# # #
Showing posts with label GOP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GOP. Show all posts
Thursday, July 20, 2017
Monday, July 17, 2017
No repeal of Obamacare, again. Thanks GOP.
art credit: huffington post
The
GOP members of Congress who put the repeal of Obamacare to a vote dozens of times during the previous administration [per Treehouse, the Senate considered only defunding Obamacare, not repealing], and the GOP
candidates who pledged to repeal Obamacare in order to get elected, were all
lying through their teeth. They never dreamed that Trump would be elected and that
they’d be put on the spot to make good on their promises. And take a look at
the two GOP Senators who just announced their intention to vote no! From the AP :
WASHINGTON (AP) — The
latest GOP effort to repeal and replace "Obamacare" was fatally
wounded in the Senate Monday night when two more Republican senators announced
their opposition to legislation strongly backed by President Donald Trump.
The announcements from Sens.
Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas left the Republican Party's
long-promised efforts to get rid of President Barack Obama's health care
legislation reeling. Next steps, if any, were not immediately clear.
Lee and Moran both said
they could not support Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's legislation in its
current form. They joined GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of
Kentucky, both of whom announced their opposition right after McConnell
released the bill last Thursday.
McConnell is now at least
two votes short in the closely divided Senate and may have to go back to the
drawing board or even begin to negotiate with Democrats, a prospect he's
threatened but resisted so far.
Some of us had higher hopes for Mike Lee and even
Rand Paul. Lesson learned: they are all politicians. And they lie.
# # #
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Saturday, July 8, 2017
Healthcare & the GOP : Pathetic Fail or Corrupt?
Michael Ramirez cartoon via U.S. News and World Report
The headline: Pat Toomey says GOP wasn't ready with healthcare ...because they didn't think
Trump would win. That’s the conclusion in this Jul-07 report by Robert
Laurie at the Canada Free Press:
For some time, I’ve been arguing that the GOP
should have had a plan to repeal ObamaCare ready - and on the President’s desk
- the week that Donald Trump took office. The ACA’s elimination should have
been a day one priority, then you could rest of the year working on healthcare
fixes and tax reform. I’ve heard a whole pile of excuses about why that
didn’t happen and I’ve never really bought any of them.
There were only two answers that made sense:
Either the GOP didn’t really want to repeal ObamaCare, or they simply dropped
the ball and we’re witnessing one of history’s worst cases of political
shortsightedness.
While I still suspect there are a lot of
Republicans who’d love nothing more than to leave the ACA in place and have the
whole issue go away, it sounds more like the GOP just ...failed.
According to [Senator] Pat Toomey (R-PA), no one bothered to ready an ObamaCare repeal
bill, because they all thought Hillary was going to be your next President.
He made the remarks during a town hall, hosted by
ABC27 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
“I didn’t expect Donald Trump to win. I think most
of my colleagues didn’t. So we didn’t expect to be in this situation.
And given how difficult it is to get to a
consensus, it was hard to force that until there was a need to.”
In other words; “We could vote to repeal ObamaCare
40 times when we knew Obama wouldn’t sign the bill, but we never wasted our
time preparing for the eventuality that we might actually win the next
election.” That’s just pathetic, and it validates a lot of criticisms
that Democrats were lobbing at Republicans back during the Obama years.
It’s an admission that their healthcare votes
during the Obama administration really were just obstructionist political
theater and it suggests that they spent more time preparing for a
Hillary presidency than they spent trying to secure a victory.
Remember, they had eight years to ready
a repeal, replacement, or fix. Instead, they put on a big show, yakked
about their alleged principles, smiled at their constituents, and kicked the
can.
They squandered their time, your money, and our
collective efforts because it was easier than getting together on a solution.
No wonder they’re so despised.
My own take: When Senator Toomey admits that the GOP did not seriously prepare for the repeal of Obamacare
because they did not expect to win the House, Senate, and White House, he makes
the GOP look like fools, but that’s probably better than admitting the truth. I suspect that Laurie’s alternative is correct: the GOP
does not want to repeal Obamacare. Nearly all of the GOP, including the
so-called Freedom Caucus, are members of The UniParty, and they have already
been bought.
# #
#
Labels:
Canada Free Press,
GOP,
healthcare,
ObamaCare,
repeal,
Robert Laurie,
Senator Pat Toomey,
Uniparty
Monday, May 8, 2017
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Coulter on free market healthcare
Image credit: North Country Public Radio
Sorry, I have been
off the air for a couple of weeks, and when I got back online this weekend, I
found a column by Ann Coulter on HER solution to the healthcare repeal-replace
dilemma. Here’s are several extracts and the whole thing (from a little over a week ago)
is here.
It’s always impossible to repeal laws that require Ann to pay for
greedy people, because the greedy run out on the streets wailing that the
Republicans are murdering them.
Obamacare is uniquely awful because the free stuff isn’t paid for
through income taxes: It’s paid for through MY health insurance premiums. This
is unfortunate because I wanted to buy health insurance.
Perhaps you’re not aware — SINCE YOU EXEMPTED YOURSELVES FROM
OBAMACARE, CONGRESS — but buying or selling health insurance is illegal in
America.
Right now, there’s no free market because insurance is insanely
regulated not only by Obamacare, but also by the most corrupt organizations in
America: state insurance commissions. (I’m talking to you, New York!)
Federal and state laws make it illegal to sell health insurance
that doesn’t cover a laughable array of supposedly vital services based on
bureaucrats’ medical opinions of which providers have the best lobbyists.
As a result, it’s illegal to sell health insurance that covers any
of the medical problems I’d like to insure against. Why can’t the GOP keep
Obamacare for the greedy — but make it legal for Ann to buy health insurance?
This is how it works today:
ME: I’m
perfectly healthy, but I’d like to buy health insurance for heart disease,
broken bones, cancer, and everything else that a normal person would ever need,
but no more.
INSURANCE COMPANY: That
will be $700 a month, the deductible is $35,000, no decent hospital will take
it, and you have to pay for doctor’s visits yourself. But your plan covers
shrinks, infertility treatments, sex
change operations, autism spectrum disorder treatment, drug rehab and
67 other things you will never need.
INSURANCE COMPANY UNDER ANN’S PLAN: That will be $50 a month, the
deductible is $1,000, you can see any doctor you’d like, and you have full
coverage for any important medical problems you could conceivably have in a
million years.
Mine is a two-step plan (and you don’t have to do the second step,
so it’s really a one-step plan).
STEP 1: Congress doesn’t repeal Obamacare! Instead, Congress
passes a law, pursuant to its constitutional power to regulate interstate
commerce, that says: “In America, it shall be legal to sell health insurance on
the free market. This law supersedes all other laws, taxes, mandates, coverage
requirements, regulations or prohibitions, state or federal.”
The end. Love, Ann.
There will be no whining single mothers storming Congress with
their pre-printed placards. People who want to stay on Obamacare can. No one is
taking away anything. They can still have health insurance with free pony
rides. It just won’t be paid for with Ann’s premiums anymore, because Ann will
now be allowed to buy health insurance on the free market.
Americans will be free to choose among a variety of health
insurance plans offered by willing sellers, competing with one another to
provide the best plans at the lowest price. A nationwide market in health
insurance will drive down costs and improve access — just like everything else
we buy here in America!
Within a year, most
Americans will be buying health insurance on the free market (and half of the
rest will be illegal aliens). We’ll have TV ads with cute little
geckos hawking amazing plans and young couples bragging about their broad
coverage and great prices from this or that insurance company.
The Obamacare plans will
still have the “essential benefits” (free pony rides) that are so important to
NPR’s Mara Liasson, but the free market plans will have
whatever plans consumers agree to buy and insurance companies agree to sell —
again, just like every other product we buy here in America.
. . .
Until the welfare program
is decoupled from the insurance market, nothing will work. Otherwise, it’s like forcing grocery
stores to pay for everyone to have a house. A carton of milk would suddenly
cost $10,000.
. . .
STEP 2: Next year, Congress formulates a better way of delivering
health care to the welfare cases, which will be much easier since there will be
a LOT fewer of them.
No actual money-making
business is going to survive by taking the welfare cases — the ones that will
cover illegal aliens and
Mara Liasson’s talk therapy — so the greedy will get government plans.
But by then, only a minority of Americans will be on the “free”
plans. (Incidentally, this will be a huge money-saver — if anyone cares about
the federal budget.) Eighty percent of Americans will already have good health
plans sold to them by insurance companies competing for their business.
With cheap plans available, a lot of the greedy will go ahead and
buy a free market plan. Who wants to stand in line at the DMV to see a doctor
when your neighbors have great health care plans for $50 a month?
. . .
#
# #
Labels:
Ann Coulter,
free market,
GOP,
healthcare,
Human Events,
ObamaCare,
repeal,
replace
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Ohio Governor John Kasich votes for . . . John McCain
Branco cartoon via Walid Shoebat
Cleveland.com reports:
Gov. John Kasich, who had vowed
not to vote for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, voted Monday by
absentee ballot.
His choice? Sen. John McCain of
Arizona.
. . .
The vote essentially is a
symbolic gesture. Because McCain is not among the
18 certified write-in candidates in Ohio, Kasich's vote for president will
not count.
Kasich ran unsuccessfully for
this year's Republican nomination and made clear his
concerns about Trump's rhetoric. He did not set foot inside Quicken
Loans Arena during the GOP convention in Cleveland, despite being governor of
the host state. He long hinted he would not be voting for Trump, even though he
was among a crop of other GOP hopefuls who initially pledged to back the
eventual nominee.
So much for Gov. Kasich's pledge. What
a disgrace.
# # #
Labels:
Donald Trump,
GOP,
John Kasich,
John McCain,
Ohio Governor,
pledge
Monday, October 17, 2016
Eric Holder named to lead effort to destroy GOP
art credit: OtterLimits
If
this doesn’t scare you, nothing will. It's not a headline from The Onion, either. From Thomas Lifson at AmericanThinker:
Eric Holder named to lead effort to destroy GOP
after Hillary
wins the presidency
This election is for keeps:
plans are being implemented, with President Obama already signed on, staff
hired, and money being raised. Perhaps lulled into complacency by the MSM
polls, the Democrats have already constructed and staffed their strategy to
permanently disable the Republican Party. Eric Holder is the perfect
henchman, a man above nothing in his quest for political dominance, unbound by
old-fashioned concepts of justice.
The GOP will remain in
existence as the token opposition, useful for legitimizing the actual one-party
regime, the essential element of the election rituals reminding us of the
Republic we once enjoyed.
Edward Isaac-Dovere of Politico has
the scoop:
As Democrats aim to capitalize
on this year’s Republican turmoil and start building back their own decimated
bench, former Attorney General Eric Holder will chair a new umbrella group
focused on redistricting reform—with the aim of taking on the gerrymandering
that’s left the party behind in statehouses and made winning a House majority
far more difficult.
The new group, called the
National Democratic Redistricting Committee, was developed in close
consultation with the White House. President Barack Obama himself has now
identified the group—which will coordinate campaign strategy, direct
fundraising, organize ballot initiatives and put together legal challenges to
state redistricting maps—as the main focus of his political activity once he
leaves office.
The group is moving forward in
a systematic way, assembling talent and money:
Though initial plans to be
active in this year’s elections fell short, the group has been incorporated as
a 527, with Democratic Governors Association executive director Elizabeth
Pearson as its president and House Majority PAC executive director Ali Lapp as
its vice president. They’ve been pitching donors and aiming to put together its
first phase action plan for December, moving first in the Virginia and New
Jersey state elections next year and with an eye toward coordination across
gubernatorial, state legislative and House races going into the 2018 midterms.
Redistricting, aka
Gerrymandering (depending on the eye of the beholder), is now a science, thanks
to the data-mining capabilities of all the Silicon Valley Big Money corporatist
allies of the Democrats. Assembling masses of data from Google, Facebook,
and others, they can put together districts micro-targeted with just enough
Democrats to win and shove the GOP voters into 90% majority districts,
shut out forever from control of state legislatures and the House of
Representatives.
As Richard Baehr emailed me,
"so long as there is an opposition, it must be destroyed."
It will be, if these well
designed, politically connected, well financed efforts are implemented under a
President Rodham.
Combined with a Supreme Court committed to the living
Constitution fantasy, the Uniparty will rule us all any way it desires.
The continuing avalanche of Wikileaks confirms just how corrupt the
entire political and governmental structures are. Sharyl Attkisson (who quit her CBS job a couple of years ago amid concerns of media bias) has a long column focusing
on the corrupt corporate media scandal she is calling “Newsgate.” It looks like it's merely the tip of the iceberg.
# # #
Monday, July 25, 2016
VP candidate Sen. Tim Kaine, the GOP, and the Uniparty
A
Career Spent Taking Cautious Positions
Anathema To The Party's Liberal Base
. . . It is as if Reince
told the interns to "Come up with something that makes Kaine as likable as
possible to our people."
For Tea Party readers who have been following
Sundance’s blogs at Conservative Treehouse over the past couple of years, the
mushy GOP website statement on Kaine comes as no surprise. The GOP
establishment, and party chairman Reince Priebus, are reluctant, at best, to
support Trump’s candidacy. At worst, some of the GOPe are downright hostile to
the Trump candidacy, as seen in the “Never Trump” delegates from Iowa and
Colorado who marched out of the Republican National Convention in a huff.
For Tea Party people who have not heard of the
terms “Uniparty” or “Splitter Strategy,” nor followed Sundance’s “Tripwire”
predictions based on his “Uniparty” analyses, today’s blog on Conservative
Treehouse here gives a handy summary. At the bottom of the article, you’ll find
links to Sundance’s previous blog posts that outlined the “Uniparty” theory,
linked to the new GOP primary rules state-by-state to define the “Splitter
Strategy,” and then calculated the Tripwires or predictions that give credence
to the Uniparty theory. It was the accuracy of the many predictions – in sequence
– that persuaded many readers to change their minds about what was unfolding.
Not politics as usual. (Maybe readers will want to bookmark the page to go
through all the posts linked at the bottom, as time permits.)
Once readers recognized what the “Uniparty” was,
the behavior of the political class, the donor class, and the media became more comprehensible,
albeit more reprehensible. Scrolling through the reader comments at Treehouse
can be helpful and even reassuring; it’s a bit unnerving when we find ourselves
in such uncharted waters.
Link to Sundance / Treehouse: click here.
# # #
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Disenfranchising the voters
photo credit:mishtalk.com
Both the Democrat and Republican parties have been
actively trying to disenfranchise voters, especially primary voters. Their methods
are different, but both parties (or perhaps more accurately, the so-called "Uniparty") can achieve the same result. That result is stripping
the power of the vote away from the registered voter and shifting that power to
the party committee and establishment elites.
Politico reports on this issue within the Democratic party:
A growing number of
Democratic senators support reforming the party’s superdelegate system — a move
that would dilute their own power in the presidential nominating process but
satisfy Bernie Sanders and his millions of supporters as Democrats move to
unify for the general election.
Politico interviewed
nearly 20 of Sanders’ colleagues over the past week and found a surprisingly
strong appetite for change, including among influential members of the party
establishment such as Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a top prospect for vice president.
More than half the senators surveyed support at least lowering the number of
superdelegates, and all but two said the party should take up the matter at
next month’s convention in Philadelphia, despite the potential for a
high-profile intraparty feud at a critical moment in the campaign.
The findings point to
growing momentum among Democrats for changing a system that’s been criticized
for giving party bigwigs undue sway over the nominee at the expense of the
grass roots. But powerful Democratic Party constituencies, including the Congressional
Black Caucus, are firmly opposed. And lawmakers who are open to reform disagree
over how far-reaching it should be.
. . .
Senator Sherrod Brown is on record on the subject
of superdelegates. He just doesn’t care about the electorate:
“I want Bernie in the
fold, I want him enthusiastic,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, another
potential VP choice. “I’m fine with whatever they negotiate, I just don’t care
about superdelegates. I don’t care about the whole thing.”
Then there is the GOP strategy. In this election
cycle, it included rewriting the GOP primary rules, state by state, to implement what
Sundance dubbed The Splitter Strategy, a plan that would ensure that no GOP candidate
crossed the finish line before the July convention, so the selection process
could go instead to a contested floor vote, and the GOP elite could anoint Jeb!, as in Jeb’ll Fix
It. When Trump upset that apple cart, the GOP fractured further, with the emergence
of the Never Trump bloc that still hopes to deprive Trump of the nomination in
July. All this talk, especially from Speaker Ryan about letting Republicans vote their conscience, is intended to undermine the primary results that gave
Trump more votes than any other Republican candidate in history. Haugland has
been outspoken on his contempt for the grassroots voter (via another politico report):
North Dakota’s Curly
Haugland, who is on the convention rules committee, has long argued that no
rules change is necessary for delegates to vote their conscience. He contends that
party rules require delegates to vote freely and that they can ignore any state
laws and rules that purport to bind delegates to the results of primaries and
caucuses. Haugland insists his effort is not meant to oppose Trump – he’s
pushed it for years – but rather is about
empowering the party’s elected delegates to choose the GOP nominee. [emphasis
added]
What is the purpose of primary elections, if the
party “leadership” and rules committees can disregard the voters and decide who
the nominees are themselves?
# # #
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Do the math, Senator Cruz
photo credit: youtube
Desperation. From The Daily Caller:
Sen. Ted Cruz’s
abrupt suggestion he might reenter the Republican presidential race went up in
smoke Tuesday night as he suffered a crushing defeat against Republican
presidential candidate Donald Trump in Nebraska’s GOP primary.
Cruz suggested if he were to win in Nebraska and saw a
“path to victory” at the convention, he would consider restarting his
presidential campaign, despite dropping out last week after being beaten badly
in Indiana.
“We launched this
campaign intending to win. The reason we suspended our campaign was that with
the Indiana loss, I felt there was no path to victory,” Cruz told radio
host Glenn Beck. “If that changes, we will certainly respond
accordingly.” (RELATED: Cruz Says He Won’t Run Third Party)
Such notions were
almost immediately crushed in spectacular fashion Tuesday night, as early
results showed Trump racking up almost 60 percent of the vote in Nebraska,
about 40 percentage points ahead of Cruz at 19.5 percent. Ohio Gov. John Kasich
was in third with about 14 percent of the vote.
Although no polling
was conducted in the state, it was seen as a potential Cruz victory prior to
him dropping out. But if Nebraska ever was a Cruz state, it stopped being one
the moment he dropped out as GOP voters instead flocked to the party’s presumptive
nominee.
Cruz also suffered a
massive defeat in West Virginia’s primary, though that defeat was more
predictable.
Nebraska’s 36
delegates are awarded on a winner-take-all basis, meaning Trump will take
another big step towards the 1,273 delegates he needs to lock up the Republican
nomination on the first ballot.
The delegate chart after yesterday's primaries:
# # #
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Trump, Sanders, and American discontent
art credit: www.writerscafe.org
From Pat Dooley’s FB page:
Trump, Sanders and American discontent
Trump is now the presumptive GOP
candidate. He started as a joke candidate. The pundits trashed him from left
and right. But, somehow, he resonated with ordinary Americans and gained
traction in the polls. National Review, the leading conservative magazine,
devoted a complete issue to attacking Trump. He survived that broadside. His
GOP competitors spent 10's of millions of dollars on attack ads against him. He
spent virtually nothing. He said stupid things, insulted virtually everyone,
and still he kept winning. This is actually a unique event in modern American
history. No outsider has ever done what Trump has just done.
How did he do it? He chose a great
campaign slogan and he hammered illegal immigration, bad trade agreements, job
losses, and political correctness. He used his media savvy to garner free
airtime his opponents could only dream of and he found ways to dominate
virtually every media news cycle. He spent virtually nothing on advertising and
his whole campaign was run on a shoestring. Jeb Bush blew through $130 million
and got nowhere.
Bernie Sanders is giving Hillary a run
for her money, and he is appealing to people on the left who are disillusioned
with "politics as usual." He doesn't have a chance because the system
is rigged against outsiders. Hillary picks up pledged delegates that were
committed before a vote was cast.
Sanders and Trump reflect a general
malaise that American people feel. The Federal government is working against
us, not for us, and it is costing far too much.
# # #
Labels:
Bernie Sanders,
Donald Trump,
establishment,
GOP,
GOPe,
Hillary
Friday, May 6, 2016
Jeb! reneges
photo credit: observer.com
Back
in December, and shortly before Jeb! dropped out of the race, Guy Benson at Townhall reported
on the GOP candidates' loyalty oath to support whoever became the eventual nominee for
President. The headline then was “Jeb: I'm Considering Breaking My GOP Loyalty
Pledge if Trump's the Nominee":
By declining to raise their
hands when prompted by Fox New anchor Bret Baier, every other candidate on
stage that night made a promise to voters: No matter who is nominated,
they'd throw their backing behind his or her campaign, and would rule out an
independent run.
Ironically, that question was
crafted specifically for Trump, but now it applies at least as much to
moderates like Bush and
Kasich as it does to the capricious frontrunner. If you're
seeking the Republican nomination, and if you've vowed to endorse and support
the Republican nominee, you shouldn't go back on your word -- neither out of
genuine frustration and disgust, nor as a campaign tactic.
Not only would this be a breach
of trust, it would reek of spite. Trump's been smacking Jeb around as a low
energy loser for weeks; if the former governor were to follow through on this
quasi-threat, Trump could tweak his taunt and cast Bush as a low energy sore loser.
Jeb and friends have spent tens
of millions of dollars so far, yet the campaign has failed to gain traction
with voters (to
put it kindly). Reneging on the pledge now would be akin to pouting
in the corner -- yet another indignity.
Sure, guys like Bush and Kasich
could use Trump's odious conduct and controversial
proposals as
a fig leaf to justify their potential reversals, but that would require them to
feign shock that Donald Trump is comporting himself like...Donald Trump
has always comported
himself.
Plus, it would infuriate a
large segment of the Republican base, who would accuse the establishment of
demanding party unity in support of "safe" nominees, then refusing to
abide by the same standard when they don't get their way.
Today,
The Hill reports that Jeb! has reneged on his pledge.
“In November, I will not vote
for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, but I will support principled
conservatives at the state and federal levels, just as I have done my entire
life,” Bush wrote in a Facebook post.
Jeb!
does not seem to have a clue about “conservative” principles, nor why Trump
would appeal to conservatives who are sick and tired of “conservative” GOPe
legislators who promise conservative values on the campaign trail and embrace
the liberal agenda once in office.
# # #
Labels:
Donald Trump,
elite,
establishment,
GOP,
GOPe,
Guy Benson,
Jeb Bush,
pledge,
The Hill,
Townhall
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Trump wins Indiana
All the advance polls, including those on RealClearPolitics, showed lower numbers for Trump. All the website election HQs are calling Indiana for Trump. The Democrat race as of 8pm is too close to call.
Politico election results are regularly update here. Exit Question: Will Cruz bow out now?
# # #
Labels:
Donald Trump,
GOP,
Indiana,
John Kasich,
Politico,
Real Clear Politics,
Ted Cruz
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Republican Convention in Cleveland: Bikers and Truckers plan to roll in
photo credit: infostormer
From
Reuters (and quoting Cleveland Tea Party’s Ralph King):
From bikers to truckers,
pro-Trump groups plan forceful presence in Cleveland
BY NICK CAREY
When Chris Cox rolls into
Cleveland in mid-July with other motorcycle-riding supporters of Donald Trump,
he plans to celebrate the billionaire's coronation as the Republican
presidential nominee. He also counts on joining protests if a battle over the
nomination ensues.
"I'm anticipating
we'll be doing a victory dance," said Cox, 47, a chainsaw artist and
founder of Bikers for Trump, thousands of whom he estimates will hit the Ohio
city for the July 18-21 Republican National Convention.
"But if the
Republican Party tries to pull off any backroom deals and ignores the will of
the people, our role will change."
Bikers For Trump is
part of a diverse array of groups coordinating to hold thousands-strong
protests and marches if the real-estate mogul is denied outright victory at the
Republican Party’s nominating convention in Cleveland.
The risks of
confrontation and violence surrounding Trump events were highlighted again on
Thursday, when around 20 people were arrested following clashes between
anti-Trump protesters and police outside a rally for the candidate in
California. It was the worst outbreak of violence since Trump was forced to
cancel a rally in Chicago in mid-March.
Anti-Trump protests
are expected in Cleveland. In late March, the left-leaning National Lawyers
Guild held a conference in the city to coordinate legal support to protesters
in the event of mass arrests during demonstrations.
Leaders and members
of the pro-Trump groups told Reuters their main goal is to mount a show of
support for their candidate, who after a series of primary victories this week
looks increasingly likely to clinch the nomination outright ahead of Texas
Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich.
But if he falls short
of the required 1,237 delegates, raising the risk he could lose out in a contested
convention, they said they plan to do all they can to exert pressure on party
leaders to prevent someone else getting the nomination.
Several Trump
supporters suggested that tensions could escalate if the party was seen as
trying to deny Trump the nomination despite his commanding lead in delegates
won in primary contests.
"The plan either
way is send a message to the Republican establishment to respect our
votes," said Ralph King, a member of the Cleveland Tea Party. "If the
party tries to parachute in a white knight to steal the nomination, it's not
going to end well."
. . .
The Cleveland
Division of Police also has a security plan in place as it does for all major
events of this kind, a spokeswoman said in an email, without providing further
details.
. . .
Pro-Trump groups
planning a presence in Cleveland include some Tea Party-affiliated
organizations, a new group called Stop The Steal led by Trump ally Roger Stone,
Citizens for Trump, and the Truckers for Trump group.
King, a veteran of
Tea Party rallies, is coordinating with other groups and local police to obtain
permits for marches and protests during the convention, and to hold a major
rally in downtown Cleveland that will then march on the convention site.
"STOP THE
STEAL"
Read more here.
# # #
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Ann Coulter's take on Cruz and Kasich
Ramirez cartoon credit: rightwingnews.com
Ann Coulter's acerbic take on Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich was up on the Breitbart website the other day:
Apparently,
John Kasich and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) are at their most appealing
when no one is paying attention to them, which, conveniently, is most of the
time.
. . .
Listening to
Cruz always makes me feel like I have Asperger’s. He speaks so slowly, my mind
wanders between words. As Trump said, there’s a 10-second intermission between
sentences. I want to order Cruz’s speeches as Amazon Audibles, just so I can
speed them up and see what he’s saying.
The guy did go
to Harvard Law School, so I keep waiting for the flashes of brilliance, but
they never come. Cruz is completely incapable of extemporaneous wit.
Now that Cruz
has been mathematically eliminated, he’s adding Carly Fiorina to the ticket.
She’s not his “running mate,” but his “limping mate.” It’s an all-around
lemon-eating contest.
. . .
Kasich
is constantly proclaiming that illegals are “made in the image of God,” and
denounces the idea of enforcing federal immigration laws, saying: “I don’t
think it’s right; I don’t think it’s humane.”
When
asked about his decision to expand Medicaid under Obamacare — projected to cost
federal taxpayers $50 billion in the first decade — he said: “Now, when you die
and get to the, get to the, uh, to the meeting with St. Peter … he’s going to
ask you what you did for the poor. Better have a good answer.”
He
lectured a crowd of fiscal conservatives on his Obamacare expansion, saying,
“Now, I don’t know whether you ever read Matthew 25, but I commend it to you,
the end of it, about do you feed the homeless and do you clothe the poor.” He
also attributed the law to Chief Justice John Roberts and said, “It’s my money,
OK?”
Voters
thought they were getting a less attractive version of Mitt Romney with Kasich,
but it turns out they’re getting a more televangelist version of Ted Cruz.
They’re
also getting a less warm and personable version of Hillary Clinton. Last week,
Kasich lashed out at a reporter who asked a perfectly appropriate question,
going from boring campaign boilerplate to irritated browbeating in about one
second flat. As much as I enjoy watching reporters being berated, this was
deranged.
Kasich:
Listen, at the end of the day I think the Republican Party wants to pick
somebody who actually can win in the fall.”
Reporter:
But if you’ve only won Ohio?
Kasich:
“Can I finish?”
Reporter:
“If you answer the ques–”
Kasich:
“I’m answering the question the way I want to answer it. You want to answer
it?” (Snatches voice recorder from reporter’s hand.) “Here,
let me ask you. What do you think?
When
giving a speech to Ohio EPA workers a few years ago, Kasich suddenly went off
topic and began shouting about a police officer who had given him a ticket
three years earlier. “Have you ever been stopped by a police officer that’s
an idiot?” he began. He proceeded to tell the riveting story
of his traffic violation to the EPA administrators, yelling about “this idiot! …
He’s an IDIOT!”
Based
on the dashcam video immediately released by the police, Kasich had been in the
wrong, and the officer — you know, “the IDIOT” — was perfectly polite about it.
. . .
Ironically,
it’s Kasich who has been complaining the loudest about the alleged billions of
dollars of “free media” Trump has been getting. It turns out not getting “free
media” was a godsend for Kasich and Cruz.
Read the rest here.
# # #
Labels:
Ann Coulter,
GOP,
Illegal immigration,
John Kasich,
Medicaid expansion,
Ted Cruz
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