Tips for Persuading the Fledgling Socialist in Your Life

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It seems everywhere I turn these days, liberty minded people are perplexed to see their friends, family members and the general public supporting presidential candidates who are socialist or socialist in everything but name. The younger generation seems especially friendly to “Feeling the Bern,” leaving small government people trying to figure out how their loved ones can possibly overlook candidates’ socialist tendencies.

I can tell you why so many of the youth love the socialist candidates. This is complicated point which will take a lot of concentration to understand and accept, so please brace yourself for the nuclear bomb of truth I’m about to drop. People are supporting socialist candidates because…they really, really like socialism.

I know this should be obvious, but I think a lot of people, especially the older generation, are in denial. Those who grew up during The Cold War era when the socialism of the U.S.S.R. was painted as the philosophical antithesis to all things American have an instinctive and vitriolic rejection of anything reminiscent of Soviet Russia, but most in the millennial generation were not even alive during The Cold War and none know much about it unless they happen to be a dedicated student of history. Most youngsters have zero problem with socialism, so no amount of, “But he’s a socialist,” style arguments will ever sway today’s budding leftists.

If you’re looking at me to convert your loved ones, you’re out of luck. You have a personal relationship while I’m just some dumb schmuck with a blog. Hopefully, the leftists you know trust and respect you which puts you in a much better position to reach them than I’ll ever possess, so let me share some strategies which should help you make your case.

Ease Off on the Nazis

Talking with a friend the other day, we discussed how our church gave us both the impression that a sinful life would immediately destroy you and make you miserable, so when my friend first smoked pot and first had premarital sex and did not immediately become a heroine addict or break out in genital warts, he felt the stated risks of sin had been nonsense. If the church had emphasized a more realistic view of sin being fun for a season but having serious long-term cost, perhaps he would have taken a different path.

Similarly, some conservatives paint an overly cataclysmic picture of socialism. Yes, Hitler, Stalin and Mao were all practitioners of different forms of socialism which lead to the deaths of at least a hundred million people, but we need to be intellectually honest. There are plenty of socialist states in Europe where people are not being rounded up and executed in death camps.

People do need to know the horror stories of National Socialism and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (by the way, you can start using these terms instead of Nazism and the U.S.S.R. to subtly emphasize the importance of socialism to these regimes), but leftists also need to know the more moderate problems inherent in all socialist nations such as the negative impact of socialized medicine, the higher taxes and the lower standard of living. However if you make it sound as if electing Bernie Sanders will lead directly to another holocaust, most leftists will understandably dismiss you.

Feelings not Facts

For generations, small government types have been making largely fact based arguments while leftists have appealed to the feelings of the American people. Which side has been winning?

Bernie Sanders hasn’t been giving specific answers to how economic systems should be structured to even the playing field or how he will fund his many new initiatives, but he has been abundantly clear in condemning the status quo as morally corrupt and stating that the rich have an unfair advantage. Many people don’t need to be convinced in their head if you can capture their hearts.

Fight fire with fire. It’s counterintuitive for many conservatives, but lead with emotions. Ask questions like, “Is it fair for people who chose not to go to college and those who sacrificed to pay their own way through college to have to pay for everyone else’s tuition?” and, “How will it make people who spent years working to earn $15 an hour feel to learn they are now working a minimum wage job with a higher cost of living?” Don’t drop the facts, but insert the feelings into the facts.

Philosophy not Politicians

We’ve all felt indignation when the media attacks a conservative politician unfairly. Perhaps we were not even that thrilled with the politician ourselves, but when we heard the opposition taking a hatchet to a guy on our side, we got defensive.

Leftists feel this way too. A lot of people love Bernie and Hillary, and if you aggressively attack them, you’ll likely end up hurting the feelings of their fans and make them less likely to listen to your arguments. It’s a tricky tightrope to walk, and I fully admit that I all too often fail in this area, but it’s important to focus criticism in a way that targets the message and not the messenger. Make sure to focus on issues rather than personal attacks or you risk ostracizing your audience.

That’s it for today, but later on in the week, I’ll release Part 2 where I’ll discuss a few more strategies. (For more from the author of “Tips for Persuading the Fledgling Socialist in Your Life” please click HERE. You can follow him on Facebook HERE and Twitter HERE.)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The Choice for the GOP: Salvation or Annihilation

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With 13 GOP candidates for president now sitting on the sidelines and winner-take-all states right around the corner, it might seem as if we have reached the homestretch of the primary season.

Likely, though, the exact opposite is true and we’re really just getting started.

See, so far the race for the Republican Party’s 2016 presidential nomination has already rendered one undeniable verdict — everybody the system said was worthy of sustaining it has been soundly rejected by the voters.
This leaves us with two options.

Though Donald Trump is a progressive and the consummate insider by his own admission, the reason the status quo has reacted to him the way a vampire reacts to garlic isn’t just because of his lack of character, integrity, and high negatives makes his election unlikely. Let’s face it, the status quo has overlooked such electability warning flags in the past in order to maintain its grip on the reins of power. The status quo would rather lose elections than lose control.

Rather, it is the fact that Trump is running on the populist economic message that rightly rejects bad corporatist boondoggles deceptively advertising themselves as “free trade,” as well as the disastrous impact unfettered legal and illegal immigration has had on the real wages of middle class Americans. Of course, by his own admission again, Trump has used that very same corrupt immigration system to his advantage as a corporatist himself, but though he is more than a flawed vessel for it his message is true nevertheless. Thus making Trump’s troubling candidacy the result of the GOP ignoring these warnings and laments for decades going back to Pat Buchanan.

In fact, Trump is essentially running on Buchanan’s message (even mirroring his controversial penchant for drawing moral equivalencies between Israel and the Palestinians) minus Buchanan’s staunch social conservatism.

Then there’s Ted Cruz, who though a member of the most august body in American politics, the U.S. Senate, is really the consummate outsider, for Cruz dares to bring forth into the hallowed halls of gangster government what they revile the most. Real conservativism and loyalty to the Constitution’s limits on government power.

If the vampires in the status quo see Trump’s candidacy as their garlic, then Cruz is the Cross. A reminder of all the lies, deceptions, and treachery they have foisted upon their conservative base from the moment Reagan left the national stage. Garlic is but a painful repellant to the vampire, but the Cross is an existential threat that leaves a permanent mark. Sort of like a scarlet letter that reminds everybody you’re a child of darkness.

And now that the race is down to these two, this is the choice before the Republican Party. Will it go with the French Revolution of Trump, as in the bloodthirsty revolt of the peasants with pitchforks? Or will it go with the American Revolution of Cruz, and pledge its lives, fortunes, and sacred honors to advance a party platform it’s been willfully ignoring since before Al Gore invented the Interwebs?

Currently, Trump has only won 43 percent of the delegates needed to secure a majority of at least 1,237. Cruz sits comfortably in second place with 34 percent of the delegates, and is even closer to Trump when measuring the percentage of the vote won so far: Trump 34, Cruz 29.

These facts obviously run counter to Fox News’ ‘All Trump All the Time’ schedule of schilling, err, I mean, programming. But perhaps an alleged assault on a female reporter by one of Trump’s most senior staffers will finally put a dent in that sordid love affair, and let some fresh air into the room.

Then again, Trump did appear as grand marshal in a parade that one time to support Israel, so Olly Olly Oxen Free! I guess you can all stop trying to save American Exceptionalism now and simply ignore all the lies Trump has dumped on you and your country, because who on earth can compete with that.

Trump’s lead really begins to look tenuous when you consider how it has been built with the help of Democrats and Independents voting in “open” primaries that have consistently drawn larger-than-normal turnout. Moving forward, 21 of the remaining 34 contests are closed primaries of only Republican voters — amounting to 792 delegates (or more than half of what is still available). And in the “closed” primary and caucus states held since Iowa kicked things off, Cruz has outperformed polling expectations in every single one of them.

Not a bad trend line, indeed, as we move into the realm of “Winner Take All” states on March 15 and beyond. Where nine states and territories are winner-take-all in the strictest sense, and most of the remaining 18 states left on the primary calendar are winner-take-all by congressional district.

In fact, if you tally all the delegates earned by Cruz, Rubio and Kasich combined at this point, they lead Trump by more than 100. And if #NeverTrump is indeed what increasingly motivates voters as candidates bow out and alternatives are chosen, it isn’t a stretch to say Cruz could soon move into the pole position for securing the nomination. Heck, Cruz would have the delegate lead right now had Rubio dropped out after Super Tuesday mortally wounded his candidacy.

But if principle won’t finally, now, with the future of the country potentially hanging in the balance move the status quo, perhaps its survival instinct will? Two more national polls this week have Hillary Clinton spanking Trump, and Trump now has the highest unfavorability of any domestic politician in the history of the ABC News/Washington Post poll. And that comes after months of Trump receiving the best media coverage he could’ve hoped for.

So the ball is now in the Republican Party’s court. It can either unite behind Cruz and finally keep its word to advance conservativism to its base for once, or face the guillotine this Fall with Trump as a cancerous standard-bearer who will metastasize all the way down the ballot.

For the GOP its salvation or annihilation — and there is no middle ground. (For more from the author of “The Choice for the GOP: Salvation or Annihilation” please click HERE)

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Who Won Last Night’s CNN Debate?

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By Alan Rappeport. The Republican presidential candidates turned to substance over theatrics on Thursday night in a final effort to court voters before they go to the polls in Florida, Ohio and three other states next week, in what could be a decisive Primary Day. There was little sparring and only a few barbs as the contenders largely stuck to talk of trade, terrorism and immigration. Commentators and critics thought a “low-energy” Donald J. Trump seemed to be running out the clock, while Senator Marco Rubio delivered a sharp performance that probably came too late.

“Rubio with a clear and decisive win. At least it makes the next few days interesting.” — Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of The Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report

“Trump very ‘low energy’ so far. No joy in it for him unless another of the monkeys is hurling poop his way.” — Bill Maher, host of “Real Time with Bill Maher”

“On policy — Ted Cruz won. On inspiration and oratory Marco Rubio won.” — Todd Starnes, Fox News host

(Read more from “Who Won Last Night’s CNN Debate?” HERE)

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A Good, Substantive Debate That Probably Won’t Change Much

By Jim Geraghty. Do you notice how much better the debates seem with only four candidates?

CNN went for substance, particularly in the opening half-hour, focusing on trade deals, legal immigration visas and entitlement reform. It was generally a good debate, but for the three trying to catch Donald Trump, I don’t think they generated the buzz-worthy, “hey, did you see that?’ moment they needed.

Trump clearly wanted to be more “presidential” this week, and generally demonstrated a quitter, “kindler, gentler” tone. He opened and closed with his best argument – no matter what you think of me, you want and need my voters checking the box for Republicans in November. In between, he was his typical train wreck, with some interesting wrinkles. He said that when he said the Chinese crackdown in Tiananmen Square was a show of strength, he didn’t mean it was a good thing. He clearly had no idea about the details of Cuba policy, talking in circles about how he would insist upon a “good deal.” He insisted the violence at his rallies is all spurred by “bad dudes” who come in to cause trouble, and quickly tried to change the subject to saluting the police. He hates Common Core, and spoke about charter schools as if they were some new idea. After a while, you start to ask, “what is the point of asking questions to a pathological liar who doesn’t know any details?” (Read more from “A Good, Substantive Debate That Probably Won’t Change Much” HERE)

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Bread Lines for Bernie

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After Bernie Sanders visited the Marxist Sandanista regime in Nicaragua on a propaganda tour, he argued that the bread lines in major cities were a good thing. “American journalists talk about how bad a country is, that people are lining up for food. That is a good thing!”

The bread lines had been caused by the radical regime’s socialist agricultural policies of land seizures from farmers. Those farmers who refused to be drawn into Soviet-style communal farms rebelled, along with Indian and Creole racial minorities, and became the core of the Contras, the heroic resistance fighters whose mass murders at the hands of Sandinista terrorists were cheered by American leftists.

What had been productive farmland vanished into a warren of newly invented government agencies run by leftist university graduates with no agricultural background obsessed with seizing land, but with no idea of how to run it. The remaining farmers were forced into grinding poverty by a government purchasing monopoly while the profits went not to their farms, but to the political class of the Sandanistas who lived in luxury while farmers fled and city workers waited on bread lines.

Think of them as the Bernie Bros of Nicaragua. Except they wore khaki fatigues, not pajamas. And instead of angrily tweeting, they marched their victims into churches and set them on fire. (Read more from “Bread Lines for Bernie” HERE)

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Thanks to the Republican Civil War, Every Scenario Ends With Hillary Clinton Winning the Election

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What is the worst possible outcome for the presidential election of 2016? Assuming that an election will actually take place, that is an easy question to answer – Hillary Rodham Clinton as the next president of the United States. She is truly evil in every sense of the word, and the implications of what four (or eight) years of Hillary would mean for our nation are almost too terrible to imagine. That is why it is so depressing watching what is happening to the Republican Party right now. The civil war in the Republican Party is ripping it to shreds, and as a result of all this warfare every plausible scenario for what will happen the rest of the way ends with Hillary Clinton winning the 2016 election.

According to the Associated Press, here is how the Republican delegate count stands as of right now…

Donald Trump: 384

Ted Cruz: 300

Marco Rubio: 151

John Kasich: 37

Ted Cruz looks like he is within shooting distance of Trump, but that is an illusion. The early part of the schedule was full of states where Cruz was expected to do well, but now the map is going to work very much against him.

At this point, the only candidate that looks like he may be able to accumulate 1,237 delegates before the convention is Trump, and that is far from guaranteed. So far, Trump has won approximately 44 percent of the delegates during the caucuses and primaries. By the time it is all said and done, he will need to have slightly more than 60 percent of all the delegates awarded during the caucuses and primaries to guarantee himself the nomination before the Republican convention. That is because there are hundreds of delegates that are not awarded during the caucuses and the primaries, and almost all of those delegates are members of the Republican establishment.

Trump can still get there by racking up large delegate totals in winner-take-all states such as California, but it will be a challenge. The entire Republican Party establishment, Fox News, Glenn Beck and a significant number of other prominent conservative voices have all declared war on Trump. In fact, there are super PACs that are going to spend tens of millions of dollars doing nothing but trying to destroy Trump.

If the Republican Party actually wanted to beat Hillary Clinton in November, they should be rallying around Trump and trying to help him, because he would definitely need a lot of help to win the general election.

According to Real Clear Politics, the latest three polls all have Trump losing to Clinton by at least 5 points. In key states such as Michigan, the numbers are quite a bit more dismal. Over the next few months, those numbers are likely to get even worse as Trump is savagely assaulted by the Republican establishment and relentlessly bombarded by tens of millions of dollars of negative attack ads. Meanwhile, Clinton is cruising along virtually unscathed.

Of course in a just world Hillary Clinton would have already been arrested and put in prison. There is no possible way that she should be running for president of the United States. Unfortunately, we live in a deeply corrupt society, and this is the way that things work.

If by some miracle he does survive to become the nominee, a significantly weakened Trump would then have to face the full power of the Clinton political machine. It is estimated that a billion dollars could be spent on the Democratic side this time around, and Trump does not have the resources to match that. Normally big Republican donors rally around the nominee, but in this case the big money is fighting like crazy to defeat Trump. In a general election matchup, it really would be David vs. Goliath, and Trump would not be Goliath.

If Donald Trump does not accumulate 1,237 delegates before the convention, then we would be headed for what is known as a “brokered convention“. The rules are very complicated, but the key thing to remember is that the delegates are only bound for the first vote. After that, they can vote for whoever they want.

And it is very important to note that the campaigns don’t pick their delegates. Becoming a delegate is a long and tedious process in most states, and most of them are party loyalists.

In the end, a “brokered convention” would almost certainly result in an establishment candidate being chosen as the nominee. Needless to say, the names “Trump” and “Cruz” would not be on that list.

Have you noticed that Mitt Romney has started to put himself out there lately? His verbal attacks on Trump have been absolutely scathing, and he told Fox News that he would not say no if he was “drafted” to become the nominee at the Republican convention…

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and the Republicans’ 2012 presidential nominee, repeated remarks from last week, telling “Fox News Sunday” that he wouldn’t launch an eleventh-hour campaign for president. But he declined to reject being “drafted” at the GOP convention in July to be the party’s general election candidate.

“It would be absurd to say that if I were drafted I’d say no,” Romney said.

Behind the scenes, much more is going on. In fact, CNN is reporting that Romney’s team is actively working on a plan to steal the nomination from Trump at the convention…

Mitt Romney has instructed his closest advisers to explore the possibility of stopping Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention, a source close to Romney’s inner circle says.

The 2012 GOP nominee’s advisers are examining what a fight at the convention might look like and what rules might need revising.

“It sounds like the plan is to lock the convention,” said the source.

If Romney does emerge as the nominee, does anyone actually believe that he will defeat Clinton?

Of course not. Trump’s millions of supporters will be absolutely infuriated, and many of them would absolutely refuse to cast a vote for Romney in the general election.

In the end, it would be the same result – a victory for Hillary Clinton.

The next few weeks are going to be very interesting. If Trump wins Florida and Ohio, there is going to be a lot of pressure on Marco Rubio and John Kasich to get out of the race, and the path to 1,237 delegates would appear to be clear.

However, Mitt Romney could attempt to derail the Trump bandwagon by jumping in the race after March 15th. Romney’s goal would be to capture enough delegates in winner-take-all states such as California to keep Trump from getting to the magic number of 1,237. If Romney could do that, he knows that he would likely come out of a brokered convention as the nominee.

But no matter what happens on the Republican side from this point forward, it is going to take a miracle of epic proportions to keep Hillary Clinton from winning the presidency. Every plausible scenario ends with her in the White House, and that is a truly horrible thing to imagine. (For more from the author of “Thanks to the Republican Civil War, Every Scenario Ends With Hillary Clinton Winning the Election” please click HERE)

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Record Immigration Will Buoy Hillary

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Last October, I analyzed how record immigration is creating a permanent Democrat majority. Today, my friend Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, published an insightful breakdown of immigration numbers from the most recent Census data, which further portends electoral doom for conservatives.

Immigration, like most other things in life, is good in moderation. That has always been our guiding principle, even during the most expansionist periods of our history — a point I plan to elaborate on further in my upcoming book. What is happening today however, the mass influx of immigrants predominantly from third world countries, is something we’ve never seen in our nation’s history.

As a way of quantifying the magnitude of this great wave of immigration, Camarota tallied the Census data of the immigrant population and their American-born children under the age of 18. Focusing just on the raw number of immigrants often overlooks the broader effect of mass migration, especially resulting from immigrants with high birth rates. He found that there are now 61 million immigrants living in America, including those minor children. Camarota’s best estimate is that 15.7 million of them are illegal immigrants and minor children born in the U.S. to at least one illegal immigrant parent.

This is unprecedented in our history. As late as 1970, just 13.5 million immigrants (including their minor children) were living here, representing just 6.6% of the population. Now immigrants and their children comprise 19% of our population.

Moreover, in some individual states, that number is much higher. Here are the states where the foreign born and their minor children comprise more than 20% of their respective population:

California – 37.4%

New Jersey – 30.4%

Nevada – 28.2%

New York – 27.5%

Florida – 25.3%

Texas – 25%

Connecticut – 24.4%

Maryland – 22.3%

Hawaii – 21.8%

Arizona – 21.3%

Massachusetts – 21%

Rhode Island – 20.8%

Illinois – 20.3%

Washington – 20.3%

Think about it: there are 14 states where more than one in five individual residents is either an immigrant or a minor child of an immigrant. More than one in three Californians fit this description! As I noted in my October analysis, this volume of immigration, particularly from the third world, is so precipitous there is no way for many of these people to assimilate into our political values. This is why so many of these states have turned hopelessly blue. It’s also why so many former red states are becoming purple or even light blue.

In states like Nevada, North Carolina, and Georgia, immigrants and their minor children have grown by 3,000% since 1970! Virginia’s immigrant family population has grown by 1,150%. Is there any wonder it’s so hard to win these states?

Unfortunately for conservatives, the trajectory is set to explode. By 2065, immigrants and their children will comprise 36% of the entire U.S. population.

Here is what Thomas Jefferson warned in 1780 with regards to mass migration:

They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass. [Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 9]

Declaring love and admiration for immigrants in an abstract sense is not public policy. Of course we welcome immigrants. We always have. But how many and over what period of time? The devil is in the details, and in this case the details are the devil our founders warned about 230 years ago.

The Democrats understand exactly what they are doing. This is why someone as unappealing and corrupt as Hillary Clinton can still remain competitive in a general election. Unfortunately, the other party is merely an exercise in self-immolation. (For more from the author of “Record Immigration Will Buoy Hillary” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Social Conservative Leaders Wonder: Can Homosexual Activism and Religious Liberty ‘Coexist’?

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Minutes after addressing a packed room at the 2016 CPAC, two leading social conservatives told LifeSiteNews that sexual agendas are putting religious liberty at risk.

The Family Research Council’s Travis Weber told LifeSiteNews that “for a lot of us, religious liberty’s only been a hot-button issue recently, we’re seeing in the news. Why is that? It’s driven by agendas affecting matters of sexuality – marriage, abortion, contraception, and all sorts of other issues.”

(watch a recent interview between Joe Miller and Travis Weber below:)

“So what do we do about this? Some of these claims are going to be dealt with in the courts. Others, though, we need to deal with [inaudible] protections. Where’s the threat right now? It’s on anyone doing business with the government, having indexes with the government, those getting tax-exempt status, contracting, getting grants, etc.”

“And those folks need to be protected with a version of the federal First Amendment Defense Act, or state government non-discrimination act, not other areas, such as pastor protection act, or some focus that doesn’t need protection right now.”

Weber’s co-presenter was Ashley McGuire of The Catholic Association. “We were discussing threats to religious liberty,” she explained. “I focused on the threats facing health care workers and religious people who do not wanted to be conscripted into providing drugs and devices that violate their consciences.” (Read more from “Social Conservative Leaders Wonder: Can Homosexual Activism and Religious Liberty ‘Coexist’?” HERE)

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8 Key Observations From Cruz’s Super Saturday Win

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For most non-political junkies last night was just another quiet Saturday night. However, in the world of politics, which will determine the trajectory of our country for the next four years, last night might have been the turning point. If Cruz winds up upsetting Trumpmania in this election, last tonight’s largely overlooked contests will have been the Battle of Midway of this nomination war.

Last night’s results consummate the narrative we’ve been observing since Super Tuesday: Cruz is surging and can defeat Donald Trump for the nomination, but if Marco Rubio and John Kasich do not exit the race, Trump will win.

Cruz won big in Kansas and Maine. Cruz won twice as many votes in Kansas as Trump and more than the entire GOP field combined in 2012. And he closed a massive pre-election deficit in Louisiana and Kentucky to come in just a few points behind Trump and nearly tie him for delegates. Overall, Cruz will net more delegates over Trump from last night. My best estimate (subject to change) is Cruz 71, Trump 60, Rubio 14, Kasich 10. Cruz has now garnered roughly 300 delegates, about 80 less than Trump.

Here are the 8 key outcomes:

Cruz is surging: Cruz has demonstrated that he can beat Trump even with a crowded field. His over-performance in every state by as much as 20 point as compared to pre-election polling shows that his Super Tuesday victories and superb debate performance have won over both Rubio and Trump supporters.

Rubio/Kasich playing spoiler: It’s self-evident that had Kasich or Rubio been out of the race, Cruz would have easily won Kentucky. Trump has siphoned off much of Cruz’s conservative base in rural counties and Cruz needs the full support of urban and suburban Republicans to overcome Trump. As long as a more moderate candidate is in the race, many of these voters will not go with Cruz. But once they are left with a choice between the two, they would have to get behind Cruz. This was borne out in Lexington and Louisville where Rubio siphoned off enough votes in third place to prevent Cruz from winning enough votes needed to counteract Trump’s advantage in rural, eastern Kentucky. In northern Kentucky, which would have otherwise been a stronghold for Cruz, Kasich played spoiler. Due to the Cincinnati media market, the favorite son of Ohio was able to cut into Cruz’s margins. Rubio/Kasich also prevented Cruz from reaching the 50% threshold in Maine to win all the delegates, costing him roughly 11 delegates and giving Trump 9 more.

Rubio is out of luck: Rubio failed to win 20% in a single state last night. He won just 16.7% in Kansas despite winning the endorsements of all the major Republican officials in the state. Yet, he still siphoned off some delegates from Cruz. Even if Rubio pulls off a miracle and narrowly wins his home state, he has nowhere to grow and is, mathematically speaking, hopelessly behind in the delegate hunt. Narrowly winning your home state means you will likely loose almost everywhere else. There is no rationale for his candidacy.

Kasich is the new Rubio: Across the map, Kasich is beginning to supplant Rubio as the candidate of choice for more moderate Republican voters. Also, he is likely to win his home state while Rubio will probably lose his home state of Florida. Kasich is also polling well in Michigan. But even if Kasich wins Michigan, he won’t net many delegates out of this crowded field in a purely proportional allocation. He won’t have enough delegates to mount a serious challenge and cannot appeal to conservative voters. By staying in the race for the long run, he could prevent Cruz from winning in important neighboring states like Pennsylvania and Indiana on the back end of the primary calendar. He is playing the role of spoiler.

Closed caucuses/Primaries matter: All four contests last night were closed to non-Republican members. It is quite evident that Donald Trump does much better with cross-over voters but as the primaries continue, most of the remaining contests are closed. This should help Cruz going forward.

Early voting is a killer: Donald Trump has been garnering all the media attention and has led the entire race. Thus, most of the early voting benefits him. He crushed Cruz 2-1 in early voting in Louisiana but Cruz won election day voting. This is yet another demonstration of why early voting is fundamentally unfair. In this case, many voters cast ballots before the Cruz surge and debate performance. It also shows that headed forward, Cruz is in good shape to continue winning states that are commencing voting after the debate. It will be interesting to see if Cruz could win election day voting in the neighboring state, Mississippi, on Tuesday, where there is no early voting. There is no early voting in the other three contests that day either: Hawaii, Idaho, and Michigan.

RNC Rule 40: In order for a candidate to be placed into nomination at the GOP convention, a candidate must win the majority of delegates in at least eight states. After last night’s majority wins in Kansas and Maine, Cruz now has three states under his belt. Trump already won four states with a majority of the delegates prior to last night’s contests.

Cruz can beat Trump: The biggest takeaway from Saturday is that were the other candidates to drop out, Cruz can easily win in most of the remaining states. Sure, Kasich can win his home state of Ohio, but he can never catch Donald Trump in the delegate count. Were he to drop out, Cruz would have an excellent shot at winning those winner-take-all delegates in Ohio. This week we will find out if those declaring #TrumpNever are good to their word or if they really hate Cruz just as much as Trump.

(For more from the author of “8 Key Observations From Cruz’s Super Saturday Win” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

‘It’s Unstoppable’: Glenn Beck Lays out His 2016 ‘Dream Team’

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Following Super Tuesday’s primary results, Glenn Beck revealed his “dream team” to beat Republican presidential contender Donald Trump.

During his radio broadcast Wednesday morning, Beck, who is a top surrogate for GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz, said he wants to see the Texas senator at the top of the ticket with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) as vice president — a pair he described as “absolutely unstoppable.”

However, according to Beck, the two men must team up before the Florida Republican primary on March 15 if they want to successfully challenge Trump.

“Florida, they would win,” Beck said. “If it was Cruz and Marco Rubio, they would win. … But if they don’t do it before the Florida election, then we lose it to Donald Trump. And all those delegates go to Donald Trump” . . .

“How is that not a win for absolutely everyone? And that team would be unstoppable. Tweet that. Facebook that. Get that out. Demand that that’s where we go,” he said. (Read more from “‘It’s Unstoppable’: Glenn Beck Lays out His 2016 ‘Dream Team'” HERE)

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Donald Trump: The Post-Truth Candidate

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On Thursday night, live in front of nearly 17 million Americans watching on national television, Donald Trump abandoned a central plank of the hawkish immigration platform that has helped propel him ever closer to the Republican presidential nomination.

The H-1B visa program makes it easier for employers to import highly skilled foreign labor, and has been widely abused to undercut American workers. Trump has declared himself against such abuses, stating in the immigration platform available on his website that, if president, he would require employers using H-1B visas to hire American workers first. Just last Sunday, Trump highlighted two former Disney IT workers replaced by foreign workers.

But by Thursday night, the front-runner had changed his tune. When moderator Megyn Kelly cited his previous waffling on the subject, Trump announced that he was “softening” his website’s hard line. “We need highly skilled people in this country,” he said. “And if we can’t do it, we’ll get them in.”

Yet one flip-flop was not enough. Just after midnight, Trump’s campaign announced that he was reversing his reversal in a statement that promised to “end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.”

Well, then. Will the real Donald Trump please stand up? (Read more from “Donald Trump: The Post-Truth Candidate” HERE)

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