Editorial from yesterday’s Tampa Bay Times:
Vote for me to stop Donald Trump. That is Sen. Marco Rubio’s message to Florida voters this week as the Republican establishment desperately tries to prevent the billionaire from winning the Republican nomination for president and completing a hostile takeover of the party. It’s a weak argument from a weak candidate who is not prepared to be president.
That’s how it starts. It doesn’t get any less brutal.
But wait! According to Cruz and his insane extremist father, GOD HIMSELF has already anointed Ted “The Canadian” Cruz to become POTUS, so how is it even possible that TC fails to win both the primary and general elections. It’s simply unpossible!! Of course, as Teddy sits and watches Hillary (or Bernie) take the oath of office, he’ll surely have a good explanation on how the very WILL OF GOD was thwarted by mere mortals.
A bullshit headline.
A bullshit article
I am aware that Romney failed at his message last week. However, there was another, less publicized, message from Romney:
That the other GOP candidates can stay in the race…just they should pull more votes than Trump…so as to deny Trump the majority of the delegates to the GOP Convention. Looking at last night’s results, it was Mission Accomplished:
Rather than stating that Romney’s suggestion bore fruit, this TPM story says the opposite: “Driving the action to Trump”
We know that, in upcoming winner-take-all Primaries, Trump can ultimately crush the others and sew this delegate majority up. But I am right now talking about presentation of data and the media’s idea of Trump inevitability-so-let’s-all-just-roll-over-for-the-knockout. Right now (Wednesday), the ratios of Trump versus non-Trump Primary votes are about the same as two days ago (Monday). And, if this ratio were to hold, Trump would arrive at the GOP Convention with less than the majority of delegates.
That was Romney’s other message.
Knowledge is power. But belief is also power. If the anti Trump forces are to stop him, they are going to have to show the potential of some momentum of their own. Blase shrugging and saying, “See? I knew Trump had it all along” are not going to help to stop this man Trump from getting the nomination.
And why would I be frightened about Trump getting to the General?
Because there would be only ONE barrier (addled-brained Reality TV fans) separating this worm of a fascist from the Presidency of the United States (the Political Office the oddsmakers now give him a better chance of obtaining than Bernie Sanders).
We need to step back and consider that the Horse Race has become not just infotainment (celebrity for ugly people), but a full-on reality show. It’s not just Trump’s meat commercial yesterday, but the exasperation of “Socialist” Bernie Sanders trying to appeal to Southern Black people and Rubiot attempting to explain anything. Who goes off the island next? If Cruz and Rubio start scratching each other in the face, let’s hope somebody’s bikini top gets torn off or some other wardrobe malfunction that appeals to the prurient interest. We’ll be right back with more on this BREAKING NEWS (flash, crawl, alert) after a few minutes of words from our sponsors.
Yeah, but Rubio didn’t win any delegates in most of those states. Rubio is accomplishing nothing.
Giant egos will allow the world’s largest ego to be the nominee.
The NBA/NFL/MLB/NHL for geriatrics.
And throw in Roller Derby and WWF as well. PLUS, people are playing for Keeps. While the rest of us sleep…(or watch the NBA/NFL/MLB/NHL).
Rubio’s accomplishment is that those who voted for him did NOT vote for Trump.
TPM:
You think Donald Trump’s competition would have learned by now. […]
But now, after it has grown impossible to deny Trump is the frontrunner and the New York real estate mogul is getting dangerously close to clinching the nomination, two of the GOP’s best hopes for stopping Trump are entangled in a bitter civil war that could jeopardize the Stop Trump strategy laid out by former Republican nominee Mitt Romney. […]
Romney has argued that Rubio, Kasich and Cruz need to get together and unselfishly share the goal of denying Trump as many delegates as possible.
Unselfishly? Ayn Rand must be having a hissy fit in her grave.
It’s pretty much impossible for anyone in the GOP to do anything unselfishly. Selfishness is their political philosophy, their raison d’être. It’s their wife, and it’s their life.
Plus - Cruz, Kasich, and Rubio would have to pursue a Nash equilibrium strategy with the agreed upon goal of stopping Trump from getting the nomination. And Republicans are repulsed by cooperative strategies. Any economic/game theory that post-dates Friedrich von Hayek’s Road to Serfdom is anathema to them.
In other words, Cruz and Rubio are in a dick-measuring contest. Please proceed, gentlemen.
What’s interesting is that in today’s WashPost national GOP poll the only number that went up since January was “Undecided,” everyone else including Trump, Cruz and Rubio fell. Cruz doesn’t have any other option than to try and knock Little Marco out in FL and try to capitalize on the anyone-but-Trump momentum, but if that poll is correct there are a good number of primary voters who don’t like any of these guys.
That dwindling amount of voters could have supported Kasich or Pinocchio.
They’re trying, but the puppet can’t get ahead. It keeps getting tangled up in the strings.
absolutely… if being establishment weren’t an issue it would be Santorum’s turn this year
What a nonsense article. Of course Rubio and Cruz are competing with each other. Both are, after all, running to become the GOP candidate for President. Neither is running to keep Trump from winning. If the Republicans were united against Trump they would necessarily be united in favor of an alternative to Trump, and that isn’t going to happen. The GOP is a moribund party, unable to even find a suitable candidate for the Presidency, let alone being able to unite behind him or her. Trump is just filling the vacuum, to the detriment of the whole USA.
Cruz is an ugly reflection of everything the GOP has pursued for the past five to six decades. But Republicans can’t see themselves in the mirror Cruz represents. They’re like vampires in that way, as in so many others.
Okay, Hillary Haters and Bernie Burners, unless you get to like each others’ candidates and decide to fully back whoever wins the nomination, get used to saying the words “President Trump.” I’m seriously concerned that if we liberals don’t keep our community together we will have someone 10x as bad as W in office with a blindly obedient GOP playing along and we’ll have only ourselves to blame for the societal wreckage that ensues.
I like your post…except the word “unless”.
I spoke to some people under 45…and they are about 0.01% as scared of Trump as most people here. They think he is a funny billionaire with a TV show. They belong to a group of people who would think that Trump “sucked”…and then sit out the General 'cause Bernie didn’t get the Nomination.
I must confess that I did not realize that the hatred in the United States was at the level it is.
Nor the atrophy of the “press”.
Ted Cruz being a self-absorbed asshole who is willing to torpedo the entire GOP in a pointless exercise, if it means getting a few minutes of air-time is hardly news. He did it in the Senate with his filibuster, he did it with a government shutdown. This is why there are no US senators endorsing him. This is why for months serious leaders in the GOP said publicly that they would prefer Trump over Cruz (though they seem to be changing their minds on that point).
Florida is winner take all, and Cruz has NO chance of winning, and thus NO chance of picking up ANY delegates there. If he doesn’t realize this he’s both incredibly stupid and deluded. While I wouldn’t rule either of those out, I find it much more likely that this is a political stunt designed to thumb his nose at the establishment out of spite and petty malice. All he can hope to do here is wound Rubio and kick the election to Trump. That’s the only realistic outcome of his involvement in that state.
And he doesn’t care. He wants to go to Florida, so the rest of the party can FUCK OFF, even if that means spending money and time in a race with no benefit for him, when he could use it to much greater effect elsewhere.
I suppose it’s nice to know that his obsession with obstructionism isn’t limited to President Obama. He just likes breaking shit to prove he’s strong enough to smash things…
