Things Are Going Badly For Ted Cruz... And The GOP In General... But More For Cruz

A new national poll of registered Republicans released this morning by CNN showed only one candidate of those still standing losing support since January, when so many other candidates suspended their campaigns and went home-- Cruz:

• Herr Trumpf 49% (+8)
• Rubio 16% (+8)
• Cruz 15% (-4)
• Dr. Ben 10% (+4)
• Kasich 6% (+5)

And there was worse news for Cruz in the poll. Trumpf's re-branding seems to be working, as only 14% of registered Republicans picked Cruz for "most honest and trustworthy," behind Trumpf at 35% and Dr. Ben at 22%. Stand up comedian Marco Rubio scored 13%. But then there was a question asking how likely voters would be to back each candidate in the general election. 48% of registered Republicans said they would either "probably not" (13%) or "definitely not" (35%) support Herr Trumpf. Rubio elicited 29% in those two categories and Cruz was at 31% of registered Republicans who are inclined to not support him against Bernie or Hillary in November.

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, once rejected by the Senate for a George W. Bush judicial appointment because of his ties to the KKK, is now a hard right senator from Alabama himself, and one of the most extreme racists in Congress. It came as no surprise to anyone yesterday when he announced he had finally formally endorsed Herr Trumpf for president, just as David Duke and several other Klan and white supremacist leaders had. (Herr, whose father was once arrested at a KKK rally in Queens and who had an anti-racist song written about him by Woody Guthrie, refused to disavow his KKK support and was delighted that he landed a senator, even a senator as out-of-the-mainstream as Sessions, before Ted Cruz did. On the far right fringe, there was ecstasy over the endorsement.

2016 GOP presidential frontrunner billionaire Donald Trump will pick up the most significant endorsement any presidential candidate in the GOP can get here on Sunday: Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

Sessions, the intellectual leader of the future of the conservative movement, has provided the brainpower behind the populist nationalist revolt against political elites that’s been emerging since at least 2013... Sessions' backing Trump is a significant blow to both Rubio and Cruz, as now the powerful Alabamian will be putting his entire operation all in behind Trump.

...[All Trumpf's other] endorsements pale in comparison to Sessions’ backing of Trump, as the Alabamian senator is universally respected-- and feared-- inside the beltway in Washington. Sessions is known for his tough views on immigration and trade and has repeatedly aimed to push the Republican Party in a more populist, nationalist direction. Sessions has helped frame the movement’s views on both issues-- and more, like courts and judicial nominations, law and order and police matters, and on budgetary issues and the fiscal well-being of America-- while maintaining a formidable political and policy operation that his allies view as invaluable and his enemies dread.

Even apart from the screaming match he had with Chris Wallace on Fox News (see the hilarious video up top), it hasn't been a good weekend for Cruz... although Democrats must have been kvelling when he went on TV to accuse Herr Trumpf of being in business with the Mafia-- not, he reminded his fans, that that would keep him from supporting Herr when he wins the nomination... of course. He told Jake Tapper, on CNN's State of the Union that if Trumpf wins the nomination Hillary will "probably" beat him, in part because of Herr's $100,000 contribution to the Clinton Foundation. Cruz: "Listen, if Donald becomes president, who the heck knows what he would do? Even Donald doesn't know what he would do. And I think the challenges facing this country are too grave to roll the dice and risk losing the Supreme Court for a generation, risk yet more economic stagnation and risk on foreign policy allowing radical Islamic terrorism to continue to rise and threaten America."

On This Week, Cruz rolled out the Mafia stories about Trumpf's long associations with Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno, head of the Genovese crime family, and Paul Castellano, head of New York's Gambino family, both of whom were also intimately tied to Staten Island Republican Congressman Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm, currently in prison on a number of fraud convictions.


Cruz sent out a really unflattering 1990 portrait of Trumpf in Vanity Fair by Marie Brenner. Cruz focused on repulsive statements by Trumpf like, talking about his divorce settlement with Ivana and the sympathy she was getting in the tabloids, "When a man leaves a woman, especially when it was perceived that he has left for a piece of ass-- a good one!-- there are 50 percent of the population who will love the woman who was left." What he ignored were things that Democrats wouldn't, like sleazy McCarthyite Roy Cohn having been Trumpf's lawyer, ally and political mentor. Trump once told a reporter that "If you need someone to get vicious toward an opponent, you get Roy. People will drop a suit just by getting a letter with Roy’s name at the bottom." He represented Trumpf in his countersuit against the government when they caught him systematically discriminating against blacks in his residential buildings. Cohn was the man who brought Trumpf into the Mafia circles Cruz was hissing about on TV yesterday. Before he was disbarred for unethical practices, Cohn was the attorney for Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, an eventual Trumpf business associate.

Meanwhile, on another end of the GOP, poor Miss McConnell, sensing he'll be going back to minority leader in January, is telling vulnerable Republican senators to take out TV ads against Trumpf during the general election.

While still hopeful that Mr. Rubio might prevail, Mr. McConnell has begun preparing senators for the prospect of a Trump nomination, assuring them that, if it threatened to harm them in the general election, they could run negative ads about Mr. Trump to create space between him and Republican senators seeking re-election. Mr. McConnell has raised the possibility of treating Mr. Trump’s loss as a given and describing a Republican Senate to voters as a necessary check on a President Hillary Clinton... McConnell has said, “We’ll drop him like a hot rock,” according to his colleagues.

John McCain didn't need any advise from McConnell about going after Trumpf. Sources close to his campaign say he is relishing the idea of attacking Trumpf and rendering him unelectable in Arizona, although a powerful ad from Ann Kirkpatrick, the extremely flawed conservative Democrat running against McCain, would have you believe that McCain is just another McCain lap dog now. Do remember though, that Trumpf is not without heavy duty allies in Arizona Republican politics and he could certainly do some rendering of his own if he chose to. And he is known to be a vindictive fellow. Other Senate Republicans most in jeopardy of losing their seats with Trumpf on top of the ticket are Ron Johnson (WI), Mark Kirk (IL), Kelly Ayotte (NH), Rob Portman (OH), Pat Toomey (PA), Richard Burr (NC) plus GOP candidates Joe Heck (NV) and whomever the Republicans wind up with in Florida and Colorado. If things go really bad for them, Chuck Grassley (IA), Roy Blunt (MO) and John Boozman (AR) could also be looking at trouble. If all of those races go badly for the GOP, it means the 2018 midterms are unlikely to win the Senate back for the Republicans. Luckily for the Republican, Chuck Schumer-- in other words, Wall Street-- has taken effective control of the DSCC and is working to insert candidates who cannot win in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, while ceding North Carolina, Iowa and Arkansas to the Republicans. The NRSC is going to soon understand how lucky the NRCC was all these years with Rahm Emanuel, Chris Van Hollen and Steve Israel at the helm of the DCCC. By the way, you can help elect a more progressive U.S. Senate here and thwart both McConnell and Schumer: