trump is serious!!!!!

[Sue U]

And Jim, I understand your concern about USSC nominees, but FWIW, there are very few people (repub or dem) who I think would be worse than Trump in that regard.

Yeah, he might nominate his big sister.

[Big RR]

no person n the left would have supported the crime and welfare reform bills Hillary and Bill did.

Bernie Sanders voted for the crime bill, as did a majority of the Congressional Black Caucus...

Agreed Jim, and they have their reasons (including compromise, that now-dirty word), but Hillary publicly supported and campaigned for it.

[Burning Petard]

Washington Post summary of the primaries yesterday says if Trump gets 50% of the remaining delegates up for grabs, he has the nomination on first ballot at the convention. I was going through my recent stack of stuff to look at later, including the Dec '15 Atlantic magazine. Included an article 'The Front Runner Fallacy' by David Greenberg that argued the polls are all wrong on Trump because undecided voters change their minds between the poll and the actual ballot box poll. It has been six months later, at least since this was written, the experts still seem to be harmonizing on the tune 'Trump can't win'

The election may be the biggest failure for the experts since the '48 Dewey Defeats Truman.'

snailgate

later edit. I really messed this one The line about the experts was intended to indicate the experts have been saying Trump is gonna lose, any minute now. And he doesn't

[Bicycle Bill]

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong ... nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." .... Eccles 9:11, KJV

The Republican Party — and especially Trump himself — needs to keep this thought in mind.

-"BB"-

[Gob]

[MajGenl.Meade]

[Joe Guy]

I wonder if he can make TPFKA@W @W again...

[Econoline]

FTFY, Gob.

[Scooter]

[Lord Jim]

I give the credit, (or the blame, depending on how you want to look at it) to Paul Manafort for the fact that Trump seems to have finally cobbled together the over 50% support among GOP voters he's needed to nail down the nomination...

Prior to Manafort taking charge, Drumpf had never gotten over 50% of the vote in any primary or caucus...he only had 37% of the vote overall...

He's now been well over 50 in six contests in a row...

What Manafort appears to have been able to do is to get Trump to dial back on the crazy just enough to bring in that additional 10-15 percent he needed to reach the tipping point...

Over the past few weeks since Manafort took charge of his campaign, Trump has managed to discipline himself enough not to gratuitously alienate whole new blocks of voters, focusing his ranting bile almost exclusively on Cruz and dishonest, cynical attacks on the nominating process...(which not many people are going to be offended by)...

He's also avoided being an ubiquitous loose cannon motor-mouth on the TV news shows, or in social media...(Though this must have been very difficult for Trump; I've noticed that since his victories on Tuesday, there's been a definite up-tick...)

What this seems to have accomplished is to bring in a chunk of the GOP primary voters who while not true Trumpanzees, also aren't big fans of long drawn out nominating processes...(To a certain extent I can sympathize with that; we Republicans are genetically hard-wired to oppose long, ugly nomination fights...)

A chunk of the GOP vote which is now ready to reconcile itself to a Trump nomination by rationalizing, "well at least he seems to be acting more sane, and he's far ahead, so we might as well just accept it. It's time to unify"...

These are folks who were troubled by Trump, but who were also looking for some way to rationalize avoiding a convention fight...

For this group, Manafort got Trump to behave in a way that enabled them to make this rationalization...

As I've made abundantly clear I am not in this group...(I'm in the 35-40 percent group of GOPers who sees Trump as an existentially threat to the well being of the party, and the well being of the country, and would prefer the ugliest convention fight imaginable to his nomination...)

[Bicycle Bill]

TRUMP CAMPAIGN WORKING ON NEW LOGOS FOR FINAL PUSH

Or he could recycle Obama's logo — all he needs to do is rotate it and change the coloration....

(the sphincter in the center is optional)

-"BB"-

[MajGenl.Meade]

Another false attribution. The quote about genius and stupidity was not made by Albert "Enistein" (nor yet Einstein). It originated in the 19th century and is attributed in variant forms to A. Dumas - sometimes to Dumas fils.

[Gob]

[Bicycle Bill]

I was trying to remember the last time we had a candidate quite like Donald Trump.  Then it came to me —

     

Trouble is, this time nobody is laughing....

-"BB"-

[Scooter]

Oh, there are a lot of people laughing.


We mostly live outside your borders, but we're definitely laughing.

[Lord Jim]

Yeah, well we'll see how hard you're laughing when somebody in Canada says something that pisses President Trump off, and he launches an invasion...

I was very disappointed in Bob Corker this week...

Corker is the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he is hardly some sort of Tea Party nincompoop; he's generally a pretty serious-minded and thoughtful guy...

He was also one of the few Senate Republicans who refused to sign that ill-advised letter that was sent to the Iranian leadership...

He hasn't endorsed Trump, but after that horrible, rambling, contradictory rant he gave on foreign policy Corker said he "liked what I heard"...

Seriously Bob? That speech was a hodge-podge collection of assertions that were alternately incoherent, ignorant, and just plain stupid....(sometimes all three at once)

And Bob Corker, who is one of the most knowledgeable people on foreign policy in America, surely knows it was embarrassingly awful, and a complete joke in terms of factual accuracy...

There's no way, that he truthfully " liked what he heard"...That's just a complete impossibility...

Shame on you Bob...

You're never going to get to be A Real Boy if you tell whoppers like that...

He was probably thinking, "Well, I may have to work with this, guy, so there's no point in antagonizing him"...

I can kind of understand that, but he didn't have to go as far as he did. He could have just said nothing, or at least something that was less of a blanket endorsement for sheer nonsense...Maybe something like, "Well he made some points that I agree with"

[Econoline]

He was probably thinking, "Well, I may have to work with this, guy, so there's no point in antagonizing him"...

Either that or, "Well, considering the source, it could've been worse..."

[MajGenl.Meade]

He was probably thinking, "Well, I may have to work with this, guy, so there's no point in antagonizing him"...

Either that or, "Well, considering the source, it could've been worse..."

Either that or, "Surely everyone will see how stupid Trump is and Kasich will be the nominee"

[Lord Jim]

What this seems to have accomplished is to bring in a chunk of the GOP primary voters who while not true Trumpanzees, also aren't big fans of long drawn out nominating processes...(To a certain extent I can sympathize with that; we Republicans are genetically hard-wired to oppose long, ugly nomination fights...)

A chunk of the GOP vote which is now ready to reconcile itself to a Trump nomination by rationalizing, "well at least he seems to be acting more sane, and he's far ahead, so we might as well just accept it. It's time to unify"...

Here's a perfect example:

Jon Huntsman adds to the growing list of GOP elite supporting Trump

Jon Huntsman now says he supports Donald Trump's bid for the White House, calling on the rest of the GOP to rally behind the Republican presidential hopeful.

The former governor of Utah told Politico: "We've had enough intraparty fighting. Now's the time to stitch together a winning coalition."

Just two months ago, Huntsman told CNN's David Axelrod he could get behind Trump if the front-runner secured the nomination — much as he would for any eventual GOP nominee.

Huntsman's endorsement and others signify a rare shift for the GOP elite, who have been scrambling to stop Trump for a while. But the fear of a contested —and potentially very ugly — convention in July has caused some GOP leaders to speak out in favor of Trump.

Republican Congressman Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania told Politico on Friday: "I believe that the establishment and people in Washington should say this is over. Donald Trump is clearly, clearly who the people want.

http://www.aol.com/article/2016/04/30/j ... /21368357/

[MajGenl.Meade]

Donald Trump is clearly, clearly who the people want.

See my sig line (OK yes, it's spurious but....)