Insulting the worms

From Townhall, today's cartoon by Glenn McCoy:

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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.

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Cartoon of the Day

Steve Kelley cartoon via Townhall

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.

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Gary Varvel cartoon of the day

Cartoon of the day by Gary Varvel, via Townhall.

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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?

. . .

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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.

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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. 

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VP candidate Sen. Tim Kaine, the GOP, and the Uniparty

Richard Fernandez (Belmont Club at the PJ Media blogsite) has a good analysis of the GOP official website statement about Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary’s pick for Vice President. Fernandez call it a “stunningly awful” statement, an almost GOP-lite endorsement of Kaine:

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.

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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?  

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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