I recently noted that a reasonable prediction indicates that Trump could enter the Republican National Convention a mere 8 delegates short of a lock. (See this.)
But now, Ted Cruz may have changed that math a bit, by announcing that Carly Fiorina as his vice presidential running mate. She was one of the least popular of the candidates when she was running as one of the clowns in the GOP clown car earlier this year. One could even argue that she wasn’t merely unpopular, but did so much damage to her own credibility among the Republican voters that she left the race in the negative popularity range.
This could easily be worth 8 delegates for Trump. Don’t you think?
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You might be right. I’m not sure how Cruz (or his advisors) thought this would in any way help him. Perhaps the thought was it would counter the notion that he is “anti-woman”?
Just when you think the campaigns won’t get any stranger.
Isn’t it obvious? Her track record as an eminent political loser in California was simply irresistible!
He certainly knocked himself out of contention.
But Kasich is still there, and unless Trump wraps it up before the convention, I’m betting on him. This insane move by Cruz might actually help K in the primaries.
His Sarah Palin.
Palin speak stoopid in politics, Fiorina do stoopid in business.
A match made in heaven —er— hell: Together Teddy & Carly will run America into total economic destruction (Teddy’s glee), and shred its culture into bloody bits (Carly’s glee).
There are reports that one of her staffers had an adulterous affair with Ted Cruz, and that is why Ted Cruz gave $500,000 to her campaign.
Cruz is not stupid. He knows he would lose in a blow-out to Hillary or Bernie. Maybe he is angling to be selected by the GOP House if there is a third party candidate run and no one gets an electoral majority? That is a long shot, but it is likely his best one at this time.
“…thought this would in any way help him.”
Just another Republican playing craps, this time rolling the dice on tokenism — because when it comes to people, there’s no understanding that arrogance, contempt, ideology, saber rattling, and hallelujah-hail-Mary will only take you so far in the long run.
Anyway, our modern P. T. Barnum has already pretty much cornered the market on most of that anyway. He’s bought the craps table.
Honesty and probity. Compassion and empathy.
How can Americans not be dazzled by the light of such goodness?
… because Eva Braun is dead.
I very much hope Trump is nominated, and the ‘GOP’ candidate.
Cynical pandering to women will not help in the Republican primaries at this point. Trump has already driven away all the women possible from his candidacy. There are no more available to steal.
This is too-late desperation by the odious, unprincipled Cruz.
http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2016/04/carly-fiorina-just-burst-song-and-it-was-weirdest-thing-ive-ever-seen
Carly Fiorina Just Burst Into Song and It Was the Weirdest Thing I’ve Ever Seen
By James West | Wed Apr. 27, 2016 5:06 PM EDT
@ Desertphile
I’d much rather see a brokered convention take the nomination away from Trump, creating either a 3rd party run by him or a large, “Screw you, Republicans!” reaction from Trump supporters in the general election.
Either way, disaster for the Republican Party.
Adam R.: I’d much rather see a brokered convention take the nomination away from Trump, creating either a 3rd party run by him or a large, “Screw you, Republicans!” reaction from Trump supporters in the general election.
Either way, disaster for the Republican Party.
Well gosh: I think Trump is a perfect example of a Republican Party member; he is the epitome of what the political party has become. Of course I may be wrong; I often am.
From what I can tell, Trump’s words match the Republican Party’s actions. The party hates girls and women with a ravening, irrational loathing— and they deny it; Trump has the same loathing towards females, and does not pretend otherwise. Trump is the personification of the party.
I still expect Ms. Carly Fiorina to soon show up in public wearing the hides of 101 Dalmatian puppies.
Greg, where did you find pictures of them having almost the same facial expression? Intentional?
More proof that Cruz and that brand of Rep. are almost totally tone deaf to what mainstream voters think. They are so deep within their bubble that they’ve convinced themselves that they ARE the mainstream, rather than the far right.
Anyone here who thinks they can read Tez Crud’s mind is welcome to apply for the James Randi prize.
Never underestimate the enemy. Crudz is a diagnosable sociopath with major delusions of grandeur. That combination is as dangerous as black widow spiders in your bed.
Sure, he loses California: he already did, we have a large Latino plurality, many of whom are Mexican. Everyone knows someone who is “from there,” and we all get along with friendship & mutual respect.
Adding Snarly Carly to the ticket only relieves him of the need to do any campaigning here at all.
Our best outcome would be that the convention nominates Torquemada Jr., and then Orangutan Mussolini incites a riot, and there’s enough burning of stuff in the streets to make “good TV.” All of his voters have a permanent snit and stay home. After the election, Trump gets indicted for interstate conspiracy to incite rioting, and his perp walk with US Marshals makes viral TV.
Our second-best outcome would be that the convention nominates Trump, and then some weeks later, in a heated live-TV debate, he calls Hillary the C-word. The word gets bleeped but the booing from the audience doesn’t, and Trump goes down in a blaze of ignominy.
But we are not going to win by counting on “fate” or other pseudoscientific horse****. The way to win is:
Register new voters.
Canvass every single household to see that every single voter has whatever identity papers are required in their state.
Any voters who don’t have their papers, give them whatever support is needed to get them: volunteer help navigating the maze, rides to & from wherever, subsidies to pay for getting the papers, etc.
Follow up with rides to the polls.
Election Protection volunteers at every polling place, with lawyers standing by to file for emergency injunctions if “stuff happens.”
Host block parties on Election Night after the polls close.
Don’t just aim for a win, aim for the landslide of a lifetime, with coat-tails.
Passive waiting loses. Working hard wins.
I don’t know enough about Fiorina’s standing in California to have an opinion on her effect on that primary, but her opportunistic football fandom earlier in the campaign won’t help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kjZ65fDjgI
This has already been used by Trump. If Cruz receives the nomination, it would obviously be used by the Democrats. This is one of Cruz’s problems. A larger one is that the only way he can get the nomination is by gaming the system and defying the results of the primaries. His victory would then be of questionable value. It would also cripple Trump by showing that he’s not “very smart,” not very competent, and not a “winner” – he didn’t make an effort to understand the rules, and the shortcomings that were already apparent in Iowa were never corrected. Trump vaunts himself on his exploitation of bankruptcy laws, but whines when rules are exploited against him.
Aside from the Republican troubles, I strongly agree with G that nothing should be taken for granted, and that all those who oppose Republican policies should do whatever they can to make sure that the Republicans lose. Every vote is important, and sitting out an election can have lasting consequences.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/gops-house-seats-are-safe-heres-why.html
By the way, if you add up all the delegates given to all of the GOP candidates except trump, and throw in the few dozen that are somehow “undecided” you get just a few more than Trump has.
Cruz probably likes Fiorina because she shares with him the ability to look into a camera and tell a blatant, bald-faced lie. (On the other hand, his religious fanaticism probably leads him to disbelieve in or hate extraterrestrial forms of life, whereas Fiorina is plainly a Reptilioid.)
Cosmi,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carly_Fiorina#Hewlett-Packard_.28HP.29
Particularly the parts about how she drove HP into the ground and left a big, smoking crater. (Piling on debt and causing the stock to drop 50% while its competitors were booming, and destroying the company culture, laying off record numbers of employees: 30,000 jobs lost.)
How bad was it? When news broke that she was being forced out of HP, the stock market reaction added almost three billion dollars to the value of HP in a single day.
She is unquestionably one of the worst leaders America has ever seen, having been been described as one of the worst tech CEOs of all time by several business reporting firms.
All that makes her the perfect match for that disturbed maniac, Cruz. No wonder he picked her!
Boehner on Cruz:
“I have Democrat friends and Republican friends,” Mr. Boehner told David Kennedy, an emeritus history professor, at the event. “I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
He’d vote for Trump, but not Cruz.
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/28/john-boehner-ted-cruz/
cosmicosmos, did you see how Peter King unloaded on Trump?
http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/04/peter-king-ted-cruz-lucifer-222589
Boehner was wrong about Cruz being Lucifer in the flesh…
Republicans would embrace Lucifer as an ideological leader. But most of them apparently won’t follow Cruz!
(You have to be extraordinarily awful to be a Republican rejected so emphatically by the Republican establishment.)
Brainstorms: “Republicans would embrace Lucifer as an ideological leader.”
Lucifer is the good Christian god— defender of reason, knowledge, and understanding: the bringer of light and enlightenment (he was created by the second writer of Isaiah, who did not know the planet Venus is a hot rock). The Republican Party is therefore against him. If Cruz *WAS* “Lucifer in the flesh,” I would vote for him in an instant: so would all sane people. Carl Sagan was Lucifer; Isaac Asimov was Lucifer; Neal deGrass Tyson is Lucifer. I would not hesitate to vote for either of them.
The demon god YHWH is the Republican Party’s ideological leader.
This is from Dean’s link #22:
“King, who voted for John Kasich to send a message to Donald Trump, said he hates Cruz and would take cyanide if he ever won the GOP nomination.”
This isn’t far from what Lindsey Graham had said about choosing between Cruz and Trump:
“It’s like being shot or poisoned.”
Al Franken described Cruz as “The lovechild of Joe McCarthy and Dracula.”
Regarding the Cruz-Kasich alliance to stop Trump:
“ ‘There is no alliance,’ Cruz told reporters on Thursday, acting as if a pact announced by his own campaign days before had never happened.
Minutes later, Kasich strategist John Weaver dispatched a cryptic tweet: ‘I can’t stand liars.’ ”
The Republican campaign started out with encomiums to its “deep bench of talent.” It has degenerated into a screwball comedy that now is breaking new ground as a slapstick tragedy.
(More Cruz:
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/the-most-creative-descriptions-of-ted-cruz-so-far/?_r=0
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/03/lindsey-graham-endorses-ted-cruz )
In the USA Congress there are “moral guidelines” that are followed that include being polite to fiends, butchers, cutthroats, and monsters when they are one’s peers. The most vile and treacherous Senator must be called “My Esteemed Colleague.” One of the benefits of a primary / caucusing year is that members of Congress campaigning for the same political office are finally saying what they really think about each other.
#19
“Cruz probably likes Fiorina because she shares with him the ability to look into a camera and tell a blatant, bald-faced lie.”
That was unkind. Why not luntz it into something everlastingly beautiful?
…because they share a passion for dishonesty.
Desertphile #26 “One of the benefits of a primary / caucusing year is that members of Congress campaigning for the same political office are finally saying what they really think about each other.”
On a related concept, having candidates such as Trump and Cruz in the GOP lead has been very revealing about my friends and acquaintances who embrace their vile rhetoric and shockingly actually believe that those two are worthy and capable of leading the world’s largest economy and superpower. Astonishing and disappointing.
skeptictmac57: “On a related concept, having candidates such as Trump and Cruz in the GOP lead has been very revealing about my friends and acquaintances who embrace their vile rhetoric and shockingly actually believe that those two are worthy and capable of leading the world’s largest economy and superpower. Astonishing and disappointing.”
Indeed, it is baffling behavior to see a candidate well-known to be a horrible business person, with multiple bankruptcies, and a violent bully with the emotional control of a three-year-old, being put at the head of the Executive Office— to reject or approve the government’s budget, make treaties with other countries, and control the congressional veto. It’s as if supporters of trump have no idea what the USA president’s jobs are.
It is even more baffling to hear him described as “a man who built himself up from nothing” as you will hear people say in coffee shops and restaurants here in West Michigan.
Oh, Trump builds himself up all the time. Open any media web page and you’ll get all kinds of stories of Trump building himself up… out of his usual hot air.
With Cruz suspending his campaign he could be handing over the nomination
He’s just falling on his sword to keep Carly out of political office. “For the good of the country.”