Or maybe it should be "Trumper Tweet Tantrum".
Either way, read it and giggle, my friends:
Ted Cruz didn't win Iowa, he stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad!
Already, he's sounding like Al Gore in 2000. Because, you see, it isn't possible for ANY Democrat to lose ANY election LEGITIMATELY, even in a Republican primary. Ipso facto, "Democrat loses = Republican cheated".
It really is that hairlip-obvious, Trumplicans.
During primetime of the Iowa Caucus, Cruz put out a release that@RealBenCarson was quitting the race, and to caucus (or vote) for Cruz.
Because that's what news outlets - in this case, CNN - were reporting. As I'm sure Trump would agree in more self-serving circumstances, you take advantage of every opportunity you can, especially on election night itself.
Now it is true that when the corrective followup report came out soon thereafter that Carson (alas) isn't dropping out (not yet, anyway), the Cruzers didn't put out a corresponding release to their network, which they should have and for which Senator Cruz apologized yesterday. Was it, as he assured everybody, an "innocent mistake"? I report, you decide. But given (1) that Cruz won by almost seven thousand votes, (2) the impossibility of those seven thousand votes ALL coming from Ben Carson's "pile" instead of being scattered among Cruz, Rubio, and even Trump himself, and (3) the fact that Dr. Carson OVERperformed by two percentage points versus his final Iowa poll average (9% vs 7%), it's preposterous to suggest that, even if Cruz did attempt to "cheat" (what Trump would call "good campaign strategizing" if it had worked in HIS favor), it ONLY took votes away from Trump.
In point of fact, Cruz, Rubio, and Carson all overperformed; the only candidate that underachieved was Trump. So did ALL of them "cheat," and Cruz was the only one who left out a hook for such whining?
Many people voted for Cruz over Carson because of this Cruz fraud. Also, Cruz sent out a VOTER VIOLATION certificate to thousands of voters.
The Voter Violation certificate gave poor marks to the unsuspecting voter(grade of F) and told them to clear it up by voting for Cruz. Fraud
That's not "fraud"; it's campaign hardball. And, in Trump's case, telling the truth about him. Like every other Democrat, Trump apparently believes that he should be able to dish out nad-shots with impunity but be exempt and immune from having to take any of them. Had he won Iowa anyway, he'd doubtless be playing this one up as an example of how weak and pathetic Cruz is. It also makes it all the more ironic how it illustrates his need to, as it were, "grow a pair".
In any case, Cruz did take heat for the Voter Violation angle, and it's doubtful that it netted him many additional votes from anybody else's "pile".
And finally, Cruz strongly told thousands of caucusgoers (voters) that Trump was strongly in favor of ObamaCare and "choice" - a total lie!
Actually, it's the total truth on abortion, and on healthcare, the truth is even worse than Senator Cruz indicated. It reveals precisely how Donald Trump is the antithesis of conservatism and constitutionalism: He doesn't want to shrink government at all, much less back within the boundaries enumerated by the Founding Fathers; he just, like all leftists, believes that he's the only one who can actually make "Leviathan" work. Remember what his fundamental criticism of Barack Obama has been: Not that he's a despot and dictator and tyrant who has usurped most, if not all, federal power into his own hands; but that he's wielded all that usurped, stolen power (oh, the irony) incompetently. But once Trump is the despot, dictator, tyrant - strongman - his managerial awesomeness (you know, the one that produced four separate bankruptcies) will turn that bloated brontosaurus with the mindset and hunger of a T-Rex into a well-oiled machine humming on all cylinders.
Given that about the only saving grace of Big Government is its sclerotic inefficiency, would we really want that flaw to be fixed - an efficient tyranny - instead of shooting the saurian horror through the head with a phaser cannon and starting over? That's what Senator Cruz was essentially saying.
Nobody likes to be publicly pantsed, but thank and praise the LORD that somebody in the GOP race did so before it was too late. And that, frankly, is what I think has Trump the most unsettled today, for what it portends for the long-slog primary campaign ahead. If hype and insults and lies are not enough, and vote-splitting also-rans start dropping out, exposing his "deep but narrow" support ceiling, what does he do then?
Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.
All the preceding whiny, sore loser tweets were bad and damaging enough to Trump's "alpha-male" image. But this one? He's demanding a mulligan? A "do-over"? Probably so that he can ensure the results are rigged in his favor. Really?
You know, it's not that it's in any way surprising that the billionaire slumlord would feel this way; we know how stupendous his ego is, how his entire id, public persona, marketed image, the very fiber of the core of his being is defined, DNA-encoded, as being a "winner," being "invincible". Donald Trump never loses. EVER. PERIOD. It's what he's said in every media interview he's done since he announced his candidacy last June 16th. It's the justification for that candidacy and answer to every question about it and anything remotely tangential to it: "I'm winning, I'm leading the polls, I'm on top of the polls," etc., etc., etc.
And in his first actual primary/caucus election, Donald J. Trump.....LOST. And he cannot handle it. And rather than remembering the sage advice of the old deodorant commercial - "Never let 'em see you sweat" - letting his semi-gracious (for him) Iowa concession speech stand, and immediately focusing on Viagra-izing himself in New Hampshire to prevent another bout of "electile dysfunction," he couldn't even make it thirty-six hours without letting his ego take a blowtorch to the fuel of every back-of-the-mind doubt any voter could possibly have about him as a candidate and as president of the United States.
Philip Klein thinks Trump is imploding right before our eyes:
Nobody likes a sore loser, and by adopting that role on Wednesday morning in charging that Senator Ted Cruz "stole" Iowa, Donald Trump has effectively imploded his campaign.
Yes, I know. Pundits have been saying for months that one Trump comment or another would sink him, only to be proven wrong. But here's why this is different.
Every other time Trump said something controversial, or insulted an opponent, he was doing so from a position of strength. He looked like the alpha male toying with his pathetic oppnents. His whole brand is based on the idea that he's a "winner" — being not just a loser, but a "sore loser," is greatly damaging.
In this case, Cruz pulled off an impressive win in Iowa. Trump validated that win by giving a gracious — for him — concession speech, even congratulating Cruz. But now, he has unleashed a temper tantrum. [emphasis added]
In other words, he did so impulsively. Unpredictably. Mercurially. With unstable temperament. Not the kind of volatile personality we need anywhere near the nuclear launch codes, wouldn't you all agree?
But something else Klein says also catches my eye for what it implies:
But maybe this is by design. Remember, this morning's rant comes a day after he mused on Twitter that he wasn't getting enough credit from voters from self-funding his campaign, writing, "I will keep doing, but not worth it!"
Perhaps in reality what's happening is that Trump is looking for his exit strategy....[I]t's hard to see Trump's candidacy ending like any normal candidate['s]. That is, lose a bunch of primaries, collapse to the single digits, start getting smaller crowds, then bail out at the bottom.
Instead, if you were to imagine a Trump exit strategy, this is closer to what it looks like: Trump saying he had the biggest crowds and the best poll numbers, but was cheated by the corrupt political system. [emphasis added]
And would that not be the launching pad for the independent write-in candidacy I predicted six months ago?:
[A]s to getting on State ballots across the country, why not go the write-in route? Maybe even buy advertising time to run a blitz next year asking everybody to write in the name "Trump" - which everybody knows and is easily spelled - on general election ballots to "send a message" to the "establishment," yata, yata, yata. You'll recall that that worked for Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) in her 2010 reelection campaign after she lost the GOP primary to a Tea Partier (Joe Miller). Would it get Trump elected POTUS? No, but it would probably garner him at least as big a vote haul as Ross Perot took in 1996 (9% or so). And that would be more than enough to turn what would otherwise be a [Cruz or Rubio] landslide into a narrow Hillary Clinton (or whomever) victory.
Like Mrs. Clinton encryptedly said earlier this morning, Donald Trump is her secret weapon. Maybe it won't be next week, but the next phase of his chaotic odyssey may be about to begin.
UPDATE: Cruz wasted no time exploiting this gift-wrapped opportunity.
A good question raised by AP: Given that Rubio may well be a bigger threat to Trump in New Hampshire, why is The Donald wasting time slandering Cruz? Indeed, it sounds like he's not even thinking about the Granite State primary that is now less than a week away. Almost as if he's taking New Hampshirite votes for granted.
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