Wednesday, May 04, 2016

SHOCKER: Trump WAY Behind On General-Election Ground Game

by JASmius



I guess we're supposed to believe that the "GOPe" "rigged" the general campaign against The Donald as well:

The Republican presidential nomination may be in his sights, yet Donald Trump has so far ignored vital preparations needed for a quick and effective transition to the general election.

The New York [liberal con]man has collected little information about tens of millions of voters he needs to turn out in the fall. He’s sent few people to battleground States compared with likely Democrat rival Hillary Clinton, accumulated little if any research on her, and taken no steps to build a network capable of raising the roughly $1 billion needed to run a modern-day general election campaign.

Oh, but what does he need any of THAT for?  He's gotten this far by "winging it," right?  He's "changing all the rules," so why not this one as well, yes?

Actually....no:

“He may be able to get by on bluster and personality during the primaries, but the general election is a whole different ballgame,” said Ryan Williams, a veteran of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns. “They’re essentially starting from zero heading into the general election.”

In a straight-up, head-to-head matchup in which (1) he will NOT be the "front-runner" and (2) there will be no arcane rules to exploit to provide him with gap-closing short-cuts.  There will be no "delegates" to be won in disproportion to actual popular vote share.  Trump will have to earn everything he can manage to get, and every State is "winner take all".  And without organization and ground game, without resources and preparation - all of which Mrs. Clinton has in copious quantities - his campaign will not only fail, but be massacred.

Which, in a way, puts The Donald at the mercy of that same Republican National Committee, whose independent GOTV and data metrics apparatus he's going to desperately need going forward....on what should be certain "conditions," which I am surmising have been delivered from the apparent fact that TrumpWorld has belatedly stopped talking about kicking out Reince Priebus:

Lewandowski and other aides have also signaled a willingness to work closely with the Republican National Committee should Trump claim the nomination — “hand in glove,” in Lewandowski’s words.

Ed Brookover is working from a recently opened Washington-area office that is tasked with developing Trump’s detailed policy prescriptions and working with allies on Capitol Hill.

“From all reports — we’ve not gone in and kicked the tires yet — the RNC’s got a larger ground game already in place than ever before,” Brookover said. “And they’ve been investing an incredible amount of money on data.” He said that’s “going to be incredibly helpful.”

Beggars, in other words, cannot be choosers.

But I still think Trump will blow off the Growth & Opportunity Project and keep "winging it".  Because if he accepted help from anybody, much less the "GOPe", it wouldn't be HIM who was "winning".  And besides, whom else could he scapegoat after his crushing defeat?  La Clinton Nostra for "not cheating fair"?  Even though in this context, they'll have no need to cheat at all (though, of course, they will anyway, because it's in their DNA).

Here is more of Trump "winging it" from his CNN interview with Wolf Blitzed yesterday:

Julia Ioffe, a reporter who wrote an ["unflattering"] article for GQ on Melania Trump, has been the recipient of disgusting anti-Semitic attacks and death threats because she didn’t paint Melania in the perfect light. Blitzer asked Trump if he had a message for those who were sending the hateful messages to this reporter for her story. Trump not only defended them by talking about how “nasty” the article was (as if they were justified), he also remarked, “They shouldn’t be doing that with wives.” No really. He said that. [emphasis added]

So can we not conclude from this exchange that while Trump - so far as anybody knows - has never issued vile anti-Semitic attacks and death threats himself, he has no problem whatsoever with his supporters doing so?  That he considers them justified when he wants to "counter-punch" and has his minions to do it for him?  Wouldn't that speak to at least a profound amorality and absence of moral compass to the man, if not anti-Semitic and violently thuggish sympathies themselves?  Why on Earth would any "conservative" support a candidate of that low a moral character?  Because he "fights"?  Aren't there rules to this sort of "war"?  And that doesn't even touch on the rank hypocrisy of his declaring wives off-limits after this....





Remember how I've described Barack Obama's seven-plus year misrule as "governance by the extended middle fingers"?  Did Trumplicans have a problem with that in principle or have they become so corrupted that all they want is to respond in kind?  Yes, that is a rhetorical question.

That's something the Director needs to contemplate when he excuses Trump's Twitter abuse on the grounds that "one of his employees is Tweeting that stuff, not Trump".  I don't really buy that, but how it would change the fact that it's Trump's Twitter account and everything goes out under his name, making him responsible for all of it, just as the Jew-hating slurs and death threats of his supporters against Julia Ioffe being vomited against her in his name makes him responsible for at least disavowing it, is a rank mystery - and by defending it instead, he becomes no less culpable in it.

Do the ends really always justify the means, Trumplicans?  Yep, another rhetorical question.

Meanwhile, the Trumpanoma cancer of corruption is trying to infect Senator Cruz as well:

“I think [Cruz] would be terrific on the Supreme Court, or I think he would be a terrific attorney general. Or he could be both,” [Ben] Carson said. “He could be attorney general first, you know, go ahead and prosecute Hillary, and then go on the Supreme Court.” [emphasis added]



"He could be both"?  Let me see if I've got this straight, Doc: You think that Ted Cruz, the most despised man in the United States Senate, could win confirmation by a Democrat Senate not once, but twice in the space of - what?  A year?  Especially if that bribery arrangement was disclosed in advance?  LORD God Almighty, I don't know if TrumpWorld really believes that Cruz is that stupid or if Carson actually is himself.  I'd like to lean toward the latter, but this is Trump we're talking about.

I wonder how that trial balloon is making Chris “Shinebox” Christie, whose presumptive job the A-G billet was supposed to be, feel right about now.

Exit question: Remember how Donald Trump "the billionaire" was going to "self-fund" because "nobody controls Trump" and "Trump can't be bought by the 'special interests'"?  That promise just reached its expiration date.


UPDATE: The Trump effect:

For some in the party, the question of whether to embrace Trump is not merely an intellectual exercise. Some staff members at the Republican National Committee were told Wednesday that if they were unable to get behind the nominee, they should leave by the end of the week.

The RNC categorically denies this, but what's not to believe?  They're a wholly-owned subsidiary of Trump, Inc. now.  It'd be frankly astonishing of the anti-conservative purge had not already begun.

You know how I've been describing Trumpmania as a "hostile takeover" of the GOP for the past ten and a half months?  Welcome to it.

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