Goodness gracious, what could have happened to the cozy little corrupt, covert arrangement these two men had just a few weeks ago?
Donald Trump outlined an unabashedly [isolationist] approach to world affairs Monday, telling the Washington Post’s editorial board that he questions the need for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which has formed the backbone of Western security policies since the Cold War....
Trump said that U.S. involvement in NATO may need to be significantly diminished in the coming years, breaking with nearly seven decades of consensus in Washington. “We certainly can’t afford to do this anymore,” Trump said, adding later, “NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO, but we’re spending a lot of money.” [emphases added]
Oh....
Ohhhhhhh.
Chalk up one for Governor Kasich.
And Trump reacted with his trademark reflexive, Pavlovian vindictiveness, and a level of oblivious hypocrisy that this world would never have witnessed if he hadn't already been in this campaign for bordering on ten months:
Let me see if I understand this: The Republican National Committee - the same organization that Trump has indiscriminately and promiscuously accused of treating him "unfairly" and plotting to screw him out of the GOP nomination, such that he has endorsed his supporters rioting in Cleveland if he falls short of it three months from now - should unilaterally intervene and FORCE the Ohio governor out of the race? Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Trumplicans, do you EVER listen to what your personal pocket Jim Jones says? You'd flip out if Reince Preibus did this to Trump (and you're slanderously positive he's plotting to do just that), but you'd be okey-dokey A-okay if Preibus did THE EXACT SAME THING to John Kasich BECAUSE it would help Trump? I can only conclude that the answer has to be yes, because that is PRECISELY what Trump is saying in this video.
If y'all want to know why I have come to regard Trump supporters as functionally indistinguishable from the vast, baying, extremist Kool-Aid drinkers of the Obamunist Left, there's your answer.
Once you can drag yourself past the triple-spit-take of Trump's "Do it unto others but don't dare do it unto me"-ism, it occurs that perhaps it's donned on him that most of the remaining primaries/caucuses are in "blue"/RINO States, and having Governor Kasich hanging around is going to hurt him in those contests more than it will Senator Cruz.
And he would be right about that:
Trump’s not necessarily wrong, though, to think that Kasich is hurting him more than he’s hurting Cruz — at least in some regions. Dave Wasserman tried to game that out a few weeks ago, looking at jurisdictions so far where Kasich and Marco Rubio had combined for a bigger share of the vote than Trump and Cruz did. Turns out those districts are blue, by and large, and well educated — coincidentally, the same basic demographic profile as many jurisdictions in the northeast, where Trump is hoping to pile up delegates in the coming weeks. In particular, I think, what Trump’s worried about here is Kasich cutting into his margins in New York, which awards its delegates proportionally by district unless the winner of the district reaches 50%, in which case it becomes winner-take-all. Trump needs to win big in New York to keep his shot at 1,237 alive, especially if he does badly tomorrow night [in Wisconsin], yet here’s Kasich poised to play spoiler. In fact, look at the last few polls of New York and you’ll find Kasich at parity with Cruz or even a few points ahead. If you’re a Cruz fan, New York is almost a perfect argument for having Kasich in the race since it matters much more there for purposes of a [contest]ed convention to hold Trump under a certain number than it does to maximize Cruz’s take. If Kasich can win some votes that otherwise would have gone to Trump — and, importantly, if he can combine with Cruz to hold Trump under 50% in various congressional districts — that’s a very good outcome for anti-Trumpers. And Trump seems to know it.
What it is is a spectacularly satisfying case of "What goes around, comes around". It was the enormously overpopulated and fractured GOP candidate field that enabled Trump to rocket to the top of the polls in the first place based on nothing but his fame, name-recognition, media hype, and, shall we say, Clintonoid entertainment value. But now, as the field has finally narrowed, the very factors that were such a boon to Trumpmania are now hamstringing obstacles as he confronts the growing likelihood that Marco Rubio's extended presence in the race and John Kasich's continued stubbornly quixotic quest despite being mathematically eliminated weeks ago, and, of course, Ted Cruz's tortoise-like steady strength as the last #NeverTrumper standing will all combine to hold him short of 1,237 delegates, and the convention takes the contest out of the hands of glitz and hype and late-night Twitter feuds and daily Hannity and Morning Joe court-holdings and transfers it to the hands of delegates and party rules. Which is to say, a deck that Trump cannot stack in his favor.
If that proves to be what transpires, that's where his lying, cheating, and thuggery will come (even more) to the fore. And the twenty-first-century "Days of Rage" will riotously ride again.
Right alongside #BlackLivesMatter, more than likely. Which leads to the exit question: Will #BLM's communist revolutionaries and Trump's Partito Nazionale Fascista "alt-righters" "rumble" with each other, or will they join forces and literally burn down the Quicken Loans Center with the entire Republican Party trapped inside?
UPDATE: More "Trump's Days of Rage" details.
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