Category: Domestic Policies

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Domestic Policies Entertainment News Politics Racism RIP Sports

The Ali Effect

So many thoughts. So many questions. So much controversy. So much for us to learn from his actions. Such was the man and his effect on the country. Others have written with far more eloquence than I ever could about the legacy of Muhammad Ali, but from where we are now, we had better pay attention because he had so much to teach us about ourselves and where we are as a culture.

Has boxing been the same since he thankfully retired from the ring in 1980? A rhetorical question, to be sure. Yes, we did have Mike Tyson and Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns and Ray Mancini, but those were strictly fighters. Boxers. Sportsmen. Boxing has fallen farther than politics into the realm of parody, and as an entertainment choice is pretty much irrelevant. Yes, there was that fight between those two guys about a year ago that promised a great match up, but all I can remember is that people complained bitterly about how much they had to shell out for the Pay-Per-View for a fight that was decidedly terrible to watch. I could look up the fighters’ names, but I figure that if I can’t remember the latest fight of the century, it couldn’t have been memorable. That never happened for an Ali fight, even the ones that only got shown in movie theaters where the cigar smoke was so thick it’s a wonder that the fire alarms didn’t go off. Ali was vital. He was a compelling star. And you couldn’t take your eyes off him.

And, no, I do not ever remember wondering how much money any of his big fights raised, nor how much anybody had to pay to see them.

Ali also became the template for the political athlete. He paved the way for Bill Russell, Bill Walton, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Billie Jean King and others (though not countless others, unfortunately) who saw that sports was intricately connected to politics and to world events. Anyone like me who grew up during the Cold War must remember the protestations by Olympic officials and sportscasters who said that sports and politics must not mix, only to be roundly and crushingly contradicted by the black gloves, Munich, steroids and doping, the Apartheid banishments, the boycotts of 1980 and 1984, and a certain hockey game in Lake Placid. Ali took a stand on the most controversial issues of his day, Vietnam and Civil Rights and spoke truth to power. He didn’t worry, at least outwardly, about shoe contracts or his personal wealth. He was banished, then reinstated, and won more titles. Then he became the ambassador to the world. He led, and that’s what’s made it possible for other athletes to stand up to racist basketball owners and to speak out when members of minority groups are shot by police under dubious and outright illegal circumstances.

Ali was a Muslim. Think about that if you need to. Imagine Ali and Kareem and Ahmad Rashad and every other athlete and entertainer who became a Muslim and changed their name doing so today in the age of know-nothing politicians and citizens who are utterly ignorant of the religion. Would he ever get a fight? Would the government put him on the no-fly list? How much twitter shame would he have to endure? As controversial as it was for people to become Muslims in the 1960s and 70s, and it was controversial, today we would see boycotts and, likely, violence. Ali was able to take his conversion and make it all about peace. He used his religious beliefs as the basis for his pacifism and his sense of justice. And he was right; institutional racism was far more of a threat to him and other African-Americans in 1967 than the Vietcong.

Ali was neither universally popular nor loved during his athletic heyday, nor should we expect that he would be.  But as we are entering another era of domestic change and upheaval, we do need to remember that all people in all professions need to stand up for what is right and for the equal treatment of all people.

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Domestic Policies Donald Trump Donald Trump Immigration Reform News Politics

The Silly Season Starts Early

Technology really speeds things up, no? We used to have to wait until August to read stories that made little sense or that focused on the non-political part of the political process, but this year we should be proud that the press is once again ahead of the calendar and is in full silly season mode on this, the unofficial start of the summer.

Part of the issue might be that both party’s political conventions are in July, which is upsetting the media. Of course, the other reason is that the Republicans will nominate perhaps the least qualified person for president in our nation’s proud history. Whatever the motivation, we needn’t look very far to see evidence of silly-creep.

Point one – I hate to say – is this notion that Donald Trump is a fascist. He is certainly profoundly ignorant on all of the issues of which he’s spoken publicly so far including immigration, energy policy, foreign affairs, climate science, and taxes. But a fascist he is not. We’ll reserve that title for those who really are official members of the Fascist Party and select foreign leaders such as Victor Orban of Hungary and a few African dictators who revel in their personal bloodbaths. Fascism has a specific definition, and since I am a charter member of the Words Have Meanings Collective, I am not going to accept that Trump is anywhere near one. Racist? Sexist? Offensive? Most assuredly. These are the terms we should use and are enough to render him unacceptable as Commander-In-Chief.

The other sillinesses that occupies my thoughts today are the ones associated with the Clinton campaign tactics and polling.  That sound that resembles teeth-gnashing on the left is, in fact, teeth-gnashing over the state of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, or non-campaign, against said non-fascist. Can we get a bit of a break here? It’s May. The campaign hasn’t had a chance to consolidate because Bernie Sanders is fighting to the end, which is both his right and a test to see how the Clinton campaign reacts. Hillary always knew that this would not be easy because of both her last name and her gender. She will become a better candidate once she is able to leverage all of the Democratic resources at her disposal. Many of Bernie’s supporters will back her. Both party’s conventions will have their television moments which I hope are not violent, and then the campaign will begin. Then we’ll see what the strategies are.

As for polling, I’ve said it before, but let’s hear from someone really smart on this and repeat – we will not be discussing polling until August 1. This will be a close race and Trump is getting his pre-convention bump. Hillary will get hers. Then they’ll both get their convention bumps. Then we can pay attention.

In the meantime, enjoy the extended silliness and the holiday.

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Domestic Policies Donald Trump Donald Trump Foreign Policies News Politics

Mr. May vs. Ms. October

Those of us old enough to remember the halcyon days of the late 70s and early 80s and the great New York Yankee teams of that era with their owner, George Steinbrenner.

George knew greatness and proved it when he went out and bought Reggie Jackson to patrol right field for the 1977 and 1978 World Series champions. Reggie excelled when it counted and sealed the team’s 1978 title with three home runs in the final game of the series. For that he was lauded as Mr. October. Clutch. In 1980, Steinbrenner bought Dave Winfield to play for the team, and he promptly fizzled in the 1981 series, going 1 for 22. For that, the Boss labeled him Mr. May. Unclutch.

I think we’re dealing with the same phenomenon in the presidential race. Donald Trump has shown that he can win primaries and woo (some) voters with a message that’s brazen, loud, racist, xenophobic, and politically incorrect, which is just an excuse to say terribly nasty things about women, Muslims, immigrants and members of minority groups. His economic policies are incoherent and his foreign policies would make the isolationists of the 1920s and 30s proud. He shifts his positions daily and repeats his signature slogan to mask the fact that he doesn’t really have anything meaningful to say. It’s an emotional appeal based on the time-tested media strategy that made him and countless others, into wealthy television stars. He’s run his campaign on the backs of the national media, using free air time and phone-in interviews to spout his vitriol and to deflect any criticism as nay-saying and negativity. Trump has no idea what’s coming as he becomes the sole focus of investigations into his business practices, income, taxes and everything else that’s bared in a national election campaign. He’s already shown a Christie-like thinness to his skin when it comes to attacks, and when the press really starts looking into his affairs he will have some memorably bad moments.

In short, Mr. May.

On the other hand, Hillary Clinton has actually won an election and understands what it takes to gather resources and organize a campaign. She has real, practical policies that would move our country forward, would honor all people and would continue to value America’s place in the world. She has a positive message, and the experience of being the focus of unrelenting attacks on her character and gender. Does she have baggage? Enough to make me want to buy Samsonite stock. Emails, speeches, ties to Wall Street, the Clinton name and an unfortunate stint as the point person for her husband’s failed health care reform effort. Will these hurt her in the campaign? You bet, but she’s been through this before, has an experienced team of advisors and actual ideas that will help the United States. And she is also a terrific debater. She will come through when it counts.

Ms. October.

Right now, Republicans are coalescing around Trump and getting used to the idea that he’s going to be the nominee. There are distinct pockets of opposition and many big GOP donors have said they will not be giving to his campaign. Some of the other money that would normally go to the top of the ticket is being funneled to House and Senate races as the party says one thing, that Trump is their guy, while whispering quite another, that Trump is likely to lose and bring our majorities down with him.

Meanwhile, the fun is on the left as Bernie Sanders makes a last ditch plea to voters in New Jersey and California to back him and send a message to the Super-delegates that they should back him instead of Hillary. I don’t see this happening, but it’s prolonging the campaign beyond what the party, and Hillary, wants. That will end by the end of June and I could see a Clinton-Sanders ticket in the fall. In fact, I would heartily welcome it. As for the polls, talk to me on July 30. That’s when I’ll start being interested.

Right now, it’s Mr. May vs. Ms. October. In the end, the clutch hitter will win.

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Domestic Policies Donald Trump presidential

The Neutering of Trump. Just Spayin’

Word is that Donald Trump will act more presidential from this point forward. Of course, not everyone is buying it, but the New York primary seems to have marked a turning or shifting point in the GOP race, if for no other reason than it looks more and more like Trump will be the Republican nominee this fall. Yes, I know that many party stalwarts are still trying to undermine his campaign and delegate count, and they say that even if Trump is 10 or 20 delegates short of 1237 that they will stop him, but that’s easy to say in late April or even May. Come July, when angry Trump supporters gather in the streets or threaten to walk out or support him for a third-party run, the GOP will relent.

But, as we have read over the past few days, that might not be necessary because Trump now understands that if he really wants to be taken seriously as president, he’s going to have to tamp down his comments, become less controversial, and appear like, well, a politician.

Welcome to the end of the Trump phenomenon.

It’s not like he commands a majority of the GOP popular votes, because even his most dominant showings are barely over 50%. At best he commands 35-40% allegiance among the party’s base supporters. That, in no way can translate into an electoral victory in the fall. He has simply insulted and lied and shifted his positions too many times for him to capture the vital center from which all presidential aspirants must live during the campaign.

Take for example the Cook Political Report’s map of electoral votes. Can Trump really win Iowa after not capturing it in the caucuses? Are Nevada and Colorado really toss-ups given what he’s said about Mexican immigrants? Virginia just elected a Democratic governor. Will Trump convince enough of those voters to switch to him? The only way he can do that is by fleeing from his bombastic past and embrace a boring future.

Trump has built his campaign on the provocative and the vague, but if he wants to appeal to more voters he’s going to have to leave all of that behind and hope that most voters forget that he ever said such things. This will not happen. Also, his most loyal supporters don’t want another politician in the White House. They want a real maverick who says what he believes, even if, possibly especially if, it’s misogynist, racist, anti-Muslim and largely made up of magazine articles he’s recently read. Will they continue to support a Trump who pivots to the party line?

I would think not.

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Domestic Policies marco rubio Politics

The Christie Era Is Over

It happened so quickly and so quietly that I wasn’t sure exactly what transpired, but it appears that the Chris Christie era in New Jersey is over!

Yes, I know we have to officially endure the Governor until January of 2018, but most of that time will find him drowned out by the presidential race, and by the time that’s over it will be time for candidates to begin announcing their intentions ahead of the June 2017 gubernatorial primaries.

Chris Christie was the main architect of his own downfall, though of course he will blame everyone except himself for his not still competing for president or the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal that has his style written all over it. He banked on being the rude loudmouth in the 2016 race but it turns out that he’s only a piker compared to Donald Trump, Christie’s take-down of Marco Rubio showed that he could use the bully part of the bully pulpit, something that New Jerseyans always knew, but that the rest of the country had to actually see to believe.

The capstone to Christie’s fall, though, was his very quick and very ugly endorsement of Trump not three days after leaving the GOP race. The way he looked standing behind the Donald will be an enduring, iconic image for approximately the next thousand years and will serve as a warning against candidates making major decisions while still in the throes of Stages 1,2,3 and 4 of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s continuum of the terminally ill.

And his move to Stage 5, acceptance, came last week when Christie didn’t just blink, he all but sent a message that he was going through political torture at the hands of NJ Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney and the rest of the Democrats, when he appointed a Democrat to the State Supreme Court, ending six year political battle by, well, giving up (although the new nominee is evidently a financial backer).

All was not terrible for Chris Christie, though. He was able to use political cronies of both parties to get a state employee pension and benefit reform package through the legislature that has contributed to a four-year reduction in take home pay for a significant slice of New Jersey’s middle class. And he can also point to the fact that he didn’t ask the wealthy to contribute more to solve some of New Jersey’s problems, arguing that they would leave the state. Meanwhile, less-than-wealthy people have left the state because they couldn’t afford to live here.

And then of course there’s that confounded bridge.

Chris Christie will go down in history as a failed governor because he wasted his political capital on his White House bid, when he could have done much more and run in, say, 2020 with a fuller record of accomplishments. He has, though, paved the way for a Democratic sweep in 2017. Bank on that.

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Domestic Policies Donald Trump Donald Trump Politics vote

It’s April 2016: Do You Know Where Your Vote Is?

Now that we’ve got some room to breathe a bit until the New York primary hits with full force this week (that’s when the ads will start running), it’s worth looking at the present election season and asking, “Is this democracy?” I’m sure the rest of the world is following the elections and is wondering how the greatest democracy in the world can elect its political leader with such a long, messy, potentially divisive process.

As are many Americans.

The 2016 primaries will, I think, redefine the system we have for a few reasons. The first is the influence of social media. No longer can a candidate say one thing in Arizona, contradict themselves in Massachusetts and say a third idea in Florida and have nobody notice. We are too connected and communication is instantaneous.

The second reason is that many more people are taking part in the primaries, partially due to social media, but mostly due to the issues at stake and the bitter polarization between the parties.

Finally, Donald Trump, love him or not, has made this campaign into his own reality program and no news organization can resist him. But now that we have more voters participating, more citizens are questioning the process, and for good reason.

A look at the primary results so far suggests that both parties lack transparency, and the Republican Party is on course to actually thwart their own system in order to stop Donald Trump from becoming its nominee. On the Democratic side, although Hillary Clinton has a substantial delegate lead, the use of free-floating superdelegates is skewing her lead. These delegates are party elites who can essentially vote for whichever candidate they please, and most of them have pledged themselves to Hillary, although as in 2008, they can always switch their allegiance to Bernie Sanders should he upset her in New York and Pennsylvania. So even though thousands of Democrats have gone to the polls, they’re finding that their democratic will is not being honored.

On the Republican side, superdelegates are not really the problem, as they mostly have to vote as their state did during the primary. The real issue is that the candidate who wins a state primary’s popular vote does not necessarily get all, or even a representative portion of that state’s delegates. This has happened to Trump in Louisiana and Colorado, and threatens to derail his bid for a majority once the GOP Convention starts in July. This also affects Bernie, as Saturday’s Wyoming Caucuses show. He won the most votes, but he and Hillary will get the same number of delegates.

This is why many voters are feeling disenfranchised, despite their being able to cast a ballot. In effect, although the Supreme Court just ruled in favor of counting all voters in the latest “one person, one vote” case, we don’t seem to all have that vote. The Republican Party is risking more because they have come out in favor of doing all that they can to deny Trump the nomination, even if he comes close to having enough delegates. This would fracture the GOP and probably lead to Trump running as an independent, especially if Ted Cuz is the nominee despite not having anywhere near the required delegate majority after the primaries.

The Democrats won’t suffer the same fate, but it would help if Hillary won enough delegates independent of the superdelegate votes. That would at least convince Democrats that their votes had weight.

Nominating contests have traditionally not been expressions of democracy, but now much of the country is paying attention at this early stage. 2020 will look different.

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Barack Obama Domestic Policies Donald Trump Donald Trump Foreign Policies Healthcare News Politics

The Reality Show Election Just Got Very Real

It is true that political discourse has taken a wildly unpredictable and extremely troubling turn in this country, but just when it seems that the shouting match will get louder, along comes a politician who is calm, focused, steely, intelligent, moral and principled. Who is this person?

The current occupant of the Oval Office. A man who has led this country through some of its most trying days. The president who will be remembered for bringing health care to millions and for signing a financial reform plan that is holding up well in the face of those opponents who would like to go back to the conditions that created the crisis in the first place. He has made stirring speeches, gave the order to kill Osama bin Laden, reminded us that race is still a central issue in the country, and weathered attacks by people who questioned not only his authority, but his legitimacy and fitness for the highest office in the land. And he did all of this without a major political scandal, running the government and hiring advisers who, for the most part, served their president well.

And for all of that, President Obama’s approval ratings have risen as the economy has improved, as evidenced by last week’s Labor Department report showing that wages are rising, more people are working and looking for work, and the economy is improving at a rate we haven’t seen in years.

But of course, much of this improvement is because the opposition is presenting voters with the choice between a Know-Nothing, Say Anything candidate in Donald Trump and his main competition, Ted Cruz, whose chief accomplishments seem to suggest that he wants to be president so he can shut the government down rather than have it serve the American people.

And this past week serves as a reminder that we had better be very careful about who we elect to the presidency. Trump’s mindless comments about criminalizing women who have abortions is only one-half step worse than Cruz’s position that abortions due to rape and incest be likewise criminalized. Both have said that American citizens who are Muslims should be watched more closely, and of course Trump wants to bar Muslim immigrants based solely on their religious beliefs. As for foreign policy, if you can call it that, Cruz wants to carpet bomb while Trump said last week that he wants our allies to pay far more for their own defense, even if it means the spread of nuclear weapons to South Korea and Japan. Never mind that an arms race with China is a real possibility and that the United States has an interest in shoring up those two countries against Chinese and unpredictable North Korean threats.

This last issue provoked the president into reminding the country that candidates like Trump can’t simply make up foreign policy on the fly. We have commitments in the world and whoever is president needs to take them seriously. And saying that many other countries, such as Pakistan, have nuclear weapons as a reason to allow more countries to have them is not responsible.

There is a reason why the Republican Party is trying desperately to stop Trump from earning enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot, even to go so far as to repeal a rule passed to stop Ron Paul and ensure the nomination of Mitt Romney just four short years ago. Even in the states that have already voted, such as Louisiana and Tennessee, there are efforts to deny Trump delegates or to convince formerly committed delegates to support another candidate, or no candidate at all. Yet. Now, don’t confuse this with GOP support for Ted Cruz. The party doesn’t want him either. What they want is an open convention where they can settle on a compromise candidate who can win, such as…um…I’ll get back to you on that.

All of this should serve to remind us that we have a president who is a positive role model, a committed family man, a serious thinker and an admirable representative of the United States. He’s had his challenges and burdens and did not really understand just how hard the Republicans would try to thwart him, but he’s learned and adjusted. In the end, we might not get Justice Garland, but we might trade that for the Senate in 2017. I’ll take that deal.

And I think a majority of the people in this country are waking up to the reality of what might happen if we make the wrong choice.

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Domestic Policies Donald Trump Donald Trump Foreign Policies ISIS

Terror Reminds Us of What’s At Stake

Just when it looked like we were going to spend the spring being subjected to the GOP food fight about wives and Supreme Court blockades and keeping swarthy people out of the country, along comes a cold sweat, fear-inducing, terror-in-the-night event in Belgium to focus us on what’s really at stake in this election.

So let me be clear: Hillary Clinton is far and away the best, most knowledgeable, temperamentally suited candidate to lead this country through our foreign policy challenges. The Republicans will talk about Benghazi and e-mails, but when push comes to shove, and it already has, Clinton has the smarts and the cold-eyed sense of reality that befits a Commander-in-Chief.

To prove the point, Donald Trump revealed the members of his foreign policy advice team prior to the attacks, and the response was overwhelmingly negative, to the extent that many in the Republican Party are genuinely afraid at what advice Trump is receiving. Even if he shifts to more established experts in the fall, how can he change his positions and make them stick, given the nature of what he’s said so far? Further, Trump also said that he would be in favor of having the United States pare back its influence and footprint in Japan and South Korea at a time when China is making aggressive moves in what it considers to be its back yard. He is clearly a man who has not thought through many of his policies, and he continues to act as though the world will tremble and submit to his will should he (shudder) ever become president.

I’m not sure if Ted Cruz’s policies are worse, but they certainly aren’t better than Trump’s. Cruz’s default strategy is to carpet bomb a group that has embedded itself into the fabric of a community it was once devoted to. This would result in a huge number of civilian casualties and the deaths of thousands of innocent people. He now wants to add a totalitarian element to his policy that would enable law enforcement officials to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods in the United States.

I understand patrol, as bad as that is, but what does secure mean? Since most Americans who are radicalized are done so over the Internet, does that mean an extra layer of surveillance? Wiretapping? Issuing subpoenas to service providers to give up Internet browsing histories? Other chillingly McCarthyistic ideas?

The world is a very dangerous place and made more dangerous by people who talk tough with little thought behind their words. Defeating ISIS and other radicals will take time and it will require that the United States have a clear, sober, realistic strategy to carry out. Neither of the GOP front-runners has such a strategy.

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Domestic Policies Donald Trump Donald Trump Politics

The Countdown to the GOP Explosion

I’m at the point now where I don’t care about the process by which the Republican Party commits Hara-Kiri. I just want it to be over.

In its boldest move yet, the party has committed itself to making sure that Donald Trump is not its nominee come July, and the strategy looks like this: Let’s get the most unpopular Senator we’ve got, Ted Cruz (but you knew that) and make sure not that he has a majority of delegates after all the primaries, but that he denies Trump the majority. We’ll also keep John Kasich around to show that we actually have a moderate wing, even if we don’t want to say it too loud because moderate just means you’ll let women have an abortion before 22 weeks as opposed to the 6 that the far right is pushing for. Then, once Trump is denied the nomination, we’ll cart out a retread like Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan to rescue the party.

Wait! I have an even better idea! Let’s have Romney and Ryan run as a ticket! That would be a winner! Oh, wait…

Honestly, I can’t really see this working out well. Any party has a difficult road to 270 when it’s unified and has a fairly popular nominee. A divided party that is actively working against its own front-runner is giving itself an impossible task. The Democrats found this out in the 1970s, but then Watergate came along and falsely convinced them that the tide had turned. It hadn’t. Then came 1984. Is that what you want, GOP? I didn’t think so.

It’s gotten so bad that FOX News is even fighting with Trump over his treatment of Megyn Kelly. Why even get into it with them? If Trump wants to show that he can reach out to women, he’s going about it the wrong way. And he’ll pay for it if he does become the nominee. Likewise with the Mormon vote, if this story is true. Even Glenn Beck is against him. How the world has changed.

Now that the GOP has gone public with its concerns about Trump, it will be almost impossible for them to walk back comments and make nice-nice with him when he doesn’t buy into a good part of the conservative platform. Their frantic attempt to deny him delegates with flawed candidates will only make things worse.

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Climate Change Domestic Policies Donald Trump Donald Trump Immigration Reform Politics

Denying the Climate of Fear

It was certainly bound to happen. After all, one of Donald Trump’s earliest backers hosted the same crowd when she was running for national office. This is what happens when a politician plays into the anger with more anger and blame and bluster and racism and Islamophobia and, above all, ignorance.

Look, Bernie Sanders has some angry Democrats at his rallies, but Sanders is a responsible, thinking adult who knows that the way you channel anger is to turn it into positive energy and constructive policies.

But the Republican Party has denied climate change for so long that they didn’t see the political climate shifting underneath their Gucci loafers. And now that both the planet and the right-wing are heating up to the point that there’s no turning back, we have our first political super storm. And it’s ugly. Trump has fed the storm for years with his claim that President Obama was not a citizen and that Ted Cruz should be barred from the GOP race. He’s also claimed his own reality when it comes to his finances, his bankruptcies and, in the aftermath of his canceled Chicago rally, the claim that if he hadn’t brought up immigration, it wouldn’t have been an issue in this campaign. Of course it would have: the difference is that maybe we could have had an adult conversation about it, not a white-hot ethnic slur-fest that’s resulting in more Hispanics applying for citizenship so they can vote against Trump (shudder) in November.

The motley crew’s endorsement of Trump – from the Klan to the Illinois Nazi Party to Chris Christie to Ben Carson – makes it quite clear that his message is dangerous and that he needs to be careful about stoking emotional outbursts. Trump needs to rebuke all of this in a national statement, but I’m not holding my breath.

In the meantime, the deniers will ensure that the atmosphere just gets hotter.

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Domestic Policies Donald Trump Donald Trump

Voters Scratch the 35 Year Itch

I think I understand why more than a third of Republican voters are fed up with the Republican Party and are supporting Donald Trump for president (including this list of august personalities who have endorsed the man). The GOP has played lip service to the small government, socially conservative crowd for decades without really committing serious national resources to break the grip that the wealthy have on the party. These voters want someone who won’t compromise and who will follow through on the time-tested xenophobia and intolerance that’s a hallmark of this country’s past. What a message.

And now they have their man. Perhaps. Saturday’s caucus and primary results saw a slowing of the Trump train at the hands of none other than the candidate the party regulars despise only less so than the Donald. That would be Ted Cruz.

Be very careful what you wish for Mitt.

It’s been 35 years since Ronald Reagan’s election ushered in the great conservative reaction to almost 50 years of Democratic-liberal rule. As the country, and certainly the GOP, moved harder to the right and the tax cuts moved more swiftly into the hands of the already wealthy, social conservatives wanted more action.

What they got was the old country club Republican brushoff. Now the guy that built all of the country clubs wants to be president. The irony is ironic.

But the nomination is not Trump’s yet. Ted Cruz is running a solid campaign and is now most likely the candidate best positioned to challenge Trump. The latest polls in Florida show that Marco Rubio’s best presidential opportunities lie in 2020 or beyond. Once he loses his home state next week, I expect him to drop out. Likewise John Kasich, who will get a taste of backyard defeat in Michigan and follow Rubio out the door by March 16. At that point, Trump will have 165 more delegates from those winner-take-all states, but his lead will not be insurmountable if Republicans rally around Cruz. The party wants Rubio and sees both Trump and Cruz as losers in November. So the question will come down to which guy you dislike least.

Again, quite a choice.

Of course, the Democrats are feeling similarly frisky after enduring 35 years of right-leaning government programs, which is why Bernie’s take-down-the-banks rhetoric is so powerful. Hillary looks downright boring by comparison, but she’ll still be the nominee. I’m sure she’ll add some of Sanders’ best lines to her campaign repertoire to appeal to the new, young voters that are now part of the political landscape.

We might have reached a crisis point in the campaign last week, with the seventh grade debate and Chris Christie cannon-balling into the race, then looking miserable about it. But despite the backlash against Romney’s jeremiad, there might be enough GOPers willing to search their souls and questions whether they really want Trump as their nominee.

The next 10 days will tell.

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Domestic Policies Donald Trump Mitt Romney

The GOP Creates a False Reality

I don’t know why people are so concerned about Donald Trump’s foreign policy experience. He’s currently fighting a war right here in the United States, and he seems to be winning.

The past couple of days have shown, in vivid monochromatic white, that the Republican Party is in full-blown Three Mile Island meltdown mode, what with talk about a brokered convention and establishment plots to deny Donald Trump the nomination and vast amounts of money to stop his campaign that should have come in November when, perhaps, and I mean perhaps, it could have made a difference. What’s clear is that the party wants to stop him, but in the absence of any one candidate that has been identified as the anti-Donald, this is not going to happen.

Carting out Mitt Romney, of all people, to tell the world that Trump is a fraud is in itself a fraud of momentous proportions, but it is emblematic of how far the GOP has fallen and how they have, in Karl Rove’s famous words, created their own reality. Remember that it was Republican fuzzy math that gave them the false idea that Romney was going to defeat Obama until FOX News called Ohio for the president and Rove went into mini-meltdown mode on national television.

Then they thought that simply by winning some House seats that they were going to force the president to give up his signature accomplishment because, well, the base demanded that he do that. Then there’s the Cruz shutdown gambit  and the proposed Planned Parenthood shutdown gambit and the climate denial gambit and now the Supreme Court shutdown denial gambit that just got a whole lot more interesting.

But they’re saving the biggest reality denial for the fall, and that’s the idea that a political party that loathes its potential nominee and is publicly and loudly looking for an alternative that includes forcing a brokered convention and inviting talk about a third-party challenge can actually win a presidential election in November. Moderate Republicans, and I mean real moderates, not right wingers like John Kasich or Marco Rubio, will flee the GOP in the fall. Senators will run from Trump and try to create their own local reality in a news environment that will force them to take sides. And if the GOP does give in and support Trump, it will lose Hispanic voters and ensure that more women, young people and African-Americans will go to the polls. It’s difficult enough to win national elections when the party is helping its nominee; it’s almost impossible to win with a party that is spilt along three or four fronts.

I said repeatedly that Trump would not be the nominee because I assumed that the Republican Party would do anything to ensure its viability. That clearly is happening too late and I will admit that I am wrong as soon as Trump crosses the delegate math finish line. But if the party is still this fractured at the convention, then they will find it extraordinarily difficult to win in the fall.

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