“Leaving The Top Of The Ticket Blank”: More Conservatives Backing Away From Trump Nomination
As conservatives all over the country come to terms with Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party, a cohort of conservative political figures and media personalities are actively fighting against him. Here’s what they have said about the racist billionaire’s ascension to the party nomination:
Steve Deace, host of conservative talk show The Steve Deace Show, in USA Today.
“But it’s not Donald Trump’s fault any more than it’s the fault of your pet scorpion when it stings you. After all, it takes a special kind of stupid to allow an animal with a poisonous stinger close enough to do that to you in the first place. The scorpion is simply being a scorpion. You, on the other hand, are supposed to know better.”
David Limbaugh, brother of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, in Townhall:
“If Trump wants our support (and sometimes he implies he doesn’t), he should have to convince us that he will not move toward authoritarianism; that he will honor the Constitution; that he will not take steps to use the Republican Party (or any other party) to permanently undermine constitutional conservatism; and that he won’t cater to those in his movement who want to cast constitutional conservatism into the burning dumpster.”
“I am not ‘NeverTrump’ — I recognize how bad Clinton is — but I think conservatives should now use what leverage they have to hold Trump’s feet to the fire so that we don’t lose either way.”
Former Republican Dallas County party chairman Jonathan Neerman, quoted in TIME:
“That would leave me with leaving the top of the ticket blank,” [he said.] “I will fill out the rest of my ballot for every other Republican candidate. I just won’t vote for Donald Trump, and I certainly won’t vote for Hillary Clinton.”
South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, quoted in The Hill:
“I also cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump because I do not believe he is a reliable Republican conservative nor has he displayed the judgment and temperament to serve as commander in chief.”
Former Texas congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, speaking on Fox Business:
“I don’t think he offers anything and hardly do I think Hillary offers anything,” said
Conservative commentator Linda Chavez, in Newsmax:
“I have said it often enough, but it bears repeating: I will not vote for Donald Trump for president. There are millions like me. We fully understand the consequences — another four years of a Democrat in the White House — even if we do not like them.”
Former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, at “a dinner in Washington,” according to The Washington Examiner:
“I happen to think that the person who is leading the nation has an enormous and disproportionate impact on the course of the world, so I am dismayed at where we are now, I wish we had better choices, and I keep hoping that somehow things will get better, and I just don’t see an easy answer from where we are.”
Radio host and leading anti-Trump conservative Glenn Beck, speaking on his network, The Blaze:
“Because what’s going to happen is you are now going to have Hillary Clinton legalize as many voters as you can, the GOP is going to be completely racist – whether it’s true or not – because of Donald Trump. You will never have another Republican president ever again.”
Despite the widespread opposition to Trump, it’s uncertain whether so many conservative politicians and commentators will have any effect. Trump has picked up the endorsements of a growing number of Republican governors and congressmen who have insisted that the racist billionaire should be supported as a matter of duty to the party. Despite their exhortations, it will be hard to paper over the deep divisions that have emerged between the two sides of the Republican Party.
By: Saif Alnuweiri, The National Memo, May 6, 2016
“GOP Convention Rule 40(b)”: How An Obscure Rule Could Limit The GOP Convention To A Choice Of Trump Or Cruz
Back in the day, when national party conventions were largely autonomous events rather than infomercials for a nominee chosen in primaries and caucuses, you’d have many names, including multiple “favorite son” candidates who were not really running for president, placed in nomination, with extensive time spent on nominating speeches and even “spontaneous” floor demonstrations. As conventions became more tightly controlled and their managers worried about things like ensuring that the balloting and acceptance speeches occurred before East Coast television viewers were asleep, nonserious candidacies were sacrificed to efficiency. Among Republicans, the tradition developed that no one’s name could be placed in nomination without support from at least three delegations; that cut off the pure favorite-son candidacies. Beyond that, the status of conventions as ratifying rather than nominating events exerted its own pressure on “losers” who typically succumbed to the pressure to unite behind the nominee and grin for the cameras.
That was before the Ron Paul Revolution appeared on the scene. In 2012, the Paulites shrewdly focused on winning fights for delegates that occurred after primaries and caucuses in hopes of making their eccentric candidate and his eccentric causes a big nuisance at Mitt Romney’s convention. And so the Romney campaign and its many allies reacted — some would say overreacted — by using its muscle on the convention Rules Committee (meeting just prior to Tampa to draft procedures for the conclave) to change the presence-in-three-delegations threshold for having one’s name placed in nomination to this one:
Each candidate for nomination for President of the United States and Vice President of the United States shall demonstrate the support of a majority of the delegates from each of eight (8) or more states, severally, prior to the presentation of the name of that candidate for nomination.
This Rule 40(b), moreover, was interpreted to mean that no candidate who did not meet the threshold could have votes for the nomination recorded in her/his name.
Rule 40(b) succeeded in keeping the Paulites under wraps in Tampa, but as is generally the case, it remained in effect as a “temporary” rule for the next convention, subject to possible revision by a new Rules Committee meeting just prior to the 2016 gathering, and by the convention itself, which controls its own rules. In fact, its drafters may have intended to keep the rule in place to head off some annoying convention challenge to President Romney’s renomination.
Back in the real world, Rule 40(b) may have been in the back of some minds early in the 2016 cycle as a way to keep the convention from being rhetorically kidnapped by noisy supporters of Rand Paul, or of the novelty “birther” candidate Donald Trump.
Now, obviously, the shoe is on the other foot, and there is a growing possibility that the two strongest candidates for the GOP nomination, Trump and Ted Cruz, could join their considerable forces to insist on maintenance of Rule 40(b) or something much like it to prevent their common Republican Establishment enemies from exploiting a multi-ballot convention to place someone else at the top of the ticket.
Trump is currently the only candidate who is beyond the eight-state-majority threshold for competing for the nomination under the strict terms of Rule 40(b). But Team Cruz is confident enough that its candidate will also satisfy the rule that he’s the one out there arguing that Rule 40(b) means votes for John Kasich are an entire waste because they won’t be counted in Cleveland. And with both Trump and Cruz repeatedly claiming that the nomination of a dark horse who hasn’t competed during the primaries would be an insult to the GOP rank and file, maintaining Rule 40(b) is the obvious strategy to close off that possibility. A good indicator of the new situation is the evolving position of Virginia party activist and veteran Rules Committee member Morton Blackwell, a loud dissenter against Rule 40(b) before and after the 2012 convention, who now, as a Cruz supporter, is arguing that changing the rule “would be widely and correctly viewed as [an] outrageous power grab.”
But can the Republican Establishment stack the Rules Committee with party insiders determined to overturn Rule 40(b) and keep the party’s options wide open going into Cleveland? Not really. That committee is composed of two members elected by each state delegation. No likely combination of Kasich and Rubio delegates and “false-flag” delegates bound to Trump or Cruz but free to vote against their interests on procedural issues is likely to make up a majority of the Rules Committee, or of the convention. Indeed, most of the anecdotal evidence about “delegate-stealing” in the murky process of naming actual bodies to fill pledged seats at the convention shows Team Cruz, not some anti-Trump/anti-Cruz cabal, gaining ground. If Trump and Cruz stick together on this one point no matter how many insults they are exchanging as rivals, they almost certainly can shut the door on any truly “open” convention and force Republicans who intensely dislike both of them to choose their poison.
That would leave Kasich with his fistful of general-election polls and the proliferating list of fantasy “unity” candidates on the outside in Cleveland, playing to the cameras but having no real influence over the proceedings. And you can make the case that this is precisely what the Republican “base” wants and has brought to fruition through the nominating process. It would, of course, be highly ironic if the Republican Establishment’s Rule 40(b) became the instrument for two candidates generally hated by said Establishment to impose a duopoly on the party. But there’s no President Romney around to put a stop to it.
By: Ed Kilgore, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, March 31, 2016
“Rand Paul, Falling Flat”: The Candidate Everyone Thought Could Change The Republican Party Is Completely Collapsing
The moment one veteran Republican strategist realized Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) was flailing as a presidential candidate came when he suddenly decided to take on Donald Trump last week at the first presidential debate.
Challenging Trump’s refusal to pledge support for the eventual nominee should have been a moment that earned Paul some credibility among Republicans frustrated with Trump’s rise.
But it ended up falling flat.
“It just missed the mark,” the strategist said. “He didn’t give off a good vibe doing it.”
Last fall, Time magazine declared Paul the “most interesting man in politics” and stamped him on its cover. Paul launched his campaign earlier this year pledging that he was a “different kind of Republican.”
Four months later, though it’s still early in a crowded, fluid race, it’s clear that many Republicans want different — but not him.
His campaign is struggling to keep up with his rivals in fundraising. Two of his political allies running an outside super PAC supporting his candidacy were recently indicted on campaign-finance fraud charges. Significant plunges in polling are starting to correspond.
And Trump has an aggressive counterpunch. In a raging statement responding to Paul, the real-estate tycoon took him to task for running for reelection to the Senate at the same time he’s campaigning for president.
“I feel sorry for the great people of Kentucky who are being used as a back up to Senator Paul’s hopeless attempt to become President of the United States — weak on the military, Israel, the Vets and many other issues. Senator Paul has no chance of wining the nomination and the people of Kentucky should not allow him the privilege of remaining their Senator,” Trump said.
Trump further called Paul’s operation a “total mess” and said the senator should leave the race.
“Rand should save his lobbyist’s and special interest money and just go quietly home,” he declared. “Rand’s campaign is a total mess, and as a matter of fact, I didn’t know he had anybody left in his campaign to make commercials who are not currently under indictment!”
Polls trickling out after the debate have underscored the challenge ahead for Paul and have led to speculation that he could be one of a handful of GOP candidates who drops out before the Iowa caucuses next year.
Paul now sits just ninth in the first-caucus state of Iowa, according to an average of three polls of the state that have been released this week. One of those polls, from Suffolk University, showed his support plunging to just 2% of likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa. That put him behind such candidates as Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), who has been diverting most of his early-state resources to New Hampshire.
Iowa will be especially important for Paul, whose father, Ron, scored with its voters during his previous presidential runs. Matt Kibbe, the director of one super PAC supporting Rand Paul, told Politico in July that the group only had paid staff in Iowa because “it matters so much.”
But Paul hasn’t shown many signs that he will successfully hold onto his father’s voters, let alone significantly expand upon that base. And the indictment of the two allies, which stems from their work on Ron Paul’s campaign in 2012, revolves around an alleged money-for-endorsement scheme involving former Iowa State Sen. Kent Sorenson (R), who already pleaded guilty to concealing campaign expenditures.
A Public Policy Polling survey released this week showed Rand Paul with the worst net-favorability rating among all GOP candidates. His standing in Iowa has plunged from 10% in April to just 3% now.
“The biggest loser in the poll is Rand Paul,” PPP director Tom Jensen wrote. “Paul’s been foundering anyway, and his campaign’s ties to the Kent Sorenson mess are probably making things particularly bad for him in Iowa.”
Things aren’t looking much better in New Hampshire, where Paul was thought to potentially capitalize on its independent-leaning primary electorate, and where his father had two strong showings.
According to a Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald poll released this week, Paul has seen his favorability rating dip from a positive 57-24 margin in March to a negative 44-45 margin in August. His support in the state also plunged from 13% in March to just 6% now. It put him behind better-funded candidates investing significant resources into the Granite State, like Kasich (12%) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (13%).
During the Republican presidential debate last week, Paul used polls as a major selling point for why Republicans should support his candidacy.
“I’m the only one that leads Hillary Clinton in five states that were won by President Obama. I’m a different kind of Republican,” he said in his closing statement.
But the polls he’s referring to are from March and April. Perhaps in a sign of his diminished standing, the same polling outlet that found him leading Clinton narrowly in those states — Quinnipiac University — instead measured Clinton’s strength against Republican candidates Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) in a poll conducted earlier this month.
“His campaign has been in free-fall,” said Greg Valliere, the chief political strategist at the Potomac Research Group, of Paul’s debate performance.
“Paul didn’t help himself much last night.”
By: Brett LoGiurato, Business Insider, August 15, 2015
“Rand 2015 Runs From Rand 2007 On Iran”: Changed His Tune To Match The Rest Of The Republican Field
In 2007, Rand Paul gave his first interview to Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist radio host and founder of Infowars.com.
Paul was helping his father, then-Congressman Ron Paul, campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and, Jones said, the entirety of his audience helped to make up the elder Paul’s base of fervent supporters.
Jones was struck by the younger Paul’s similarity to his father. “You know, talking to you, you sound so much like your dad,” Jones said. “This is great! We have, like, a Ron Paul clone!”
When Jones noted that the elder Paul was the only anti-war candidate, Rand replied, “I tell people in speeches, I say you know, we’re against the Iraq war, we have been since the beginning, but we’re also against the Iran war—you know, the one that hasn’t started yet. You know, the thing is I think people want to paint my father into some corner, but if you look at it, intellectually, look at the evidence that Iran is not a threat.”
As evidence of this, he said, you needn’t look further than the fact that “Iran cannot even refine their own gasoline.”
And further, Paul said, “even our own intelligence community consensus opinion now is that they’re not a threat. My dad says, they don’t have an air force! They don’t have a navy! You know, it’s ridiculous to think that they’re a threat to our national security. It’s not even that viable to say they’re a threat to Israel. Most people say Israel has 100 nuclear weapons.”
Eight years later, Paul’s beliefs are very different.
In response to the agreement reached Tuesday between Iran, the United States, the UK, France, China, Russia and Germany to diminish Iran’s nuclear program, Paul, now the junior Senator from Kentucky and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, released a statement outlining his opposition.
“The proposed agreement with Iran is unacceptable for the following reasons:
1) sanctions relief precedes evidence of compliance
2) Iran is left with significant nuclear capacity
3) it lifts the ban on selling advanced weapons to Iran
I will, therefore, vote against the agreement. While I continue to believe negotiations are preferable to war, I would prefer to keep the interim agreement in place instead of accepting a bad deal.”
Asked how Paul’s position had shifted so dramatically since he was campaigning for his father, Doug Stafford, his senior campaign adviser, said, “Foreign policy should reflect events and events change. Senator Paul has always thought Iran getting a nuclear weapon was a bad idea and dangerous. But over the last eight years, as Iran has made progress in their nuclear enrichment program, it’s become more of a threat. Not allowing your opinions to reflect changing threats would be foolish.”
But it’s just frankly not true, as the Alex Jones interview demonstrates.
What is true is that the Iran deal places Paul in an impossible bind. Paul’s positions are usually so nuanced that they escape criticism of flip-flopping, but his shift on Iran is unusually clear—even if it was gradual.
Whether compromise is a wise strategy for Paul in the primary is uncertain. Paul is currently polling at 6.6 percent—behind Jeb Bush, Donald Trump, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee. Paul is not going to vault back into the top tier by siphoning off votes from more establishment candidates, whose supporters will never buy him as one of their own. And he won’t mobilize his libertarian base by taking them for granted.
In April, reporter David Weigel, outlined in detail Paul’s transformation for Bloomberg Politics. In 2011, while in the Senate, Paul was still vocally opposed to war, telling reporter Zaid Jilani he wanted to “influence” Iran instead. In 2012, while again campaigning for his father, he reiterated their anti-war position while clarifying that Ron Paul “doesn’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons…But should they get nuclear weapons, he thinks that there are some choices.” A few weeks later, Paul explained to CNN that when it came to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, “I did finally come down to the conclusion that doing something was better than doing nothing.”
By 2013, Paul was saying that “the most pressing issue of the day” was how to contend with Iran’s nuclear program, and said that although he still did not want war, if he were in the White House while a deal collapsed, “I would say all options are on the table, and that would include military.”
Back in March, Paul was faced with a choice: sign the open letter penned by his Senate colleague, Tom Cotton, which Cotton explicitly said was designed to halt negotiations, or be the only presidential contender in the Senate to not sign it, and risk losing support in the fallout.
Despite the fact that Paul had maintained—and continues to maintain—that he favors negotiations, he compromised and opted for the first choice, contorting himself uncomfortably in his effort to explain his decision and irking some of the longtime libertarian supporters he inherited from his father in the process.
He has pursued a similar strategy with the deal.
The Atlantic’s David Frum made what on its face felt like a reckless prediction on Tuesday: “The Rand Paul Candidacy for the Republican Nomination Is Over.” Frum’s case was that throughout the course of his short Senate career, Paul has been able to carve out space for himself within his party by mostly focusing on the issue of domestic surveillance, which comfortably placed him in opposition to the hawks he bemoans and to President Obama. The deal presented for Paul a no-win: Were he to support the deal, however, Frum argued, he would “find himself isolated with the old Ron Paul constituency,” but were he to oppose it, he would vanish amid a sea of similar voices in the primary field.
The best explanation for Paul’s new position may come from Paul himself.
In an interview with The Today Show’s Savannah Guthrie in April, the same day two attack ads were released tying him to Obama on the issue, Paul said, “2007 was a long time ago and events do change over long periods of time. We’re talking about a time when I wasn’t running for office, when I was helping someone else run for office.”
So when the facts change—be they the facts of the issue at hand or the facts of Paul’s personal political objectives—Paul changes his mind.
By: Olivia Nuzzi, The Daily Beast, July 15, 20116
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