Octopus Overlords

El Guapo wrote:

Rip wrote:

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE: DONALD TRUMP IS THE INEVITABLE REPUBLICAN NOMINEE!!

For weeks, reports of Trump’s demise were greatly exaggerated. It had been days of bad news for his campaign, most of it distorted by a GOP establishment wishing and hoping that Trump was finally falling. After all, Ted Cruz had picked off delegates at obscure state conventions, and the 40-something senator had won the majority of contests out West. He’d shown the qualities that make him loved and hated from Harvard to Austin and back to Washington: he’s tenacious, driven and prepared. The elites, like buzzards circling overhead, figured that if Trump couldn’t get the requisite number of delegates before the GOP convention, that his carcass would be picked apart like carrion.

The funeral was premature. With Trump’s big victory in New York on Tuesday, he’s set to sweep primaries in the Mid Atlantic next week when Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia hit the polls. “When you look at these places they have problems, everywhere you look,” Trump said at his victory rally on Tuesday night.

The problem for Trump is that the odds of the party turning to Cruz at the convention are not, despite what the article says, "extremely remote." Trump's almost certain to fall short of the first ballot majority he needs. When that happens, Cruz's team by all outward appearances is vastly more organized and has more insiders attached to it, so it seems more probable than not that Cruz would be able to beat Trump at the convention.

Pyperkub wrote:Yeah, if Trump doesn't have it on the first ballot, the chances of him winning are about 5%,imho. He's bleeding second ballot delegates from a 1000 cuts and being completely out flanked by Cruz

Sepiche wrote:

Pyperkub wrote:Yeah, if Trump doesn't have it on the first ballot, the chances of him winning are about 5%,imho. He's bleeding second ballot delegates from a 1000 cuts and being completely out flanked by Cruz

That's the impression I get as well. Trump may have won those delegates which guarantees him their votes in the first round, but in many states it's the party that picks the delegates not the candidate, and from all accounts they've been packing that list with people who won't support Trump beyond the first vote.

If that ends up being the case though, Trump is definitely signalling for his supports to go ballistic if the nomination is "stolen" from him at the convention, and despite statements to the contrary, I could definitely see him trying to mount a third party run if Cruz gets the nomination, and I'm not sure the Republican party as we know it will survive that.

3. Several members of the Republican National Committee tell Eli Stokols that Trump will not need 1,237 pledged delegates, or anything close to that, in order to win the nomination before the convention. To understand the significance of this, remember that Trump’s chances of winning the nomination are the sum of two variables. The first is the number of bound delegates he wins in primaries and caucuses. If that number is below 1,237, he can make it up by persuading some of the roughly 200 unbound delegates — party officials who get to vote — to support him on the first ballot. If Republicans are unified and determined to stop Trump, then Trump has no room for error at all. He needs all 1,237 on his own and can expect no help from party officials. This is the scenario that anti-Trump Republicans, like consultant Rick Wilson, have maintained would take place:



But Stokols’s reporting implies this is not the case at all. One Republican committee member suggests Trump could prevail if he comes within just a hundred delegates. Another tells Stokols Trump could come within 50 to 100 delegates. They may be wrong, but they are at least providing evidence of a perception that the party is ready to reconcile itself to Trump. Perhaps Republican officials fear the chaos and perceived illegitimacy of denying the nomination to the plurality winner, or they find Cruz no more palatable (or not sufficiently more attractive to be worth fighting for).

Wisconsin presented an image of the Republican Party the anti-Trumpsters hoped and believed they would create. Conservative activists and party officials would form a united front and send the message to the base that Trump was an interloper, and elevate Cruz as a plausible and even desirable presidential nominee; Cruz would gather enough momentum to hold Trump beneath his required first-ballot majority, and use his organizing strength to line up delegates for a second-, third-, or fourth-ballot win. The plan hinges on Republicans broadly sharing a belief that they must treat a Trump nomination as an existential threat that dwarfs any other downside — be it pro-Trump street theater in Cleveland, a Trump write-in campaign, or having to support Ted Cruz. Its chances of success also hinge on the perception that the plan can succeed, and that Republicans sticking their neck out to block Trump won’t be alienating some of their own supporters only to damage the inevitable nominee for no reason. Trump’s victory in New York has dealt a blow to his opponents’ morale that may prove self-fulfilling.

U.S. Republican officials began meeting on Wednesday, a day after Donald Trump's crushing victory in a New York presidential nominating contest, and said he has been winning growing acceptance within their ranks - but they want to see the billionaire do more to mend fences with the party establishment.

Trump, the front-runner to become the Republican presidential candidate in November's election, was the focus for the party's spring meeting of 168 Republican National Committee (RNC) members in Hollywood, Florida. The three-day conclave at an oceanside resort will take stock of the race for the White House and prepare for a possible contested convention in July in Cleveland.

The New York real estate mogul's win Tuesday in his home state over rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich was an important milestone for RNC members, who said it could put him on a pathway to acquire the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination outright without a contested convention.

"There are a fair number of RNC members who were discounting his chances of success when we met in January and now see that he’s building a substantial lead and may in fact get to 1,237 before we get to the convention," said Steve Duprey, an RNC member from New Hampshire.

"The New York results were such an overwhelming win," Duprey said. "It's impressive. That's what I've heard people talking about."

RNC members said Trump could help improve the climate by taking steps to end the bad blood that has developed between him and the committee's leadership, including RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.

Donald Trump thinks anti-slavery icon Harriet Tubman is "fantastic" -- but he says the move to have her replace seventh president Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill is "pure political correctness."

hepcat wrote:How to lock down the white supremacist vote without expressly saying so.

Donald Trump thinks anti-slavery icon Harriet Tubman is "fantastic" -- but he says the move to have her replace seventh president Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill is "pure political correctness."

em2nought wrote:

hepcat wrote:How to lock down the white supremacist vote without expressly saying so.

Donald Trump thinks anti-slavery icon Harriet Tubman is "fantastic" -- but he says the move to have her replace seventh president Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill is "pure political correctness."

I wonder is she's going to come out looking like Halle Barry or Beyoncé on the $20?

Defiant wrote:Delegates face death threats from Trump supporters

Donald Trump has reached 50 percent support from Republicans and Republican-leaners nationally for the first time since the beginning of the NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll in late December. This milestone is significant as the 2016 primary heads into its final few weeks of contests, as there has been intense speculation that Trump's support has a ceiling. Though his support has hovered in the high 40s since mid-March, the front-runner had yet to secure half of Republican voters.

Holman wrote:Indeed, 538 is now suggesting that Trump's path to a clean first-ballot nomination is very very close (although still not yet certain).

Rip, you are apparently Cruz's worst supporter.

Unagi wrote:Hillary Clinton Wins Presidency !

Rip wrote:
I'm all about winning

hepcat wrote:Sadly, I believe you. The rest of us try to put more thought into it though.

YellowKing wrote:So the question: Is Trump more liberal a Republican than Clinton is more conservative a Democrat?

YellowKing wrote:So the question: Is Trump more liberal a Republican than Clinton is more conservative a Democrat?

Defiant wrote:

YellowKing wrote:So the question: Is Trump more liberal a Republican than Clinton is more conservative a Democrat?

Clinton was the 13th most liberal Senator during her time in the Senate. To the extent that she evolved over time, the truth is the Democratic party itself evolved, as well.

Holman wrote:

Defiant wrote:

YellowKing wrote:So the question: Is Drumpf more liberal a Republican than Clinton is more conservative a Democrat?

Clinton was the 13th most liberal Senator during her time in the Senate. To the extent that she evolved over time, the truth is the Democratic party itself evolved, as well.

It must be incredibly frustrating for right-wingers to know that, now that she's actually running for president, they can't really tar Clinton as an America-hating radical commie like they've been doing since the 1990's. Rush Limbaugh must be wishing he'd never heard of Bernie Sanders.

I suppose we'll still hear "Feminazi," but it won't be the same.

YellowKing wrote:So it looks like we'll have a choice between someone who is crooked, megalomaniacal, and sane (Clinton), or someone who is crooked, megalomaniacal and insane (Trump).

To me, Clinton is cod liver oil and Trump is arsenic. Both are going to taste extremely bad going down, but only one won't kill me.

P.S. I never in a million years would have dreamed the Republicans would have put up a candidate so bad that Hillary looked like the better option.

Rip wrote:If it were about polls Trump would have lost long ago, yet here we are.

msteelers wrote:

Rip wrote:If it were about polls Trump would have lost long ago, yet here we are.

You mean the polls that have consistently shown that Trump was the favorite? The polls that nobody believed in because they were too early?

Rip wrote:Too early for those polls to matter.

Rip wrote:
But by all means continue on assuming that Clinton will easily beat Trump. Makes it more enjoyable for me.