Cruz just now: “You don’t get to abuse and take advantage of American workers and then suddenly style yourself a champion for American workers.”
New CNN poll has Trump at 49% nationwide. Rubes at 16%, Cruz at 15%.
This has been crystallizing in my mind without my realizing it. And when I went back to Donald Trump’s Twitter feed it was more true than I realized. Trump doesn’t just tweet. He’s developed a sort of twitter-based, 140 character, insult haiku literary form. Not every one of his tweets follows the exact metrical progression. But most of them do. And those that don’t appear to be permutations or attempts at the model.
The metrical pattern is deceptively simple: Single clause declarative sentence, single clause declarative sentence, primary adjective/term of derision.
The networks all called South Carolina for Hillary Clinton as soon as polls closed. Six in 10 Democratic voters today were African American, and the networks are describing her victory as overwhelming, which would be in line with the recent polling of the state. Full story here.
Hillary Clinton’s polling lead in South Carolina has been big enough that it would be a surprise for the networks not to call the race right at 7 p.m. ET, when polls close. And they’re pre-game coverage tonight is not doing much to conceal that fact. So stay tuned. Full results here.
Here is a New York Times article you may have seen. It describes the GOP’s panicked, hyperbolic and yet utterly ineffectual rush to stop the Donald Trump juggernaut. As I’ve said before, the GOP’s Trump problem reminds me of the regional and global powers’ efforts to destroy ISIS. Every party sees the problem, is terrified by the problem. And yet every player has some other angle or priority that’s just a bit more pressing or important. The Saudis, Iran. The Turks, the Kurds. The US, Assad. And on and on. Yet it goes without saying that Trump isn’t the real problem. He didn’t bamboozle the heads of the RNC into signing some one-sided contract they can’t live with. The problem is Republican voters. Look at the polls and you see that in virtually every state in the country between 30% and 50% of GOP voters currently back Trump. And only unicorn thinking supports the idea that the 70% to 50% who do not constitute some sort “anti-Trump” faction. That’s the problem, not Trump himself.
The saving grace for the GOP is that if they’re actually able to destroy Trump with a brutal, scorched earth total war which drives all the way to the convention, he’ll definitely go away quietly.
On the bright side, after Trump is elected President, we’ll be able to look at Turkey and Italy and say, “Bros, we topped you.”
And yes, we’ll need to say ‘bros’.
We can also tell Toronto.
I’ll give Rubio this. This morning’s stump speeches are a different Rubio, a whole new operating system, harsher, funnier, freer. The one we’re listening to now is identical to the stump speech this morning. But okay, that’s a stump speech. The thing is, I don’t think it’s enough. He’s already defined. Trump is too far ahead. Contrary to what almost everyone said last night, Trump did very well. And Tuesday is the big windfall of delegates. The Christie endorsement didn’t change the tide. It just cemented it. Another punch to the face for Rubio when he could least afford it.
Trump announces: “We’re going to open up those libel laws. So that when the New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”