march would work just as well to raise the insurgent Trump phenomenon among the Right’s traditional constituency.

    People is people, and activism works for anyone for any cause. And against anyone for any cause.

    With the GOP depending on the Right more urgently than ever to supply the activism needed to compete for real, conservatives instead have responded to the alt-Right insurgency by conceding and accepting, with barely a ripple of pushback, the changes to the political landscape being engineered under their feet. Conservatives, instead of adapting activism to at least to try to compete for real, even belatedly, have insisted on approaching current events with a traditional electoral frame of reference that is clearly insufficient. No help from the Right for the GOP campaigns.

    Neo</b.:
    "“The people” want Trump? What a strange comment."

    Critical mass. The general will of We The People is a function of activism. The American nation wasn't founded via majority polling, either.

    In the activist game, making a difference doesn't necessarily require an actual majority of "the people", only critical mass as needed for strategic maneuver to advance from play to play until the social dominance to reify preferred social condition is established.

    The majority that matters competitively is which side possesses more, better activism, the power of the people to move "the people".

    The alt-Right's "jayvee" activists may not measure up (yet) to varsity Left activists (though as demonstrated by the Ivy League pro-military campus activists who defeated elite campus 'SJW' leftists, one can never count out activists in the insurgent position), but it's apparent the Trump-front alt-Right has more of the activism needed to compete for real than the "GOP, conservatism, and the right".

25. Oops. Fix:

    Neo:
    ““The people” want Trump? What a strange comment.”

    Critical mass. The general will of We The People is a function of activism. The American nation wasn’t founded via majority polling, either.

    In the activist game, making a difference doesn’t necessarily require an actual majority of “the people”, only critical mass as needed for strategic maneuver to advance from play to play until the social dominance to reify preferred social condition is established.

    The majority that matters competitively is which side possesses more, better activism, the power of the people to move “the people”.

    The alt-Right’s “jayvee” activists may not measure up (yet) to varsity Left activists (though as demonstrated by the Ivy League pro-military campus activists who defeated elite campus ‘SJW’ leftists, one can never count out activists in the insurgent position), but it’s apparent the Trump-front alt-Right has more of the activism needed to compete for real than the “GOP, conservatism, and the right”.

26. In short, the rationale for open primaries often comes down to a sense of fairness and inclusiveness. Not everyone wants to be enrolled in a political party, and not everyone will vote a straight party ticket in the general election. An open primary can bring in more supporters. Usually, the numbers are such that it doesn’t make much difference with open primaries.

    There’s an exception to all this, obviously, with Trump, who has been a major public figure for decades. Trump may have some appeal with his celebrity, and his nationalist and populist message, but even he would not be doing nearly so well this time were it not for the faults of others. All too often, the Republican party has been silent, has been passive, and has failed to provide any meaningful opposition.

27. I find comments like Yancey Ward’s, that the GOP doesn’t have a winning national coalition and needs to be dramatically, very puzzling. First, I doubt it’s true. Michael Barone has written a good deal about how fragile are the demographic bases on which this claim is based, so I will simply refer the reader to his work, rather than repeat it.

    Second, I don’t see any evidence that Trump is adding voters to the Republican party. Maybe he is getting some additional white working class voters, but most of them were Republican already. Meanwhile, he is driving out upper-income and more educated white voters, resulting in a net loss of voters. Losing the country club vote, and for that matter the neocon vote, will not strengthen the Republicans.

28. Nyomythe– homosexuals have the same rights under the law as anyone else? You mean heterosexual males have the right to use the women’s bathroom? How did I miss that?

29. An epitaph for the GOPe.

    Even when we the voters win it for them, they the politicians lose it for us.

    That in a nutshell is your “why this is happening”.

    We gave them the House and the Senate. We gave them the governorships, and the states.

    They. Gave. Us. Nothing.

    In return for electoral victories they betrayed us.

    We needed warriors, willing to fight.

    We got lying collaborators, who would sacrifice the nation and the future for their self-gain.

    The donor class raped the middle class with the complicity of the political class.

    Let it burn.

30. Neo, to a certain extent I agree with you about parliamentary rule, delegating choice, and our dysfunctional primary system. The difference between a Republic and the chaos of pure democracy is evident from history. We have strayed from the representative government that the founders set up. But it was not a perfect system. Tammany Hall, smoked filled rooms, deals, graft, half the population – women – totally disenfranchised, not to mention poll taxes, Jim Crow, and worse. I have a lovely picture of my grandmother dressed in white holding a “Give Women The Vote” sign, ready to step off the wood sidewalk for a march. Maybe we’ve gone too far. But anything that allows people to make a choice is better than denying them the opportunity. Isn’t what you’re railing against the dismal state of our culture, and that people seem incapable of admiring intelligence and integrity?

31. Nyomythe (AKA the banished nyomythus):

    Non sequitur of a pretty high degree, unless there was some comment about homosexuality I failed to spot in this thread.

32. The Other Chuck:

    Not exactly. Even if “the people” had brilliant and wonderful taste, I think a party ought to choose its own leaders. Of course, if a party decides to let “the people” choose them, that party takes what it gets, and has lost control of its own choice of standard bearers. A party should only do that if it trusts “the people” implicitly, or thinks that without giving the people the choice, the people will desert it.

    I also think that unless a party has a run-off primary election and also does not allow crossover voting, the process is inherently deeply flawed and doomed to failure. Too many candidates lends to a non-majority candidate even if there’s a series of primaries, unless there’s a run-off election.

33. As neo and a few others have stated, a political party should be a closed organization. The RNC and the state gop parties need to tighten their rules. ‘Independents’ have no business voting in primaries/caucuses. We have no hard evidence, but my gut tells me that in open primaries operation ditch and switch has made a difference in elections trump has won by a few percentage points.

    I have no problem with Cruz’s operations in states such as CO. And if Cruz and Kasich have joined forces to deny (I hope) 1237 that is fine by me. The same would be true if Trump and Kasich joined forces to secure the nomination forTrump. Think sausage making. You may find it abhorrent, but my advice is start your own political party, and stop your sobbing and whining.

34. Democracy is a messy business, but I have also wondered why both parties don’t have a tighter rein on how they nominate a presidential candidate.. Seems problematic on the face of it, and one of many reasons I don’t donate to the RNC.
    The only positive I have to offer, is that a faith in God is good to employ in times like this. We seldom see the path clearly, but we in the general Anglosphere have had good leaders when it was really needed, probably with divine help. Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, Thatcher, Reagan have all been elected somehow. They all had their detractors, then and now, but lend proof that inspired people arise even through the mire of everyday politics. May we still be so fortunate.

35. Neo, I’m with you on the run off primary. That is definitely a needed reform. Get to 50% or have another vote.

36. Anything that allows the selection of the president to be governed by THIS electorate is BAD. The founding fathers rightly restricted voting to those who had some skin in the game and presumably some intelligence and education.

37. “The only positive I have to offer, is that a faith in God is good to employ in times like this. We seldom see the path clearly, but we in the general Anglosphere have had good leaders when it was really needed, probably with divine help.” bdh

    I share the view that America has in the past had divine help. However, I’m not hopeful that future assistance can be extended, when the majority of Americans have rejected faith in a beneficent divinity.

    “There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right, then, have it your way.'” C. S. Lewis

38. “The founding fathers rightly restricted voting to those who had some skin in the game and presumably some intelligence and education.” texexec

    Historical fact supports that assertion. Presumably the founding fathers were essentially in agreement with Pres. Adam’s assertion that, “Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is entirely inadequate for any other”. By ‘religious’ I believe Adams meant a people who believed themselves to be accountable for their actions in an afterlife.

    Today, that the “movers and shakers” of both party’s are NOT moral and ‘religious’ (believe themselves to be accountable for their actions in the afterlife) is a given, demonstrated by their repeated actions. Thus, it is a virtual certainty that they will NOT choose a better nominee than the admittedly disastrous choice that this electorate would choose. So… we’re screwed.

    “Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.” Abraham Lincoln

39. y81,

    The Democratic coalition is only fragile if the Republican Party can find a candidate that can bust it up. Only Trump offers that possibility.

    You wrote that Trump only gets people who were already Republicans. Well, why is turnout up so much in this primary season vs 2012? If what you wrote is actually true, then, at worst, Trump is getting “Republicans” who sat on their asses in November 2012 to get engaged again. And if he isn’t on the ballot, show me how Cruz or Kasich is a stronger candidate than Romney was in 2012? Romney was the best candidate in the field in 2012, and Obama in about as weak a position as a sitting president can be, and Romney still got crushed.

40. Question for Neo, or anyone else.

    Neo, we all know your story about your relatives and friends, and the risks involved in trying to talk politics with them in a calm and rational manner.

    Many of us here have had the same dismal experience with our own friends or relatives: One or two exchanges and you are out of the realm of proportion driven discourse and into moral dicta and personal attacks.

    Given that this is so common, I would like to ask if anyone here, has at any time anywhere, been successful in discussing “moral issues” with someone from the opposite side of the spectrum.

    Has anyone been able, for example, to get a progressive to rationally explain to them why government mandated altruism is a rational imperative?

    I’m beginning to think that any political conversation, as well as the ensuing “moral” or “values” discussion that invariably results in the second or third exchange of views, is utterly pointless.

    Now we all know that progressive ideologues have long held that position: That, these are not matters which can be decided through rational reflection but are matters worked out in a form of social warfare not quite escalated to open violence – and that that is all there is to it.

    Yet, modern liberals who still cherish the conceit that they are not completely non-rational, and that interpersonal “dialog” means something other than buying time before an attack, should be able to come up with something better than “just because” or “I feel it” or “it is the greatest good for the greatest number, and NO I cannot really define ‘good’ in a non circular way!”

    Has anyone ever had a successful conversation with a progressive – even to the extent that the progressive was able to unequivocally explain and justify his own moral preferences in a plausible way?

    To reflect on the topic of the earlier post: I think we are beyond the social capacity, if our society ever did have it, to rationally adjudicate these “values”, or to even recognize moral boundaries.

    If anything will lead to violence it will be not the futility of dialog, but the acceptance of the idea that it is pointless in the first place in ever really resolving life-way issues.

41. Yancey: The problem with that is that if the Republicans win, we still have Trump, a President whose personality is way to similar to the chump in office right now.

    Of course, you might argue that having Trump on the ticket ensures more people won’t sit out the election like they did in 2008 and 2012, which helps the down-ticket candidates, to which I can only respond that if the electorate is really that stupid, that we have to bribe the voters with LIV-bait like Trump just to help ensure the Republicans hold onto Congress then the Republic is already lost.

42. Hot Air linked to this piece by David Harsanyi about what Republicans have accomplished.

    http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/26/the-gop-sucks-but-its-not-as-bad-as-everyone-says/

    Too many voters are frustrated because they can’t get their way, even though following the constitution limits what they can do. Maybe that’s why Trump’s ignore the law approach is so appealing to them. They havent figured out that you have to convince a majority to support your position. They think that stomping your feet is enough. A bit of Eric’s activism woué¶dn’t hurt either. Nor would jumping on the bandwagon for unqualified candidates.

43. Yancey Ward: Trump (and the other candidates, it’s hard to allocate responsibility) appear to have boosted Republican primary turnout. it remains to be seen what the general election will look like. If the race is between Trump and Hillary Clinton, then I expect that the presence of two candidates with such high negative poll ratings will greatly depress turnout. My own participation is certainly in doubt, given how much I dislike both of them.

    I don’t see the relevance of the 2012 election to the Republicans’ overall chances. Election dynamics are totally different when there is an incumbent president–the election is a referendum on the incumbent–and when there is not.

44. Well, if you are frustrated with open primaries, I am frustrated with states that don’t even conduct primaries. Especially a state like Colorado, that only ever had a ‘presidential preference vote’ that could be easily ignored when choosing delegates. To me, primaries are the best indicator of where voter support will be in a general election for a given potential presidential candidate.

    Caucuses are too easily manipulated and take time/dedication and a love of crowds that not everyone has. I am not just talking about the 2016 race, but saw a lot of shenanigans going on with Democratic caucuses in 2008 that shafted Hillary big time.

    I would prefer ALL primaries. I would prefer ALL delegates solidly promised to the candidate. I don’t necessarily have a problem with unbound delegates, but these should be equal numbers in all states or at least related to registered voters in some way. Because I understand there may be a time when no candidate gets a majority of delegates, so some wiggle room should be possible to help with that on a first ballot.

    I don’t have a problem with open primaries. Not all states have them. I think it allows for independent voters to have a voice…which we need some indication of for a general election.

    BTW, Cruz/Kasich ploy was a huge mistake. When you have no chance of winning the majority of delegates in primary contests, it looks bad to attempt to undermine the voter. I know many of you on here cannot stand Trump, but I’ve felt that way about Dole, McCain, and Romney, yet I was willing to let go of my dislike and get behind these guys anyway.

    If I were like some of you, I would’ve been insisting that Gingrich or Santorum stay in the race, just to screw with things. Just not a good idea.

45. Sorry. Neo. I know the race is very tight, but I don’t buy into the idea of a Trump “momentum” that is getting much play in the media, and therefore am not so down about it all.

    Part of the reason is we knew ahead of time that NY and the NE were going to be Trump territory. That he wins big in NY and looks to do strongly elsewhere in the NE should not be a surprise.

    That the media (both the left/MSM and the ones backing Trump in the “conservative” media) would be pushing the “momentum” narrative should also not be a surprise.

    This narrative is meant to get the not-Trump folks down. Psyops they call it in the military.

    It is times like these that we’ve got to hold it together and ignore the rest.

    Still confident that Cruz has a superior ground game for the votes and for the delegates.

    Would have liked Kasich to get the f out of the race, but, since he won’t, working with him in this manner is in both their interests. Smart play. It might even come down to VP Kasich.

    Only two points of unknown potential cons:
    1) Manafort and his impact at improving Trump’s odds, both organizationally and in taming Trump himself – yet to be truly tested, but will be in the more competitive states;
    2) Not sure how different CA is from NY in the “Dem lite” version of Republican supporters. Suspect they are more mixed by district than NY. And, not sure being from NY plays as well in CA.

    Bottom Line: Despite all the talk from the Trump camp and those who’d rather face Trump in the elections, they have to be rather uneasy about Trumps prospects at 1237.

    If Cruz cannot close the deal in IN, then, yes, slim chance indeed in stopping Trump.

    If Cruz does win IN, then expect his camp to push the “momentum” message going into CA (but don’t expect the media to pick up on that as heartily).

46. K-E:

    Either you didn’t read or don’t remember this post of mine, or you read it and remember it and are purposely ignoring it.

    You use your dislike/distaste for Dole, McCain, and Romney as an example of how you let go of your “dislike” and voted for them anyway, and suggested those who don’t like candidate Trump do the same. But you ignore the vast difference between Dole, McCain, and Romney—and why you disliked them—and Donald Trump, and why HE is opposed by so many people in the GOP. I will quote from that previous post of mine:

    Many Trump supporters also write things like, “You forced me to vote for Dole, Bush, McCain, and Romney, because they were the nominees. So now you’d better vote for Trump if he’s the nominee unless you want to be called out for the hypocrite you are.” Leaving aside the fact that it’s not possible to force someone to vote for a particular candidate (short of holding a gun to the person’s head and going into the voting both with him), are there parallels here?

    I don’t think so. Trump is not just a candidate with whom people differ on policy items, or think is too conservative or not conservative enough or whatever it was that people didn’t like about the aforementioned Gang of Four, he represents a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. This is no ordinary disagreement between the more moderate and more conservative wings of the party; this a difference more profound.

    Here are a few reasons why Trump’s candidacy isn’t business as usual:

    (1) Never having held any public office at any level, Trump has no record to look to and no experience in office-holding or governing.
    (2) Trump has a history of supporting Democrats and has called himself a liberal on most issues, and if he’s a bona fide political changer he’s certainly never explained his change (unlike, for example, Reagan, who worked for conservative causes for decades after his political change, and then held office for many years at the governor level).
    (3) There are multiple character issues with Trump that are well-known and dramatic and go to the heart of whether he has anything like the temperament required to be president.
    (4) Trump often shows little grasp of policy issues when speaking, and is inconsistent on a host of subjects, putting out proposals and almost immediately walking them back or modifying them considerably.
    (5) Trump has leveled an extremely serious charge against the previous Republican president (Bush lied!!), one that heretofore was only offered by the far left.
    (6) Trump has shown a marked tendency towards strongman rule, with him as the strongman.
    (7) Trump is not supported by the majority of Republican voters; he has a plurality only, and a lot of his votes seem to come in the primaries from Democrats (who may or may not actually support him in the general).

    These are qualitatively different objections than the objections to previous candidates and nominees. In fact, a good argument can be made that someone as far outside a particular party as Trump is would ordinarily run Independent or third-party, and that his Republican candidacy can be likened to a hostile takeover.

    I will add that Trump is the first candidate in memory who is pretty open about his disdain and dislike for the party for which he is trying to run as its standard bearer. The same is true for many of his supporters, who are very very open about trying to destroy the GOP. So some sort of tit-for-tat pact that equates him to Dole, Romney, or McCain is absurd.

    Or maybe I missed the part where Dole, Romney, and McCain were trying to destroy the GOP.

47. Big Maq:

    No need to say “sorry.” I hope you are correct in your predictions.

    I realize that a lot of this is propaganda designed to get Cruz-supporters down. But it works. I’m aware of the stats, but I it’s in my gut that I feel the momentum for Trump building.

48. Yancey Ward Says:
    April 26th, 2016 at 11:55 am

    y81,

    The Democratic coalition is only fragile if the Republican Party can find a candidate that can bust it up. Only Trump offers that possibility.

    You wrote that Trump only gets people who were already Republicans. Well, why is turnout up so much in this primary season vs 2012? If what you wrote is actually true, then, at worst, Trump is getting “Republicans” who sat on their asses in November 2012 to get engaged again. And if he isn’t on the ballot, show me how Cruz or Kasich is a stronger candidate than Romney was in 2012? Romney was the best candidate in the field in 2012, and Obama in about as weak a position as a sitting president can be, and Romney still got crushed.

    &&&&&&&&&&&&

    Parsing this…

    1) Trump is — even now — only getting ~ 40 to 55 % of the GOP primary vote.

    2) Romney’s problem was that the single most important issue of 2012 was 0bamacare.

    As the author of Romneycare, Mitt couldn’t — and didn’t — rail against it.

    The MSM put up Mitt as the least effective GOP nominee knowing full well that he turned off MAJOR Republican factions. They did this by running nothing but positive blurbs on Mitt — on the whole. NEVER did the MSM bathe Mitt in Romneycare.

    3) It’s PLAIN that Trump does best in open primaries — and the Northeast. The latter are hopelessly lost to the GOP come this Fall. In sum, Trump scores well exactly where it means nothing for the general election.

    EG, in New York Trump’s blow-out victory amassed FEWER votes than Bernie Sanders — who lost in a blow-out to Hillary.

    New York is not even in play.

    4) Trump is sure to lose Utah… ! Some Republican.

    Indeed, Trump is extremely likely to lose TEXAS.

    5) The folks talking Trump UP are those that wish to see Hillary in the oval office.

    In contrast, they have dropped a cone of silence around Ted Cruz.

    This is deliberate.

    A cone of silence was largely dropped around 0bamacare – four years ago – to the extent possible.

    The MSM never went into the full mathematical horror that was sure to come. Note the flight of the insurers at this time.

    &&&&&

    Even now no-one is howling about the impact of 0-care on the money supply: It’s hyper-deflationary.

    Yup.

    ‘Cause it’s a tax upon the cohort looking to form new families… and purchase a home.

    Yup.

    Note how soft the new home construction tempo is.

    This will only fade further as time progresses.

49. Neo, please read Roger Simon’s article over at PJ Media. He has been an “intermittent and ambivalent” supporter of Donald Trump (like myself) but now strongly urges support for Trump as the nominee. Trump is not perfect but we can at least exert some leverage over his policies if we rally around him. He has created a lot of excitement which I can attest to living in a deep blue northeast state. Friends and relatives of mine who voted for Obama are now switching to Trump! I’m baffled but happy about that. I also noticed that Trump is two million votes ahead of Mitt Romney at this same point in the primaries despite much more competition. Overall the Republican primary vote is up 60 percent over 2012. Some may be mischief making crossovers but I suspect the vast majority are genuine. On the other hand Democratic primary votes are down about 20 percent from 2008 (previous contested Democratic primary). There seems to be something happening. By supporting Trump we could urge him to adopt winning ideas that would be good for the country. For example if we could get Trump to go after the African-American vote by pointing out the failure of Democrat run inner cities and how he could turn these areas around this would be a very interesting election. How about Ben Carson as VP? Trump’s focus on our terrible international trade deals is common sense as we watch countless American workers lose their jobs to virtual slave labor overseas. So I think its time to unite behind the front runner and get on with making America great again!

50. DNW — I’ve thought about your question for a long time. Finally, during the 2008 election campaign, I came to the understanding of why it’s impossible to talk to a leftist — they live in a different parallel universe than ours. In their universe, it’s not that facts don’t matter, it’s that facts don’t exist.

    If you mention, for example, that the official policy of the United States, enacted in the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, was to overthrow Saddam Hussein, they will not believe you. If you say that the President who first sent troops to enforce desegregation in the South was a Republican, they will tell you that you can’t be right. If you tell them black people were better off before the War on Poverty than they are today, they won’t believe you, no matter how many statistics you show them. If you tell them Hillary violated the law with her private server, they won’t believe you, even if you show them the applicable sections of the federal penal code.

    Since the reality we experience is so different from the one Lefties experience, it’s impossible (at least I have found it so) to communicate with them. You can hope that maybe, possibly, one out of a hundred lefties will, like Neo, get a glimmering of our universe and gradually become aware of reality — but, sad to say, that’s only a hope.

51. I’d like to expand a bit on what I said earlier.

    “Anything that allows the selection of the president to be governed by THIS electorate is BAD. The founding fathers rightly restricted voting to those who had some skin in the game and presumably some intelligence and education.” texexec

    I am very pessimistic about the future of our republic. We have slowly allowed more and more people to vote, in the name of democracy. That has allowed the uneducated and uninformed the right to vote.

    Have you seen “Watters World” or his interviews on Bill O’Reilly? It is AMAZING what these people don’t know about politics. And it isn’t limited to dummies on the street…on a recent show, students at HARVARD couldn’t identify who the Secretary of State is. Before the election in 2008, some people coming out of the primary POLLS thought that Sarah Palin was a good choice to be OBAMA’S running mate.

    Should we entrust the selection of our president to such people?

    And I’m afraid it can only get worse. There’s no way that the dumb and ill informed voters are going to let anyone take away their right to vote.

    I weep for the failed experiment of pure democracy.

52. Via Ace of Spades:

    In a phone interview with Fox News on Tuesday morning, host Brian Kilmeade mentioned that O’Donnell, a sometime nemesis of Trump, was on a growing list of celebrities who have said that they would leave the country if he won the White House.
    “We’ll get rid of Rosie?” Trump said. “Oh, I love it.”

    …

    Another Fox host, Steve Doocy, listed other celebrities who have said that they would leave the country if Trump was elected, including comedian Jon Stewart and “The View” host Whoopi Goldberg.

    “Now, I have to get elected,” Trump said, “because I’ll be doing a great service to our country. I have to. Now, it’s much more important. In fact, I’ll immediately get off this call and start campaigning right now.”

    Now, regardless of what one thinks of Trump and his abilities, he’s giving the right a lesson in how it’s done. They said they would leave? They are the nemeses of conservatism? All the more reason to campaign even harder.

    If in fact he is elected, then he has his staff remind these celebrities of their promises. They won’t leave the country of course, because even though they are shallow loudmouths they are smart enough to realize that they have a good thing going here and like all good Marxists, they’re not going to give that up. But what it does, is constantly remind everyone that these celebrities, with large megaphones for their mostly unsubstantiated opinions, are nothing but a lot of hot air who won’t walk the walk when the time comes. A great amount of future damage for the left exists in that approach.

53. Bob:

    I disagree with Roger Simon’s evaluation of Trump, and have for this entire campaign cycle.

    Plus, I don’t see his support of Trump as having been intermittent at all; it’s been quite consistent. He may be ambivalent about it, but that’s not relevant to my own decision.

    I have observed Trump and read about Trump, discussed Trump and written about Trump. I stand on my observations and on what I wrote here. Whether I’m right or wrong, those are my observations, and I base my opinion on those observations, which are the fruit of a lot of independent intellectual labor.

54. The rationality and integrity of that last comment exemplify why I love neo-neocon. That’s why it makes me sad when she gets depressed.

55. “I weep for the failed experiment of pure democracy.” texexec

    The majority of the electorate are as mentally lazy and thus ignorant as you surmise. That said, we’ve never had a “pure democracy” and the founding fathers were adamantly against having one. We had “a republic” but humanity, most with the best of intentions, are ignorantly throwing it away. We all shall reap what they’ve sown.

    Pogo had the right of it, “We’ve met the enemy and they are us”…

56. DNW, I’m in a bible group with my fellow Catholics. Some there cannot help themselves to discuss things without bringing in politics.

    My perspective has always been that we have many of the same concerns, but have different ways of approach. I tend to keep my mouth shut though after hearing how evil and heartless Rs are. Moral they are, but open minded they are not.

57. To Richard and Julie,

    I think we are all experiencing and describing various facets of the same phenomenon – lives lived in what are surprisingly different psychological realities.

    Now, this observation places aside the left-progressive movement’s notorious, long acknowledged, and even publicly proclaimed strategic disdain for locating moral questions in a domain wherein rational calculi based on self-evident first principles can be brought to bear in a clarifying way.

    We all already acknowledge that in the case of the left-wing ideologue, you cannot expect to have a conversation about the justifiability of this or that value based on some agreed upon objective principles: when, at the core of the progressive ideologue’s worldview exists a constellation of assumptions which contradict that possibility: and, include instead such beliefs as the idea that there is no such thing as “truth” in any “big” sense; that the most important drives and phenomena in human life are unconscious, and not adjudicable by reason; that teleology is a mental illusion; that reality is both objectively meaningless, and ultimately unintelligible; and on and on with emphases on subjectivity, life as feelings, morals as defined by care only, and so forth and so on.

    The question we have to answer is – Freud, Marx, Skinner, Rorty, and the present day big shots of the left aside – is whether we can even talk to our everyday acquaintances, and ostensible peers.

    And it seems, based on long experience, that we cannot.

    I have tried repeatedly. And because I am better at argument than most of the folks I run into outside of the Internet, and because I cannot be physically intimidated by most people (no virtue, just size) and because I am patient and persistent, I am able to play the string out as far as humanly possible, to let them rage and fume and eventually calm down. And at the end of it, they typically just stop talking, and stare at you: like their brains have quit working or they are from another world somewhere.

    Thus, I am convinced that this cannot all be the simple result of a protracted misunderstanding, or some endless failure of one party to grasp the “real issue” at hand or the other’s viewpoint. [Although Haidt actually claims that conservatives are inherently better equipped to intellectually grasp the rationales and evaluative processes of “liberals”, than liberals are to understand conservatives viewpoint]

    We can tell ourselves that one side or the other may not fully appreciate the consequences of this or that policy they advocate, but surely it cannot be just shortsightedness and stupidity that cause some adults to sell their children’s liberty and futures for their present satisfaction. Freedom must simply not mean the same thing to them psychologically.

    I think at one time, when we first confronted these issues in school we understood this. We were reading Freud, Marx, Skinner, Rorty, Marcuse and the like on a daily basis. We knew they shrugged at what we called freedom, and laughed at what we thought could be called “true” and objective We knew this because they told us so outright.

    Somehow, many of our peers must have accepted this; and we have either forgotten that they did, or we never knew it in the first place.

    It is we who are, or have been in an important sense, the blind men.

58. @Neo – it is always hard to identify the source of ones feelings, but please consider that what you are feeling is the anxiety that comes with an uncertain outcome, given how tight the race is.

    It is healthy to have some doubts. But we needn’t let them drive us beyond the evidence. The lack of publicly available polls for the remaining states leave us guessing.

    We will probably see with more clarity after Indiana.

    If there then is a slide of top GOP and conservative leaders towards Trump, that would be a strong indicator.

    Of course, if Cruz does well, that might cause most who might throw in with Trump to second guess themselves.

    If he does not, yes, it will dim our hopes somewhat.

59. Big Maq:

    Oh, I’m not declaring it over, either, believe me. But tonight is demoralizing, and it’s hard not to be affected by it, because I see more and more people jumping on the Trump bandwagon (they don’t want to be left behind; everybody loves a winner; yada yada yada). These things affect voters and build momentum, at least they tend to. Indiana will definitely be some sort of watershed, and even then it won’t be over until the convention. There are all sorts of black swans possible.

    It’s been a long long primary season with many many disappointments. All my originally favored candidates have fallen by the wayside, and the one I think the least of is the definite frontrunner and favored to win, if I’m realistic about it (which I am). That doesn’t mean it’s Trump for sure, nor does it mean I’ve thrown in the towel.

60. @Bob – ” Trump is not perfect but we can at least exert some leverage over his policies if we rally around him”

    Not sure you understand what Trump is offering.

    He is beholding to no one. Period.

    For him, there are never any promises, only negotiating positions that are subject to change.

    He is celebrated because he is everything that a typical politician is not. He has no boundaries, that the rest of us would abide by.

    He gives every indication that he will do what he wants to do, regardless of what the electorate, nor Congress would want, nor what the Constitution says he can do.

    The idea that there would be any “influencing” this man after an election is malarkey. He will demonize anyone who doesn’t follow his policy lead… think Obama on steroids, and that much more destructive to our governing structure.

    If you think that is a good thing, you ought to read the informative piece here on Venezuela, as to where strong man populism gets you.

61. “Yankee:
    In short, the rationale for open primaries often comes down to a sense of fairness and inclusiveness. Not everyone wants to be enrolled in a political party, and not everyone will vote a straight party ticket in the general election. An open primary can bring in more supporters. Usually, the numbers are such that it doesn’t make much difference with open primaries.

    That sounds nice. However, one result seems to be that “moderate” Republicans depend on crossover votes to keep conservative Republicans off the ballot. In Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson and another establishment fellow ran against a conservative. Tommy won the nomination for U.S. Senate, and lost to Tammy Baldwin, an openly lesbian liberal-socialist. The state that elected Scott Walker 3 times elects Baldwin. Moderate Republicans prefer Democrats to conservative Republicans. Moderates are all about bigger government and more regulation. The Left has stopped hating Nixon, as he gave us Title IX, Affirmative Action, Forced school integration, EPA, and legions of other government expansions. But he was a moderate Republican.

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