Trump rescinds pledge to back Republican nominee; Cruz, Kasich refuse to commit support
Donald Trump said Tuesday that he would no longer honor his pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee for president, while fellow candidates Ted Cruz and John Kasich refused to say whether they would back the party's pick.
All three GOP contenders appeared at a CNN town hall in Milwaukee one week before Wisconsin's April 5 primary.
Trump: ‘I Hate Proliferation’ But It Would Be Better if Japan, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea Had Nuclear Weapons
As usual, his syntax was a mess, but the points he made were that proliferation is irresistible and it would be better for America if Japan, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea got their own nukes and so could take care of their own defense needs, without us.
We are getting financially soaked, he said in substance, providing for the defense of far too many rich countries from which we get little or nothing back, including (for example) Germany.
And anyway we are not going to use nukes to defend all these folks.
All this is of a piece with his previous remarks about NATO being obsolete and a gyp benefiting Europe at America's expense.
This is Pat Buchanan's foreign policy and, no matter what he might say, it most certainly isn't Ronald Reagan's or, for that matter, Richard Nixon's.
It is the policy Antiwar.com has been recommending for decades.
It is the policy of people like Ron Paul and, if I am not mistaken, Rand Paul.
Pat Buchanan and those same others, most definitely including The Donald, oppose not only NATO and (of course) the UN but the EU and most volubly Europe's continuing policy of allowing rapid, mass immigration of Muslims and black Africans.
They used the Greek financial crisis against the EU and now support Brexit.
They say they support a Europe of the Nations, but it's not far from being just a Europe of the Skinheads.
Internationalists like most of the GOP and a bigger most of the Democratic Party see Buchananism as a path to chaos driven by the emergence of so many additional nuclear flash-points at wholly independent and uncoordinated centers of power, able to make local conflicts much worse and more dangerous globally.
They remain committed to the UN, to NATO, to the EU, and to the system of US alliances in the Far East and Oceania as essential elements of peace and order in a very disorderly and unpeaceful world.
Not to mention that the more independent and uncoordinated centers of power there are with nukes in their hands, the greater the chance of genuine horrific WMDs getting into the hands of Jihaders or other crazies.
(For similar reasons, by the way, it would clearly be contrary to the public safety for ever larger numbers of ordinary civilians to routinely go about carrying loaded firearms, ready and probably far too many of them itching for a shootout.)
I have myself from time to time been persuaded by the Buchananite view, but I have to admit that the presence in the race this year of somebody who seems, if genuinely committed to anything, genuinely committed to exactly that has, by making the thing more real, made it more stunning and even appalling.
[Update 12212016. I am far from agreeing with the above 3 paragraphs, now.]
MSNBC just now said Marco Rubio, officially out of the race, is making an unprecedented attempt to retain control of his delegates going into the convention.
Normally, his delegates would be redistributed among remaining candidates before the convention, so Trump would be helped toward getting a majority before the opening day.
It appears from the video that The Donald's campaign manager being charged with simple assault against a journalist is both bogus and politically motivated, and all his enemies are using that incident to raise the level of alarm in the public mind about Trump and his candidacy.
Showing posts with label Marco Rubio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marco Rubio. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
How's that?
Trump clobbers Rubio and Cruz in Nevada
In his latest win, Trump again got more support than Cruz the Ineligible and Rubio, taken together.
Deflecting attention from his ghastly performance in the contest, so far, Rubio explained that a majority of Republican voters do not want Trump to be the nominee.
Of course, a much bigger majority do not want him to be the nominee.
Trump wins with Nevada Hispanics
He said he would win among Hispanics.
He did.
Cruz, of course, is not Cuban-American.
He is Cuban-Canadian.
In his latest win, Trump again got more support than Cruz the Ineligible and Rubio, taken together.
Deflecting attention from his ghastly performance in the contest, so far, Rubio explained that a majority of Republican voters do not want Trump to be the nominee.
Of course, a much bigger majority do not want him to be the nominee.
Trump wins with Nevada Hispanics
He said he would win among Hispanics.
He did.
Cruz, of course, is not Cuban-American.
He is Cuban-Canadian.
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Is Rubio done?
Verbally beaten up by Christie the other night in debate but still expecting to win in NH, his abysmal failure there could have finished him.
Rubio's Whole Career Probably Ended Last Night
The debate thing was this bad.
Late on Saturday evening I started to think if I could remember a debate where one candidate had damaged another candidate quite that badly in a single encounter. The only instance that came to mind was Lloyd Bentsen's notorious "you're no Jack Kennedy" assault on Dan Quayle in 1988.
But on reflection I realized that Christie's evisceration of Rubio was worse.
I saw that.
Bentsen simply dissed Quayle to death on that one.
The whole Murphy Brown thing, on which he was actually right, hurt him, too.
The debate exchange.
Rubio's Whole Career Probably Ended Last Night
The debate thing was this bad.
Late on Saturday evening I started to think if I could remember a debate where one candidate had damaged another candidate quite that badly in a single encounter. The only instance that came to mind was Lloyd Bentsen's notorious "you're no Jack Kennedy" assault on Dan Quayle in 1988.
But on reflection I realized that Christie's evisceration of Rubio was worse.
I saw that.
Bentsen simply dissed Quayle to death on that one.
The whole Murphy Brown thing, on which he was actually right, hurt him, too.
The debate exchange.
Friday, February 5, 2016
Krauthammer on the threat to the GOP
The ‘Establishment’ Nonsense
CK is an ideologue and his version of conservatism is the neocon one: Wall Street interests will dominate at home and The War Party will dominate abroad.
A party office holder, elective or not, might have thought that a threat to the party would be a threat to its officials to win and hold offices.
The priests and publicists of the conservative ideology (or "ideologies") see things otherwise.
The threat to the GOP posed by the Trump insurgency is not that he’s anti-establishment.
It’s that he’s not conservative.
Trump’s winning the nomination would convulse the Republican party, fracture the conservative movement and undermine the GOP’s identity and role as the country’s conservative party.
. . . .
The Iowa results clarified the dynamic of the Republican race.
There are only three candidates in the race and, as I argued last week, each represents a different politics.
The result is a three-way fight between Trump’s personalized strongman populism and two flavors of conservatism — Marco Rubio’s more mainstream version and Cruz’s more uncompromising take-no-prisoners version.
In the present article he understates the differences between Rubio, a War Party man and a deal maker, and Cruz, less globalist and a bomb-thrower.
Not to mention that Rubio is constitutionally eligible for the presidency while Cruz is not.
This prediction offers what seems the most likely scenario.
We can now read the Iowa results as they affect the Republican future. Trumpian populism got 24 percent, conservatism (Rubio plus Cruz) got 51 percent.
There will be a spirited contest between the two conservatives over who has the better chance of winning the general election and of governing effectively.
But whatever the piques and preferences of various “establishment” party leaders, there’s no denying that either Rubio or Cruz would retain the GOP’s fundamental ideological identity.
Trump would not.
This, too, rather regrettably.
What Iowa confirms is that whatever beating the “establishment” takes during this campaign, Republicans are choosing conservatism over Trumpian populism by 2 to 1.
Which means their chances of survival as the party of Reagan are very good.
Last week, CK commented on his 'druthers.
He had this to say.
Cruz is a genuine conservative — austere, indeed radical, so much so that he considers mainstream congressional conservatives apostates.
And he finds Trump not conservative at all, as he is now furiously, belatedly insisting.
That means Cruz is a bomb thrower, a pro-government shutdown, pro-debt default kind of guy.
He and his like have been repeatedly cheered on to smash the state by such voices of true blue conservatism as George Will, Pat Buchanan, and of course CK, himself.
Our author continues.
My personal preference is for the third ideological alternative, the reform conservatism that locates the source of our problems not in heartless billionaires or crafty foreigners, but in our superannuated, increasingly sclerotic 20th-century welfare-state structures.
Right, the source of our problems is that Granny can still afford cat food on her Social Security budget, and can still afford prescriptions under her Medicare plan if she cuts all her pills in half.
But she can't afford to see her doctor or be hospitalized for anything at all because she has no savings (her 401k went belly up) and on Social Security alone she can't afford the premiums for a Medicare Advantage plan to cover the whopper physician and hospital costs Medicare alone still leaves the old and the desperate.
Their desperate need for reform has been overshadowed by the new populism, but Speaker Ryan is determined to introduce a serious reform agenda in this year’s Congress — boring stuff like welfare reform, health-care reform, tax reform, and institutional congressional reforms such as the return to “regular order.”
Paired with a president like Rubio (or Chris Christie or Carly Fiorina, to go longshot), such an agenda would give conservatism its best opportunity since Reagan to become the country’s governing philosophy.
My own preference would be that Trump win the GOP nomination, thus loosening conservatism's grip on that party and hastening the return of Eisenhower-Nixon Republicanism, and then lose to Hillary in the general election.
I say Hillary because, though Bernie wants to strengthen both Social Security and Medicare for all the elderly while she does not, I fear his Quixotism would undermine both and perhaps Obamacare as well, and maybe discredit the Democrats in the eyes of a public far more centrist than he is.
CK is an ideologue and his version of conservatism is the neocon one: Wall Street interests will dominate at home and The War Party will dominate abroad.
A party office holder, elective or not, might have thought that a threat to the party would be a threat to its officials to win and hold offices.
The priests and publicists of the conservative ideology (or "ideologies") see things otherwise.
The threat to the GOP posed by the Trump insurgency is not that he’s anti-establishment.
It’s that he’s not conservative.
Trump’s winning the nomination would convulse the Republican party, fracture the conservative movement and undermine the GOP’s identity and role as the country’s conservative party.
. . . .
The Iowa results clarified the dynamic of the Republican race.
There are only three candidates in the race and, as I argued last week, each represents a different politics.
The result is a three-way fight between Trump’s personalized strongman populism and two flavors of conservatism — Marco Rubio’s more mainstream version and Cruz’s more uncompromising take-no-prisoners version.
In the present article he understates the differences between Rubio, a War Party man and a deal maker, and Cruz, less globalist and a bomb-thrower.
Not to mention that Rubio is constitutionally eligible for the presidency while Cruz is not.
This prediction offers what seems the most likely scenario.
We can now read the Iowa results as they affect the Republican future. Trumpian populism got 24 percent, conservatism (Rubio plus Cruz) got 51 percent.
There will be a spirited contest between the two conservatives over who has the better chance of winning the general election and of governing effectively.
But whatever the piques and preferences of various “establishment” party leaders, there’s no denying that either Rubio or Cruz would retain the GOP’s fundamental ideological identity.
Trump would not.
This, too, rather regrettably.
What Iowa confirms is that whatever beating the “establishment” takes during this campaign, Republicans are choosing conservatism over Trumpian populism by 2 to 1.
Which means their chances of survival as the party of Reagan are very good.
Last week, CK commented on his 'druthers.
He had this to say.
Cruz is a genuine conservative — austere, indeed radical, so much so that he considers mainstream congressional conservatives apostates.
And he finds Trump not conservative at all, as he is now furiously, belatedly insisting.
That means Cruz is a bomb thrower, a pro-government shutdown, pro-debt default kind of guy.
He and his like have been repeatedly cheered on to smash the state by such voices of true blue conservatism as George Will, Pat Buchanan, and of course CK, himself.
Our author continues.
My personal preference is for the third ideological alternative, the reform conservatism that locates the source of our problems not in heartless billionaires or crafty foreigners, but in our superannuated, increasingly sclerotic 20th-century welfare-state structures.
Right, the source of our problems is that Granny can still afford cat food on her Social Security budget, and can still afford prescriptions under her Medicare plan if she cuts all her pills in half.
But she can't afford to see her doctor or be hospitalized for anything at all because she has no savings (her 401k went belly up) and on Social Security alone she can't afford the premiums for a Medicare Advantage plan to cover the whopper physician and hospital costs Medicare alone still leaves the old and the desperate.
Their desperate need for reform has been overshadowed by the new populism, but Speaker Ryan is determined to introduce a serious reform agenda in this year’s Congress — boring stuff like welfare reform, health-care reform, tax reform, and institutional congressional reforms such as the return to “regular order.”
Paired with a president like Rubio (or Chris Christie or Carly Fiorina, to go longshot), such an agenda would give conservatism its best opportunity since Reagan to become the country’s governing philosophy.
My own preference would be that Trump win the GOP nomination, thus loosening conservatism's grip on that party and hastening the return of Eisenhower-Nixon Republicanism, and then lose to Hillary in the general election.
I say Hillary because, though Bernie wants to strengthen both Social Security and Medicare for all the elderly while she does not, I fear his Quixotism would undermine both and perhaps Obamacare as well, and maybe discredit the Democrats in the eyes of a public far more centrist than he is.
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