Don’t Get Fooled Again? Whatever.

Photo by Dave Davidson – Prezography.com

My social media feeds have been entertaining to say the least ever since it became abundantly clear that Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for president in 2016.

On one hand, you have members of the GOP establishment throwing a temper tantrum because, for the first time in decades, they didn’t get their way. Then there are the Cruz supporters, who bought stock in the campaign’s narrative that given a choice between Cruz and Trump, people would embrace the Texas Senator.

Yeah. Not so much.

One of Cruz’s chief propagandists, conservative shock-jock Steve Deace, has also taken the Texas Senator’s defeat hard. Apparently after Cruz dropped out of the race on Wednesday, Deace told his radio audience that he’s going to, “troll like a mother,” all of the people like Mike Huckabee who have come out and endorsed Trump. “I’m going to scorched-earth them all, and I’m going to enjoy doing it, actually. Maybe more than I should.”

The next day, Deace lit into Huckabee, but not without some serious self-promotion where he attempted to take all of the credit for Huckabee’s 2008 win in the Iowa caucuses. Was Deace helpful to Huckabee in 2008? Of course. Was his over-the-top endorsement influential? Certainly. Especially since, at the time, he commanded the microphone of the state’s most listened-to talk radio station.

So if Deace was powerful enough to practically raise Huckabee from the dead, why has he not been able to produce similar results when his good buddy Bob Vander Plaats ran for governor, or when he was supporting his 2012 presidential candidate of choice, Newt Gingrich? The truth is that Huckabee’s charm and personality won people over in 2008. The exposure on WHO Radio helped, but there was a heck of a lot more involved in Huckabee’s rise in Iowa than Steve Deace.

What’s more humorous than Deace taking all the credit for Huckabee’s 2008 victory in the Iowa Caucuses is his sudden hatred of Donald Trump. Sudden is a relative term, but let’s be honest, Deace’s hatred of Trump elevated substantially once the race essentially came down to Trump and Cruz.

Just like the candidate he endorsed, Deace spent the summer enjoying what Trump was doing to the GOP establishment. On August 6^th, just a couple weeks before he would formally endorse Cruz, Deace wrote, “The new attacks on Trump — he’s not really a Republican at all. From the same people who constantly tell us we need a ‘big tent’ of course.”

Deace went on to add, “I can’t get enough of him face-palming these GOP liars, bed-wetters and thumb-suckers. Watching him run roughshod over this party that has lied to, betrayed, and failed us so many times is the most fun I’ve had in politics since kicking the teeth in of some state Supreme Court justices.”

And even though Donald Trump has been on both sides of a number of issues throughout the campaign and insulted dozens of people along the way, it’s not like Trump is being any different than he’s been for his entire adult life. It’s not like all of a sudden people are just starting to realize that he is a megalomaniac.

So it’s kind of ironic when people like Steve Deace warn us all that he’s going to “troll like a mother” on everyone who supports Trump when not all that long ago he was asking Trump for interviews, posing for pictures, and oh lets not forget, asking Trump to endorse one of his books.

Deace obviously asked Trump to endorse his book, “Rules for Patriots, How Conservatives Can Win Again.” Trump wrote, “If you want to be able to say ‘you’re fired’ to the people plunging this great country of ours down the drain, this book is for you. Steve Deace is one of the rising stars in conservative media, and he’s able to tackle serious subject matter in a winsome way that’s so easy to understand, even a Washington, D.C. politician can get it.”

Now, Deace isn’t the only one who’s suddenly fed up with Trump. Iowa Congressman Steve King also fits that description. Last week, he told reporters that Trump would have to, “earn” the support of conservative Republicans.

King told Fox News Latino, “I’m not compelled to unconditionally endorse Donald Trump right now,” King said. “It’s up to Donald Trump to start the process of uniting the party now. The healing of this party cannot be done by anyone except Donald Trump.”

King felt differently in 2014 when Trump flew to Iowa to headline a fundraiser for his re-election campaign. It was a nice fall event, a little cold, but nothing like the cold shoulder Trump is getting now from some Iowa conservatives.

Photo by Dave Davidson – Prezography.com

Photo by Dave Davidson – Prezography.com

 

The real irony is all of this is that, had these Iowa conservatives used their access and influence to truly vet Donald Trump in the years leading up to the 2016 presidential race, things may have been different. Sure, Trump’s candidacy is unique, but had people actually taken him seriously from the time he started visiting Iowa, perhaps we wouldn’t be where we are now. Who knows.

Top Ron Paul Campaign Aides Found Guilty On All Counts

Photo by Dave Davidson – Prezography.com

As Donald Trump was putting an end to the primary phase of the 2016 Republican presidential campaign this week, a federal court concluded its criminal trial against three Republican campaign operatives for their underhanded and shady dealings in the previous presidential contest.

Jurors found Jesse Benton, Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign chairman, John Tate, Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign manager, and Dimitri Kesari, Paul’s deputy campaign manager in 2012, guilty of charges ranging for conspiracy to causing false records and campaign expenditures. The trio of national political operatives who once made up Paul’s inner political circle was tried in federal court in Iowa and is now awaiting sentencing.

The scheme involved paying Kent Sorenson, a former Iowa legislator and chairman of Michelle Bachmann’s 2012 presidential campaign, more than $73,000 to switch his allegiance to Ron Paul just days before the 2012 Iowa caucuses.   As a State Senator, Sorenson would be in violation of Iowa Senate rules if he accepted financial compensation from the Paul campaign, so the high-ranking Paul operatives concocted a scheme that paid Sorenson through vendors who did no work for the Paul campaign.

Sorenson resigned from the Iowa Senate in the fall of 2013. The following August, he pled guilty to one count of causing a federal campaign committee to falsely report expenditures and one count of obstruction of justice for concealing. Sorenson is still awaiting sentencing for his part of the scheme, but his cooperation with federal prosecutors will now likely get him a more lenient sentence. Sorenson faces up to 25 years in prison for his involvement in the cover up.

The entire ordeal spans parts of two presidential campaigns and lasted almost six years. TheIowaRepublican.com was the first to break the details of Sorenson’s involvement with the three senior members of Ron Paul’s campaign. While Sorenson was already dealing with an Iowa Senate Ethics complaint stemming from his financial compensation from the Bachmann campaign and the theft of a database belonging to an Iowa Homeschool organization, it was his involvement with the Paul campaign that ultimately brought him down.

The scandal has been national news and has even caused problems in the 2016 Republican race for president. Benton and Tate led a Super PAC that was supportive of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s bid before he dropped out of the race. Benton is also currently involved in a pro-Trump Super PAC. Needless to say, being convicted of multiple crimes will make it impossible to maintain his involvement in any political committee.

While TheIowaRepublican.com was responsible for shedding light on this scandal, justice would have never been served, and thus the credibility of our political process would not have been preserved, had it not been for Dennis Fusaro, the primary source of all the evidence the entire case was built upon.

Fusaro was Ron Paul’s national field director in 2008. He was also the former Executive Director of Iowans for Right to Work Committee and the National Right to Work Committee. He had worked with all those involved in the cover-up, including Sorenson, from his time working in Iowa politics.

“This is not a happy moment for me or anyone concerned with true Liberty,” Fusaro said after being reached for comment after the guilty verdict. “I tried to get Jesse Benton to come clean on his own and clean it up internally, but instead I was mocked and insulted by him.”

“The cover-up is always worse than the crime,” Fusaro added. “They could have told the truth to the voters of Iowa that Kent Sorenson had been paid or offered payment to endorse Ron Paul. They could have thumbed their noses at the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee and made a First Amendment stand over the right to associate for Kent Sorenson. Instead they chose to take on the federal government.”

Another integral figure in exposing this scheme was former State Senator Sandy Greiner. While Republican leaders in the Iowa Senate wished to quietly sweep Sorenson’s transgressions under the rug, it was Greiner who stood alone against her own party and provided the critical fourth vote on the Senate Ethics Committee to appoint an independent investigator to look into Sorenson’s dealings with both presidential campaigns.

On Facebook on Thursday afternoon, Greiner referred to the situation as, “The darkest days of my entire Legislative career.” Greiner added, “I really felt an investigation by Independent Counsel was the only way to clear the air. I take no joy in the outcome.”

After the Senate Ethics Committee voted in favor of appointing independent counsel who would have subpoena power, the Chief Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court appointed Des Moines attorney Mark E. Weinhardt to investigate. It was his 556-page report that came out in October of 2013, just two months after TheIowaRepublican.com broke the story, that lead forced Sorenson to resign. Soon after, federal authorities charged those involved with scheme for their involvement.

For many Iowans, this story began and ended with Kent Sorenson.   While the this entire case involved him, Thursday’s guilty verdicts prove that the scandal was much bigger than just a State Senator getting paid under the table for an endorsement. While it may have seemed at times that there was an effort to “get” Sorenson, the truth of the matter is that he was the only way expose the corruption in at the highest levels of a presidential campaign.

Not only has justice been served, but hopefully the integrity of the political process has also been preserved.

 

 

 

Cruz Controls District Conventions

Photo by Dave Davidson – Prezography.com

As expected, Texas Senator Ted Cruz secured all but one of the 12 delegate spots that were up for grabs on Saturday at the Republican District conventions across the state. The Cruz campaign faced minimal competition from an unorganized Trump campaign. The only delegate spot that the Cruz campaign was unable to claim on Saturday went to Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a three-time congressional candidate who remains popular in Iowa’s second congressional district.

The Cruz campaign also won a majority of seats on the statewide nominating committee that will fill a slate of 15 delegates that will be voted on at the state convention next month. Cruz is likely to get the majority of the at-large delegates, but most people expect the committee to be more willing to build a balanced slate than the supporters of Ron Paul built four years ago.

With the likelihood that Donald Trump will be unable to garner the necessary 1237 delegates to claim the Republican nominations growing, the makeup of the Iowa delegation matters immensely to the Cruz campaign.

There was a common message from those running for national delegate in Iowa’s Fourth Congressional District on Saturday. They intended to vote for Cruz on the first and second ballots, but also pledged not to change the current rules that will govern the conventions. More simply put, the Iowa delegates all pledged to not allow somebody to come out of left field to seek the nomination.

While the Cruz campaign flexed its organizational muscles when the delegates were on the line, the campaign opted not to play in state central committee races. In the Fourth District, all four incumbents were re-elected, and statewide, two-thirds of incumbents were retained. Three state central committee incumbents, Ryan Frederick and Sherill Whisenand in the Third District, and Trudy Caviness in the Second District, were not re-elected.

Whisenand, Caviness, and Frederick are each hard-workers who have donated countless hours in working on behalf of Iowa Republicans. Still, in presidential years, some incumbents can get swept out of office for a number of reasons. While these three individuals will not be on the State Central Committee, they will still be involved at the county level, and frankly, that’s what matters most.

Overall, Saturday was a good day for the Cruz campaign, and in the Fourth District, it was obvious that Republicans were in good spirits and ready for the general election to begin.

Cruz Gets the Big Win He Desperately Needed

Photo by Dave Davidson – Prezography. om

A win is a win. Wins in presidential campaigns are necessary, not just to garner the necessary delegates to capture the nomination of one of the two major political party’s, but they also provide the fuel for a campaign to continue on.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz needed a win in Wisconsin not just to further fuel his campaign, but to change the narrative of the Republican primary fight. Cruz needed to win in a rout over Trump. He was successful on Tuesday night, garnering 50 percent of the vote, but more importantly, he walked away with the lion’s share of the state’s 42 delegates.

While the win allows Cruz to begin closing the delegate gap between himself and Trump, the resounding victory is important because it makes it more likely that no candidate will win the 1237 delegates necessary to capture the Republican nomination outright. As it becomes more apparent that Trump win be unable to capture the nomination before the convention, Cruz will be seen as a stronger candidate in the remaining states.

Cruz benefited greatly from the “Never Trump” effort that spent millions of dollars attacking Trump in Wisconsin, and his win on Tuesday means that will likely continue. Another important factor on Cruz’s side is time. The Anti-Trump effort spent a lot of money in previous contests with little to show for it until Wisconsin.

What changed wasn’t the ads or avenue of attack, but the pace of race slowed considerably for the Easter holiday. Easter provided over two weeks for Cruz to campaign and for the Anti-Trump forces to attack the GOP frontrunner in advance of the vote in Wisconsin. It just so happens that there is another two-week period before the next contest in Trump’s home state of New York.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the Cruz campaign and the Anti-Trump crowd approach New York. Not only is it Trump’s home turf, but it will also be expensive to play to win there. Instead, they may choose to ignore New York and instead focus on Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. Regardless of what they choose to do, the most important thing is that they have the time to conduct a thorough campaign.

Trump can survive the loss in Wisconsin, but it’s the campaign that is sure to follow that will cause him problems. Trump let many of the negative ads running against him in Wisconsin go unanswered. The decision to do so is probably rooted in the belief that the Anti-Trump movements had not been all that effective. Trump’s luck ran out as the campaign slowed down, and now if he doesn’t fund a paid media campaign to counter the negative campaign being run against him, he could suffer the same fate.

Trump Continues to Roll with Big Arizona Win– Cruz Scores Symbolic Victory in Utah

Photo by Dave Davidson – Prezography.com

Americans woke up on Tuesday morning to news of terrorist attacks in Brussels that left at least 30 people dead and hundreds more wounded. By night’s end, voters in Arizona, Utah, and Idaho would cast their votes in the presidential race. As has been the case for Republicans for the past five Tuesday’s, GOP frontrunner Donald Trump continues his march to the Republican nomination.

Trump easily won Arizona’s 58 delegates, meaning he was able to keep pace in winning enough of the available delegates to reach the 1237 delegates necessary to claim the Republican nomination. Texas Senator Ted Cruz was able to win the Utah Caucuses, and even broke the 50 percent threshold that garners all of the state’s 40 delegates, but it’s more of a symbolic victory. The Utah win helps Cruz continue on, but does little to stop Trump’s momentum.

For weeks, national media outlets have devoted significant time and space to covering the “Stop Trump” movement, yet to date, there hasn’t been any indication that the effort has been effective in slowing Trump’s momentum. The month of April looks even better for Trump as the race heads back east with contests in Wisconsin, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

Not only is the GOP race returning to the northeast, an area where Cruz is likely to struggle, but the terrorist attacks in Brussels only underscore the main themes of Trump’s campaign. Trump has made securing the border between the United States and Mexico his main objective. Before the attacks in Brussels and Paris, most Republican voters already supported securing the border. The recent attacks only make Trump’s plan to build a wall only more desirable.

With Arizona’s 58 delegates now in Trump’s column, he needs 498 delegates to claim the Republican nomination. With 984 unallocated delegates remaining, Trump now only needs to capture about 51 percent of those delegates to win. The next big contest will be in Wisconsin on April 5th. It is by far the friendliest turf for Cruz in the month of April, but in order to actually stop Trump, Cruz will need to win at least five of Wisconsin’s congressional districts, something we have yet to see him do outside of his home state of Texas.

Kasich gets his, but Trump begins to pull away

Photo by Dave Davidson – Prezography.com

While the news media continues to report on how Republicans can’t stomach Donald Trump, the New York billionaire continues to rack up wins and accumulate delegates. Reaching the necessary 1,237 delegates to claim the nomination may be difficult for Trump, but he is the only candidate with a reasonable shot at winning the nomination outright.

Trump won contests in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, and the Northern Mariana Islands on Tuesday.  The only blemish on the night was Ohio, where John Kasich, the current governor of the state, won with 47 percent of the vote and took home all 66 delegates. Even still, Trump was able to hold the home state governor under 50 percent and garnered 36 percent of the vote for himself.

Kasich, who finally won a state on Tuesday, has no possible route to accumulate the necessary delegates to win the nomination. Regardless, by preventing Trump from getting Ohio’s 66 delegates, Kasich makes it more difficult for Trump to get the delegates he needs. The problem for Kasich is that he probably can’t post a win anywhere else. On Tuesday night, he announced he was headed to neighboring Pennsylvania. While the move makes plenty of sense, a quick look at the Ohio results map shows that Trump won counties all along the eastern portion of Ohio that borders Pennsylvania.

If Trump was again the big winner, Florida Senator Marco Rubio was the big loser. Rubio was trounced in his home state, losing to Trump by 19 points. In fact, Rubio only carried Miami-Dade County. It was evident that Rubio wasn’t surging in his home state, but such a lop-sided loss has to sting. Rubio clearly saw the writing on the wall and announced he was suspending his campaign early in the night.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz repeatedly says that he is the only credible alternative to Donald Trump in the Republican presidential race. He also likes to say that he is the only candidate who has “repeatedly” beaten Trump. While both statements are factual, Cruz continues to fall behind Trump in the delegate count, and there doesn’t appear to be a roadmap that would actually allow him to edge out the New York billionaire for Republican nomination. Once again, Cruz was competitive with Trump in states like Illinois, Missouri, and North Carolina, but he failed to pull out an actual victory.

Despite not winning any state on Tuesday, Cruz will continue to accumulate delegates, but he needs to beat Trump in a primary contest if he ever hopes to derail Trump. The upcoming calendar also isn’t favorable to Cruz. His best chance to post a victory will be next Tuesday when Utah voters caucus, but Trump is expected to win Arizona. The month of April is comprised of only primaries and the friendliest turf for Cruz is Wisconsin.

Even though it currently appears possible to prevent Trump from getting the1237 delegates he needs, the pressure is still on Kasich and Cruz to find places to win. The month of April, in which New York, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin vote poses a difficult obstacle for the Cruz campaign to maneuver. With every win Trump gets, the more he is able to pull away from Cruz in the delegate count, and the more inevitable Trump becomes.

More Questions than Answers

In 2010, an Iowa-based Tea Party Group created a billboard that compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Do you remember that?

The sign read, “Radical leaders prey on the fearful & naive.”

The group was castigated by folks on both ends of the political spectrum, but vilified by the liberal left and by the liberal media for comparing President Obama to two of history’s most ruthless leaders. We didn’t know it at the time, but the North Iowa Tea Party was ahead of their time. Now everyone from NPR to some of Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s closest advisors and advocates have free rein to compare Donald Trump to Hitler.

If you want a more recent example of the media’s hypocrisy, one only needs to go back to last summer. Mike Huckabee, then a presidential candidate, created storm of controversy when he compared President Obama’s hideous nuclear deal with Iran to the Holocaust. “This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven,” Huckabee said.

Once again, the media reminded us that any reference to the Holocaust was out of bounds. Heck, even my old college history professor felt compelled to send me a Facebook message to convince me that Huckabee’s choice of words was insensitive.

The front page of the New York Daily News featured “Trump is Hitler” in bold print last week. The newspaper’s cover corresponded to an article that featured the opinions of comedian Louis C.K. Following the provocative newspaper cover, Sarah Silverman mockingly dressed up as Hitler, to “defend” Trump on Conan O’Brien’s Late Night TV Show.

And how did all of these Donald Trump-Adolf Hitler comparisons get started? He asked people to hold up their right hand and pledge to vote for him while campaigning in Florida last week. When did raising your right hand to make a promise equate to the Nazi salute? Was Ted Cruz doing the Nazi salute when Glenn Beck pretended to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and imagined to swear in Ted Cruz as president at an event in Iowa before the caucuses? Of course not.

This isn’t just nonsense. It’s a double standard that we shouldn’t tolerate because just because it might happen to serve a political purpose we currently like.

I’m equally disturbed by some of the comments from over the weekend blaming Trump for the out of control protesters at his events. Protestors are opportunistic in picking when and where to take a stand. It’s not Trump’s rhetoric that set them off. They came in looking for a fight because they knew the media there were either sympathetic to their cause, or were desperate to blame the Republican frontrunner. Either way, the disobedience and disruptiveness of the protestors is ignored, and thus rewarded.

Unfortunately there are some people who are looking for any excuse to riot. This weekend in Chicago, it was Donald Trump. In the summer of 1992, it was the Chicago Bulls first NBA championship. Do the same people who want to blame Trump for this past weekend’s riots blame the Bulls for winning it all in 1992? Of course not. Had the Bulls lost, the same goons would have rioted anyway.

Last summer we saw riots in Baltimore, Maryland, and Ferguson, Missouri. Both were fueled by altercations with the police that left a young African American dead. Conservatives were united in standing behind law enforcement and called out the protestors that who took to the streets destroyed public and private property to vent their frustrations.

I’m not suggesting that Trump doesn’t need to watch or change his tone, but it’s important for conservatives and everyone else to be consistent in how they apply judgment. From my vantage point today, I see a lot of my fellow conservatives being inconsistent because doing so now serves their personal political purpose.

Frankly, I don’t know what to think about the 2016 Republican presidential race any more. I spend most of my time shaking my head at all parties involved. Maybe this Tuesday’s contests will provide a little clarity. I’m looking forward to a time when everyone just calms down.

It’s Harder and Harder to Stop Trump when he Keeps Winning

Photo by Dave Davidson – Prezography.com

According to the Republican establishment and their friends in the media, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had stalled or at the very least it had plateaued prior to Tuesdays elections. Some even suggested that it was on the verge of imploding.

Selling the public on the idea that voters have grown tired of Trump’s shtick has always been easy, and even if you are growing tired of the billionaire’s antics, one can’t dispute his ability to win states.

On Tuesday night, Trump claimed victories in Mississippi and Michigan, the two biggest delegate prizes of the night.  He also won Hawaii. The wins increase the number of states that he has carried to 15. Texas Senator Ted Cruz has won six states, but his campaign has yet to find a way to beat Trump in a primary outside of his home turf.

Cruz rightfully points out that he is the only candidate in the race who has actually beaten Trump in a nomination fight, but he hasn’t proved that he can consistently beat Trump in conventional primary contests. It’s surprising that Trump has been able to win states in the south that Rick Santorum won in 2012. Trump has won Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. Those are all states that a conservative like Cruz should have won.

Trump’s ability to win in Mississippi with nearly 50 percent of the vote, a state won by Santorum but split evenly between Santorum, Romney, and Gingrich in 2012, undermines Cruz’s claim that not only is he the best candidate to challenge Trump, but that he also has a pathway to wining the GOP nomination outright. Trump trounced the field in Michigan. With 90 percent of the vote in, he was leading Cruz by over 140,000 votes. His lead in Mississippi, which had a much smaller turn out, was almost 40,000 votes.

It appears that Cruz will get a win in Idaho, another low-turnout contest. Regardless of the size of the contest, wins are important, but if Cruz actually wants to challenge Trump for the nomination, he needs to do better than just notch an Idaho victory. Tuesday’s results also make it clear that the Cruz campaign’s decision to compete in Florida, a winner-take-all state, is a fool’s errand that actually could end up helping Trump secure the nomination.

3/8/2016 Mid-Day Must Reads

Why Ted Cruz might torpedo the strategy to stop Trump

The payoff for Cruz is clear. Rubio is struggling tremendously in the primary so far. Even if he wins Florida, it’s really hard to envision him getting to 1,237 delegates. If he doesn’t win Florida, it could be so embarrassing for him that he could drop out of the race.

The Republican establishment wants to stop Trump. Ted Cruz wants to beat Trump.

The problem is that if Rubio doesn’t win Florida’s 99 delegates, someone else will. And that someone is likely to be Donald Trump. Then, he’ll be on pace to win an outright majority of delegates by the end of the primary.

That’s the “stop Trump” crowd’s worst nightmare.

Donald Trump Would Be Easy To Stop Under Democratic Rules
By Nate Silver

Trump will have a chance to improve on his pace as the calendar turns toward states that have more aggressive delegate allocation methods — especially winner-take-all Florida and Ohio, which vote March 15. If Trump wins both states, he’ll have a good chance of eventually getting a delegate majority. If he loses both, we might be headed to a contested convention in Cleveland. And if Trump splits them — perhaps the most likely outcome based on where polls stand — we’ll continue to be on knife’s edge.

If the Republican nomination were contested under Democratic delegate rules instead, Trump would find it almost impossible to get a majority of delegates, and a floor fight in Cleveland would already be all but inevitable.

But switching to Democratic rules would make a big difference. Between the highly proportional allocation method and the large number of superdelegates, Trump would have received only 306 delegates so far, more than any other candidate but still just 34 percent of the total. It would be hard for Trump to ever get a majority under these circumstances; he’d have to get at least 72 percent of the elected delegates from the remaining states, or he’d need help from superdelegates who might not be willing to provide it to him.

Mike Huckabee wins Naples Derby

We have all watched the Presidential election this year and all know that candidate Mike Huckabee gave it all he had. He graciously bowed out in February. Although not in the Presidential campaign his four-legged namesake posted a winning campaign in the $50,000 Naples Fort Myers Derby series and finished on top on March 5^th.  Brindle kennel’s Mike Huckabee a strapping 80-pounder and the bet favorite, thrilled both on and off-track fans that watched the handsome black son of Trent Lee and Twinkles come from behind and win in a powerful five-length victory over the 660-yard course.

Ted Cruz’s risky detour to crush Marco Rubio in Florida
By Margaret Carlson

It’s been a huge week in the presidential campaign. We’ve gone from Donald Trump having an unstoppable path to the Republican nomination to the possibility that he could be beaten.

That’s the good news for the majority of Americans who believe that an authoritarian, ill-informed, bellicose real estate mogul is unsuited to be president.

The bad news is that the vehicle of Trump’s defeat is turning out to be Sen. Ted Cruz.

With his faux-folksy recitations of Dr. Seuss and “The Princess Bride,” his singular insistence that Obamacare could be repealed, and non-stop obstruction fueled by his self-regard as the only principled man in Washington, he helped grind governing to a halt in recent years. One of the few points of bipartisan agreement on Capitol Hill is antipathy to Cruz. Vice President Joe Biden captured the feeling at the annual Gridiron Club dinner on March 5, joking that if President Barack Obama really wanted to put his mark on the Supreme Court, he should name Cruz to the open seat. “Before you know it, you’ll have eight vacancies.”

The emergence of Cruz as the savior of his party offers the painful choice between a fast death by gunfire (Trump romping to an unbeatable plurality of delegates within days) or a slow one by poison, as Cruz chips away at Trump’s lead with his latest wins in Kansas and Maine. But there’s no time to waste. The most super of Tuesdays is coming up on March 15 with the winner-take-all contests in Ohio and Florida. If Trump were to win both, the fat lady has sung.

Kasich’s survival strategy
By Kyle Cheney

Blanked in the first 20 Republican presidential nominating contests, the Ohio governor is desperate for a breakout performance Tuesday night in Michigan and a win next week in his home state. That’s because even if he pulls it off — no guarantee when polls show him down by double digits to Donald Trump in Michigan and statistically tied with the mogul at home — his advisers rarely mention what’s likely to come next: another six weeks of winless hell.

That’s because Kasich won’t have another chance at a marquee day until April 26, when five northeastern states — including Pennsylvania, where he grew up — hold Republican primaries.

Don’t Overlook Rubio’s Island Hopping Strategy

It was my belief that Sen. Marco Rubio would have capitalized off of a strong third place finish in Iowa by now, but the Rubio campaign’s poor campaign strategy of believing that early wins were not important combined with a horrific debate performance before the New Hampshire primary essentially has rendered him a non-factor.

Rubio has two wins under his belt, Minnesota and Puerto Rico. Neither are victories that candidates boast about. All that said, I expect Rubio to continue to do well in the U.S. Territories of American Samoa, Guam, Virgin Islands, and the Northern Marianas. I imagine Rubio will also do well in Hawaii. Those contests will only garner him 55 delegates if he gets every single delegate up for grabs.

Like Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Rubio needs a significant home-state victory in Florida on March 15^th. Securing all of the state’s 99 delegates will not only get him back into the nomination fight, but it will also boost the establishment effort to prevent Trump from accumulating the necessary 1237 delegates to capture the Republican nomination. Many have been calling for Rubio to vacate the race, but if you are pushing a convention strategy, you actually need him to remain in the race and win wherever he can.

As of today Rubio has 151 delegates. If he can secure wins in Hawaii on Tuesday and Guam and Virgin Islands on Wednesday, he just might have enough momentum to win pull off a big Florida win, and all of a sudden he’s sitting there with at least 297 delegates, which isn’t anything to sneeze at. In fact, that would surpass the number of delegates that Santorum racked up in 2012.

There are 2,472 total delegates to be had. Trump is racing towards 1237, the number needed to secure the nomination, and while Cruz thinks he can play to win, it’s more likely that he, Rubio, and John Kasich could get to 1237 and prevent Trump from securing the nomination outright. In a race to 1237, Trump actually trails the field by over 100 delegates – 496 to 384.

There are only 1582 delegates remaining to be had. Trump needs over 53 percent of them to capture the nomination. It’s doable, but if he’s shut out in winner take all states like Ohio and Florida, that makes getting to 1237 that much more difficult. Instead of needing 53 percent to the remaining delegates, he suddenly needs to get over 63 percent of the remaining delegates.

It’s hard to see Rubio getting to 1237 on his own, but if Cruz can’t find a way to become more competitive with Trump in states outside of the Bible belt and Trump can’t get to 1237, it’s easy to see how Rubio might be able to be successful in a convention fight. If Rubio and Kasich were somehow able to become a joint ticket, they could easily become big factors at convention, especially if they control the Ohio and Florida delegations.

For all those calling for Rubio to drop out, I don’t think they really understand how the nomination process works. We may shrug off his victory in Puerto Rico, but it gives him momentum, and if he can win the three island contests this week, suddenly he’s back in the thick of things.