Month: March 2016

Just days after recording robocalls for Marco Rubio in Florida, failed 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney joined Governor John Kasich on the campaign trail in Ohio on Monday. Bizarrely, Romney wasn’t there to endorse Kasich, but instead merely to oppose Donald Trump. But in trying to keep alive his faint hopes of rescuing the GOP from itself at the July Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Romney’s presence with Kasich only served to highlight their joint opposition to the rescue that mattered most to Ohioans–President Obama’s saving of the American auto industry.

When writing about climate change, the boiled frog analogy serves a useful purpose, and it goes like this. If you place a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out. If you place the same frog in slowly heated water, it will stay put until it boils to death. No frogs were harmed in the writing of this post. Nevertheless, the boiled frog analogy describes an aspect of human nature: How complacent attitudes ignore a looming threat that unfolds gradually over time.

Climate change cannot be seen, touched, or watched on cable TV with the immediacy of a hurricane or tsunami. Climate change may not be felt this next year, next year, or ten years from now.

The Trump tidal wave is about to wash the Republican brand out to sea in its wake. The group that is so proud to wrap themselves in the title, “party of Lincoln”, is about to become irrelevant. I’m not saying that the party will disappear, but it will no longer be able to make a claim to the lineage of Lincoln. The Party, which so proudly adopted the southern strategy in the 60’s and doubled down on that with the Lee Atwater tactics of the 80’s, is about to fully reap what it has sown

In the last election cycle, I thought that Sarah Palin was the ultimate payoff for what had been done to the Republican brand over the past 40 years. I was incorrect.

At this writing it’s unclear who started the violence that caused Donald Trump to cancel his 3/11/16 Chicago campaign rally, although it was most likely instigated by Leftist agitators. Disruption has been the Left’s modus operandi since the rise of the New Left in the 1960s.

But regardless of who initiated the violence, what is clear is that the anti-Trump protesters’ aim was to silence Trump. It was an overt attack on his right to freely express his opinions, and on the attendees’ right to hear what he had to say. Fortunately, Democrats and Republicans alike condemned the violence. Unfortunately, most major candidates managed to partially blame Trump’s rhetoric for, as John Kasich put it, creating “a toxic environment.”

I’m no Trump fan. But this is nonsense.

A much-ballyhooed meeting of big-name wingnuts yesterday produced a call for a “unity ticket” behind which all anti-Trump Republicans could unite in a last-ditch effort to snatch the nomination away from the Orange Peril. So far, so good. But who should comprise that unity ticket? Cruz and Kasich are the obvious choices — yes, it means pairing an extremist religious wacko with a moderate religious wacko, but they’re the only two non-Trump candidates still in the race. But which one should get the top spot? And maybe some of the 14 ex-candidates should be considered? Cruz is even more hated by the party establishment than Trump is, and Rubio did pile up a passel of delegates even though he dropped out after losing his home state by 19 points, and, and…..

These people are hopeless.

It’s time for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to endorse Texas Senator Ted Cruz. When Walker withdrew from the presidential campaign trail, he called on other Republicans to consider dropping out to unite the anti-Trump forces around one candidate. His advice was ignored then and Donald Trump has built a delegate lead while the field sorted itself out.

There are only two Republican challengers to Trump remaining now, and only one of them, Cruz, has a chance of winning the nomination outright.

President Obama‘s nomination of DC Circuit Court Chief JudgeMerrick Garland has escalated the fight to replace deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has taken to citing something called “The Biden Rule” as justification for not taking up Garland’s nomination, or any other from the current president.

That “rule” is, of course, not actually a rule at all, but rather one in a sea of bipartisan pull-quotes that have been deployed by one side or the other in order to prove that, gee whiz, senators like to get their way on lifetime appointments.

Could John Kasich be single-handedly destroying a political party?

Either by helping Donald Trump win the Republican nomination or by dragging the party into an ugly contested convention, Kasich seems to be causing a lot of trouble.

Serious presidential candidates normally leave the race when they no longer have a chance to win. This is an important part of how the nomination system functions. If losers drop out, then voters in subsequent states — voters who might not follow politics enough to know which candidates are serious contenders and which aren’t — won’t waste their voters on the also-rans.

Oh my!

I haven’t lived in Chicago for a long time, but I don’t think the big Windy has seen a Friday night like this one since 1968. I don’t think our dear country has been as divided since the illegitimate war in Vietnam that killed tens of thousands of my generation and set the “Love it or Leave it” thugs against the rest of us.

It’s thigh-slappingly funny to recall that RNC chairman Reince Priebus said on the eve of this national race that “Republicans will choose from a deep bench of presidential material.”

After the latest round of contests and the latest winnowing of the field, here’s what the GOP is left with: A celebrity hate-peddler whose agenda is built on bluster, a far-right government-crashing ideologue who would lose 40 states, and a governor whose primary season record is 1-28.

Yes, folks, the GOP’s long-gestating existential crisis has finally arrived. What does it stand for as a party?