“The Cure For The Common Trump”: Take One Cruz And Call Me In The Morning
It is time for Marco Rubio, John Kasich and their supporters to take a bitter pill. It won’t go down easy. But it is the only thing that gives the GOP a chance at curing the nasty infection that is The Trump after Tuesday’s election results.
The medicine is controversial. There are risks involved. There are serious but unavoidable side effects. But it does make a fine pairing with a cup of tea and a serving of delegate math, since the infection is still just a plurality and not a majority.
The pill is called Ted Cruz.
Now, now. Calm down. I see you, friends (establishment types or elites or moderate Republicans) shaking your heads and pursing your lips. May I suggest, before turning your head away, to please look again at your infection, The Trump. It’s looking like it might go gangrenous. It’s started asking good people to lower themselves by raising their hands and taking a pledge, to swear loyalty – the kind of gesture that has traditionally been reserved in this country not for mortals, but for the great symbols of our collective freedom, such as our flag and our Constitution.
What I’m saying to you is that the infection is scary. Like, really scary. If you don’t treat it now, you might die, okay?
The Republican party and the conservative movement – fractured as it is, it’s still important – might die. Take. The. Pill.
I’m not going to sugar coat it. You’re not a child (even if The Trump calls you and others like you “babies”). You are also old enough, and smart enough, to know that your own behavior got you here. You were reckless. You got into bed with people who weren’t good for the party.
Oh, sure, they seemed like a good idea at the time – so rich and powerful, right? Big insurance, big pharmaceutical manufacturers, big Wall Street. Of course you swooned. Of course you let them in. You let them whisper sweet nothings in your ear, and followed their advice, thinking that a little crony capitalism between lovers is only natural. Who would really notice that your promises to cut spending, simplify taxes, reduce regulations and strengthen national security would not be kept?
Meanwhile, you mocked the people who were trying to change the party to be more populist – a move that we now know was the beginning of the wave of the future. But you chose the wrong partners, and now you have The Trump. And it requires what you may consider to be an unpleasant and painful treatment. Bad medicine.
Again, perhaps context will help: Compared to The Trump, the populism of the tea party looks like the sniffles. And you had a chance, let’s not forget, to slow down and deal with the sniffles. Recognize them. Make peace with them. Heal together. But instead you scorned them. You laughed at them. You ignored and tried to delegitimize them. So isn’t it rather poetic justice that the cure to your Trump infection just may be a large, hot cup of tea party?
And besides, there could be some positive side effects that you haven’t even considered! A dose of Cruz may also soothe that tea party headache that you were never able to get rid of. Your conscience might clear up, too, as you get some distance from your crony capitalist exes. So, please. Consider taking one Cruz and calling me in the morning.
By: Jean Card, Thomas Jefferson Street Blog, U. S. News and World Report, March 9, 2016
“Rubio’s Big Fade”: As Cruz Crushes Caucuses, GOP Establishment Needs A Drink And A Hug
Ted Cruz crushed the Kansas and Maine caucuses on “Super Saturday” while Donald Trump narrowly won the Louisiana and Kentucky prizes. But perhaps the biggest news was Marco Rubio fading in the field to a distant third place, despite racking up major endorsements across the map.
Over the past six weeks, the GOP establishment has moved from denial to anger to bargaining in the stages of grief that have accompanied this outsider election. But with Rubio’s big fade, the Hail Mary of a brokered convention looks even less likely. And what’s left of the party’s center-right is heading for the next stage of depression. A hug and a drink are in order, as their party prepares to be wrested away from reform Republicans.
How bad was it?
Well, their unofficial standard bearer, Marco Rubio, got schlonged.
The Florida Republican—struggling to present himself as the establishment-friendly alternative to Donald Trump—had perhaps his worst night yet, racking up zero wins, and failing to even snag a second-place finish anywhere.
In fact, Rubio finished third in three of the four states contested on Saturday. And with just 8 percent, the Florida senator fell to fourth in Maine—failing to get the minimum 10 percent necessary to win any delegates.
Trump pounced on this, opening his West Palm Beach victory press conference with a call for Rubio to drop out.
“Marco has to get out of the race. Has to,” Trump said.
The math for Rubio isn’t pretty.
There’s now no question that Rubio’s decision to descend to Trump’s level of discourse has been a total failure. The attacks on the size of Trump’s hands, the jokes about him wetting himself, the “con artist” name-calling, have all fallen flat.
And the losses on Saturday could rob his campaign of desperately needed momentum. Rubio has repeatedly stated that he expects to win in his home state of Florida on March 15. And, of course, that’s technically possible. But he has yet to lead in a single public poll of the state. And he doesn’t want to talk about what he’ll do if Florida doesn’t work out.
The billionaire businessman, with the flair of a pro wrestler, said he hoped for a head-to-head match-up with Cruz.
“I would love to take Ted on one-on-one,” he growled. “I want Ted one-on-one.”
If Rubio takes Trump’s advice, then some hot Cruz/Trump one-on-one action could be in our future. Best election ever.
By: Betsy Woodruff, With Reporting by Tim Mak; The Daily Beast, March 6, 2016
“Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted, Yoga And Manhood”: The Debate That Made America Dumber
Thursday’s Republican presidential debate made us all dumber.
It was a disgrace. As people wake up in capitals around the world Friday morning, in London and Addis Ababa and Riyadh and Beijing and Seoul, newscasters will be forced to find a way to discuss, in their local euphemisms, Donald Trump’s dick size.
The exchanges on the stage at the Fox Theater in Motown centered around erstwhile reality television star Donald Trump, who found, as usual, a way to be even more outrageous than he has been in previous debates.
Sen. Marco Rubio—a 44-year-old U.S. senator! A grown man! With children!—had made fun of Trump’s hand size, implying that his manhood was not so large.
“I have to say this. He hit my hands. Nobody has ever hit my hands. I have never heard of this. Look at those hands. Are they small hands?” Trump responded, on a nationally televised debate to become leader of the free world.
“And he referred to my hands, if they are small, something else must be small,” Trump deadpanned. “I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee you.”
There was shouting inside the debate hall and out. As a light snow fell on Woodward Avenue across from Ford Field, progressive protesters growled about their issues of the day: their objections to “racist” Trump; their demand for a higher minimum wage; calls for an immediate solution for the lead-poisoned people of Flint.
But the shouting and chanting was statesmanlike compared to the childish theatrics indoors. You could practically hear your brain cells crying out in pain as they died out, answer after answer.
There were insults, and Donald Trump defending war crimes, and Cruz treating the businessman like a small child. Trump called Rubio “little Marco,” and Cruz “lyin’ Ted.”
It was beyond satire. The first question, to Trump, was about former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who had delivered a scathing speech challenging Trump’s fitness to become president.
“He challenged you to answer with substance, not insults. How do you answer Mitt Romney, sir?” asked Fox News moderator Chris Wallace.
“He was a failed candidate,” Trump shot back. “He failed miserably, and it was an embarrassment to everybody.”
When Rubio challenged Trump on whether he’d answer a policy question substantively, the businessman responded like an adolescent: “Don’t worry about it, little Marco.” Rubio fired back: “Let’s hear big Donald.”
It was like a kindergarten brawl: a lot of cheap insults, a lot of whining, culminating with the need for everyone to have a time out. Sen. Ted Cruz—a 45-year-old U.S. senator! A grown man! With children!—treated Trump much like he would his two young daughters.
When Trump tried to interrupt him during an answer, Cruz responded patronizingly, “Donald, learn not to interrupt. It’s not complicated—Count to 10. Count to 10.”
“Yelling and cursing people doesn’t make you a tough guy,” Cruz said, as if lecturing an infant on the playground.
Meanwhile Trump one-upped everyone by defending torture, and insisting that the military would follow through with illegal orders if he gave them. Trump had previously said that his national security policy would involve targeting the innocent family members of terrorists and the use of interrogation methods even more extreme than waterboarding.
“They won’t refuse. They’re not going to refuse me. Believe me,” Trump said. “We should go for waterboarding… and tougher than waterboarding… I’m a leader, I’ve always been a leader… if I say do it, they’re going to do it.”
And on targeting the family members of terrorists, a potential war crime? “I have no problem with it,” Trump said.
The businessman struggled to square these authoritarian instincts with one of his key selling points: that he’d be the man who could make a deal with Congress, with China, with Vladimir Putin. He has a “strong core” that is also “flexible,” he said.
“You can breathe,” Cruz told Trump, during yet another shouting match. “I know it’s hard.”
“When they’re done with the yoga, can I answer a question?” Rubio butted in.
“I really hope we don’t see yoga on this stage,” Cruz responded.
“Well he’s really flexible, so you never know,” Rubio quipped.
On a day that former governor Romney gave a speech in Utah decrying Trump’s excesses, the dumbest presidential debate of all time took place. It must have made much of the American public yearn for a less stupid time—when the biggest controversy of the day was Romney’s car elevator and awkward word choices. How quaint that all was.
By: Tim Mak, The Daily Beast, March 4, 2016
“The Odd Man Out”: For Ted Cruz, Anti-Trump Cabal Could Be A Suicide Pact
For Marco Rubio and John Kasich, the current anti-Trump cabal whereby every surviving candidate takes on the Donald in different states via a division of labor that involves tactical cooperation is a no-brainer. Both of these dudes face possible extinction in winner-take-all home-state primaries on March 15 in which they’ll need every anti-Trump vote. More fundamentally, they are in third and fourth place in total delegates. Rubio, in particular, is no longer in a position to insist on consolidation of non-Trump voters under his banner. But for Ted Cruz, the cabal forces a tough decision. He’s not in a position to stop Trump on his own. But if he cooperates with Rubio and Kasich and a Republican Establishment that despises him nearly as much as it does Trump, he could be enabling his own demise down the road and thwarting his own efforts to seize the party for the more militant elements of the conservative movement.
At the moment, Team Cruz is focused on the short-term challenge of winning in three states that vote tomorrow: Kansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana. The first two are closed caucuses with long-passed cutoffs for reregistration to change party affiliation — probably the least hospitable environment for Donald Trump’s campaign. And Louisiana is a closed primary in a state where Cruz has been running a relatively strong second to Trump in the polls. If the mauling of Trump in the Fox News debate in Detroit Thursday night produced lasting damage to his candidacy, it should begin to show up in these states.
But assuming March 6 goes well for Cruz, the strategic dilemmas begin. Sure, he’ll go for the gold in Mississippi and Idaho on March 8. But does he take a dive the same day in Michigan, where he’s been running even with Rubio and well ahead of Kasich? And does he entirely pull his campaign out of Florida and Ohio on March 15 to maximize the home-state cabal boys’ odds of beating Trump? Presumably he will, but he could wake up on March 16 to find his delegate advantage greatly reduced, and with the remaining list of Cruz Country states on the calendar looking mighty slim.
Looking ahead to the potential “contested convention” that is the anti-Trump cabal’s strategic linchpin, Cruz’s main leverage is the possibility that he could put Trump over the top on a second ballot if he is prematurely cast aside by the Establishment folk. He could even position himself as a “unity candidate” whose views on immigration and national security are closer to Trump’s than any other available candidate’s. More likely he’ll be the odd man out in whatever decisions the Establishment makes, having already burned his bridges to Trump’s insurgency to a smoking cinder. Right now the candidate running second to Trump seems doomed to failure whichever way he — or the worm — turns. His consolation will be that, like Rubio, he’s still very young, and, unlike Rubio, he hasn’t given up his Senate seat to participate in this wild presidential nominating contest.
By: Ed Kilgore, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, March 4, 2016
“Missouri Suicide Haunts Ted Cruz Campaign”: Campaign Manager Jeff Roe’s Bad-Boy Brand Is Major Hindrance To Cruz’s Presidential Hopes
One year ago today, the Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich took his own life.
Schweich’s political mentor, former Sen. John Danforth, blames Ted Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, for contributing to his death and said Cruz’s decision to hire him should give voters pause.
It’s not a universal view—far from it. Roe rejects any responsibility for the suicide, and police haven’t in any way assigned him with legal culpability for Schweich’s death. But as Cruz’s opponents question his character, some point to Schweich’s death as evidence of a morally sick presidential campaign.
At the very least, it’s a PR nightmare.
As Cruz gears up for a month of primaries that will likely determine the Republican nominee, his campaign manager has gotten significant attention. That includes a Page One New York Times story describing Roe as “an operative with a reputation for scorching earth, stretching truths, and winning elections.”
Danforth says the truth is less sexy: that Roe loses—a lot—and that his bad-boy brand is a major hindrance to Cruz’s presidential hopes.
A year ago, Roe was working for Catherine Hanaway, who was (and still is) running in the primary to be Missouri’s next Republican gubernatorial nominee. Schweich, then the state auditor, was the contest’s frontrunner. The race got ugly fast.
One of Hanaway’s supporters, John Hancock, started telling people that Schweich was Jewish. Hancock said he may have mentioned Schweich’s heritage to a few people as a neutral fact, and didn’t intend to hurt his chances by stoking anti-Semitism.
Schweich, in fact, was not Jewish; he was Episcopalian, though of Jewish ancestry. Schweich suspected Hanaway’s allies had launched an anti-Semitic whisper campaign against him—a prospect he found deeply disturbing, according to reports from local and national publications.
Another part of the race was weighing on his mind as well: a radio ad, narrated by a Frank Underwood sound-alike, that criticized his physical appearance by saying he looked like the deputy sheriff in The Andy Griffith Show. The ad, which you can listen to here, also called Schweich weak.
“Once Schweich obtains the Republican nomination, we will quickly squash him like the little bug that he is,” intoned the narrator.
Roe, working for Hanaway’s campaign, took responsibility for the ad. He told The Kansas City Star that he paid for it to air during The Rush Limbaugh Show. The ad left Schweich deeply shaken, according to his friends.
“I talked to Tom two days before he shot himself to death and he was terribly upset,” Danforth told The Daily Beast. “And he was upset about two things: One was the radio commercial that was being run making fun of his physical appearance. But even more, he was upset about what I would call a fishing expedition in the waters of anti-Semitism.”
Two days after that conversation, Schweich shot himself. The death shocked the Missouri political world. According to The Washington Post, his wife subsequently told police that he’d talked about suicide in the past while holding a gun.
Danforth said Roe bears some responsibility for Schweich’s death.
“Yes, of course, of course he does,” he said. “When two days before a man shoots himself to death he’s upset about a radio commercial and it’s Roe’s commercial—of course. You don’t just do dirty things to people and then just walk away from it as though, ‘Oh, I didn’t do anything.’ Of course you did. ‘I’m not responsible.’ Of course you are. Of course you’re responsible.”
Danforth made similar comments in the homily for Schweich’s funeral, which he delivered.
“Words, for Jesus, could be the moral equivalent of murder,” he said in the homily last year. “He said if we insult a brother or sister, we will be liable. He said if we call someone a fool, we will be liable to hell.”
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Roe declined to give additional comment on any allegations of culpability for Schweich’s death.
A few months after the suicide, Roe told The Kansas City Star that the death had saddened him. And he defended the ad.
“His resemblance to Barney Fife had been characterized in Missouri newspapers,” Roe told the paper. “He made fun of himself on the stump. It was a parody.”
Speaking with The Daily Beast, Roe said attacks on the moral character of Cruz’s campaign are meritless.
“This campaign is being fueled by millions of people around the country who are putting their heart and soul into electing a consistent conservative, and of course our opponents would have to attack our underlying credibility of telling the truth,” he said.
“They want to change the subject from their liberal records, that they admit, and that’s exactly what we see here,” Roe added.
Though Danforth—the elder statesman of Missouri Republican politics—blames Roe for the death, other prominent conservatives in the state defend him.
“Nobody should be blamed for a guy’s suicide,” said Ed Martin, the president of Eagle Forum, which is based in St. Louis. “I don’t lay it on Roe or anybody.”
Martin added that he disapproved of Danforth’s homily.
“Danforth’s homily, when I sat in the pew, it was a terrible thing—it was a terribly inappropriate thing,” he said. “Danforth should have held a press conference afterwards, not at the eulogy. And because of that, it really spun the whole argument in a way that wasn’t really fair.”
And he said the attacks Schweich faced are just politics as usual—and that if he hadn’t committed suicide, they wouldn’t have drawn special reprobation.
Bill Kenney, who heads Missouri’s Public Service Commission, concurred.
“I think any politician realizes that politics is politics,” said Kenney, who is a former state senator. “The radio ads didn’t cause Tom Schweich to take his life.
“I like Jeff,” he added. “I’m glad I’m out of politics so I don’t have him against me.”
After Schweich’s death, many called for a change in Missouri’s political culture.
“The auditor might have pulled the trigger, but the bullies who were campaigning against him held the gun to his head,” read an editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“Tom Schweich is a martyr for the cause,” the same editorial said.
But a year later, Danforth said, things aren’t better. And now, one of the men he holds partly culpable for Schweich’s death is running a top-tier presidential campaign.
Danforth also said the so-called dirty tricks that have damaged the Cruz campaign’s reputation are all classic Jeff Roe. As examples of those tricks, he pointed to the “voter violation” mailer in Iowa, the false statement that Carson was about to drop out of the presidential race, and the use of a photoshopped image of Marco Rubio shaking hands with President Obama.
“I don’t know Roe, but I know what he did to Schweich,” he said. “And as soon as I saw what happened to Carson in Iowa, I said to myself, this is Jeff Roe.”
Martin said Cruz shouldn’t be surprised that his campaign is taking significant heat for its tactics. After all, he said, that’s what Cruz should have expected when he hired Roe: controversy and criticism.
“He likes to play very aggressively and flashily,” Martin said. “There are plenty of people who do hardball tactics who you never hear from, you never know. Then there’s the Lee Atwater model, where you talk about it, and the Jeff Roe model, where you revel in it.
“He’s got a problem now,” Martin continued. “And I bet they’ll address it, but they definitely have a perception problem.”
Danforth said the Cruz campaign has far greater problems than its image.
“In The New York Times article about Roe it said, ‘Well, he’s a master of dirty tricks, but it works,’” Danforth said. “Well, I don’t think it does.”
Danforth noted that while Roe has helped several candidates win statewide races, he’s also chalked up a number of high-profile losses—including a blistering defeat in Jackson County, where he led a $1 million effort in 2013 to hike sales taxes. Fewer than 14 percent of voters ended up supporting the effort.
“I don’t think losing a campaign in Kansas City 86 to 14 is exactly a stellar accomplishment,” Danforth said. “You almost have to try to do that. Who’d ever hire this guy?”
Other statewide losses include Sarah Steelman’s defeat in the 2008 gubernatorial primary, Brad Lager’s 2008 general election bid for treasurer, and Bill Stouffer’s campaign in the 2012 Republican primary for secretary of state.
Roe has won plenty of races, especially on the local and congressional levels. But statewide, he’s also lost a lot.
A year later, Schweich’s family and friends still grieve.
“I think he was probably too sensitive a person to be in elective politics, but so what?” Danforth said. “Does that mean that we all only want the rough-and-tumble people in politics? I don’t think so. Is it OK to pick on somebody who is sensitive? I don’t think so.”
By: Betsy Woodruff, The Daily Beast, February 26, 2016
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