New Polling Shows That Not Just Bernie, But Even Hillary Would Beat Paul Ryan If He Steals Trump's Nomination

I know, I know-- Ryan just wants to be a simple House Budget Committee Chairman (on the receiving end of that nice $6,008,853 from the Wall Street banksters he works so hard to accommodate) but... magically, he just happened to survive a tank filled with great whites and starving barracudas to wind up as Speaker of the House. It's the same strategy he's using the guarantee his coronation as a gun-free-zone in Cleveland in 3 little months.

Ryan took his presidential campaign from Israel to Egypt yesterday, while the full force of the actual Republican political establishment manned the walls for his fresh face back here in America. Top Republican politicos are putting odds on his Quicken Loans Arena coronation already.

One of the nation's best-wired Republicans, with an enviable prediction record for this cycle, sees a 60 percent chance of a convention deadlock and a 90 percent chance that delegates turn to Ryan-- ergo, a 54 percent chance that Ryan, who'll start the third week of July as chairman of the Republican National Convention, will end it as the nominee.

"He's the most conservative, least establishment member of the establishment," the Republican source said. "That's what you need to be."

Ryan, who's more calculating and ambitious than he lets on, is running the same playbook he did to become speaker: saying he doesn't want it, that it won't happen. In both cases, the maximum leverage is to not want it-- and to be begged to do it. He and his staff are trying to be as Shermanesque as it gets. Ryan repeated his lack of interest Monday morning in an interview from Israel with radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Of course in this environment, saying you don't want the job is the only way to get it. If he was seen to be angling for it, he'd be stained and disqualified by the current mess.

Not all Republicans, though, see him as "conservative" enough. He's certainly no Ted Cruz and he's not likely to be embraced by the crowd of extremists who have their hearts set on a genuine fanatic. Is that his general election strength though? It's certainly why he can't participate in a primary contest. He's more like Rubio than Cruz or Trump when it comes to comprehensive immigration reform. And he's as avid a "free" trader as Hillary-- at a time when the GOP electorate has come to understand that the trade policies of the Bush and Clinton (and Obama) years are catastrophic for them and their families. Trump and Cruz are against the TPP and now that Bernie has forced Hillary to at least pretend to be against it too, Ryan would stick out as a sore thumb on an issue that is finally being publicly debated.

So-- FINALLY-- the pollsters have come around to understand that, press release or not, Ryan is a candidate. Ryan's not happy about it, but even GOP polling firm Rasmussen has tossed him into the match-ups now. And it isn't just Bernie that would beat him; even Hillary might be able to! "The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that Hillary Clinton tops Ryan 40% to 34% among likely U.S. voters," they wrote but a sizable 22% prefer some other candidate given that matchup... Similarly, Senator Bernie Sanders posts a 41% to 34% win over Ryan, but 20% like another candidate. Five percent (5%) are undecided in both cases."

A closer look at the numbers, however, suggests the danger to Republicans of a brokered convention that denies Donald Trump or Ted Cruz the nomination. Ryan earns GOP support only in the high 50s against both Democrats. If Ryan is the GOP’s choice to run against Clinton, 28% of Republicans opt for someone else. If Sanders is Ryan’s opponent, 24% of GOP voters like another candidate. Twenty-four percent (24%) of GOP voters said last month that they are Very Likely to vote for Trump if he runs as a third-party presidential candidate.

Ryan is viewed favorably by 59% of Republican voters. That’s little changed from last October and includes only 27% with a Very Favorable opinion of him. But 30% now share an unfavorable view of the House leader, including 14% with a Very Unfavorable one. Unfavorables are up noticeably from 16% and three percent (3%) last fall. Eleven percent (11%) remain undecided.

Among all voters, Ryan is seen favorably by 39% and unfavorably by 44%. This includes 15% with a Very Favorable view of him and 21% with a Very Unfavorable one. Sixteen percent (16%) are undecided.

...Just over half (51%) of GOP voters oppose a brokered convention and think the party’s nominee should be the candidate who arrives at the convention with the most delegates. Two-out-of-three Republicans (66%) believe delegates should be required to support the candidate they were elected to support.

Ryan is viewed unfavorably by 64% of Democrats. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, 30% have a favorable opinion of him; 38% do not, but 21% are not sure.

Voters under 40 prefer Clinton by 20 points over Ryan, while Sanders holds a 34-point lead. Ryan has a slight edge among older voters, although Clinton is the favorite among senior citizens.

The race is close, too, among men, but women give both Democrats a double-digit lead over Ryan.

The speaker holds small leads over Clinton and Sanders among whites but trails by wide margins among blacks and other minority voters.

Is Paul Ryan Writing His Own Presidential Campaign Platform?

We've been warning for months that if the Republican Establishment manages to force Herr Trumpf to walk into the Cleveland convention with less than 50% of the delegates and is able to actually pull off a deadlocked/brokered convention, there's a good chance the GOP nominee will be Paul Ryan. We've been urging the unimaginative polling companies to start including Ryan in their surveys. I was happy to see that Frank Luntz took our advise and included Ryan in his survey of young Americans (finding only 1% of people between the age of 18 and 25 like and trust him. Like Rubio, Ryan is a wealthy old white man's idea of what young voters admire). But on yesterday's Chris Hayes show, commentator Charles Pierce actually came out and said it-- that if there's a deadlocked convention, Ryan would come out as "the last man standing." I cheered at the TV set. Not because I want to see Ryan get the nominee... it's just that I want the Democrats to recognize the direction from which their big challenge may be coming.

Jennifer Steinhauer, writing for the NY Times this week, pointed out that something is stirring that is putting Paul Ryan on a collision course with Herr Trumpf. She and the rest of the corporate media sense that something is happening in the presidential race that has to do with Ryan, and she's inching towards it, although she doesn't quite have it down yet. She thinks Ryan is putting together a "conservative policy agenda" for the next Republican presidential candidate. Isn't that the party platform that is routinely ignored by all candidates the day after the convention? The agenda Ryan is writing is for the candidate he sincerely hopes will be the nominee: himself.

I don't think Steinhauer was cracking a joke when she wrote that "if that nominee is Donald J. Trump, that may be a waste of time." But she may have been. "Panicked Republicans question whether Mr. Trump will be able to unite a Republican-controlled Congress that would normally be expected to promote and promulgate his agenda, an internal crisis nearly unheard-of in a generation of American politics." Waterboarding?

On nearly every significant issue, Mr. Trump stands in opposition to Republican orthodoxy and his party’s policy prescriptions-- the very ideas that Mr. Ryan has done more than anyone else to form, refine or promote over the last decade.

...Mr. Ryan’s positions embody the modern institutional Republican Party. He has been a crucial promoter of free trade on Capitol Hill, which Mr. Trump opposes. Mr. Ryan supports taking away money from Planned Parenthood-- a central target of Republicans for years-- while Mr. Trump has said the group provides needed care to women. Eminent domain, the right of the government to seize private property for public use? The concept is despised by Republicans. Mr. Trump, who has used eminent domain to try to demolish an older woman’s home in Atlantic City to build a parking lot, calls it “wonderful.”

There is more: Mr. Ryan is the architect of his party’s plan to rein in spending on entitlement programs, which Mr. Trump has said is the reason the party lost the White House in 2012, name-checking Mr. Ryan in his swipe. Mr. Ryan supports all forms of domestic energy development, but Mr. Trump has called for colonizing Iraq’s oil reserves through military intervention.

Mr. Trump’s signature issue-- deporting millions of undocumented workers-- also stands in contrast to Mr. Ryan’s belief that his party needs to change the current system to help some immigrants, and in the process attract them to the party. Not least, Mr. Trump said last week that he would be “a neutral guy” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but Mr. Ryan holds the traditional Republican position of strong support for Israel.

...Though most in the Republican establishment are hoping for the dust to settle and for Senator Marco Rubio to emerge as their nominee-- his Capitol Hill endorsements stack up daily-- some still murmur privately that in the event of Mr. Trump’s nomination, they would like to see Mr. Ryan emerge as a brokered nominee at the Republican National Convention in July.

The more establishment endorsements Rubio gets the lower he sinks. Voters-- even Republican voters-- hate these crooked political elites. As for stealing the election from Trumpf and handing it to Ryan... the Republicans have banned guns-- aren't they supposed to keep people safe???-- from their convention even though Ohio Republicans rammed through the NRA's open-carry legislation.

Congressional Republicans-- especially senators up for re-election in swing states-- have been terrified to criticize Mr. Trump by name because they need his voters, too, in primary and possible general election battles. White-hot fear is beginning to set in.

Trumpf is starting to catch on that he may have to contend with Ryan in July. Last week he blamed Romney's loss on his selection of Ryan as his running mate. It's all about Ryan's plans to destroy Social Security-- standard GOP claptrap. Last week, the Washington Post reminded us that right after Romney picked Ryan as his running mate, the progressive policy group, Agenda Project Action Fund, ran an ad attacking Ryan's stance on Medicare that showed an elderly woman in a wheelchair being thrown off a cliff by a man in a dark suit. The message on the screen: "Mitt Romney made his choice... Now you have to make yours." Trumpf, speaking at a South Carolina retirement home, moved in for the kill: "Every single other candidate is going to cut the hell out of your Social Security-- remember the wheelchair being pushed over the cliff when you had Ryan chosen as your vice president? That was the end of that campaign, by the way, when they chose Ryan. And I like him, he's a nice person, but that was the end of the campaign. I said, 'You've got to be kidding-- because he represented cutting entitlements, et cetera, et cetera.' The only one that's not going to cut is me."

Neither Ryan, Herr Trumpf, nor any other of the conservative candidates, are seriously addressing the systemic flaws, many of them having festered under the protection of grotesque political corruption, that nearly crashed the world economy and did drive millions of Americans into destitution. Cruz, Rubio and Hillary have had their political careers financed by Wall Street. Instead, Republicans and the media are talking about whether or not Herr Trumpf is being audited annually, as he claimed last night in a post debate spin room, because he is a "strong Christian." Only Bernie is addressing Wall Street's predatory behavior and dysfunction. Below is his new ad. At this link is a page where you can contribute to Bernie's campaign and to the campaigns of the congressional candidates who are running on Bernie's issues.

The Establishment Plot To Insert Paul Ryan As The Republican Party Presidential Nominee

Few of the growing number of Republicans opposing Trumpf say their opposition is rooted in what's good for the country. It's about what's good for the fucked-up political party they share with him-- albeit uneasily-- that spawned him in the first place. I don't recall ever seeing so many elected officials from a party saying they will not support a candidate if he's their party's official nominee. Miami-Dade walking dead freshman Carlos Curbelo comes right out and says he "wouldn’t support Donald Trump for president if he were our nominee. I would support any reasonable idea to find a better nominee." That's the brokered convention idea we've been talking about for the past two days in which the GOP will seek to thwart their own bigoted, ignorant base and sell them Paul Ryan.

Another Florida Congressman, David Jolly, who represents the Pinellas County district but finds it too blue-leaning now and is giving it up to run for the Rubio Senate seat, said that he has "broad disagreement with Donald Trump. If he is our nominee, I think he loses, I think Republicans lose the Senate. He puts the House at risk and sends the party into the wilderness for the next decade... If there is a mechanism to make sure somebody other than Donald Trump wins the nomination, I think that is a good thing for Republicans." Again, "good for Republicans." What about America? Do any of them care?

Establishment goon, Steve Chabot, who represents a severely gerrymandered district that allows him to win in Cincinnati-- remember Obama beat Romney in Hamilton County 208,508 (52%) to 188,653 (47%) and Sherrod Brown beat Josh Mandel there 208,611 (53%) to 171,718 (44%), while the state legislature redrew the district to include blood red/all white Warren County northeast of the city, where Romney took 69% and Mandel took 65%-- thinks the GOP establishment can trick the idiot Trumpf followers. He advocates feigning "respect" for them while doing what the establishment feels is best for the party. "Whatever it is that makes that more likely to happen, I’m for it. I don’t know if it’s a brokered convention or not. But it would be unrealistic for us not to at least have that in the back of our minds that that is a distinct possibility this time."

Many of the Republicans in Congress-- Chabot and Luke Messer (R-IN) are two examples-- are already laying the groundwork for what amounts to an Establishment coup d'etat against their own base in favor of Ryan. The editorial board of Ryan's hometown newspaper, the Janesville Gazette was setting it up Friday, much the way establishment editorial boards will be doing all over the country:

If Donald Trump defects and runs as an independent because leading Republicans won't accept this egomaniac as their presidential nominee, so be it.

The sooner the better.

So far, he has denigrated women, Hispanics and those with disabilities. On Monday, he fanned the flames of fear in suggesting we ban Muslims from entering our country.

Let's see, are we missing anyone? Is there any group Trump hasn't disparaged?

Seemingly every time he opens his mouth, he stoops to a new low, and his poll numbers rise. Too many Americans who are fed up with politics as usual and Washington gridlock appreciate Trump as the ultimate outsider, the anti-establishment candidate who's willing to say what's on his mind, regardless the law or consequences. It matters not whether he can unilaterally act and fulfill his promises. It's disturbing that Trump's hateful positions are embraced by so many.

New polls show Trump is backed by twice as many Republican voters as his nearest competitors. Yet every fresh statement from this bombastic “carnival barker”-- as one Gazette letter writer put it this week-- leaves Republicans one step closer to handing Hillary Clinton the keys to the White House. That's because Trump's comments further cast Republicans as an exclusive rather than inclusive party.

Republicans can blame themselves. Other candidates, feeling poll envy, have been too tempted to join in this rhetorical cesspool, this caldron of poor taste in which Trump says whatever outrageous thing will fuel media and public attention, regardless of accuracy and credibility.

Blame the national media for playing into Trump's hands. As Charles Haynes of the Religious Freedom Center pointed out in a column in Thursday's Gazette, CNN makes “breaking news” of every Trump move and comment. Trump gets more airtime on network evening news programs than the entire Democratic field.

Into this fray steps a voice of relative reason in House Speaker Paul Ryan of Janesville. On Tuesday, he urged fellow Republicans to steer clear of Trump's Muslim message.

...If anyone can unite and save the Republican Party, it might be Ryan. While he didn't want the speaker's role, he answered the call to duty. And while he has taken a tough tone with President Obama, in a few short weeks he also has forged bipartisanship too seldom seen in Washington. He helped usher through a five-year transportation bill and a replacement for the No Child Left Behind education law.

On Dec. 3, in his first major address as speaker, Ryan again advocated conservative, free-market solutions to America's ills. He pledged to craft a plan “to replace every word of Obamacare,” as well as rewrite and simplify the tax code and propose a “bold, pro-growth agenda.”

If only presidential candidates would follow Ryan's lead and outline a meaningful and constructive reform agenda rather than join Trump in verbal assaults and the rhetorical gutter, the GOP might have a chance to win next November.

This morning on ABC-TV's This Week, Dr. Ben reiterated that if the party bosses try to fix the convention in favor of an insider-- no one is mentioning the beloved Ryan by name you'll notice-- he would quit the Republican race. Asked about the GOP establishment's brokered convention plot, he said "one of the reasons that I got into this is because I heard the frustration in the people who are so tired of back-room deals, of subterfuge, of dishonesty... if that is the case, then you know I’m out of here."

If, as many Republicans believe, Trumpf is a Bill Clinton false flag operation, the Clintons may well be hoist on their own petard by Hillary winding up having to run against Ryan. Of course the newest polling from Iowa could put a spanner in the Republican establishment's plans to insert Ryan as the candidate without him having to compete for the lunatic fringe base voters. I kind of think Cruz would be able to make mincemeat out of Ryan if this whole thing doesn't get shut down.

Gun Fight At Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena In July? Maybe Not

GOP refuses to allow guns into their events

I have have to admit-- since I've been writing about it for weeks-- that I've been praying for a deadlocked Republican convention. Once it appeared that Herr Trumpf had pulverized Cruz and would sweep Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, I couldn't see how the deadlock to keep Trumpf from a first ballot victory would work. No deadlock, no brokered convention (with the inevitable installation of Paul Ryan as the "compromise" candidate), no psycho-Trump fans shooting up the Quicken Loans Arena. But now that Cruz managed to win decisively in Iowa-- even if he did so by stealing Dr. Ben's voters-- we're back on track to a deadlocked, brokered convention. But maybe not the gun fight, after all.The delegate count is now Cruz 8, Herr Trumpf 7, Rubio 7, Carson 3, Jeb 1, Fiorina 1, Kasich 1, Rand Paul 1, Huckabee (who dropped out Monday night) 1-- perfect makings of a deadlocked convention.

Sure, sure, we all know the NRA-shilling GOP claims everyone is safer if people carry guns everywhere (except in Congress). But... apparently, despite Ohio's concealed carry law-- yes you can brings guns into a bar-- Republican delegates will not be allowed to bring guns into the July convention. Montana blogger Edward Burrow explained why not yesterday:

Ah, yes, Cleveland in the month of July.

Such a lovely time to be in the city that wore the moniker of "Mistake by the Lake," after the Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969.

For many of you planning on attending the GOP Convention in that city, the biggest question is: Can I pack heat into the convention?

The answer is NO.

The Convention itself is being held at the Quicken Loans Arena just down the street from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Its policies clearly state that "no weapons of any kind" are permitted.

Got that, you say to yourself, "but, I have a concealed carry weapon permit issued by the State of Ohio. That means I'm golden, right?"

Nope.

A phone call to 216-420-2195 will clear up any confusion.

This is not the first time gun-toters have been denied at a GOP event.

Despite the Grand Old Party's and its Presidential candidates' concerted pandering to gun rights, gun rights activists and generally the right to carry guns (1) everywhere, (2) any time, (3) no matter what, (4) no how, they and their ilk has a nasty habit of holding meeting and conventions in venues that prohibit attendees to carry firearms.

At the GOP nominating Convention in Tampa in 2012, guns were not allowed.

At numerous other GOP-centric events and venues in recent months, ditto.

Congressman Paul Ryan has a no gun policy for town meetings regardless of location. [Bows and arrows and permitted. What about crossbows?]

In August, ThinkProgress did a bit of research and found that most of the Donald Trump-owned golf courses and hotels it staff contacted are gun-free, including for those with concealed weapon permits.

Why?

If you read the facility and event policies, even those sponsored by GOP operatives, in most cases the reason cited for the prohibition is the safety of visitors.

So, convention-goers like you will be sitting ducks, right?

Given the Montana GOP's strident support for the Second Amendment, one might ask if its conducts meetings and conventions in venues that allow weapons. After all, in the 2013 Legislature it championed guns, guns everywhere, including college campuses.

It's holding it's Winter Kick-off this weekend (February 5-6) in Bozeman at the Holiday Inn.

No weapons allowed.

Well, ah'll be.

OK, but what about the state convention?

As for its upcoming state GOP convention, it's not clear when or where (or if) it will be held. (After it shut down its office, the Party events page fell out date for activities after September 2015. The Party's phone number (406-442-6469) rings to voice mail and the mailbox is full.)

If you happen to know, thanks for sharing.

If not, stay tuned.

Montanans hell bent on attending need to know if their Second Amendment rights be infringed.

UPDATE: Safer With Guns, Right, Boys?

This could mean trouble. Now that the Trumpf fans are getting wind of the fact that the GOP establishment is trying to steal the nomination from Herr Trumpf, they are demanding their constitutional right to bear arms and shoot each other up. I'll sign their petition!

Yes Trumpf And Cruz Are Dangerous-- But Hardly More So Than Paul Ryan

Paul Ryan, who still hopes, perhaps at this point unrealistically, to be the compromise candidate of a deadlocked GOP convention, has been tweeting all weekend that "We will put forward a bold, pro-growth agenda. It will show where we stand." Except Paul Ryan didn't just pop onto the scene when he managed to "Awww... shucks, fellas, not me" his way into the Speaker's chair. We already know exactly where he stands, unless we've been politically asleep for the past decade or so. 

When he was 16 his father died and young Paul received Social Security survivors benefits which put him through college, a government program he has since come to decry as "socialism" and which he would like to abolish (or "privatize"). But first he was elected Prom King of his Janesville, Wisconsin High School. He was soon captivated and infatuated with Ayn Rand's adolescent novels and they have completely shaped his political philosophy, studying every sentence when he was on break from driving the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

Ryan worked as a fitness trainer in DC and later as a speechwriter for the forerunner of FreedomWorks and then for Jack Kemp, with whom he was rumored to have had an affair, before moving on to work for Kansas neo-fascist Sam Brownback. In 1998 Ryan ran for an open seat and has been in the House ever since, a prodigious fundraiser, who knows exactly what to say to the ultra-rich to get them to sit down and write big checks with his name on them. Since 1998 the Finance Sector has been his single biggest source of funds-- $5,519,391-- primarily while he was Budget chair and Ways and Means chair, obviously flagrant conflicts-of-interest. Although only two bills he's written have ever become law-- renaming a post office in his district and lowering the excise tax on arrows-- he has been tremendously influential in shaping the Republican Party economic agenda, basically using failed European Austerity schemes to ensure that the rich become richer and the poor poorer.

Paul Krugman, who dubbed him the Flim Flam Man in 2010, has been following Ryan's slippery career for nearly a decade. He often wonders who does Ryan's p.r. for him. "Ryan has somehow acquired a reputation as a stern fiscal hawk despite offering budget proposals that, far from being focused on deficit reduction, are mainly about cutting taxes for the rich while slashing aid to the poor and unlucky. In fact, once you strip out Mr. Ryan’s 'magic asterisks'-- claims that he will somehow increase revenues and cut spending in ways that he refuses to specify-- what you’re left with are plans that would increase, not reduce, federal debt."

This week Ryan has been squawking away about bold new ideas, but he's still trying to sell his tired, failed notions and bottles of snake oil  As Krugman put it half a dozen years ago, "Ryan has become the Republican Party’s poster child for new ideas thanks to his 'Roadmap for America’s Future,' a plan for a major overhaul of federal spending and taxes. News media coverage has been overwhelmingly favorable... He’s often described with phrases like 'intellectually audacious.' But it’s the audacity of dopes. Mr. Ryan isn’t offering fresh food for thought; he’s serving up leftovers from the 1990s, drenched in flimflam sauce."

And 4 years later, Krugman was again reminding Times readers that Ryan Don't Know Much About Economics. The 2 minute video up top from Robert Reich and MoveOn is important to take a look at even if there is no brokered GOP convention and Ryan just stays where he is-- as a very radical and very ignorant Speaker of the House. His "bold ideas" are the same conservative nonsense the GOP has been peddling since the 1800s turned into the 1900s, highlighting all their excuses to opposed the New Deal. The clip details his 7 terrible ideas:

1. Reduce the top income-tax rate to 25% from the current 39%. A terrible idea. It’s a huge windfall to the rich at a time when the rich already take home a larger share of total income that at any time since the 1920s.

2. Cut corporate taxes to 25% from the current 35%. Another bad idea. A giant sop to corporations, the largest of which are already socking away $2.1 trillion in foreign tax shelters.

3. Slash spending on domestic programs like food stamps and education for poor districts. What?! Already 22% of the nation’s children are in poverty; these cuts would only make things worse.

4. Turn Medicaid and other federal programs for the poor into block grants for the states, and let the states decide how to allocate them. In other words, give Republican state legislatures and governors slush funds to do with as they wish.

5. Turn Medicare into vouchers that don’t keep up with increases in healthcare costs. In effect cutting Medicare for the elderly. Another awful idea.

6. Deal with rising Social Security costs by raising the retirement age for Social Security. Bad! This would make Social Security even more regressive, since the poor don’t live nearly as long as the rich.

7. Finally, let the minimum wage continue to decline as inflation eats it away. Wrong again. Low wage workers need a higher minimum wage.

Conventional wisdom is that Herr Trumpf has loudly shaped the Republican primary. Mike DeBonis, writing a puff piece bordering on a press release, for the Washington Post, though, asserts Ryan is shaping the general election. Ryan is the mouthpiece of the Republican establishment and, of course they want to set the parameters and tone; they always do. But this time they don't just have the Democrats trying to do the same thing, they also have Herr Trumpf. Sure Ryan is trying to enshrine his 7 terrible ideas into the party platform, but does that matter at all... to anyone-- unless he does wind up as the "compromise" candidate of a deadlocked, brokered convention? DeBonis strayed from the Ryan script towards the end of his love note: "Trump, so far, has mostly ignored Ryan. In a rare mention at a rally in Massachusetts earlier this month, Trump lambasted the spending deal Ryan finalized with Democrats last month: 'Everything that you don’t want is in that budget,' he said. 'And I say where was Paul Ryan? Where are all of these people that are supposed to be representing our interests? Where were they?'"

The Republican extremists responded to American sailors being taken into custody after "wandering" into Iranian territorial waters very predictably. While John Kerry was successfully negotiating for a speedy return of the sailors, Ted Cruz surrogate Louie Gohmert (R-TX) was loudly demanding the U.S. bomb Tehran. This morning on Fox News Sunday, Cruz implied he agreed and claimed "our enemies are laughing at us." This incident ended well; had Cruz been in the White House, it may well have turned into a catastrophe. And where was the face of GOP adult-like moderation on all this? Ryan issued a bellicose statement Saturday meant to buff his credentials among the fringe nuts in his own party. "Today," he wrote, "the Obama administration will begin lifting economic sanctions on the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. As the president himself has acknowledged, Iran is likely to use this cash infusion-- more than $100 billion in total-- to finance terrorists. This comes just weeks after Tehran's most recent illegal ballistic missile test, and just days after the IRGC detained ten American sailors. A bipartisan majority in the House voted to reject this deal in the first place, and we will continue to do everything possible to prevent a nuclear Iran."

Remember When Paul Ryan Said He Was NOT Interested In Being Speaker?

Now he says he's not interested in running for president, not even to save his party-- not to mention his country-- from the monstrosity pictured just above. Thursday, with every bit of hype and brouhaha the Republican Party Establishment can still manage to muster, Ryan daddy-figure Mitt Romney kicked off a new phase in his reluctant candidate's sub-rosa campaign for the GOP nomination. This is worth watching if you haven't seen in already, perhaps even watching a second time if you already have:



By late last year, anyone who ignores the Beltway pundits knew the GOP establishment play was deadlocked/brokered convention ending in a Paul Ryan nomination. Our first DWT post predicting it came December 13 and it was met with incredulity from DC. Several people asked me for citations to "prove" the case. Citations? From the Washington Post, the NY Times, the Beltway pundits? I sit on the phone all day talking with Members of Congress and DC and campaign staffers but you want a citation from one of the sources that refused to believe Mark Foley was gay-- let alone molesting underage boys-- for several years after "everyone" knew except the citational sources. If you want a citation, DWT might be the wrong blog for you. We'd rather cover what's going to happen, not what already happened and has even been on TV already. We've expanded on the Ryan-will-be-the nominee 8 times since that first post about it 3 months ago. And now it's citational. Everyone is writing about it and TV pundits mention it routinely. Now that there's a (content-free) website with a dedicated SuperPAC, the Committee to Draft Speaker Ryan, even The Hill has caught on!!

Ryan's non-Shermanesque disavowal-- "He is flattered, but not interested"-- isn't quite as compelling as Romney's own. Yesterday on the Today Show, Romney told Matt Lauer that "There are no circumstances I can foresee where that would possibly happen" and when pressed further, he said flatly, "I’m not running for president, and I won’t run for president." Lauer didn't ask him how he felt about a coronation, which is really what Ryan is bucking for so that the doesn't look like another grubby little politician, which is what he is, of course, out hustling votes and cash and working to disguise a reactionary agenda the American people are repulsed by. When Herr Trumpf tried to pick a fight with Ryan during his Super Tuesday victory speech-- saying Ryan will either learn to get along with him or "pay a big price"-- Ryan claims he laughed it off.

When asked, several times, about military officers saying they would refuse to obey unlawful orders in line with the themes he's campaigning on, Trumpf put on his silly school yard bully persona and warned, operatically ominously that they will be brought to heal. Oh, wait that was Hillary talking about black youth. Same idea; Herr will force the military-- mold them to his will. I asked L.A. area congressman and decorated Reserve Officer, Ted Lieu, what he would do if Herr ordered him to do one of the grotesquely illegal things he has been beguiling his fans with. Ted (no citation; it was a personal conversation): "Having served on active duty, I know America's military is the best in the world. One of the reasons for our excellence is that we train every military member in the Law of War; we demand compliance; and we court-martial servicemembers who violate those laws. If Donald Trump somehow becomes Commander-in-Chief and he orders crazy actions, our military would not follow any orders that are unlawful orders. Donald Trump can say stupid things such as that he would kill civilians because they happen to be family members of terrorists, but thank goodness our military would refuse to carry out such unlawful orders." I wonder if some authoritarian who fancies himself a constitutionalist would conspire to shoot down Herr Force One!

And, speaking of ultra-violence, I hope you've been following the on-going drama around the July Republican Convention in Cleveland. If Romney and other Establishment Republicans actually do manage to steal the election from Trumpf, no one thinks his fan boys would take it lying down. So-- the party that claims the whole world is safer if everyone is armed with guns-- has banned guns from the Quicken Loans Arena, even though the GOP, to great fanfare in crazy town, pushed through an open-carry law in Ohio.

Parties expecting to be aggrieved-- the very parties who always expect to be aggrieved and are encouraged by the GOP and their Hate Talk Radio and TV hosts to always play the victim-- are now petitioning, although the order for the ban came directly from Paul Ryan-- who also bans all guns (but now bows and arrows) from his own public events. Andrew Tobias wrote yesterday in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that Cleveland law enforcement agencies are hitting up the stressed federal budget for significant purchases of riot gear in time to great the Republican conventioneers. They've asked for the money to equip 2,000 control officers, including 2,000 sets of state-of-the-art riot-control suits.

The convention, scheduled for the week of July 18, is expected to attract 50,000 visitors to Cleveland. As part of its security plan, Cleveland is organizing a police force of 5,000 officers-- the city is in the process of recruiting officers from surrounding suburbs and elsewhere to bolster its existing force of about 1,200. Previous conventions also have attracted political demonstrators, ranging from more than 100,000 for the 2004 RNC in New York City to less than 1,000 for the 2012 RNC in Tampa, Florida.

Because the RNC has been designated as a National Special Security Event, it is eligible to receive federal funding. Cleveland is planning convention security under the direction of the Secret Service.

City officials largely are not commenting on their convention-planning efforts.

However, Mayor Frank Jackson's administration told City Council last month that the city plans to spend roughly $30 million of the federal grant on personnel, and $20 million on equipment.

Don't worry about Little Marco or Lyin' Ted making it all the way to the nomination as the alternative to Herr Trumpf. They have as much a chance as Low Energy Jeb did... which goes a long way towards explaining why Ryan is laying low and making sure there is as small a target on his back as possible-- although the natives in the House are getting extremely restless already about what they see as Ryan's instant sell out to the forces that prefer to keep the government open rather than giving a green light to the safe-district extremists  who want to shut it down, the preferred action of a significant and loud faction of the Republican Party, especially in the House... and of their crackpot constituents.

UPDATE: Louisianans Vote Today

When I woke up this morning, I flipped on MSNBC to get some light in the room. I was still groggy and floating in and out of consciousness and thought I dreamed something truly horrible from a grandmother who supports Herr Trumpf and plans to vote for him today. But, later, when I was on Twitter, I realized it wasn't a horrible dream but something reported on MSNBC:

Republican Party Bosses Are Not Giving Up On Their Dream Of Crowning Paul Ryan At Their July Convention

The fix is in

When the polling organizations do their head-to-head match-ups between Bernie and Trumpf, Cruz and Rubio and between Hillary and Trumpf, Cruz and Rubio, they ought to start including Paul Ryan. I'm not kidding... the conservative establishment is gung-ho on keeping Trumpf (and Cruz) from winning the nomination and if Rubio continues to be too implausible, Ryan will be the readymade "compromise" candidate "everyone" can be happy with. (Remember, no guns allowed at the Quicken Loans Arena GOP convention in Cleveland, even though Ohio is a concealed carry state and even though Republican insist everyone is safer when everyone is armed.) Morning Consult has even started including Michael Bloomberg. Hillary lost to Trumpf with Bloomberg in the race-- 37% Herr Trumpf, 36% Hillary and 13% Bloomberg-- while Bernie won the same match-up-- Bernie 35%, Trumpf 34%, Bloomberg 12%. Bernie also beats Rubio (36-29%) and Cruz (36-28%) with Bloomberg in the race.

In New Hampshire general election polling, PPP matched Hillary and Bernie against Jeb (Hillary beats Jeb 43-41% and Bernie beats him 47-38%), against Dr. Ben (Hillary beats him 45-43% and Bernie beats him 46-41%), against Cruz (Hillary beats him 47-39% and Bernie beats him 48-38%), against Fiorina (Hillary beats her 45-44% and Bernie beats her 48-40%), against Rubio (Hillary beats him 44-43% and Bernie beats him 45-41%) and, of course, against Herr Trumpf ((Hillary beats Herr 47-41% and Bernie crushes him like a cockroach, 49-40%). But no Paul Ryan, far more likely to be the nominee than Dr. Ben or Fiorina ever were.

The pollsters don't have to take my word for it that the establishment bosses are plotting a deadlock/brokered convention. Even Politico is talking about it openly... which means it'll be on TV news within a week. Yesterday Ben Schreckinger reported that "[m]ysterious outside groups are asking state parties for personal data on potential delegates, Republican campaigns are drawing up plans to send loyal representatives to obscure local conventions, and party officials are dusting off rule books to brush up on a process that hasn’t mattered for decades. As Donald Trump and Ted Cruz divide up the first primaries and center-right Republicans tear one another apart in a race to be the mainstream alternative, Republicans are waging a shadow primary for control of delegates in anticipation of what one senior party official called 'the white whale of politics': a contested national convention. The endgame for the most sophisticated campaigns is an inconclusive first ballot leading to a free-for-all power struggle on the floor in Cleveland."

As we've been writing for months, the party bosses and the GOP lobbyists and donor class are desperate to prevent Herr Trumpf from walking into the convention with 51% of the delegates for a first-ballot victory. They feel if they can prevent that, they can steal the election from him and steer it to Ryan.

“This is going to be a convention like I’ve never seen in my lifetime,” said veteran operative Barry Bennett, who managed Ben Carson’s campaign until December and is now advising Donald Trump. “It’s going to be contentious from Day One.”

...Each state party has its own rules governing delegate selection, a process so steeped in nuance and legal ambiguity that there are multiple blogs dedicated to wading through it all.

In some states, campaigns select slates of their own delegates, making it relatively easy to send loyalists to Cleveland.

In many others, delegates to Cleveland will be selected at a series of conventions held at the congressional district and state levels. Candidates who are able to get supporters to show up at those conventions and elect loyal delegates would be rewarded in a multi-ballot Republican convention-- even if those delegates are bound to vote for someone else in the first round.

“Just because you get x number of delegates, it doesn’t mean that it’s your people unless you go to these conventions and get people to run,” said Marco Rubio’s deputy campaign manager, Rich Beeson. “You want to make sure that they’re with you on subsequent ballots.”

Rubio, who openly contemplated the possibility of a contested convention in an AP interview last week, is not the only candidate whose campaign is preparing to contest the shadow primary.

One Southern state party chairman said that the calls from campaigns seeking data-- such as contact information on eligible delegates and the names of people who have served as delegates in past years-- began in late 2015. The chairman said calls have also come from third-party vendors who declined to identify which campaigns are their clients. “There’s a bit of skuldugerry. ... I suspect some super PACs are behind some of this.”

...As a true political outsider, Trump, despite his history of business deal-making, would likely find himself at a disadvantage after the first ballot in Cleveland, even if he enters with more delegates than any single rival.

“Donald Trump would get smoked at an open convention,” said the Southern state party chairman, who said he had seen little evidence that Trump is courting the 150 national committee members and state chairs who will serve as automatic delegates to Cleveland and unofficial leaders of their state delegations if the convention turns into a floor fight. “If they were smart, Donald Trump would call every state chair and strike up a friendship.”

A person intimately involved with Trump’s political operation confirmed that the businessman’s campaign is not courting RNC members and lamented that omission as a mistake. “Somebody’s got to be talking to these pricks and at least taking them off the accelerator and making sure they’re not working against you,” the person said.

...One former RNC chairman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, suggested another soft power that the national party could assert over the outcome. The RNC’s Committee on Arrangements controls the logistics of conventions, including the allocation of staging space for campaigns’ whipping operations. In the heat of a floor fight, such details could become meaningful.

But another former chairman, Michael Steele, warned that any attempt by party insiders to nudge the nomination to a favored candidate would be disastrous. “If they want to monkey around with this process and try to fix it, they’re asking for all hell to break loose,” he said.

“Any inkling that state party officials or national party officials are colluding and conspiring to prevent a particular individual from getting the nomination,” he said, “will basically create Armageddon with the base.”

If You Don't Call It A "Brokered Convention," Maybe No One Will Notice You're Stealing Trump's Nomination

Friday the Washington Post cobbled together a mini-National Review Against Trump OpEd featuring American right-wing luminaries-- overwhelmingly proven crackpots-- like Haley Barbour, William Kristol, the Newtster and Eric Cantor. It was a wide array of establishment GOP positioning on what to do about the existential threat a Trump nomination poses to their party, if not their nation.

Barbour, an RNC chair in the mid-90's and then governor of the Great State of some secessionist hell hole from 2004-2012. He got the OpEd off the ground by spouting the official GOP establishment party line on how to steal the election from Trump and hand the nomination over to Ryan. Utter bullshit: "As one who intends to support the Republican nominee, I recognize that this choice is in the hands of millions of GOP primary voters, as it should be. I expect a candidate to go to Cleveland with the necessary 1,237 delegates to be nominated on the first ballot. If not, we will have a contested convention, a rarity in modern U.S. politics. But it won’t be a 'brokered' convention. There is nobody who can 'broker' it. In the unlikely case of a contested convention, the delegates will have to work through the process; no wise men exist who can control or broker such a convention." There are no brokers; there is no one pulling the strings from behind the curtain. We is a democracy!

Before being kicked out of Congress and politics, Newt Gingrich rose from crackpot backwoods/backbench Georgia bomb-thrower to a spectacularly failed House Speaker, a miserable 2-decade sojourn. He pointed out faux-sagely that the two most likely nominees of the GOP lumpen-proletariat, Trump and Cruz, "represent a widespread rebuke to party elites" and posits that for those hated elites (who banished him from Washington to a career of book peddling and hucksterism) "it is time to accept that ordinary Republicans-- their own voters-- want an insurgent outsider." Predictably, he's perfectly content with Trump and the silly-historian inside warns them not to mess with him. "In the event of a Trump nomination, the question will be whether the party elites suicidally do to their nominee what they did to Barry Goldwater in 1964 or come around to supporting him, as they did with Ronald Reagan in 1980. It’s easy to forget that the establishment similarly disliked Reagan, whom they viewed as an outsider, before he became a Republican hero. In 1964, the anti-Goldwater elites at the top of the party not only caused the defeat of their own party’s nominee for president because they despised him so intensely; they also crushed House and Senate Republicans in the process. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) should hope that today’s elites consider how much better it was to work with Reagan than it was to destroy Goldwater." He demands the nasty, vitriolic Mitt walk back his unwarranted personal attack on poor Donald.

Irving Kristol's kid, Bill, who runs a website called the Weekly Standard, doesn't agree with Newt at all and doesn't share Barbour's greasy subtlety. "How should Republicans respond to having Donald Trump as our front-runner? With the determination to defeat him... [E]even if Trump were to be the official nominee, there would be no reason not to mount an independent Republican candidacy in the general election. Either way, we can prevail-- or go down fighting, with flags flying and guns blazing."

Jim Leach was an Iowa congressman for 3 decades, sandwiched between 2 exceptionally mediocre Democrats, Ed Mezvinsky, the bribe-taking, prison-bird father of Hillary Clinton's son-in-law, and the current disappointing nonentity, Dave Loebsack. Leach's unimaginably silly solution-- let Trump win but put in a military dictator as VP to control him.

The political establishment must begin by recognizing that it is responsible for the public cry for change. Americans are reaching out for new approaches to governance because we are still engaged in the two longest and most debilitating wars in our history and are still coping with a job-eroding recession. The lessons of these man-made events are self-evident. The case for going to war with a country that did not attack us and attempting to “finance” it with tax cuts was frail. Likewise, the case for allowing large financial institutions to overleverage and play Russian roulette with the economy was nonexistent. The point is that multitrillion-dollar misjudgments were made by a political-ideological complex that misunderstood the national interest and ignored the common good.

That doesn’t mean that all is wrong with the United States or that radical change is the answer. What is needed is better judgment: tax policy that emphasizes fairness rather than social splintering; foreign policy that highlights negotiation rather than military adventurism; politics that is based on shared convictions and mutual respect.

Dysfunctional governance is an American embarrassment. Donald Trump is a flawed candidate, but the establishment must look long and hard in the mirror as it attempts to carve out an alternative path. If Trump’s greatest strength is that he is not thee, perhaps the party would be wise to coalesce around balancing whoever is nominated at the convention with an element of non-political gravitas: a vice presidential choice from the outside, such as Adm. Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Cantor has nothing to say worth commenting on and Ari Fleisher, Bush's gay press secretary for most of his first term warns about the end of the GOP, which leased Trump it's name "so that he can temporarily affix it to the campaign he is building. He’s a wrecking ball, swinging through the Republican Party, destroying the GOP positions on entitlement reform, free trade and Planned Parenthood. But if he’s the nominee, his wrecking ball will swing through the Democratic Party, too. Republicans have long dreamed of growing the party with blue-collar, working-class Americans, and especially against Clinton, Trump has a chance to gain these new voters. Many low- and middle-income workers who know this economy isn’t working for them are Trump voters-in-waiting."

Thanks, Ari, for making our case:

Will The GOP National Convention In Cleveland Turn Into A Gun Battle?

When asked if he would support Herr Trumpf if Herr wins the GOP nomination, Paul Ryan was ready to cast aside concerns for the well-being of the country in favor of naked narrow partisanship. He told Matt Lauer Wednesday morning, without much enthusiasm, that "Yes, I will. I'll support whoever our nominee is." Tuesday night, though, it was Ryan and his brain trust that crafted the anti-Trump messaging for Nikki Haley's SOTU rebuttal, in which she warned Republicans against following the anti-immigration rhetoric that has propelled Donald Trump to the lead in GOP presidential election polls.

"During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices," she said, without mentioning Mr. Trump or other 2016 candidates by name. "We must resist that temptation."

The first I saw of the anger headed Nikki Haley's way after-- actually during-- her SOTU response came from Ann Coulter, who has attacked her before and, in fact won a PolitiFact Pants on Fire designation for smearing her last summer. In a series of xenophobic and islamophobic tweets, she was enraged at the premise behind Haley's compassionate conservatism approach. Coulter concluded that President Trumpf should deport her. This morning Kasie Hunt was reporting that the backlash from the far right fringe was heating up. And it went beyond just Trumpf fan-girl Coulter. Laura Ingraham condemned Haley because her speech was praised by Van Jones and accused her of missing an opportunity to move the right-wing agenda forward.

The quickly evolving sentiments underscore the deepening divide in the Republican Party-- one that has many so-called "establishment" Republicans increasingly convinced that Trump is on his way to winning the nomination. It's a reality, many believe, that will fundamentally reshape the GOP as it's now known.

Even right-wing Members of Congress, like Jeff Duncan (R-SC), Steve King (R-IA) and Dave Brat (R-VA) were critical of the Haley-Ryan approach. Jeb Bush, Ryan and the establishment brand Republicans-- who are increasingly being called RINOs by the neo-fascist Trump/Cruz end of the party, lauded Haley, as did many independents and Democrats, while the right exploded with their usual vitriol. Establishment shill David Jolly (R-FL): "This isn't a fight for the soul of the party, This is a fight for the dignity of the party and I admire what she did." Herr Trumpf, of course, immediately called Fox and Friends to vent.

"No. 1, she's very weak on illegal immigration. I've known that for a long time. And she certainly has no trouble asking me for campaign contributions. Because over the years, she's asked me for a hell of a lot of money in campaign contributions. So it's sort of interesting to hear her. Perhaps if I weren't running, she'd be in my office asking me for money. But now that I'm running, she wants to take a weak side on immigration. I feel very strongly about illegal immigration. She doesn't."

In his SOTU speech last night, the president made more than one veiled warning about a rise of incipient fascism in the country. Most Americans have no idea what that means. Ryan Grim tried explaining it soon after the speech was completed. Trumpf-- a Willy Loman-meets-P.T. Barnum character who addresses audiences on a 4th grade reading level-- was tweeting that the president's speech was "really boring, slow, lethargic-- very hard to watch!" Of course he had to dismiss it. He understood some of the president's warnings were a little close for comfort.

"Those with money and power will gain greater control over the decisions that could send a young soldier to war, or allow another economic disaster, or roll back the equal rights and voting rights that generations of Americans have fought, even died, to secure. As frustration grows, there will be voices urging us to fall back into tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background... We can’t afford to go down that path. It won’t deliver the economy we want, or the security we want, but most of all, it contradicts everything that makes us the envy of the world"

The irony to all this attention Trumpf is getting is that it has largely allowed an equal-- if not greater threat-- to largely slide under radar scrutiny. Trumpf is primarily a self-serving blowhard with no real political agenda. Cruz is a demented ideologue with a truly dangerous agenda. And there are some inside the Republican Party who are awakening to how badly a Cruz nomination could hurt the party in November. Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan reported at Politico that GOP pollster Dave Sackett of the Tarrance Group privately told Ryan and his leadership team at an NRCC retreat in Annapolis that "Cruz would be the biggest drag on House Republicans should he win his party’s nomination."

After the presentation to the group of elected Republican leaders, Ryan (R-Wis.) asked Sackett which of the Republican presidential hopefuls would be most detrimental to GOP House candidates on the ballot this year. Sackett replied that Cruz would have the biggest negative effect, citing the Texas senator’s starkly ideological positions, according to six sources who were in the meeting. Sackett told the group that the public’s perception of Cruz could shift if he becomes the nominee.

...Ryan, McCarthy and Scalise have not endorsed in the race, and the speaker did not indicate he was looking to wade into the contest or attempt to change the direction of the primary, according to sources present. Ryan’s office declined to comment, as did the NRCC and Sackett.

But the private comments indicate for the first time Ryan’s active interest in the presidential race and its potential bearing on his House majority. Senior Republican lawmakers such as NRCC Chairman Greg Walden of Oregon have publicly expressed concern that Trump could damage the House GOP’s electoral prospects should he become the nominee.

Sackett’s presentation confirmed those worries. His poll showed that a plurality of respondents-- 48 percent to 40 percent-- would be less likely to vote for a Republican congressional candidate or incumbent if Trump were the nominee. The business mogul and former reality TV star, who has been leading in most GOP polls for months, was the only candidate surveyed on that question, the sources said.

Bottom line: whichever extremist the Republicans nominate-- whether Herr or Cruz-- it's going to kill them down-ticket. And they know it. Ryan sees this as part of the rationale for the brokered convention scenario that hands him the nomination as a "unifier."