Everyone is talking about Trump, but am I the only one who is actually more terrified of a potential Cruz Presidency than Trump.
Trump is a buffoon, and he will say literally anything, but I honestly don’t know how much of it he believes himself. I think it’s all just bullshit to him. Yeah, he’ll say shit that is fascistic and racist, but I’m not sure he believes it. He might try to do some really awful shit, but I think he’s so fucking incompetent he’ll never accomplish it and the lifelong bureaucrats will restrain him somewhat. Plus, the Dems will win seats in the Senate, the Republicans hate him, and I think he will be mostly restrained. Mind you, it will be awful and is terrifying to contemplate, but the alternative is, IMHO, far worse.
Cruz is smart and calculating and evil. He’ll actually accomplish his wishes. He’ll staff agencies with diehard wingnuts, shut down the government, end environmental regulationg, and on and on and on. Plus, the rank and file GOP will be with him. Of the two, I find Cruz to be FAR more dangerous due to what he will accomplish. Not to mention, with Trump, the media will be on him like stink on shit. With Cruz, they’ll go back to their Democrats say this, Cruz says that line of effortless reporting. We’ll truly be fucked.
Am I the only one?
LAO
Amen. Preach it!
Kazanir
Certainly not. I think the possible downside risk of Trump is higher, but the variance in what might occur is also higher. We pretty much know exactly how shitty Cruz will be and it is really shitty.
bliekker
No, you’re not the only one.
Baud
Cruz is a more sinister individual, but Trump riles up the mob more. Pick your poison.
Jerome McDonough
No, you’re definitely not the only one. Trump’s a bully and an egomaniac. Cruz is a true believer. Of the two, Cruz will do more damage.
JMG
Someone so hated by everyone who meets him will have trouble getting elected. I don’t think the other Republicans would disavow Cruz, but I bet they’d slow walk their support and plenty.
dp
No, you are not. I concluded some time back that Cruz was more dangerous.
LAO
I am deathly afraid Cruz will get the nomination and then somehow when the general election. He is the distillation of everything I fear about the current GOP.
lollipopguild
Right on the money. I think Trump is going to win the GOP nomination. and if the Repthugs take it away from him you will see an all out war between the trump people and the rest of the party.
dollared
You’re not alone. But then my biggest fear right now is 1) the Convention deadlocks 2) Paul Ryan comes in and plays the reluctant savior, 3) the MSM decides he is a Brainy Moderate,4) he wins and opens Fort Knox to his friends.
I fear any Republican worse than that clown Trump.
Kathleen
One of my biggest problems with Trump-mania is that the media and Republicans want to position Rubio or Kasich or people like Paul Ryan “the sane, responsible grown ups”. The truth is there are no “sane, responsible grownups” in the crime syndicate they call their party. I don’t think Trump is any worst than any of the other Rethuglican offerings. However, Cruz is in a category all by himself. He is one of the most dangerous candidates we’ve had in my lifetime. He is a true believer. In his own divinity.
Bob In Portland
Agree with you, Cole.
Kathleen
@LAO: You pretty well summed them up.
Eric U.
The thought of Cruz of president is scary, that’s for sure. I was watching him talk at CPAC, and it was pure lies and evil, but other than that, he’s a pretty good speaker. I’m just glad he isn’t good looking, that could be a problem.
Cephalus Max
Nope, you’re not alone. Totally with you on this.
kindness
See John, your mistake is you are thinking rationally.
Nationally, Republicans frown on such behavior.
Baud
@lollipopguild: Rachel had a segment about how Cruz was using his organization to steal delegates from Trump in states where Trump won.
Betty Cracker
Cruz scares me more because he thinks “A Handmaid’s Tale” is a blueprint for good government whereas Trump would just do stupid shit like nominating Judge Judy for the SCOTUS and embarrassing us in front of Sri Lanka. But Cruz is even less electable, IMO.
JMG
Does Trump strike anyone here as a sportsmanlike loser? He and Cruz are already at daggers drawn. That kind of maneuver would set Trump off into third party land if it worked.
Waldo
Cruz is a great choice for anyone wondering what a Cheney administration would have been like.
Thoroughly Pizzled
I detest Cruz with every fiber of my being. And he’s a smart bastard. Probably running the best-organized campaign out of all the candidates. Thankfully the man himself is so repulsive.
eemom
Um, fuck no?
The bottom line about Trump, imho, is that he’s (1) a pure megalomaniac, and (2) completely unpredictable. Trump believes in nothing except Trump. With respect to all other topics, he just says whatever comes into his head at the moment. Occasionally he even speaks the truth, or reveals a shred of human decency. (E.g., the “dying in the streets” exchange with Cruz a couple of debates ago.) There’s really no way of knowing what would happen under a God forbid Trump presidency.
Cruz is a fucking monster, plain and simple. It is absolutely crystal clear what his agenda would be, and it’s pure evil.
Ohio Mom
I am still fearing Kasich the most because he appears to me the most electable (I know the numbers aren’t on his side, fears are hardly ever rational).
But other than that, Yes, I’d take Trump over Cruz. Cruz is dangerous for all the reasons listed above and if Trump is elected, it wouldn’t be long until he was impeached and on his way. In which case, we’d be stuck with his certain to be awful vice-president. But at least I’m pretty sure that VP wouldn’t be Cruz.
MomSense
I can’t decide who is more terrifying. Trump is nasty and a wildcard. How reckless will he be? No one knows.
Cruz is terrifying because he is intentionally horrible and his religious savior identity makes him unfit for political office IMHO.
Who scares you more – Mussolini or Torquemada?
RaflW
I for once agree with Ross Doubt-that: Trump’s handling of Lewandowski shows how a minor skirmish with China would rapidly escalate to thermonuclear war in a Trump admin.
That said, Prez Cruz would just use some dumb Iranian something-or-other to incinerate that country, unleashing a slightly different but equally humanity-altering global nuclear disaster.
We cannot let either of these men get the atomic football. Must. Not. Happen.
MazeDancer
Think almost every Dem feels the same way – if the choice was only Cruz or Trump, we’d all fund-raise for the Donald. Don’t know anyone in RL – or online – who feels differently.
Cruz is a deranged True Believer who feels anointed by a Dominionist God to usher in the Kingdom. (Which I won’t see, because I’ll be in the first wave burnt at the stake.)
Trump is a narcissist. He can be influenced by famous people. Leftie Hollywood could shift him.
Pretty sure GOP stalwarts backing Cruz because they know he’ll lose. But their party and conservative insanity will be intact. And they might keep the House.
lollipopguild
@Baud: I had heard something like this was going on. If they steal it from Trump he will go nuclear on their ass. We are going to need more popcorn and drinks.
redshirt
If you put a gun to my head and said I had to choose Trump or Cruz as President, I’d choose Trump without a doubt. Who knows what you’ll get – some of it might not be terrible. But Cruz is guaranteed to bring Hell on Earth.
gogol's wife
They’re both terrifying. Anyone who read Trump’s foreign policy interview in the NYTimes and isn’t quaking in their boots about him is crazy.
raven
The only thing to fear. . .
Mnemosyne
I am less afraid of Cruz only because I think he’s less electable than Trump. If Cruz had even half the charisma of Romney, I’d be terrified.
Ironically, of the two of them, Trump would be slightly less bad as president, in the way that getting shot in the leg is less bad than getting shot in the head. Sure, you still have a good chance of bleeding out and dying from it, but it’s not a sure thing.
Heliopause
Not that anybody pays attention to my comments, but I’ve said exactly that a number of times right here on BJ.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m more scared of Cruz as President, but I’m more scared of Trump as the nominee. I didn’t realize this until earlier today when I read a piece over at Digby’s place (from the Guardian) that I hadn’t thought about before and that scared the bejeezus out of me. Basically it argues that the nominee will receive high-level briefings, despite not having gone through the lengthy security clearance process, and we know already from months of watching him on the campaign trail that he lacks a filter or governor and could easily spout all kinds of classified information during campaign appearances — information that arguably could put the U.S. or other countries in jeopardy.
redshirt
@Waldo: FSM help me I think I’d choose a Cheney Presidency over a Cruz Presidency. Cheney at least ain’t overly religious. Cruz checks all the boxes for “End Times President”.
Eric NNY
No. No you’re not.
lollipopguild
@Kathleen: I love “crime syndicate”. I am going to steal that line.
superfly
not the only one…
redshirt
Does anyone know any real Republicans? My Father’s one and he said he might not vote at all if Trump is the nominee, and he’s on Team Cruz. I assume many other “traditional” Republicans feel the same way.
RandomMonster
I dunno, John. I think I would rather have evil and predictably so, more than unpredictable and willing to use ‘unpredictable violence’ as his primary foreign policy tool (if you read the depressing interview with Trump in the Times). Plus, the sheer embarrassment before the rest of the world if Donald Fucking Trump becomes the president is almost too much to bear.
The Other Chuck
Pretty much any Republican will send us over the brink signing bills from a Republican Congress.
The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016
1. Tailchaser Ted can’t win outright.
2. The party establishment absolutely hates him.
There’s no way he’s winning. At this point, he’s laying the groundwork for 2020 or hoping to get himself a good deal in exchange for going along with whoever draws the short straw at a contested convention.
Amaranthine RBG
I believe both trump and Cruz beat Clinton in the last polls I saw.
One can discount polls this far out, but it’s not like any of those three are unknown quantities at this point.
A Ghost To Most
From a pure electability standpoint, Kasich is the one I fear the most. He can actually sound reasonable, and could attract low-info voters.
The Other Chuck
@SiubhanDuinne: Be interesting to see a candidate prosecuted for espionage, no?
Steve in the ATL
I’m with you, JC.
A Trump presidency might be similar to the GHWB years, in that the primary goal is to settle scores, or Kim Jong-un’s reign of lunacy, which is bad but no one gets nuked. Cruz? Who the fuck knows. Every Bible-humpers wildest fantasy would become the law of the land, and he would speed up the transfer of the national treasury to the 0.1% while trying to bring on the End Times. Or he could “Welcome to the Monkey House” and everyone more handsome than him would have to get disfigured. That could easily affect 10-15% of us here at BJ!
chopper
oh I’m far more frightened of the idea of cruz in the WH. he’s the president out of the dead zone for sure.
SiubhanDuinne
@The Other Chuck:
Could a writer even put that in a novel or screenplay and have it taken seriously?
NR
Cruz is bad for sure. But Trump is running an openly fascist campaign. If Trump wins this election, I think there’s a very real chance that there won’t even be another one.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
(Replies to self): See Manchurian Candidate.
Thoughtful David
@JMG:
I think this is key. Right now I don’t see how Trump will lose the nomination, which means that Cruz won’t be getting it. But if by some machinations Cruz did close to getting the nom, Trump will either split the party or sue about Cruz’s citizenship, which will be a huge shitshow. So any way it goes I don’t see Cruz winning anything.
Eric NNY
@Heliopause: If you’re looking for validation in these here parts, somebody didn’t ‘splain the rules to you.
tones
Shot or poisoned ?
Mussolini or Torquemada?
Cruz fully intends to make this a theocracy in his image, and will stop at nothing to do so.
No wonder to know him is to utterly detest him, – what was it his roommate said?
If I agreed with him 99% of the time I would not hate him any less?
Gads.
MikeBoyScout
There are no Republicans whose election to the office of President would not lead to terrifying results for the citizenry and/or the planet.
Because of this fact we must all do our part to ensure another catastrophe like Bush/Cheney does not occur again.
Elizabelle
Yes, Cruz is the worst. Lucky for us he comes with his own voter and wimmens repellant. (Have to laugh at the prospect of a sex scandal where no one can believe five women would bed the guy, without money and paper bags changing hands. The paper bags would want to wear paper bags.)
However: I wonder if Trump is in the throes of imploding.
It worries me that Kasich is out there, ready to receive all the wired for Republican love that broadcast news can bestow.
Who knows who will be the nominee this September? It’s so bizarre.
lollipopguild
@Amaranthine RBG: In June 1992 Clinton was in third behind Perot(1st) and Bush(2nd)
RandomMonster
And I think Cruz is less electable than Trump. People instinctively dislike him. Trump has a populist following. The question for me is even less about who I would detest more as president, and more about who I would rather we face in an election.
PaulWartenberg2016
I don’t talk or think about Cruz that much because, based on the numbers so far, Cruz is not a factor for concern.
Granted, Trump is starting to show signs of campaign fatigue, and some of the upcoming states may not favor him, but he’s still polling high among Republicans and can still make a serious shot at the nomination. Cruz has a rougher road ahead, and in truth he’s burned so many intraparty bridges that if a contested convention does take place Cruz is gonna get tossed overboard for Paul Ryan in a heartbeat.
Don’t forget, we should be worried about a Kasich nomination too… ahehehehahahahahahahahahaha oh, sorry but I had to say it…
PaulWartenberg2016
@SiubhanDuinne:
No no, remember the X-Files episode with Jose Chung? He wrote a book titled the Calgarian Candidate. HOW DID DARIN MORGAN KNOW THIS WOULD HAPPEN?!
Roger Moore
@Waldo:
Worse. For all his flaws, Cheney was not a sanctimonious religious bigot.
Wapiti
My view is that if you happen to be a POC, or Jewish, or Muslim*, Trump would be worse. If you’re a woman or non-Christian, Cruz (or Kasich) would be worse.
* If you’re Sikh or Hindu or Middle Eastern Christian, Trump’s goon squads won’t be able to deal with that – they’ll just bash you as if you were a Muslim.
Brachiator
Trump could start a war before he could be restrained by Congress. This puts him ahead of Terrible Cruz in Danger Potential.
@Elizabelle
People keep saying this. Trump keeps failing to implode.
Tim C.
Agree 1000% on this. I said a few weeks back, Trump will screw it up hard. The odds on president Trump lasting a single term in office would be about nil. Trump would enjoy exactly zero institutional support and be unable to do the basic functions of the job. He’d also enjoy no support from his own part in congress. I would expect Paul Ryan to be president within two years.
Cruz on the other other hand is Martin Sheen from “The Dead Zone” He would represent an existential threat to the United States if elected president.
Great I see someone beat me to the example now… so it still stands.
AndyG
Folks whose opinion I respect feel that it is possible for Cruz to lose to Hillary even more badly than Trump. He’s that repellent. Moreover, there’s no way he will win more delegates than Trump in the primary, and if Trump feels the nomination is taken from him unfairly by RNC shenanigans, then he will just pull the whole edifice down on the Republicans by either going third party or telling his supporters to stay home.
redshirt
If the Repukes screw Trump out of the nomination and make Cruz the nominee, I think we have a decent chance of taking the House and Senate. So maybe I am now rooting for Cruz, but gosh that’s a dangerous fire to be handling.
shirk
No, you’re not the only one.
I think Cruz is potentially far more damaging than Trump.
I’m also not so sure that he’s as unelectable as people think.
It’s not like he just suddenly became unlikable this election.
People have been hating on Cruz for years and he keeps on finding ways to scheme and win elections.
The Republican establishment is already starting to line up behind him,
in the belief that it’s more important they win and endure four or eight years of Cruz
before installing someone slightly less crazy.
NorthLeft12
I have always felt this way John. I don’t know if Cruz is certifiably crazy, but he reminds me of the character played by Martin Sheen in the Dead Zone.
These religious nut jobs scare the shit out of me. And that is coming from a permanently lapsed Catholic.
Eric S.
Skipping to the bottom to post this without reading other comments …
While I agree on the baffoonery what scares me is if Trump wins it all but guarantees a GOP landslide down ticket. His incompetence will lead to the appointees running the show and with what I believe would be a veto proof GOP Senate.
To be fair all this is true of Cruz as well and he’s a true believer. Yes, he scares me more but I think Trump will be lead by the nose by the GOP.
In either case it will lead to the dismantling of a lot (all?) of Obama’s accomplishments.
CarolDuhart2
Cruz would be scary becasuse, competent and focused and with some work ethic. I like my evil to be lazy, unfocused and careless.
Things survive that way. Trump would just let some things slide because they don’t interest him enough, and I’m not sure he wouldn’t quit when the going got rough or the criticism got too much.
p.a.
1. The only remaining Republicans are lizard-brains; all others have been weeded out.
a. Those Republicans claiming not to be lizard-brained are lying.
2. Lizard-brained Republicans will support whatever Republican remains standing after primaries.
HRA
I agree with you, John.
Emma
Amen, brother Cole. Mr. Cruz is the bastard son of Nehemiah Scudder and Ayn Rand. Far more scary.
tones
Good point, Cruz is Canadian and there are strong arguments that he is not technically eligible.
ecomcon
Trump is far scarier than Cruz precisely because no one truly knows what the fuck he believes about anything. Cruz is a known quantity while Trump is a total wildcard. You can hate Cruz all you want, but read the transcripts of the recent NY Times and Washington Post interviews with Trump. If elected, Trump would be the most ignorant and uninformed person to sit in the Oval Office.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
Cruz, the man who was accused of five extramarital affairs and it was disbelieved on the account that no one is willing to believe Cruz is capable of seducing five women? I don’t think his chances of being elected are that great.
The Other Chuck
@RandomMonster: Low-info voters don’t know anything about Cruz’s platform and won’t all the way into the booth. Cruz is smart enough that he might be able to hire someone to do a makeover for the main campaign. This might involve bathing in the blood of virgins to pull off, but doable. Trump has hours of YouTube videos alone to sink him, even among his own teabagger people.
Amaranthine RBG
@lollipopguild: I think, perhaps, the electorate knows a bit more about Hillary in 2016 than they did about Bill in 1992.
Also Bill, unlike Hillary, is one of the greatest retail politicians in the last 100 years.
We’ll see. The bottom line is that no matter who the R is, he’ll have 40-45% of the electorate even if he’s found in bed with a live boy or dead girl.
Mnemosyne
@redshirt:
Anecdata, but my now-late father said that he would write in Ron Paul before he would vote for Romney. I’m not sure he got a chance to vote in 2012 — he was already pretty sick and died 2 months later.
Davebo
I just can’t see Cruz getting elected.
If he does, we probably deserve the havoc he will reap.
Matt McIrvin
@Amaranthine RBG: Clinton is now beating both of them substantially in the head-to-heads. Kasich beats her.
Mike in NC
Drumpf is a posturing buffoon in the mold of Mussolini, whereas Cruz is the modern Republican answer to Reinhard Heydrich. Neither is fit to occupy political office.
Aqualad08
Cruz is ostensibly scarier, but at this point his supporters are more likely to back Drumpf than vice versa. It’s like being afraid of cancer and werewolves. Cancer is possible at this point; werewolves not so much…
SiubhanDuinne
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Have actually never seen X-Files, but that’s kind of presciently scary. Or scarily prescient, one.
Matt McIrvin
Cruz is the devil we know (aggressive Christianist conservatism), Trump is the devil we don’t. Trying to figure out which one of them is worse is sort of a mug’s game.
redshirt
@Davebo: I take some solace if a Republican wins in November we then deserve the coming suffering. Not that we’ll learn anything from it.
Elizabelle
Cruz has not even served a full term as Senator from Texas. He slithered into office amid Tea Party hysteria. He was an insurgent in Texas.
The US of A is not Texas.
That said, Cruz is well educated, and attracts a lot of money from Citizens United-enabled gazillionaires. They see the Harvard lawyer turned Senator. He may seem less repellant in small groups of monied people.
We’re lucky his colleagues don’t like him, because our finest media is sure not smart enough to deal with him.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
You could build an entire university course on ethics based on that question alone.
oz29
I honestly think people underestimate the danger posed by Trump.
Cruz is an odious little pipsqueak, but I see him seeking office for plain, old fashioned power. Whatever else he is, he is not dumb. He knows that nobody can maintain power while surrounded by enemies, so he will have to tone it down. Being the most hated man in the Senate is one thing; being the most hated man in America is another, if you want to exercise your power.
Trump is in it for the aggrandizement of Trump. The real danger of a Trump presidency, to my mind, is that he will staff his administration with sycophants and incompetents and when he is tired of playing president (or when people turn on him) he’ll just walk away and let the whole government burn.
Baud
@oz29:
I assume he’ll try to sell it first.
Noskilz
I can’t say I’m worried about a Cruiz administration for the simple reason he’s such a transparently obvious jackass. You don’t get to being almost universally hated by both sides of the aisle in such a short career by being some sort of Machiavellian genius He reminds me of Nixon, but without any of the talent, ability or professionalism – he’s unscrupulous and nakedly ambitious, but not much else, and that seems more a recipe for personal disaster than limitless potential.
Poopyman
What’s really going to be fun is when Trump has his massive coronary in the midst of the contested convention.
Imagine the possibilities.
debbie
The prospect of a Cruz presidency, with the attendant Christian Sharia it would impose, frightens me more than anything a Trump administration would inflict on the country But both candidacies are fun to laugh at.
dmsilev
@Amaranthine RBG: With the (strong) caveat that general-election polling this far out is dubious, Clinton v. Cruz is +4 Clinton on average and Clinton v. Trump is +9 Clinton. I have a feeling that if Ted Cruz had a better chance to win the nomination and more people looked at his policy proposals, he’d be doing worse.
Elizabelle
@Aqualad08: Cancer and werewolves. LOL. Thank you for putting it in perspective.
Come on, folks. We will win this one.
schrodinger's cat
Its like choosing between Ebola and cancer. I too think Cruz is worse of the two, because I am particularly allergic to theocratic RWNJs.
ETA: But I am not afraid of either. Hillary is going to win this.
Baud
@dmsilev: Cruz’s tax plan is even more regressive than Trump’s. I believe it’s the most lopsided of any candidate.
Roger Moore
@Amaranthine RBG:
What polls are those. The most recent ones on Real Clear Politics show Hillary beating Trump by between 6% and 18% (mean 11.2%) and generally but not universally show Clinton ahead of Cruz (mean Clinton +2.9%).
Elizabelle
Also: who will do better in this match up: Ted Cruz?
Or super-Hillary surrogate Barack Obama, out of fucks to give, looking to make the Supreme Court work for the American people and not just its corporations?
Barack Obama is also Harvard educated, and smarter even than Mr. Cruz. Way more humane; connects better too.
The GOP is going to get a can of whoop ass opened on it. As it implodes internally.
jl
Not sure which one would be worse. Lindsey Graham did, for once, have it right there: shot or poisoned that is your choice between the two.
But, since it very probably will be a Trump nom, we get to watch him try to pivot to the center, and act and speak with the requisite presidential maturity and gravitas:
Trump On Top Aide’s Battery Charge: Why Didn’t Reporter Scream If He Hurt Her?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-corey-lewandowski-michelle-fields-she-pushed-me
And just below that I see something about a Trump aide’s lawyer biting a stripper.
What if the Trump campaign drives the whole country insane by Labor Day?
dmsilev
@Poopyman:
Thanks, Obama!
NickM
Cruz is more dangerous and less electable, I agree. I think in either case we stand a chance of never winning another federal branch – Presidency, Congress or Supremes — for decades if either wins.
Elizabelle
@jl: That, and another terrorist attack on white people anywhere, and Wolf Blitzer will stroke out by Labor Day.
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s a customary accommodation, not something required by law. If it is determined that he is unable to maintain the material as classified he won’t get the briefings. Of course he’ll whine terribly about it.
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: ARBG is an anti-Hillary troll. He has surfaced on this blog recently.
Denali
Agreed Cruz is scarier. And No one liked Richard Nixon.
redshirt
@Poopyman: A contested Repuke convention is a very real possibility and I have no idea how it plays out. I was reading earlier today how the convention is usually designed to give the nominee everything he wants/needs so as to reflect maximum unity before the TV cameras. A contested convention can’t do that, so what do they do?
And actually what happens if Trump is named the nominee then has a heart attack a few weeks later. What happens after that?
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: Talk about nullifying an issue there.
A Democratic candidate who’s accused of not keeping classified material secret on her email server?
Vs. a Republican candidate, not even receiving highly classified briefings because his briefers find him suspect and unable to maintain confidentiality?
Soap opera time.
Elizabelle
@redshirt: The heart attack business is what worries me.
Would we be saddled with VP nominee Cruz?
aimai
@JMG: I don’ t think Trump would run a third party candidacy because he doesn’t like to lose, and it would be a losing proposition. I think he will say he will make the run but for one reason or another just won’t. But I could be wrong.
jl
@Baud:
Take a look for yourself here.
How the candidates’ tax plans will affect you, in 4 charts
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/3/25/11298868/simple-charts-tax-plans
Edit: don’t see the Baud! 2016! tax plan. Huh. That is weird.
Edit2: Also, there is a link to a calculator for a custom estimate in paragraph two of the story. Which Dean Baker says in Beat the Press blog today is unfair to Sanders, since it does not subtract savings on health insurance premiums.
aimai
@oz29: This. Lewandowski is just the tip of the iceberg of the kinds of people who will be influence peddling in a Trump administration.
Roger Moore
@redshirt:
It sounds as if it’s worse than that. Apparently the party apparatus only puts together the skeleton of the convention, and the nominee is expected to flesh out the details. For example, the organizing committee decides when there will be speeches, but it’s up to the nominee to decide who will be speaking. Nobody knows what happens if it’s time to start the convention and there’s no nominee yet.
Baud
@jl:
When I’m president, we won’t need taxes because people will be so happy that they will voluntarily contribute to fund the government.
bobbo
If Trump wins the Dems will not take the Senate. In order to win, he would have to overcome the usual Democratic advantage in Presidential years. If Dems don’t benefit from the usual Presidential year advantage at the top of the ticket, that would translate to down-ballot losses as well.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
Very interesting. I did think, or at least assume, that it was a legal requirement.
So what would that mean, if Secretary Clinton (who has, obviously, already been cleared at the highest levels of security) were privy to top-secret briefings and GOP Nominee Trump’s briefings were essentially what anyone could read in the NYT or WaPo? Have we ever, in history, had anything approaching this kind of objective asymmetry in the nominees’ ability to handle classified material?
Baud
@jl:
Agree on the limitations of the tax calculator.
Roger Moore
@aimai:
I can see that hatred of losing working either way, though. If he doesn’t get the nomination, he might not want to run as a third party out of fear of losing, or he might decide to run as a third party out of anger at being denied what he thought was rightfully his win.
John in MA
John – As almost always (assuming your reading comprehension does not fail you) you are spot on here about Cruz v Trump !! I am your extremely devoted first-namesake DITTO HEAD !!!
jl
@Baud:
” When I’m president, we won’t need taxes because people will be so happy that they will voluntarily contribute to fund the government. ”
I thought Baud! 2016! was going to loiter around convenience stores and collect the taxes himself from joyful citizens, after they get to listen to colorful folksy, usually slurred, pitch from the president himself. That has been a successful approach for the campaign so far.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
You need to make your campaign lies more believable than that.
jl
@Roger Moore: Baud! 2016! slander. Those are not lies, they are pathetic delusions. We need to keep the discourse civil on an almost top 10,000 family blog.
Baud
@jl:
Leave a penny, take a penny…. for America!
JPL
Haven’t read the comments but Cruz is going to use nukes and raise the taxes on the 150 million folk who actually buy stuff, so yes he is worse . As far as social issues, I’m glad I’m an older white female, cuz the rest of you are screwed.
SiubhanDuinne
@redshirt:
@Elizabelle:
I think it’s more likely to be a massive stroke than a heart attack, but cardiovascular anyhow. Have you seen the colour of his face? Quite worrying, that particular shade of tomato.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: It is what it is. What you have to understand is that every time one of these breathless headlines and reports on Secretary Clinton being investigated comes out, several days later the vast majority of it gets walked back. So the 150 or so FBI special agents combing through her emails turns out to be not accurate. A lot of this stuff is emanating from a small number of sources. Director Comey’s office is clearly leaking for his own purposes – whatever those really are. The NSA seems to be getting its licks in through a discredited Title 10 faculty member at Naval War College who is both a former NSA staffer and has been suspended from his duties for emailing pictures of his genitalia to people that did not want to receive pictures of his genitalia. What you’re really seeing here is one part turf war between governmental agencies that includes sending signals to a potential next president about who is really going to be in charge. Another part is pure partisan fantasy. And the final part is the media doing the same thing they’ve done since the early 90s: “Hey look a Clinton! Everyone crap all over them because they’re a Clinton!” If the media thought they could get away with it, they’d be running an expose about how the grandkid is the most corrupt baby to ever don a diaper.
dmsilev
@Roger Moore: Under normal circumstances, the convention organizers (for either party) become essentially an appendage of the presidential campaign of the presumptive nominee, and that campaign does all the stage managing and scheduling and so forth.
If it’s a real contested convention, I suppose they start out by first fighting over the rules and the delegate accreditation, move to fighting over the first vote, and then segue smoothly to fighting over subsequent votes, and then continue until only the strongest has survived. And then switch to the speeches.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
I’m too devoted to math to come up with an actual tax and economic plan that would be attractive to voters.
Gin & Tonic
@jl: Trump has hired long-time R bagman Paul Manafort, who’s most recently been making his bucks by being Putin’s PR guy in Ukraine. Between that and Trump’s obvious ignorance of pretty much everything, I’m sure Vlad is salivating at the thought of a President Trump.
Matt McIrvin
I think with Trump the greater danger isn’t so much him personally as the forces he’s playing with. Trump has no plan and no ideology, but he’s willing to coddle straight-up Nazis whose plan is Mein Kampf and The Turner Diaries. He’s not a true believer, but they are, and they’re getting really excited and bold. There’s a chance that a President Trump decides to just keep riding the wave.
OGLiberal
@redshirt: https://youtu.be/b1VHSQV0yn8?t=124
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: As far as I know its not a legal requirement, its a courtesy. Certainly that changes for the President Elect. I can’t find anything one way or another that indicates if its a customary courtesy or a legal requirement for the nominee as opposed to being a legal requirement for the President Elect as part of the transition.
JPL
@Matt McIrvin: So we are screwed either way. Cruz is long time screw though cuz you don’t get social security back again. You don’t get health care back again. We become a third world country.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: He is. The Kremlin controlled media has been all in for Trump for several weeks now.
gogol's wife
@ecomcon:
Right.
Shana
@shirk: I’m not sure Cruz got elected in Texas despite his repellent aspect and general skeeviness. AFAIC he wasn’t elected before he became Senator and I’m not sure most Texans really knew him before that, and he got elected because Texas. Does anyone know his approval rating there now?
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
I saw earlier today (maybe in the Guardian article?) that Harry Truman was the first to ask that major party nominees receive security briefings — Eisenhower and Stevenson in 1952. I guess it’s been standard policy ever since, but if it’s not statutory I suppose there’s nothing to prevent the NSA (or whatever agency) from declining to brief The Donald.
It would almost be worth it to have that happen, just for the amusement of splodey heads.
Roger Moore
@Adam L Silverman:
That seems ripe for an attack ad.
pseudonymous in nc
Possibly, but everybody who comes into contact with him — apart from a really small coterie of lickspittles — fucking despises him on a personal level. He’s Nixon without the charm, but also without the capacity to inspire fearful respect from his colleagues.
But it’s Lawful Evil vs Chaotic Evil.
Redshift
I think, if you were to graph them, that the space of possible outcomes with Cruz is entirely on the awful end of the spectrum. The space of outcomes with Trump is, on average, not as awful, but that’s because at the low end, he would be relatively benign (mostly by being ineffective), but at the high end, he would be even worse. Cruz wants truly awful things for the country, but Trump is acting like a fascist demagogue (whether or not he “really believes it”) and could test whether our system can resist a would-be dictator.
And for anyone who thinks that Trump isn’t competent enough to pull it off, I’d point out that he’s an easily-manipulated narcissist who surrounds himself with yes-men. There are definitely Republican operatives who are capable of ingratiating themselves with Trump and then pulling it off for him.
So if I had to choose, yeah, I’d rather have Trump than Cruz, for many of the same reasons others have stated, but in this case, the lesser of two evils is still really really really evil.
patroclus
A Trump Presidency would lurch from one bad reality show controversy to another; it would be non-stop embarrassment and vomit-inducing brouhahas. But policy-wise, Cruz would be far worse because he actually believes the lunacy that he spouts and would actually try to implement it. Trump believes in Trump and all else is b.s. He might actually lurch to the left on some issues. He’d be terrible beyond comprehension, but Cruz would be worse for the country in my view.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
I don’t think it would cause heads to explode. It would be seen as a partisan attack by Obama trying to kneecap Trump. Honestly, the only way you could make it work would be to give Trump the briefings and wait for him to screw up.
Hungry Joe
Cruz is scarier both as a nominee (he might pull off masquerading as a normal GOP candidate) and as a President (see almost every comment above). Trump is a toddler waving a pistol around; Cruz is machine-gun-wielding lunatic.
Shana
Just took a look at a February poll he has favorables of 31% and unfavorables of 46%. In Texas.
Kathleen
@lollipopguild: No problem! Actually, I think I stole – er, I mean “leveraged” – it from Charles Pierce.
lollipopguild
@Baud: Baud2016 or Bust!
rikyrah
they are both rotten.
But, as someone has pointed out on this blog:
Cruz has a face for a Criminal Minds episode.
The thing about Cruz is…
He can’t moderate for the General Election. He simply can’t.
And, that’s where we can nail him.
rikyrah
Malia & Sasha: The princesses we never thought we’d see
Back in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, there was a slang term we applied to the more refined, upper-class young ladies of our community — BAPS. The letters of this acronym stood for Black American Princesses.
While sometimes a slight, the label also denoted pride and respect, applied on a more public level to the character Whitley from the ‘80s TV sitcom “A Different World” or to Halle Berry’s character in Robert Townsend’s 1997 film, “BAPS.”
Today, we are fortunate enough to have real, live, Black American princesses. They are Malia and Sasha Obama.
On television screens and social media time lines, we are treated to beautiful, professional pictures of our nation’s “first daughters” – Malia and Sasha in Cuba, Malia and Sasha in designer gowns at their first state dinner, Sasha and her classmates strolling across the tarmac with Air Force One in the background like, “Just me and my girlfriends!”
We are seeing images we never thought we’d see – little brown girls internationally adored and adorned.
When Barack Obama’s Black critics question, what has Obama done for us, specifically, this is what I sometimes point to. The Obamas have publicly provided us — and others — a social, cultural and political family model simply by them being them…
debbie
@Hungry Joe:
And a religious fanatic. Don’t leave that out.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s kind of a blur to me now whether this “Benghazi and emails and Benghazi!!11!!” shit started being off this bad when HRC was still SOS, or whether it just seemed to escalate after HRC left office. But really…”Sending signals to a potential next president about who is really going to be in charge”? What, is this some kind of dick-swinging “you’re not the boss of me even if you are” crap? About what? What do they think she’s going to do or not do to them? I don’t get it.
How can shit like this even be tolerated at that level of government? I know that internecine warfare between government/military agencies can be bad, but this kind of crap is just on beyond ridiculous.
Adam L Silverman
@Roger Moore: I’m working over the Russian (semi) withdrawal from Syria and part of Russia’s involvement was to tweak NATO’s nose. It was able to do more than that because Erdogan’s issues are starting to become NATO’s as he’s made Turkey an unreliable partner and ally. Trump’s anti-NATO remarks were close on to Russia’s withdrawal announcement and it gave me great pause as to whether this might be part of Putin’s maskirovka or whether my creative thinking and systems thinking had gone into overdrive and produce conspiracy thinking.
TheBuhJaysus
Cruz is the true anti-government, religious nut. He’s the darling of the RedState crowd.
I hope he and Trump continue to rip each other to shreds. Let them abuse each other’s wives. I hope that was just the beginning of an increasingly ugly march to the convention in July.
Neither one is acceptable. I would actually rather see Cruz suffer a crushing defeat in November.
eemom
Maybe we should all calm the fuck down, and recognize that, barring some completely bizarre turn of events on a par with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, neither Trump nor Cruz is going to be elected president. As fucked up as the US electorate is, the facts remain that (1) people DO turn out in a presidential election, and (2) the vast majority of those people are not crazy or stupid enough to want either of those two for president.
planetjanet
@Ohio Mom: A shiver just ram down my spine. Cruz as VP would be like Darth Cheney on meth. Bring on the asteroid.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: You want to try to dismantle the CIA? The NSA? And I don’t mean their essential functions and the actual decent people in them that are working hard every day trying to do the right thing the right way. Rather I mean the institutional CIA and NSA and their bureaucratic power. No president that has tried that has ever been successful. I’m not even sure meaningful, necessary reform would be possible.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: There is no doubt that the Syrian refugee crisis in the NATO countries is also helping destabilize that alliance from the other side. Who is contributing and whom this benefits is left as an exercise.
Cacti
No, Cruz doesn’t scare me at all in terms of his ability to be elected POTUS.
He makes Mitt Romney seem like a comparative charmer.
sinnedbackwards
@MomSense: Good comparison.
I pick Mussolini.
Cruz would be less successful with a Republican Congress than Bernie Sanders (who would accomplish almost nothing).
Our Grail is to flip the House. The Senate is a given if any of sevaral good things happen. A House flip is more likely than a sixty vote Senate so that should be the goal to continue repairing the country. We need thirty seats and almost forty are less than “solid Republican” in respected analyses. If it turns out to be a “wave” (which are a lot more frequent in recent years), we might achieve or beat a forty seat flip. Unlikely, but possible. It should be our low-possible dream goal in spending, recruitment, and advertising. Do not make little plans!
TheBuhJaysus
Cruz is denying that his call for carpet bombing would be targeting civilian areas.
Anderson Cooper keeps trying to call him out.
Cruz supporters just claim that Cooper isn’t being fair.
Hoodie
If Cruz wins, it’s likely a 1968 Nixon type plurality win (e.g., Bernie or some other third party type in the mix). He’d likely be unpopular enough and despised enough by other Republicans that he could be constrained, although he could do immense damage simply by appointing a gaggle of ultraconservative judges to the SC. Trump would believe he’s popular notwithstanding any evidence to the contrary and, as a result, could try some things that would lead to instability and possibly a constitutional crisis. He’d also surround himself with a collection of wackos and con men (including a screwy VP) who have no institutional ties to either party structure, so his actions could be completely unpredictable, especially in foreign policy. He might be more dangerous than Cruz because he could be an existential threat to the country.
Aleta
My daily wish is for Cruz to get exposed, lose the primary, never to return to power politics. (“He’s a bad man! He’s a very, very bad man!”)
As for the presidency, Cruz is predictably an unspeakable horror. Trump is a horror in unpredictable ways. Either way the damage could be permanent, but with a Cruz presidency it would be more organized and more certain to be permanent, like mountaintop mining. Trump would be easier to impeach.
As nominee, Trump would carry his grudges against the R’s who are now working against him, right on into the main election. That will weaken his campaign. I think the Rs would solidify behind Cruz more than Trump, so the local machines in tight races would not work as effectively for Trump. And he’s not a team player.
I bet Trump will have a hard time spending as much on his campaign as Hillary or Bernie will, because money is his soul, profit is his motive, and he will weigh his bets himself and disregard advice. Last I checked, he’s paying his campaign workers less than anyone, and far less than Hillary is, and that might make a difference, too. He doesn’t seem to have “the best people” working on his campaign.
His candidacy would do more damage to the R organization, maybe leave behind a 3rd party that will eventually split the R base. It’s encouraging that Rove etc have been organizing to weave wreaths of garlic to wear at the convention.
Cruz is looking like he might (have to?) take Carly as his VP if he gets that far. I want Cruz to go down badly, in smoke, shrieking.
TS
Cruz would use his hate to bring about the demise of the US
Trump would use his stupid to bring about the demise of the world
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Russia didn’t cause it, but they’ve done everything they can to exacerbate it. It is important to remember that Putin is overtly funding the Front National and covertly funding almost all the other nationalist/neo-fascist anti-EU parties and movements. So his military actions in Syria exacerbate the refugee problem at the source and the parties and movements he supports within the EU member states capitalize on this and enflame the problem at the receiving end.
TheBuhJaysus
Cruz is beginning to moderate in this town hall as we speak.
Nothing like the tent-revival shtick that he’s been playing to the Iowa and Utah evangelical crowd.
trollhattan
With Trump we know exactly who and what we have because he’s been in the public eye since the ’70s. Anybody surprised by his antics has just ignored him those four decades. Cruz basically dropped out of the sky into the Senate–thanks a ton, Texas–and is far less well known, but what we do know is blood-curdling. I’ll take Trump’s narcissism over Cruz’ sociopathy.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud:
This is your best work. Well played.
Aleta
@trollhattan:
good point. fokking scary.
Adam L Silverman
Belated GOP town hall open thread is up!
junkDNA
I’ve been torn all cycle on this—on alleged substance I maybe prefer chaotic neutral Trump to lawful evil Cruz, but I believe that losing with Cruz might actually lead to some Republican reform, whereas losing with Trump will be remembered as hoocoodadnode^googolplex
Bill_D
People should not be too confident of a Clinton win. There’s always the chance of something unexpected happening like a candidate becoming incapacitated or dying. Clinton and Sanders are getting up there in age, and there are plenty of unstable people out there who might do something terrible.
Technically, you don’t vote for president in November, you vote for electors. So if your candidate couldn’t do the job or take office due to death or disability before the election, you can’t just write in somebody else. You still need to vote for your candidate, so their electors win and can vote for a reasonable stand-in when the Electoral College meets. Otherwise the other party wins because your vote is wasted on electors who don’t exist. Or some people on one side won’t vote because they think it won’t matter, resulting in a wave election for the other party.
This is one of various flaws in our jury-rigged electoral system. It doesn’t work how most people think it works. Just as a contingency there needs to be a Plan B to educate people if the unthinkable should occur. The alternative would not be good.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman:
i’d love to try to dismantle the CIA personally, because ever since their inception it seems that they have been more about cowboy crap and illegal, unethical adventuring in foreign countries than about actual intelligence-gathering. (And yes, I know some good people work there – an ex-boyfriend, for example, who worked on Chinese affairs there before he became a professor. So no, I don’t think they’re all goons.) Do I think it’s possible? (or, Would I or anyone who tried it survive the attempt?) Completely different question, and FTR, no, I don’t.
Guess I’m a little confused about what you’re saying. Are you saying that “that’s what it would take for this kind of interagency sniping to stop”? Or that that’s what they live in fear of HRC or some other President trying to do?
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: The Intel Community is a unique beast. As far as they are concerned they are the power players, along with Defense (which controls a good chunk of the IC). This is a shot across the bow of the Department of State and the Secretary Clinton, who ran State, to demonstrate who is really in charge.
Amaranthine RBG
@Matt McIrvin: Interesting, I hadn’t heard that. I’ll go look for those polls.
Trinity
“Cruz is smart and calculating and evil.” This.
He terrifies me. But I honestly believe that we can and will beat him. He’s repulsive.
Calouste
@Shana: Cruz got elected in Texas because he managed to get the primary into a runoff, and he won that runoff in which about 1% of the electorate voted.
Zinsky
I think you are right, Cole. I think Trump would pull a Palin and quit after two years if by some odd chance he got elected. Cruz is a hypocritical pseudo-religious oddball Dominionist who wants to precipitate the Apocalypse. I’ll bet he is into latex and golden showers or some other kind of bizarro sexual fetish. He is truly nothing more than shit wrapped in skin.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman:
Oh, THAT kind of pissing contest. I get it now. Thanks for elucidating.
Rand Careaga
@Waldo: We already know what the Cheney Administration was like.
TriassicSands
What’s today? Tuesday. Oh, then I’m more afraid of Trump.
I really don’t think it is possible to predict which of these two men would be a worse president. Trump would be completely incompetent, but if a Republican Congress feeds him a constant assembly line of nightmarish legislation, Trump would probably sign most of it. (On the other hand, during a four year term, it is impossible to imagine Trump not getting into a barroom brawl with Congress — he’s just too big an asshole and so are the Republican Reps. and Senators. Given what an immature POS Trump is that could mean an assembly line of vetoes — but there just isn’t any way to predict how that will turn out.) Trump may seem less scary because he’s less predictable. We all know exactly what Cruz will do if given the chance and it is impossible to imagine anything good coming out of a Cruz presidency.
In the end, I think either one would be a disaster for this country and the world.
I still think the Republicans are worrying about Trump for nothing. My assumption is that the early days of a Trump administration will be largely consumed by Trump trying to redecorate everything so that it looks like the sleaziest whore house on the planet (See any of Trump’s upscale properties.) That means he wouldn’t start do real damage for a few weeks. All the Republicans have to do is get a good VP selection (good to them) and then, the day after the inauguration, impeach Trump. The Senate can convict him and toss him out. Even if all he’s doing is redecorating, I wouldn’t expect any 8 hour period to pass without Trump committing several “high crimes and misdemeanors.” I doubt he’ll be able to get through breakfast without committing an impeachable offense.
RandomMonster
@trollhattan: Just because Trump has been in the public eye doesn’t make him any more predictable. I don’t think any of his antics in this campaign would have been predicted a year ago. The guy is a loaded revolver hoping to play russian roulette with country.
J R in WV
Trump is… worrying, crazed in a wealthy way. Cruz is not crazed as much as he is evil
No J C, you’re not the only one.
Cruz is terrifying. Spanish Inquisition.
TriassicSands
@Elizabelle:
He will seem less repellent when surrounded by people who are all thoroughly repellent.
Omnes Omnibus
@TriassicSands: He will always be the most repellent person in the room. It is his gift.
sdhays
Lindsey Graham said it best during a brief moment of sanity: When the choice is drinking poison or taking a few shots to the head, does it really matter? I think with either Trump or Cruz, we’re pretty much finished.
DeadHeadDad
@Waldo: Umm, I thought we lived through two terms of a Cheney Administration?
dww44
John, I’m on board with you re Trump vs Cruz and which would be more horrible for the country, given that they both would be. My SO said some time ago (and he’s no liberal) that Trump is a great bullshitter and Cruz is an actual slimy liar, but a smart and devious one. Trump wouldn’t intentionally tear down what’s been built since the 1930’s, but Cruz would not hesitate to take down the whole of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and abolish all sorts of agencies..
Since the get go I’ve been more frightened by Cruz. IMO it would be better for Democratic chances for Trump to be the nominee. I’ve a number of Republican relatives, including my brother, who actually like Cruz but who hate Trump. Republicans will fall in line and support Cruz, as they are already doing. They will probably figure out a way to keep the nomination from Trump. The question is how messy and consequential will that effort be..
Soylent Green
Trump does not want the job. He wants the title. He wants to put his name on the building.
He might even get elected. All it would take is a domestic terrorist attack.
In the oval office, I could see him delegating all the actual duties to his staff and appointees, while he confined himself to making grandiose speeches on the teevee and holding classy state dinners. He knows that he knows nothing, and might even hire qualified people to do the actual work and tell him what to say. He might drop the pretense of being a hard-right conservative and end up somewhere closer to the middle. I think he would show no loyalty whatsoever to the rabble who have gotten him this far — they’re little people, not worthy of his time. He also wouldn’t give a shit about any Republicans in Congress who fail to kiss his ring.
I think he would be a profound embarrassment as president but possibly not all that dangerous.
Cruz, however, poses an existential threat to the world.
akryan
Thank you! Yes. My friends and I have been saying for months that as crazy as Trump is, Cruz would be 1000 times worse for the same reasons you said.
mel
@Roger Moore:
Agreed.
Also, don’t underestimate the danger of Kasich being tacked on to the Repub ticket as a VP candidate. That bland, folksy-jokesy, gee-whiz demeanor masks a frighteningly anti-worker, anti-union, anti-women’s rights, anti-heslthcare agenda.
All that homey, midwestern apple-pie faux-humility fooled a crap-ton of people in Ohio, especially older white voters who would normally vote the Dem ticket.
I could easily see Repubs tossing Kadich on the ticket, and touting his supposed ” moderateness” and “reasonableness” as a counterbalance to the vitriol and violence of Trump and the nasty fundamentalism of Cruz, when in fact, Kadich is smarter and just as venomous as either Trump or Cruz.
The scary thing is that Kasich is smart enough to know how to fool people with his hapless, “Aw, shucks, let’s all just get along!” routine. And fool many it does, at least initially. But take a look at his record in Ohio, and imagine him being empiwered to push that agenda frim a VP position. Truly, truly, frightening.
HeartlandLiberal
Even our Libertarian friends, who are staunch Republican voters, see through Cruz, as the bat sh*t crazy Dominionist he is. The wife also thinks Trump is disgusting. The husband would vote for him, I think. But Cruz? The idea of Cruz as president truly would be enough to start on that emigration project out of the USA.
Paul in KY
@Elizabelle: I would rather have Trump as nominee than Cruz. mainly because that means no chance of Cruz as Pres. Trump has had a bad week, IMO.
Daniel Montiel
This has been my fear all along, but my concern is the knife fight the Sanders supporters are starting against Hillary; Hillary supporters are already tired of how evil Sanders people say their candidate is, and now the dissemination of “Sanders won that one caucus by a high percentage, therefore Hillary should totally drop out despite her lead in both votes and delegates” is both irrational and entitled.
I am terrified this will boil over and burn the candidates and their supporters, harming our turnout in November and costing us the White House, never mind the Senate. And a GOP House, Senate, White House and soon-to-be-included GOP-controlled Supreme Court will reverse the Obama administration in a matter of months.
Yep – ‘terrified’ is the right word. This could happen.
Paul in KY
@Tim C.: Cruz is Greg Stillson come to life.
Paul in KY
@aimai: But his ‘win’ in that case might be seeing Cruz or Kasich losing, due to his run.
Paul in KY
@planetjanet: Cruz would be like Sarah! would have been, in that he’d be scheming to off the Pres.
J R in WV
@Paul in KY:
Yes, this.
Presidential Food Taster would be the most important position in any Republican White House if Cruz was living at the Naval Observatory, new traditional home of the VP.
Aleta
@J R in WV:
a job that would burn through dozens of employees in no time
Fr33d0m
@Mnemosyne: Problem here is how you will be if you survive either.
Fr33d0m
@mel: Lets face it, any repugnicon would be bad for the country, and we have plenty of historical evidence of that truth. But to put a Kasich in the pool with Trump or Cruz is to misunderstand. In particular, using the terrible meter, Kasich would likely register just inside the red zone, and could waver into the yellow regularly. Trump would be deep in the red but the needle would be pulsing wildly, so sometimes he’d be in the yellow, maybe even dip into the green on rare occasions, and on others he’d peg the meter in the red. Cruz would blow the needle past the red.
mel
@Fr33d0m:
I think you’re absolutely right about Trump and Cruz. In re-reading my post, I think I was a bit unclear about how I am worried that Kasich might be put into play.
My concern is that Kasich could be used as a sort of baitfish as a VP on a ticket with Cruz or Trump. The very fact that he is somewhat less horrible than Trump or Cruz, and the fact that he is skillful at masking his own brand of nasty with a bland, non-threatening countenance is what could make him an effective tool as a VP candidate. Here’s why I think it’s important to not underestimate Kasich.
What I am hearing a lot of, especially here in the Midwest, is Repubs and older, middle class Dems (esp. those who tend to waffle on issues like abortion rights, racial and gender equality, etc.) saying things like, “Well, I would never vote for that loudmouth Trump (alt. “that mean-looking Ted Cruz”) unless there was somebody decent on the ticket with them, like that John Kasich. He seems so honest and down to earth! He’d teach that Trump a thing or two!!”
I agree that Kasich wouldn’t have a chance in hell as the Repub presidential candidate, and also agree that, in terms of toxicity and general bat-shit wingnut craziness, Trump and Cruz far exceed Kasich.
But used as a VP candidate to sway waffling Repubs who are turned off by Trump’s and Cruz’s extreme views? Added to the ticket to try to sway Dems who are afraid of Hillary’s gender, Bernie’s activism, and/or the stances that both Bernie and Hillary take on immigration, racial and gender equality, living wage, etc.?
It does concern me that he could be used as the “spoonful of sugar” that helps convince the less fanatical Repubs (and some rightwing leaning Dems) to take the bitter medicine and cast their vote for either of the two big bads.
Kasich’s policies have wreaked havoc in Ohio. The last thing the country needs is an out-of-control extremist Trump or Cruz at the wheel, with a union-busting misogynist like Kasich pulling the wool over people’s eyes while the chaos unfolds.