Posted on 02/10/2016 5:56:27 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
The night could have gone worse for the GOP establishment-but I'm not really sure how. Not only did Donald Trump win an overwhelming victory in New Hampshire, but the establishment lane of viable candidates got more crowded than it had been going in. And remember that since the current primary calendar was inaugurated in 1976, no GOP nominee has ever emerged without winning Iowa or New Hampshire.
In case you haven't been paying attention, that means that, if history is a guide, the GOP is likely going to be choosing between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz as a nominee, which is enough to have Beltway insiders waking up in cold sweats. Of course, Trump was the biggest winner of the night with a dominant performance that even slightly outperformed his polls. He won virtually all of New Hampshire’s demographic groups and lapped the field, winning more votes than his top two challengers combined....
The other big winner from tonight was less obvious (except to the betting markets, where his odds of winning the nomination soared once the results became clear) and that was Ted Cruz, who finished a relatively distant third behind Trump and John Kasich (more on Kasich later). The reasons it was a great night for Cruz are not immediately obvious from the raw results (although obviously a third place finish in New Hampshire against a tough field after winning Iowa is a solid showing). But a deeper dive shows why New Hampshire was in fact a great win for Cruz. First, Cruz...
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
You prigs love the Bible quotes, so lets look at Ted’s fruits (votes) regarding H1B’s and TPA/TPP.
You’re worried about the general knowing who Trump would be up against? Give me a break!
“...I actually prefer Cruz to Trump...”
I prefer Cruz to Trump in the primaries for sure. In the general I think a Trump/Cruz ticket (either order) would be absolutely unstoppable.
Trump is currently polling in the 30’s and 40’s, so the inside-baseball prognosticators have to figure out how the the other 60% to 70% (that’s a bunch!) who are *not* currently for trump will split as the also-ran’s drop out. If Cruz stays in, and he has no reason not to so far, it is reasonable to presume he will split that 60% to 70% with Trump.
And I think it is going to be *very* difficult to predict how the split shakes out. We will probably just have to wait and see.
In other words, he's an opportunistic sleaze. All I see in Rubio is naked ambition, scripted smooth talk, and the absence of any core principles, values, or substance.
Unfortunately, it isn’t quite armageddon for the establishment. The combined establishment vote (Rubio, Jeb, Kasich, Christie, Fiorina) is basically equal to the combined anti-establishment (Trump, Cruz) vote. What’s holding the establishment back is that at the moment they’re splitting the vote in more directions than we are, and that may change soon as lower-tier establishment candidates start to drop out.
“Trump is still unacceptable to a lot of GOP voters (including no small number of folks here at NRO)”
Question for NRO. Are Bernie and Hillary also unacceptable to the crew at NRO? And when Trump is the GOP nominee, are ya’ll gonna vote for the Democrat, vote 3rd party, or simply not vote at all, helping to hand over our country to an avowed Communist or a traitor who would be in prison under any other circumstance?
One other thing here is that Trump’s negatives are highest of either party (Cruz’ negatives are high but only among the very “establishment” and they mostly exist inside DC and East Coast media) and since NH was a mixture of non-aligned voters, it’s difficult to know just how well he will do in states that hold to “closed primaries.”
Yes I am worried about the General. Trump is a time bomb. Will he go off during the nominating process, or during the general election or after he becomes President. But it is ticking for sure. He is very unpredictable and makes me nervous as he should make everyone nervous.
So, it turns out that after 8 years of conservative critics of Barack Obama throwing the epithet “socialist” carelessly around, they have taken all the sting out of the word! Congratulations Bernie Sanders! Game-changer, folks! Republicans (and you too, Mrs. Clinton) had better figure out quick that whenever they use the word as a shorthand insult they are labelling themselves as burned-out, used-up cold warriors with nothing interesting to say about, let alone prescribe for, the problems of 2016. What is a nation-state for anyway, if not to tackle large problems with collective action anyway? Riddle me that.
The one bright spot around the hideous Republican embrace of Trump is that it shows that ideological silos are crumbling-Trump (awful as he is) is more liberal than many sitting democratic members of congress.
“Cruz owns the conservative lane”
That’s debatable. Trump beat Cruz across all demographics last night, including every flavor of conservatives.
We’ll see if that holds up in South Carolina. I’m betting it will.
I’m with ya! I’m a Cruz supporter first. I question a couple of his votes, but he has a pretty consistent conservative/pro-constitution voting record (97% (A) voting record - second only to Mike Lee - if you pay attention to such things, which I do). For the most part, he has worked feverishly against the uniparty and even worked with the House Freedom Caucus to help organize opposition in the House - something I can’t recall any US Senator ever doing. He is hated by the establishment wings of both parties, which is a plus in my mind, and I have no doubt about the type of men and women he would appoint to cabinet positions and the federal bench. Furthermore, given his record in the Senate, I have no doubt that he will be more than willing to battle to have his appointees confirmed, even if it means using the bully pulpit of the presidency to take the message to the American people.
Regarding Trump, as I have said in other posts, I honestly believe that he is a patriot first, a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, a nationalist, and that he wants what is best for the country. The only things that bother me about Trump are his relatively recent past positions on some issues, as well as his tendency to broadly generalize his policy positions (the exception being immigration). I don’t want him to negotiate/”deal” with the “leadership” of either party, but take his message directly to the American people and do what he’s said he’ll do.
Bottom Line: I’ll vote for either of them against any candidate from the Democrat Party.
I agree that "socialist" is overused. Most mainstream Democrats favor crony capitalism rather than socialism, as do most mainstream Republicans. The only difference is who they pick to benefit from the cronyism.
Only the ideological right of the Republican party and libertarians support genuine free markets (in practice vs. rhetoric and lip service), while only the far Left flank of the Democrats are actual socialists in the sense of wanting to nationalize industries or banks.
I think you could write the names of all the Americans who want to nationalize industries on an index card.
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