“Johnny Strikes Up The Band”: If You Didn’t Know Any Better, You’d Think Kasich Was Indeed A Moderate
The most fascinating news coming out of the 2016 Republican National Convention might not be the struggle between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz for the GOP nomination. It might be the prominent role that Ohio Governor and stealth radical John Kasich plays at the confab in Cleveland.
A case can be made that Kasich, the Boy Wonder of Wingnuttery, is actually the most dangerous of the three remaining Republicans running for the White House. Kasich has both Donald Trump’s extensive media training and Ted Cruz’s devotion to dogmatism: while he might not have a shot at the Republican nomination this time around, he stands an frighteningly good chance of being the GOP nominee four years from now if Trump (or Cruz) fails on November 8.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Kasich is chosen to be the keynote speaker; he will certainly provide a moment of calm in an otherwise contentious convention. He’ll also be running a long con.
If chosen as the keynote speaker, Kasich will deliver a sentimental speech, syrupy but not excessively so, urging Republicans to come together and embrace an uplifting, optimistic vision for the future. He will be “surprisingly” gentle in his criticisms of President Obama and the Democratic nominee. He will make full use of his formidable rhetorical gifts to make the case to viewers that the “real” Republican Party is compassionate, conscious and charitable.
It will all be a scam designed to convince gullible viewers that there are still signs of rationality in the GOP–and that Kasich represents old-school Eisenhower Republicanism. The idea is simple: if they lose with Trump or Cruz on Election Day, “establishment” Republicans will take advantage of whatever public goodwill Kasich generates as a result of his convention speech to promote the idea that only he can guarantee a GOP victory in 2020.
This gambit could work. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think that Kasich was indeed a moderate, reasonable Republican; when it comes to portraying such a mythical figure on the stage of American politics, Kasich’s acting is so good it rivals Brando in his prime. If I didn’t know any better, I’d buy a used car from this man.
Yet those of us who know better know the real John Kasich–the cold and cynical heart that beats in his chest, the conservative mendacity in his calculating mind. Kasich talks one heck of a moderate game, but make no mistake: he’s the wingnuts’ warrior.
Kasich may emerge as the real star of the 2016 Republican National Convention. He may convince casual political observers that he’s an honorable man, one who just might deserve the presidency if voters are dissatisfied with Democrats in 2020. He might be able to fool just enough people to make him the 46th president on January 20, 2021. The only question is: if that happens, how long will it take for those who were fooled to smarten up?
By: D. R. Tucker, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, April 17, 2016
“Paul Ryan To GOP; I Can’t Be Your Everything”: His Current Job, That He Didn’t Want, Isn’t Going That Great
Paul Ryan wants you to know he’s not in the running to be president, and it’s not like when the Speaker of the House assured the public he wasn’t in the running to be Speaker of the House.
This time he wants you to know he means it.
That’s why he’s been putting out shiny, overly produced, campaign-style videos on foreign policy and giving flag draped speeches about the “common humanity” that should unify the Republican Party and the nation?
Nevermind that. This time he means it.
“We have too much work to do in the House to allow this speculation to swirl or to have my motivations questioned. So let me be clear: I do not want, nor will I accept, the nomination for our party,” Ryan told a room brimming with reporters at the Republican National Committee’s Capitol Hill headquarters.
(We’ll come back to the work Ryan wants to (and has failed to) get done in the House later.)
His forceful non-presidential announcement itself turned some heads on Capitol Hill.
“Was he in the running [at] the convention?” asked Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) when The Daily Beast informed him of Ryan’s press conference. “From Paul and from my friends in the House, I have had no one ever confirm the fact that he ever had any interest.”
The news that Ryan’s taken his name out of the running, by some accounts for the 19th time now, hit more moderate Republicans like a punch in the gut as they survey the GOP field that is dominated by reality TV star Donald Trump and conservative bomb-throwing Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
“That’s too bad. He was never pushing the talk – it was others,” said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), admitting that he was one of those on the Hill prodding Ryan to allow his name to be offered on the convention floor in Cleveland. “Paul Ryan would be great for the party and he could certainly win. I’ve known him for years and he’s a good conservative.”
But we’ve heard Ryan take his name out of the running for Speaker, only to offer it and be handed the most coveted gavel on Capitol Hill.
How different will this really be?
“Those are apples and oranges. Being Speaker of the House is a far cry from being President of the United States, specifically because I was already in the House; I’m already a congressman,” Ryan argued as progressive activists protested outside. “I was asked by my colleagues to take a responsibility within Congress that I’ve already been serving in from the one that I had. That is entirely different than getting the nomination for President of the United States by your party, without even running for the job.”
In fairness, his current job, that he didn’t want, isn’t going that great.
As Speaker, the numbers wonk has failed to unite the conservative wing of his party. Take this year’s budget battle, which Ryan seems to have lost.
Ryan was propelled to Republican fame during his tenure as chairman of the Budget Committee where he offered aggressive proposals to cut the social safety net and restructure entitlements, like Medicare. While that made him the whipping boy of progressives, it earned him the GOP’s vice presidential nomination in 2012.
After that failed campaign, he returned to the House as the Ways and Means chairman – not as prestigious as the veep spot but that’s where tax policy is written, so powerful nonetheless.
When he was elected speaker, he vowed to use his new perch atop the House to show the American people that conservatives can govern by passing a spending blueprint by Tax Day.
That deadline is just days away. And the tea party wing of the House revolted – as they are known to do – and it seems the lower chamber will fail to even pass a budget.
Thus instead holding a press conference showing a united Republican Party, budget in hand, he was forced to insert himself into presidential politics and beg convention delegates to stay in line and stop loving him so much.
“If no candidate has a majority on the first ballot, I believe that you should only choose from a person who has actually participated in the primary. Count me out,” Ryan added. “If you want to be the nominee for our party, to be the president, you should actually run for it.”
Many conservatives argue it would be better for Speaker Ryan’s future to focus on governing the House, instead of jumping into the crazy world of Election 2016.
“There’s no doubt about that,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) told The Daily Beast. “Being Speaker of the House, it’s an extremely difficult and challenging job, and he has the ability to be successful at that. I would just ask, but I think his problems will be greater if he’s not in the mainstream of Republican voters on big questions like trade and immigration.”
Sessions, who has endorsed Trump, added it would be unfair to millions of conservative primary voters for Ryan or another GOP leader to orchestrate a twelfth hour takeover at the convention.
“A lot of people have spoken at these elections. American people are not happy with the establishment of the Republican Party,” said Sessions. “And I guess the Speaker of the House would have to be classified as part of the establishment, right? So it would be hard to make that move—to go from a Ted Cruz and a Donald Trump to somebody who symbolizes the business as usual.”
By: Matt Laslo, The Daily Beast, April 13, 2016
“Courting With Disaster”: GOP Elites Think Stealing The Nomination From Trump Will Be A Cakewalk. They’re Wrong
The Republican presidential primary is settling into one of history’s most familiar grooves: Failing elites confront an internal rebellion by doing their absolute utmost to change nothing whatsoever.
The Donald Trump insurgency has demonstrated several things. First, there is a large constituency among Republican primary voters for outright bigotry and xenophobia; second, the commitment to traditional conservative economics among many Republican base voters is totally ephemeral.
It turns out that hardscrabble racist white people aren’t actually interested in gutting Medicare, privatizing Social Security, or Olympus Mons-sized tax cuts for the rich. The perception that they were was mainly created by the canny exploitation of the culture war and wealthy conservatives purchasing the entire slate of Republican candidates every year.
Now Trump has blown the scam wide open. But instead of trying to reckon with the fact that the consensus party ideology is cracking apart before their eyes, Republican elites — led by the nose by the donor class — are plotting to deliver the presidential nomination to a nice friendly establishment figure, perhaps Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.
Now, they are enabled in this by Trump himself, who just had the worst two weeks of news coverage of the entire primary. His campaign manager is literally being charged with battery, he stumbled on abortion, he got into an unbelievably petty fight over Ted Cruz’s wife, and the latest polling shows him being utterly blown out of the water in the general election. Then on Tuesday night, he got creamed by Cruz in the Wisconsin primary.
All that created a sense that Trump had finally, finally doomed himself. His support would begin to melt away, and the Republican big money grandees could come together and hand the nomination to a reliable plutocrat who could enact the welfare and tax cuts 1 percenters demand. Charles Koch himself is reportedly behind Paul Ryan, should Trump enter the convention at least 100 delegates short of a first ballot victory.
These people are fooling themselves. First of all, while Trump might really have done himself in, this is about the 40th time this exact same groupthink has taken hold and it’s been wrong every time so far. Moreover, whatever damage was done has barely registered in the polls. He’s off his large lead only slightly in the national average, and Wisconsin wasn’t a great spot for him in the first place. A bunch of states are coming up where conditions are a lot more favorable, and in the ones with recent polling (New York, Pennsylvania) he’s ahead by a lot.
In short, while he might not come into the convention with enough delegates to win a first-ballot victory, conditions would have to change dramatically for Trump to fail to get a large delegate plurality — and that’s leaving aside the distinct possibility that he could bounce back from his current troubles by changing the subject, perhaps with yet another round of anti-Muslim bigotry.
What’s more, the second place contender (behind by 237 pledged delegates at the moment) is Ted Cruz, who is nearly as rabidly anti-establishment (and as bad a general election candidate) as Trump. It is literally mathematically impossible for John Kasich, the only sort of non-extremist left in the race, to win in a first ballot.
Primary elections have been exhaustively covered and have developed a deep democratic legitimacy. If Trump comes into the convention with a large plurality of delegates, trying to wrest the nomination from him is courting disaster. It probably wouldn’t even work, as the delegates would likely get cold feet at what amounts to a massive, bald-faced election theft. Even if it did, Trump would have every reason to attempt a third-party run and split the conservative vote — and might even do better than the Republican candidate.
Trying to wrest the nomination from Cruz as well, so the billionaire donor class can hand it to one of their pets who didn’t even enter the primary, is even crazier than that. It’s the kind of thing that actually destroys parties. At that point the donors would be openly stamping on the expressed preference of something like nine-tenths of their own voters, and all but teeing up a presidential challenger that would beat their own candidate by 40 points.
The GOP elite, such as it is, is largely controlled by people who think a full-blown populist rebellion can be handled with a few backroom conversations and massive checks. They’re about to find out the hard way that they’re wrong.
By: Ryan Cooper, The Week, April 7, 2016
“Left With A Choice Of Three Varieties Of Defeat”: Republicans Are Faced With Their Worst Nightmare After Wisconsin
At long last, Donald Trump has shown the vulnerability that Republicans have been seeking for so long. Controversies over his words and ideas now trouble him like they never did before, everyone has realized how spectacularly unpopular he is with the general public, and just at the right time, he got beaten handily in Wisconsin by Ted Cruz. He has lost primaries before, but this one seems particularly wounding, as though it portends more hard times to come. Now he can be struck down, to fall with a thundering reverberation on the blood-soaked field of battle.
Or so Republicans hope. But the truth is, they may be facing the worst of all possible worlds: a terribly damaged Trump who nonetheless can’t be stopped from winning their party’s nomination.
Trump has certainly suffered in the last couple of weeks, as the horrifying farce that his candidacy represents has become more clear with each passing day. He could lose momentum and lose more primaries before the final contests in June. Then he could limp into the convention in Cleveland with fewer than the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the nomination outright. But for all that, it may already be too late to stop him.
Why is that? The first reason is that Trump’s lead in delegates is simply too big for Ted Cruz to overcome. Trump came into this week with 737 delegates to Cruz’s 505, a lead that will get only somewhat smaller after Wisconsin’s 42 are allocated (Cruz will get most of them, but Trump will probably pick up a few). Cruz will still need to win almost all of the remaining delegates to get past 1,237 himself, which is essentially impossible. Trump, on the other hand, needs to win around 60 percent of those that remain — difficult, but still possible.
And if he doesn’t, what happens? Everyone arrives in Cleveland with Trump having won far more primaries, votes, and delegates than anyone else. The convention can hand the nomination to another candidate, but no matter who that person might be, it will be seen as a grave injustice by Trump’s supporters, who are a clear plurality (if not quite a majority) of Republican voters.
And who would grasp that nomination? Ted Cruz, who came in second? That won’t sit right. In the current establishment fantasy, a deadlocked convention is resolved when the attendees finally give the nomination to that fine young man, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.
That would be a disaster of a different sort. It would validate everything that the angry voters who have dominated the GOP for the last seven years, and who have driven this primary race around every dangerous curve, have been saying all along. Just as they feared, the party bigwigs — or what Cruz likes to call “the Washington cartel” — came in at the end to steal the nomination away from the guy who got the most votes, and hand it to an insider who didn’t even compete for the people’s favor. Trump may or may not have been right when he said “I think you’d have riots” if that happened, but you can bet that Trump’s voters — and probably Cruz’s too — would be positively enraged. They might even be angry enough not to bother voting in November.
But in the meantime, they’ll shout and scream and maybe even throw a few punches. And with the first contested convention in decades, every camera will be on the lookout for signs of chaos. The country will watch as the GOP tears itself to pieces, all before the Democrats hold an optimistic yet sedate convention at which Hillary Clinton assures the country that whatever they may not like about her, at least she isn’t some kind of lunatic like the people who populate the other party.
Up until now, Republicans had a hard time imagining anything worse than Donald Trump becoming their party’s nominee. But their minds might just be able to expand to envision an even more horrifying scenario. It’s one in which the widely loathed Ted Cruz becomes the man on whom they pin their fading hopes, and yet they are not saved. It’s one in which they are left with only a choice between three different varieties of defeat, and find themselves with no power to choose. And it’s one in which Donald Trump grows more and more unpopular even before the general election begins — and then they wind up stuck with him anyway.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Week, April 6, 2016
“Bloodbath Alert”: Donald Trump Issues New Threat To Destroy The GOP
The big news of the morning is that the weak, doomed-in-advance efforts by Republican Party elders to hold off a crack-up of their party may be collapsing before our eyes: Donald Trump and his two rivals have now backed off their pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee.
“No, I don’t anymore,” Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, when asked if he remains committed to the pledge. Trump said that he would instead wait to see who emerges as the nominee before promising his support, recanting the pledge he previously signed with the Republican Party.
“I have been treated very unfairly,” Trump added.
It was always painfully obvious that Trump, in originally joining the Republican National Committee’s “loyalty pledge,” had carefully given himself an out, stating that he reserved the right to abandon the pledge if he were treated “unfairly.” Conveniently enough, Trump also knew he could define what constituted “unfair” treatment. Now he has done exactly this.
The crucial point here is not that this necessarily means Trump will run a third-party candidacy if the nomination goes to someone else at a contested convention. He may try to do that, but such an effort might depend on ballot logistics. Rather, what really matters here is that Trump is signaling his possible intention to do maximum damage to the party if he is denied the nomination, through whatever means he has at his disposal.
We simply don’t have any idea yet how much damage Trump can do to the Republican Party. It could go well beyond denying Republicans the White House. If a raging Trump, having lost the nomination at a contested convention, urges millions of his followers not to vote Republican, it could cause large numbers of GOP voters to sit out the election, potentially rupturing their plans for holding their Senate majority.
The significance of this spills over into the Supreme Court fight, too: GOP Senate leaders are explicitly refusing to consider Barack Obama’s nominee to keep the base energized, in hopes of holding that Senate majority. The idea: Republican voters might be fizzed up by the GOP leadership’s awesome willingness to do whatever it takes to prevent a liberal Court, and by the added benefit this strategy has of seeming to stick a thumb in the eye of Obama’s legitimacy as president. But Trump — by doing all he can to rupture the base — could roll a grenade into the center of all this.
Even if Trump wins the nomination with a minimum of convention drama, that, too, could do a lot of damage. If a lot of GOP voters alienated by Trump back the Democratic nominee or sit the election out, that could imperil GOP control of the Senate. It’s possible this could also begin to produce cracks in the GOP’s House majority. Paul Kane reports that political observers are suggesting it now looks possible that a Trump nomination could lead to major gains for Democrats in the House. Winning the 30 seats needed to take back the majority still looks like a major long shot. But some analysts think “double digit gains” for Dems are possible:
Such a big loss would leave Republicans holding the slimmest House majority either party has held in more than a decade. That could further destabilize the control of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan over a chamber in which his conservative flank has recently rebelled against his agenda.
If Republicans do lose the Senate, a much smaller House majority could matter a lot in determining whether the House can continue to function for Republicans as a kind of ideological island fortress, seemingly impregnable to the pressures of demographic and cultural change and evolving national public opinion.
This is why some Republicans may move to push a third-party challenger if Trump does win the nomination — to give Republicans a reason to go to the polls and vote for Senate and Congressional incumbents. But even in this scenario, they’d effectively be sacrificing the White House in order to do as much as possible to salvage their Senate (and House!!!) majority.
To be sure, it’s possible that Cruz could win the nomination at a contested convention and that Trump could support him. While this would also likely cost Republicans the White House, it could avert the most damaging down-ticket scenarios. But it’s also possible that we’ve only just begun to glimpse the damage Trump can do to the GOP.
By: Greg Sargent, The Plum Line Blog, The Washington Post, March 30, 2016
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