A few quick hits after Cruz’s victory in Wisconsin, where he ended up with 48.2% of the vote, and will end up with 36 delegates:
Posts Tagged ‘2016 Presidential Race’
Post-Wisconsin Presidential Race Update
Wednesday, April 6th, 2016Ted Cruz Wins Wisconsin
Tuesday, April 5th, 2016Ted Cruz wins Wisconsin with (as of this writing) about 55% of the vote.
Also, nationwide polls are now showing Cruz in a statistical dead heat with Donald Trump nationally.
Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is winning on the Democratic side with about 54% of the vote.
Here’s a liveblog with more election tidbits. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Presidential Race Update for April 5, 2016
Tuesday, April 5th, 2016Today is Wisconsin’s turn in the primaries. Ted Cruz leads there in most recent polls, and there are signs the Donald Trump campaign is continuing to implode.
So here are some Presidential race links:
A majority of Trump supporters agree with the following statement: “people like me don’t have any say in what the government does.”
Distance is decisive. The transcendent aim of the revolt of the public, everywhere around the globe, has been to smash the elites and the institutions down from the protected heights, by whatever means necessary, regardless of the consequences. So far, the US presidential elections of 2016 appear to be no exception.
(Hat tip: Roger Kimball via Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Scott Walker Endorses Ted Cruz
Tuesday, March 29th, 2016This won’t hurt Ted Cruz’s chances:
Washington (CNN)Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker formally endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday, saying he is “a strong new leader” and “constitutional conservative.”
“After all these years of the Obama-Clinton failures, it’s time we elect a strong new leader and I’ve chosen to endorse Ted Cruz,” Walker told conservative radio host Charlie Sykes on Newsradio 620 WTMJ Tuesday.
If you asked me in 2015 who I think had the best chance of winning the Republican nomination, I would have said it was Walker, given how how handily he beat the unions in the Wisconsin recall. Shows you how much I know…
Hillary’s Email Scandal: Worse Than You Thought
Tuesday, March 29th, 2016The Washington Post has a long piece up on how Hillary Clinton’s private email server scandal unfolded. Though quite restrained by the standards of the blogsphere, it paints a devastating portrait of Clinton and her aides not only blithely unconcerned about security, but plotting to bypass security and accountability from the get-go:
Hillary Clinton began preparing to use the private basement server after President Obama picked her to be his secretary of state in November 2008. The system was already in place. It had been set up for former president Bill Clinton, who used it for personal and Clinton Foundation business.
On Jan. 13, 2009, a longtime aide to Bill Clinton registered a private email domain for Hillary Clinton, clintonemail.com, that would allow her to send and receive email through the server.
Snip.
They were aware of a speech delivered by Joel F. Brenner, then chief of counterintelligence at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, on Feb. 24 at a hotel in Vienna, Va., a State Department document shows. Brenner urged his audience to consider what could have happened to them during a visit to the recent Beijing Olympics.
“Your phone or BlackBerry could have been tagged, tracked, monitored and exploited between your disembarking the airplane and reaching the taxi stand at the airport,” Brenner said. “And when you emailed back home, some or all of the malware may have migrated to your home server. This is not hypothetical.”
At the time, Clinton had just returned from an official trip that took her to China and elsewhere in Asia. She was embarking on another foray to the Middle East and Europe. She took her BlackBerry with her.
Snip.
Few could have known it, but the email system operated in those first two months without the standard encryption generally used on the Internet to protect communication, according to an independent analysis that Venafi Inc., a cybersecurity firm that specializes in the encryption process, took upon itself to publish on its website after the scandal broke.
Not until March 29, 2009 — two months after Clinton began using it — did the server receive a “digital certificate” that protected communication over the Internet through encryption, according to Venafi’s analysis.
It is unknown whether the system had some other way to encrypt the email traffic at the time. Without encryption — a process that scrambles communication for anyone without the correct key — email, attachments and passwords are transmitted in plain text.
“That means that anyone could have accessed it. Anyone,” Kevin Bocek, vice president of threat intelligence at Venafi, told The Post.
The Post piece is well worth reading, even if it avoids the conclusion already drawn by everyone not already a Hillary Clinton backer: She set up a private server to avoid legal accountability while doing back-channel deals with foreign powers that directly benefited herself, the Clinton Foundation (but I repeat myself), her friends and cronies.
Then there’s this: “Because Clinton did not use desktop computers, she relied on her personal BlackBerry.” Wait, a high ranking government official in the 21st century “doesn’t use personal computers”? Who is she, your grandmother that complains she can’t play solitaire because you closed the games directory on Windows 95?
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
That “Cruz Adultery” Story is Ludicrous
Friday, March 25th, 2016It looks like someone in Donald Trump’s orbit fed the National Enquirer a Ted Cruz adultery story originally peddled by Marco Rubio allies.
The story is pretty much laughable, not only for the fact that it’s deeply out of character, but also that it strikes me as logistically impossible.
Has no one ever seen Ted Cruz work on the campaign trail? The man’s a campaigning machine with a grueling schedule that would kill lesser mortals. When the hell is Cruz supposed to find time to have an affair? When on earth is he supposed to find time for one mistress, let alone five?
It’s almost as ludicrous a theory as Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls never being shot dead and secretly collaborating on a comeback album with Joe Biden.
Edited to add: Texas Monthly editor Erica Grieder finds the story as ludicrous as I do.
Most 538 Scenarios Show Trump Failing to Clinch 1,237 Delegates by the Convention
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2016For all that Donald Trump has roiled this primary season, he’s still far from clinching the nomination. In fact, the consensus scenario over at FiveThirtyEight shows him falling short at 1,208 delegates. More discussion of their methodology is here.
Note, however, that they had Trump picking up 4 delegates from Utah, when he actually picked up zero, meaning here’s already fallen (slightly) off their projected pace.
Trump could still win on the first ballot of the convention without an absolute majority of delegates going in, but that’s far from a sure thing. We could very well be headed for a brokered convention, and then all bets are off.
Cruz Wins Utah, Trump Wins Arizona
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2016Ted Cruz won Utah by over 50 points, with 69.2% of the vote to John Kasich’s 16.9%, with Donald Trump pulling 14% for third place. This means that Cruz picks up all 40 of Utah’s delegates.
Trump won Arizona by 46.9% to Ted Cruz’s 24.9%, which means he picks up all 58 of Arizona’s delegates.
Presidential Election Update for March 22, 2016
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2016Another important primary day, part of what seems a never-ending stream of them. There’s a republican primary in Arizona and a Republican caucus in Utah today. Mots recent polls have Cruz with a big lead in Utah, and Trump with a small er lead in Arizona.
The Democrats are kidding themselves if they think they are going to be able to rely on their usual attacks on Republicans with Donald Trump at the helm. They aren’t going to be able to launch into the tired war on women or talk about how Republicans hate poor people and sick people, etc., and make that stick. Nothing even close to those charges has stuck to Donald Trump so far. On CNBC, I recently likened Donald Trump to the dark force from the movie “The Fifth Element.” He seems to absorb attacks and grow in strength rather than be wounded.
Trump isn’t just a counter-puncher; he uses rhetorical counter-force weapons to deprive opponents of their favorite attacks. Remember how Trump stifled and silenced Hillary’s attempt to launch an attack on Trump as sexist? I would guess we will be hearing a lot more in the general election about Bill’s indiscretions and her complicit role in helping him concoct the lies and demonize his victims. But that will just be Trump getting warmed up. Trump will routinely go after Hillary Clinton in ways the Democrats have always thought would be off-limits. And he will do so to her face. The email controversies, the odd arrangements Hillary staffers had with the private sector, the coordination between the State Department and the Clinton foundation, the money that poured in from foreign and corporate sources who wanted easy access to the Clinton world, a variety of Clinton’s flaws and previous gaffes – even Chelsea’s employment – will all come roaring out of the Trump campaign. The Clinton campaign will spend a lot of time on their heels.
Democrats try to comfort themselves with the idea that there is no such thing as an Obama voter from 2008 or 2012 who will turn around and vote for Trump in 2016. It is easy to say Trump can’t win a general election. But that is the kind of rational thinking that has been applied to Trump ever since his campaign started. And it’s the kind of thinking that has been proven wrong time and time again. I can imagine Donald Trump pulling into a predominantly poor African-American neighborhood, standing on a platform, pointing to his wealth and saying, “If you want a chance to get rich, vote for me – look around, and if you want the status quo, vote for Hillary!” It could strike a chord with some young black voters who want a shot at a better life, not promises of incrementally more dependence and servitude to the Democratic establishment. I don’t dismiss the idea that Donald Trump could find a foothold in the African-American community.
LinkSwarm for March 18, 2016
Friday, March 18th, 2016I hope you’re not too hung over from St. Patrick’s Day (and didn’t get stabbed to death on the Ides of March). Here’s a Friday LinkSwarm:
Contrary to his expectations of finding a pliable ally in Iran, he found the Iranians in control, glad to borrow his air force, arrogant and disdainful in Damascus (and Baghdad) and well on the path to dominating a vast stretch of strategically vital territory. And Iran has no interest in playing junior partner to anyone—least of all a traditional Christian enemy.
Suddenly, Putin had a vision of a nuclear-armed, radical-Shia empire on Russia’s southern flank. Those Iranian missiles that can reach Israel? They can reach major Russian cities, too.
Putin’s initial bet on Shia Iran also backfired by turning the Islamic world’s Sunni majority against him — not least Saudi Arabia, which can continue to hold down the price of oil and gas, punishing Russia’s economy far more than it wounds American fracking efforts. And Sunni terrorists have taken a renewed interest in Russia.
Gawker is poison AIDS cancer. In the same way that the Cross is the symbol for the redemptive power of Christ’s blood, Gawker is the symbol of a metastasized social media. Gawker is Nidhogg, the dragon which gnaws at the root of the World Tree. The causes they enunciate are tarnished, just for being in their mouths.”
I don’t wish ill on anyone who works there, obviously. I mean, I guess their every action technically does sustain a legitimately evil beast of legend, some Revelations type shit, and they ruin lives for profit whenever they aren’t simply wasting your time.
