Nesrie
4762
They refused to say which organizations this money would go to. I mean even the act of giving to charity is odd for this guy.
Due diligence as in ‘we didn’t know it was a charity consisting of and run by a single guy’ or as in ‘we should have tried harder to conceal what a sham this is’?
Would it surprise anyone to learn that the ‘one guy’ in either case is a friend or associate of Trump?
So I just heard a Trump sound bite talking about big campaign financiers (I think people who gave a million +). One of them he read off was JJ Cafaro … who once plead guilty to bribing Jim Traficant and more recently got nailed and spent time in jail for illegal campaign contribution reporting issues with his daughter’s (successful) campaign to the Ohio Senate.
The friends you keep …
ddtibbs
4766
And they’re Democrats. I doubt his rabid supporters are aware of that tidbit.
Trump is the master of the soundbite. Here he is on Cruz after the debate:
“I’m glad I wasn’t there 'cause I guess all of that – he got pummeled, wow,” Trump said Friday of the Fox News debate. “And you know they didn’t even mention he was born in Canada.”
Timex
4768
Trump is going all in with the birther stuff, calling Cruz an anchor baby and saying he can’t run for president.
JeffL
4769
The deal is, Trump knows that Cruz is legally able to run. But his campaign has been masterful at keeping whoever they consider the top competitor on their heels. Trump ends up spending the week answering the citizenship question, the next week trying to respond to Trump’s ad that show Cruz sweating and stammering as he is being interviewed by Fox News saying he’s um, well, um, not in favor of the amnesty bill but only his amendment, cut to video of Cruz in Congress making a speech as to how the immigration bill must pass and we must bring in these immigrants out of the shadows, then trying to respond to that in the Fox News interview basically saying, um, um, well, no, um, I never said that.
Trump is a blustery blowhard, but they’ve been masterful at keeping the top competitors on their heels in defense mode.
Oghier
4770
Yep. He need only establish unreasonable doubt.
RichVR
4771
Legend has it that LBJ, in one of his early congressional campaigns, told one of his aides to spread the story that Johnson’s opponent fucked pigs. The aide responded “Christ, Lyndon, we can’t call the guy a pigfucker. It isn’t true.” To which LBJ supposedly replied “Of course it ain’t true, but I want to make the son-of-a-bitch deny it.”
Why shouldn’t trump say that stuff? It worked really well against Obama, even if it wasn’t enough in the end.
Today is the biggest thing to happen in the Presidential race…until Monday, anyway.
In a couple of hours, we’ll get the last Ann Selzer/Des Moines Register poll before the Monday caucuses. I’ll need to look into her accuracy on the GOP side, but her accuracy on the Democratic side of the coin has been uncanny. Nate Silver of 538 considers her the greatest pollster currently working.
RichVR
4774
Why shouldn’t he? Because it’s bullshit. And a presidential candidate shouldn’t rely upon bullshit. Of course that’s ridiculous to say in this day and age. I know that. And that last part is a bit of a contradiction, isn’t it? If it worked really well against Obama it would have been enough, wouldn’t it? In reality it worked really well on the group of idiots that it works on now. The misinformed and the ignorant. Hopefully it won’t be enough this time as well.
The Des Moines Register poll has Trump and Clinton leading, respectively.
Yep, Trump +5, Clinton +3. Both within margin of error, both leads subject to second choice adjustments.
Bad news for my “President Rubio” theory is that his support remains “flat”, according to Selzer. He’s at 15, but his support actually dropped in the last two days of the poll, which corresponded to the two days that followed the last GOP debate.
Still, he may pull a lot of second choice caucusers from the Jeb! and Kasich camps.
I thought the caucus events only happened on the democratic side? Isn’t the Republican side just a straight-up primary? At least that’s what I remember from the 2008 election. Am I just remembering wrong? Or did things change after 2008?
There are rules changes on the GOP side this year (delegates are now bound to a candidate, whereas before they were theoretically free agents) but it’s always been a caucus.
Nope, both are definitely caucuses on both sides of the aisle.
Both Trump and Sanders need a large turnout to do well. Trump is relying on “enthusiasm” to get first time voters to caucus; Sander’s actually has a get-out-the vote campaign, but Sander’s himself said he doesn’t expect to replicate Obama’s performance in 2008. I suspect Clinton will win by a small margin. For Trump it’s a huge unknown.
The press really want Rubio to do well and they are trying hard to pump him up. I recall some years ago, Wolf Blitzer on CNN all but fellated him during an interview on whether he would run in 2012. “Your party needs you!” I wonder why Rubio is such a media darling, it can’t simply be because he’s telegenic? Yeah, he’s young and handsome and all, but he’s such an empty suit.
