If Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wants Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s endorsement, the presumptive GOP nominee will have to make some changes.
“Think of it as a merger of two companies,” Kasich said in an interview Tuesday with Ohio reporters. “If the values are not somewhat similar, if the culture is not somewhat similar, it’s pretty hard to do a merger.”
Kasich, who in the past has said he may never get to the point where he would back Trump, later elaborated, noting his dislike for the way Trump will “run people into the ditch.”
“Unless I see a fundamental change in that approach, it’s really hard for me to do a merger,” he said. “If he changes, that’s a whole new ballgame. But if the cultures don’t change, mergers aren’t possible.”
During the interview session, Kasich, who suspended his presidential campaign after the Indiana primary, contrasted his approach with that of Trump, saying the billionaire made Americans out as victims without offering solutions.
“It’s easier to consider yourself a victim than it is to stand against the wind, particularly when you have people telling you it’s not your fault,” Kasich said. “And it wasn’t their fault. But when you create a scapegoat situation – ‘Well, the reason why you don’t have something is because someone else does’ – that is a message at this point in time that is more effective than, ‘Hey, we can work our way through this.’”
Kasich said he will write a book on his campaign experiences and use it to share his optimistic message of where the nation should go.
“It’s my message, and I don’t really think so much about how it fits into the Republican Party,” Kasich said. “I think people intuitively know that message is correct. But there’s a tug-of-war going on, I believe, in the country right now between people who are legitimately upset for a variety of reasons. Their concerns, fears, insecurities have to be acknowledged. The question is, do you stand against the wind and make the best out of what you have in life? Or do you go and become a victim?” (For more from the author of “Kasich Makes Announcement About Trump Endorsement” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/24761488715_0f5d2176b6_b.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-26 01:56:152016-05-26 01:56:15Kasich Makes Announcement About Trump Endorsement
By David Martosko. Donald Trump’s latest effort to saddle Hillary Clinton with her husband’s sexual indiscretions hit Instagram like a bomb on Monday.
‘Is Hillary really protecting women?’ Trump tweeted, along with a link to a short video featuring the voices of two of Bill’s sexual-assault accusers, Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey.
The 15-second video also includes a reference to Clinton’s former White House intern paramour Monica Lewinsky, in the form of a stogie clenched between the former president’s teeth.
Independent Counsel Ken Star wrote in his bombshell report on the Clinton impeachment saga that the then-president sexually pleasured Lewinsky, then in her early twenties, with a cigar.
Broaddrick accused Clinton of raping her in a hotel room when he was the attorney general of Arkansas. Willey has charged that he groped and fondled her against her will in the Oval Office. (Read more from “Trump Slams Hillary Clinton for Not ‘Protecting Women’ in Video Featuring Voices of Bill’s Sex-Assault and Rape Accusers” HERE)
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Leftist Salon: Donald Trump Is Going to Win; This Is Why Hillary Clinton Can’t Defeat What Trump Represents
By Anis Shivani. The neofascist reaction, the force behind Trump, has come about because of the extreme disembeddedness of the economy from social relations. The neoliberal economy has become pure abstraction; as has the market, as has the state, there is no reality to any of these things the way we have classically understood them. Americans, like people everywhere rising up against neoliberal globalization (in Britain, for example, this takes the form of Brexit, or exit from the European Union), want a return of social relations, or embeddedness, to the economy.
The Trump alliance desires to remake the world in their own image, just as the class representing neoliberal globalization has insisted on doing so. The difference couldn’t be starker. Capitalism today is placeless, locationless, nameless, faceless, while Trump is talking about hauling corporations back to where they belong, in their home countries, fix them in place by means of rewards and retribution, like one handles a recalcitrant child.
Trump is a businessman, while Mitt Romney was a businessman too, yet I predict victory for the former while the latter obviously lost miserably. What is the difference? While Trump “builds” things (literal buildings), in places like Manhattan and Atlantic City, places one can recognize and identify with, and while Trump’s entire life has been orchestrated around building luxury and ostentatiousness, again things one can tangibly grasp and hold on to (the Trump steaks!), Romney is the personification of a placeless corporation, making his quarter billion dollars from consulting, i.e., representing economic abstraction at its purest, serving as a high priest of the transnational capitalist class.(Read more from “Donald Trump Is Going to Win: This Is Why Hillary Clinton Can’t Defeat What Trump Represents” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/16678805005_028e7f98d3_b-2.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-23 23:32:052016-05-24 01:31:49Trump Slams Hillary Clinton for Not ‘Protecting Women’ in Video Featuring Voices of Bill’s Sex-Assault and Rape Accusers
Donald Trump’s impressive list of potential Supreme Court nominees was a very smart move at a pivotal time. It came amid news of the Little Sisters’ ongoing battle not to be compelled by Caesar to fund abortion drugs, and amid Barack Obama’s bathroom edict thrust upon every school in America—as our President of Fundamental Transformation stoically promises to slay the world’s new great scourge: “transphobia.” Our fearless commander-in-chief knows he cannot wage this just war alone. The crusade must be carried forth by left-wing nature-redefiners poised throughout the courts. A President Hillary Clinton would duly pick up the torch, inserting still more morally insane judicial activists to advance the cultural revolution. Trump’s list came the week following his meeting with Paul Ryan, which surely was an impetus.
So, kudos to Team Trump. But the judges list needs to be merely the start. I here suggest that The Donald go further. I recommend that he and his team create a literal Contract with Conservatives, taking a page from Newt Gingrich’s brilliant Contract with America in 1994. Then, Newt pledged a list of popular common-sense conservative initiatives that he vowed a Republican Congress would vote on during Bill Clinton’s presidency. My thinking of Newt right now is partly precipitated by suggestions—including by The Donald’s top male cheerleader, Sean Hannity—that the former House speaker join Trump as a running mate. Newt might want to talk with Trump about the potency of the contract concept. The idea should resonate with Trump, being a businessman whose business is contracts, and as the namesake of the Art of the Deal.
What would this contract include? It needs to underscore 10 or 12 defining issues by which conservatives need reassurance before doing the unpalatable if not unthinkable in pulling the lever for Donald Trump.
Topping the list must be the guarantee to nominate only conservative judges, which is the paramount concern to conservatives holding their nose to vote less for Donald Trump than against Hillary Clinton. I talk to these conservatives constantly. For many, the only reason they will vote for Trump is to try to save America from unchecked activists inventing Constitutional rights and redefining the country and culture from the bench.
Really, liberals, you have helped enable Donald Trump with eight awful years of Barack Obama and the prospect of eight more with Hillary Clinton. Barack’s bathroom edict, endorsed by longtime abortion-fanatic and newfound “LGBTQ” warrior-queen Hillary Clinton, merely serves to advance Trump’s presidential prospects. My word to Obama and gang: You people are not only ideologically ridiculous but politically oblivious. Barack’s public bathroom obsession repulses the electorate about as much as Donald Trump’s public behavior does. Obama’s toilet fiat is so politically idiotic that it makes me wonder if the current Democratic president is secretly working with The Donald to defeat Madame Hillary. Nice job, liberals. You don’t like the Trump monster you’ve helped build, but every day you enliven it more.
One “NeverTrump” conservative emailed me yesterday saying he might now vote for The Donald. What changed his mind? The left’s bathroom follies combined with Trump’s list of conservative judges.
I digress. My point is that point one of a Trump Contract with Conservatives needs to be about restoring sanity to a nation-culture gone mad by restoring rationally thinking human beings to the federal courts.
Beyond judges, we could easily come up with a dozen other issues for a Trump Contract with Conservatives, ranging from a direct pledge to repeal Obamacare to promises to cut federal income taxes (Trump is already reneging on this one), to defund Planned Parenthood, to eliminate the Department of Education and Common Core, to abolish the IRS, to increase military funding. Trump must also somehow vow not to aid and abet the left’s fanatical efforts to redefine human nature, from marriage to gender. This is key, because Donald Trump, despite all the hype about him being politically incorrect, has long been a cultural liberal of New York values, whose only “political incorrectness” is actually mere brashness and rudeness and crudeness. The New York cultural liberal needs to promise to resist the bathroom battlers and left’s lieutenants of gender madness. His comments on the North Carolina situation a few weeks ago were not reassuring.
The Contract with Conservatives might even go so far as to include actual names of people that a President Trump would place in crucial posts from the Department of Defense and State Department to the National Security Council and Treasury. That hasn’t been done before, but neither has (in my recollection) a pre-presidential list of potential Supreme Court nominees. It would be unprecedented, but The Donald himself is unprecedented.
Team Trump should start now behind the scenes quietly working with leading conservatives to devise a list to announce at the Cleveland convention. Tap Newt Gingrich. Newt does know conservatism, which is vital to a Republican presidential nominee who can’t spell conservatism. The value of releasing such a list in Cleveland would be immense. It would also give The Donald coherent talking points to corral him, rather than him bloviating with his usual litany of platitudes from a podium.
Key caveat: Would a President Donald Trump abide by this contract? That’s not certain. Trump is a man of (at best) new principles and (at worst) no principles. He boasts of how he can change on a dime. His ability to flip-flop could be unsurpassed in the annals of presidential history. Nonetheless, he is a businessman and deal-maker who has some devotion to the weight of contracts. Maybe a contract, done with great fanfare, could hold him accountable to a degree (it’s better than nothing).
To be sure, such a Contract with Conservatives will not mollify all conservatives. Many of us remain convinced that Donald Trump is fundamentally unfit and unsuited for the most significant office in the world — temperamentally, emotionally, intellectually, ideologically, even morally. I have seen enough over the past year. Watching Donald Trump’s astonishing antics and policy ignorance has told me everything I need to know. He has exhibited enormous character instability and psychological flaws. His childish behavior on the campaign trail does not merit the votes of serious adults. Whatever coaching he gets now on how to behave, and in devising whatever deals to better pretend to look conservative, none of it should convince us he’s something he’s not. Nonetheless, if Trump is looking for a way to appeal to a larger swath of conservatives who dread the radical left’s (i.e., today’s Democratic Party) further transformation of America into a cultural hellhole where nuns and bakers and photographers and florists and marriage clerks and wedding caterers and churches and companies and schools are forced, sued, fined, closed, threatened, picketed, boycotted, jailed, debased, demonized, dehumanized, and destroyed often simply for asking for conscience exemptions in a country that has a 220-year-old First Amendment enshrining religious freedom, then Trump should seek ways to attract them. To be sure, I still find it highly unlikely to impossible that Donald Trump can win in November. A man of such overwhelmingly historical negatives with vast segments of voters really doesn’t stand much of a chance, even as polls tighten and even as Barack Obama does his surest to have adult men share restrooms with our daughters. I am sympathetic to George Will’s plea that conservatives should work to defeat Donald Trump rather than help him because of the enormous brand damage he could cause to the party of Lincoln and Reagan. However, if Trump is looking for a way to try to reassure conservative voters in his bid to stop another post-modern Democrat from further torching our civil liberties, a Contract with Conservatives might be a good option. For the good of my country and culture, I would like some guarantee from Trump of some semblance of conservatism and resistance to the left-wing juggernaut should he seize the Oval Office for the next four years.
Now is the time, when The Donald needs conservatives because his goal is to win, win, win (i.e., when the goal is himself), for conservatives to try to hold him accountable to their movement that he’s hijacking for his own purposes. (For more from the author of “Trump Needs a Contract With Conservatives” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/8567826396_7804f0256c_b.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-23 01:28:542016-05-23 01:28:54Trump Needs a Contract With Conservatives
Donald Trump may have out-Trumped his own reputation for politically incorrect, tough talk when he called out former President Bill Clinton Wednesday night during an hour-long interview with Sean Hannity. . .
The Hannity interview came on the heels of a weekend New York Times story on Trump’s treatment of women titled “Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private.”
According to the Times, “more than 50 interviews were conducted over the course of six weeks, … [with] dozens of women who had worked with or for Mr. Trump over the past four decades, in the worlds of real estate, modeling and pageants; women who had dated him or interacted with him socially; and women and men who had closely observed his conduct since his adolescence.”
[Hannity then asked Trump,] “I looked at the New York Times. Are they going to interview Juanita Broaddrick? Are they going to interview Paula Jones? Are they going to interview Kathleen Willey?”
[Hannity continued,] “In one case, it’s about exposure. In another case, it’s about groping and fondling and touching against a woman’s will.” [Trump then interrupted,] “And rape.” (Read more from “Trump Drops ‘Rape’ Bombshell on Bill Clinton” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/3467872162_aa7b9ccacc_b-1.jpg7761024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-21 22:51:052016-05-21 23:28:30Trump Drops ‘Rape’ Bombshell on Bill Clinton
On Monday’s edition of The View on ABC, the co-hosts talked about an article in The New York Times in which presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump was accused of making inappropriate comments as well as unwanted advances toward women.
One panelist asked whether Trump is guilty of sexual harassment, saying he often accuses Bill Clinton — the husband of his likely Democratic opponent in the general election — of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior.
Joy Behar said, “You know what? They’re going to bring up Bill Clinton. … Bill Clinton is a dog also. What does that have to do with Hillary Clinton?”
Giving her opinion on the idea of Trump becoming president, co-host, Whoopi Goldberg said, “I don’t want a racist as president, sorry. I don’t want somebody who embraces — you know, I don’t mind — you know I have said this before, I would have been fine had he not brought in Muslims the way he did, Mexicans the way he did. And not said to the countless, you know, supremacists that seem to be backing him, ‘Hey, that’s not what I’m running on.’ Had he done that, I would not have an issue with him. But that’s not who I want representing the country.”
Following the posting of the article to Facebook by Breitbart, people were quick to respond to Goldberg’s comments.
One person posted: “How is it racist to point out a fact about the situation with Mexicans crossing the border illegally? Facts don’t have feelings Whoopi. Put all your feels to the side and think logically. And learn what the word racist means if you’re going to be a race baiter.”
Another post read: “Tell me again how securing the border against ILLEGAL immigration is racist…Whoopi is way more racist than Trump is !!!”
Finally, a user posted: “For these liberals/ dems, why in the 39 years Donald Trump has been in the public eye did no one call him a racist? Only now that he’s running for president, as a republican, does the left, the biased media, the sheep, etc say he’s racist. Tell me why? Also what makes him a racist?” (For more from the author of “Whoopi Goldberg Gives the One Reason She Doesn’t Want Trump to Be President” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Whoopi_Goldberg_-_Comic_Relief_2006_-_Daniel_Langer.jpg9361176Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-21 22:49:172016-05-21 23:29:40Whoopi Goldberg Gives the One Reason She Doesn’t Want Trump to Be President
“Unpredictable” versus “unqualified” could be the choice between what are likely to be the two most unfavorable presidential candidates in American history.
As Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are within a tiptoe step of becoming their respective party’s nominees, abstract outlines of the themes of the general election are beginning to take shape.
Clinton, in recent interviews, has hammered Trump for being a “loose cannon” and “provocative.” Trump has delighted in repeating remarks from Clinton’s current primary rival Bernie Sanders, arguing that Clinton’s “judgment is clearly lacking.” And both candidates are taking an increasing focus on terrorism and national security as it relates to both of these character qualities.
“I am the only person that says we will not be led down the tubes by an incompetent person like Hillary Clinton,” Trump said as a New Jersey fundraiser with Chris Christie on Thursday evening. “You look at what she has done. Her deal with Libya. Just take a look at Libya. It is a catastrophe.”
(Note: In a little noticed story published earlier this week, it was revealed that the former chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Benghazi said in January that “nothing could have affected what occurred in Benghazi.” Meaning, he felt that military could not have done anything differently to save American lives in Benghazi the night of the attacks. Of course, the decision to place Americans assets there in the first place remains within Clinton’s area of responsibility as Secretary of State.)
Clinton, for her part, previewed her initial lines of attack in a rare interview on Thursday with CNN, seeking to mark Trump’s hot talk as a barrier to making the nation safer.
The former Secretary of State unveiled her barrage of attacks in one answer to CNN’s Chris Cuomo that began by calling Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States, “provocative and wrongheaded” that led to him “being used essentially as a recruiter for more people to join the cause of terrorism.”
Clinton also criticized Trump’s “unpredictable, dangerous rhetoric” and repeatedly stated his comments would have a negative effect on national security.
“Having watched presidents” she said, “having seen the incredibly difficult work that they do and the decisions that they have to make—the thinking that goes in sitting in the situation room, do we go after Bin Laden or not? I was part of that. Was it a clear, easy choice? Of course not. did it have to be carefully parsed and analyzed and then we gave our opinions and up to the president to decide.”
But Trump is certain to do all he can to turn Clinton’s experience in the Obama Administration into a negative. That’s why he’s not shying away from the “unqualified” label for her, first publicly raised by Sanders against Clinton.
It’s usually the very first thing Trump and his advisors bring up when it comes to Clinton.
On cue, Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller responded to Clinton’s interview in a dueling appearance on CNN thusly, “We obviously agree with Bernie Sanders that Hillary Clinton isn’t qualified to be president.”
“The Democratic party is on the verge of nominating the most pro-war, pro-wall street lawmaker in the modern history of the Democratic party,” he said. “That’s amazing. Think about it. You have a candidate in Hillary running on a pro-war platform about what she did in Libya, doing in Syria, about the toppling of the Egyptian regime and the military took back control, who’s running on a pro-wall street, pro-war agenda. That’s not the right fit.” (For more from the author of “A Battle Of “Uns” Between Clinton and Trump” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/maxresdefault-57.jpg7201280Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-21 03:08:082016-05-21 03:08:08A Battle Of “Uns” Between Clinton and Trump
Actress and Fox News contributor Stacey Dash posted a picture of herself with Donald Trump on Friday, and it is generating a lot of interest online.
The picture–posted to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram–appears to have been taken at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention, which is taking place in Louisville, Ky., Friday through Sunday.
In the post, Dash announces her endorsement of Trump, as did the NRA on Friday.
Dash has had complimentary things to say about Trump during various appearances as a co-host on Fox News’ Outnumbered during the campaign season.
She also defended him in a blog post in March after violent protesters caused the candidate to cancel a Chicago campaign rally. “There’s a lot of talk about Donald Trump being violent, condoning it, or at least inciting it,” Dash wrote. But, she said, “he’s not violent, he’s just ‘street.’”
“But there is something about growing up in New York, a certain toughness instilled, a certain level of ‘street’ that can’t be ignored,” she added. “That’s why Americans LOVE him. They are tired of being pushed around. They want someone who will not put up with non-sense.”
Dash has a book coming out June 6 chronicling her political journey, entitled, There Goes My Social Life: From Clueless to Conservative. (Her breakthrough film role was in the 1995 comedy “Clueless.”)
She told Western Journalism that she hopes her book will be a vehicle to help people discover that they are conservatives too. She believes there are many currently disenfranchised people who, when presented with the facts, will have that epiphany.
“They are for the Second Amendment, they just don’t know it. They are constitutionalists, they just don’t know it. They are capitalists, they just don’t know it. Those are all conservative principles, they just don’t know it,” Dash said. (For more from the author of “Stacey Dash Shares Picture of Herself and Trump That Is Generating Buzz” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Stacey_Dash_25003111254.jpg8531280Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-20 21:50:312016-05-20 21:50:31Stacey Dash Shares Picture of Herself and Trump That Is Generating Buzz
Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson had never planned to support presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, but now he will do whatever it takes to help Trump defeat likely Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
“I was forced onto the Trump train, but I am happily volunteering my services for Mr. Trump, mainly because the Republican Party has spoken,” said Robertson, who supported Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in the Republican primaries. “The people have said we want Mr. Trump. So Mr. Cruz goes down — I love him — but now I’m on the Trump train and I’ll do everything I can to help him.”
During his appearance Wednesday on Fox & Friends, Robertson had a very clear idea of how he could assist Trump.
Robertson has said that he will remain loyal to the Republican Party.
“I’ll go with the platform that I discovered when I was 28. I looked at the Democrats and the Republicans, and at least the Republicans aren’t for killing their children or for perversion, so I’m a Republican. So I’ll back old Donald,” he told The Hollywood Reporter recently.
As for Clinton, “Her record is long, and she’s already proven herself,” he said then.
“I know which way we’ll go with her, but I’m not sure with Donald. And remember, I’m a hunter. We shoot squirrels and ducks and eat ’em, and she says she’ll take our guns. All we’re doing is shooting targets, and alligators and cottonmouth snakes, and she wants to take that away from us,” he said.
Robertson consistently calls for political leaders to turn to God.
“Why don’t we vet our thinking through the word of God, love God and love each other?” he said on Fox & Friends Wednesday. “Why don’t we try that for a while? That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
He explained to the Hollywood Reporter why following God’s teaching is important to America.
“When you remove the God of the Bible and suppress the truth and allow men and women to determine right and wrong, historically speaking, it always ends in carnage and murder — Hitler, the Caesars of Rome, the French Revolution, ISIS. Man, there has been a slaughterhouse on planet Earth, and the common denominator is the removal of God,” he said. (For more from the author of “Duck Dynasty Star Offers to Take Important Role to Help Trump” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/14837761109_c752b0a6b0_b.jpg6811024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-19 23:28:422016-05-19 23:28:42Duck Dynasty Star Offers to Take Important Role to Help Trump
Donald Trump on Wednesday released a list of 11 judges he would consider nominating to the Supreme Court, a step intended to reassure Republicans of his conservative bona fides.
The list includes several judges often found on conservative wish lists, including Diane Sykes, William Pryor and Joan Larsen. Several of the judges were appointed by President George W. Bush, and many serve on state supreme courts.
In what some interpreted as a snub, the list does not include Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Trump’s bitter foe during the presidential primary race, or Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who endorsed Cruz. Both lawmakers had been floated in Washington as potential nominees . . .
Appellate judges Sykes and Pryor, two names previously floated by Trump as model jurists, are both on the list. So is Utah Supreme Court Judge Thomas Lee, the brother of Sen. Mike Lee and the son of Rex Lee, a former U.S. solicitor general during the Reagan administration.
Other judges mentioned include Raymond Kethledge of Michigan, David Stras of Minnesota, Steven Colloton of Iowa, Allison Eid of Colorado and Raymond Gruender of Missouri. (Read more from “Donald Trump Releases List of Judges He Will Choose From to Put on Supreme Court” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/5440385457_52d372e1d0_b-1.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-19 01:46:182016-05-19 01:46:18Donald Trump Releases List of Judges He Will Choose From to Put on Supreme Court
Now that the crowded 2016 field of mostly GOP beta males is tripping all over themselves to genuflect to their vanquisher Donald Trump – and what an embarrassment to the cause of manhood they are – all eyes are on Ted Cruz.
Will he, too, bend at the knee to Trump’s chocolate bunny?
Or will Cruz continue on the righteously ornery path that has taken him from political nobody to conservative superstar in only four years?
For now, Cruz is playing it smart. There’s no point in showing your hand if you’re Cruz, because right now there is no pressure on you. You’re no longer a candidate, and it is always the candidate’s obligation to woo the voters, not the voters’ task to contort their souls into pretzels on behalf of the candidate. That means the onus is on Trump, not Cruz, to unify.
If you’re gonna play the game, boy, you gotta learn to play it right. You gotta know when to hold em and know when to fold em.
But at some point in the coming weeks and months there will be a cash call, and I hope the man I’m proud to call a friend, and whose courage of conviction I admire, has the political savvy to realize that what may seem like a tough call for him really isn’t a tough call at all. Once you remove the peer pressure and group think, which Cruz has already made a career out of defying, and plan out the long-term consequences.
If I was in Cruz’s inner circle at this moment, here are the seven things I’d be telling him:
1. There is more at stake for you in this decision than anyone else.
With the possible exception of Scott Walker, who will rightfully be given a chance to resurrect himself because of his record in Wisconsin, none of the 16 GOP candidates not named Trump have a guaranteed political future except Cruz and Fiorina. For they are the only two non-Trump candidates who definitely ended the race with more political capital than what they started with.
Furthermore, this election cycle painfully revealed the paucity of principled conservative leaders to rally and inspire us. Therefore, Cruz owes it to both the people who gave him his political capital, as well as conservatism, to not be pennywise and pound foolish here. The list of people waiting in the wings should he sell his birthright tomorrow for a pot of stew today isn’t long or credible, thus Cruz blowing his political capital has far-reaching implications for millions of patriots in desperate need of leadership.
2. This is not 1976, and you’re not Reagan.
As a first-born son of the Reagan Revolution, Cruz was fond of comparing 2016 to 1980. Clearly that’s not the case—2016 turned out to be 1789 instead. Now he should resist the temptation to cast this as 1976 and himself in the Reagan role. See that as giving an impassioned speech at the convention that sets him up for the future, all the while claiming to be the loyal soldier for the good of the party in the meantime.
The reality is the only people who care about the good of the party are the folks Trump conquered, and don’t forget that before Trump arrived they hated Cruz the most. Once Trump is gone, Cruz will return as public enemy number one to these people. Cruz should learn from what happened with Trump in this campaign: you don’t endear yourself to foes you’ll have to destroy later. Besides, anyone who would consider voting for Cruz four years from now is more interested in a fighter than a unifier anyway.
3. Remember one of the 10 Commandments of Political Warfare: Don’t ever betray your base.
The only Republican with a future, whose base is likely to be disappointed if he kneels before Zod, is Cruz, for obvious reasons. Many of those people consider themselves “principle before party voters,” and they took Trump’s dirt bag attacks on Cruz’s family almost as personally as Cruz did. Cruz voters will be among the last to hold the line on #NeverTrump, and a chunk of them will never give up the ship. If Cruz endorses Trump he risks splitting his future base like no one else does. The dumbest thing to do when you have the biggest base heading into the future is to split it.
4. This is a rare opportunity in politics when the morally righteous thing to do is also the most politically expedient.
It’s rare in politics to be politically rewarded for doing the most principled thing, but that is the case here for Cruz. And it will be much easier for him to win over people mad at him for not “unifying” later than it would be to reunify his base if he were to endorse. Look at all the voters who don’t care Trump is a progressive and a Hillary donor. Look at all the other candidates groveling before the same Trump they once insulted. These are soulless people that will come to your beck and call in the future if you’re winning. But Cruz’s odds of winning diminish if he splits his base.
5. You will tarnish your brand, at least to some degree, because all the reasons to endorse Trump tarnish it.
How do you credibly endorse someone you called a “pathological liar” for the highest office in all the land after writing a book called “A Time for Truth”? How do you endorse a guy for president who dishonored your wife, called you a whoremonger, and claimed your dad was a presidential assassin? That’s pretty much the most beta thing ever. I’m going to point this out now as a friend, in the hopes that our enemies in the D.C. Cartel and media may not have to do it later.
6. You will open the door to being out-flanked as the insurgent once again in your next presidential run, as you were in this one.
The biggest reason Cruz could not beat Trump is that Trump out-flanked him as the insurgent candidate (and yes, the media had a lot to do with that but not everything). If Cruz endorses Trump, he risks this happening to him again in the future. Except in 2020 it won’t be another megalomaniac celebrity candidacy if Trump loses, but a new hotness like fellow Senator Ben Sasse.
Sasse has been AWOL near as I can tell on pretty much every major fight since he got to the Senate, but he clearly sees an opportunity with #NeverTrump and is wisely exploiting it. By the way, that’s not a criticism but a compliment. The GOP needs more politicians who see morally righteous causes as political opportunities, not fewer. Sasse also comes from a neighboring state to first-in-the-nation Iowa, and has already given a major political speech here in my backyard, so you can see him working.
In 2020, Sasse will have even more Senate experience than Cruz ran with in 2016, and he won’t have the stench of Trump on him. Freeing him up to go after a sizable bloc of primary voters that should be Cruz’s, unless he opens the door for a Sasse type later by endorsing Trump now. If Cruz does, someone like a Sasse could turn around and do to Cruz in Iowa four years from now what Cruz did to past caucus champions Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum in 2016.
7. You literally gain nothing from this politically and it’s a one-sided waste of political capital.
Look at all the others who have assumed the position for Trump, and what have they gained politically for it? Answer: zilch. And at the cost of their integrities to boot. They now owe all their futures to Trump winning in November, and won’t have one if he loses.
Don’t be that guy.
Whatever you may think Trump will promise or hint at now, you know he won’t deliver later, but just mount Cruz’s scalp on the wall as another trophy. Like President Trump is going to spend one day fighting tooth-and-nail to confirm “Lyin Ted” to the U.S. Supreme Court. Come on, man.
On the other hand, the fertile political ground is the yet politically untapped #NeverTrump real estate. Cruz can have that all too himself, and it’s got long-term prospects. If Trump loses in November, Cruz becomes the immediate frontrunner in 2020. And if Trump wins, Cruz becomes the face of the principled opposition to what would likely be the most feckless presidency in the history of the republic.
Cruz learned early on there is hefty ROI potential on remaining principled in an era of cowards and charlatans. Now is the time for him to stay that course. (For more from the author of “Seven Reasons Cruz’s Tough Call on Trump Really Isn’t a Tough Call at All” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/6236460239_9c01ab4f52_b.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-17 02:16:232016-05-17 02:16:23Seven Reasons Cruz’s Tough Call on Trump Really Isn’t a Tough Call at All
