#352676
My kids and I were singing along, loudly, to “Run the World (Girls)” by Beyonce, as you do, when my 3-year-old son asked, “Can we listen to ‘Run the World (Boys)’ next?” “That’s not a real song,” m…
#352677
One line of defense against the Trump “rigged” charge is just to say that the rules are the rules. Jay Cost over at The Weekly Standard gets to a deeper point about why the rules make sense:
The Republican party does not belong to its presidential candidates in the way that Trump presumes. In important respects, it still belongs to the party regulars who attend these conventions. Starting in the 1970s, the party organization began sharing authority with voters to select the presidential nominee, but sovereignty was never handed over to the electorate lock, stock, and barrel. The delegates to the national convention, chosen mostly by these state and district conventions, have always retained a role—not only to act when the voters fail to reach a consensus, but to conduct regular party business.
This is hardly antidemocratic, by the way. Party organizations such as these are a vital, albeit overlooked part of our nation’s democratic machinery. The party regulars at the district, state, and national conventions do the quotidian work of holding the party together between elections: They establish its rules, arbitrate disputes, formulate platforms to present to the voters, and so on. It would be impossible to have a party without these sorts of people doing work the average voter doesn’t care about.
And these people are hardly the “establishment” in any meaningful sense of the word. Consider the process in Colorado. There was a hierarchy at play, no doubt—delegates at precinct caucuses voted for delegates to district and state conventions, who voted for delegates to the national convention. But the process was open to any registered Republican, and more than a thousand people served as delegates at the state convention. There were some big political players involved, naturally, but by and large they were just average people. The same goes for the state conventions in places like Wyoming and North Dakota. These meetings in Cheyenne and Bismarck are in no way beholden to, or the equivalent of, the power players working on K Street.
Trump might retort that Cleveland delegates should never be unbound from him, that they should be required to vote for him through the duration of the convention. But how would the party ever reach consensus in a scenario where no candidate won a majority and every delegate is bound forever? If the voters cannot agree among themselves, then somebody has to find the middle ground. The convention delegates, chosen through a fair and open process at the precinct, district, and state levels, are an obvious choice to complete this task. And this indeed will be their job in Cleveland.
#352678
Today is Tax Day — that damnable scar on the American calendar.
Nothing good can come from Tax Day. But the marker does bring up an interesting question for one Donald J. Trump, organizational super-genius and businessman dynamo that he is: Where are his tax returns?
On February 25, 2016, at the GOP debate in Houston Trump said: “I will absolutely give my [tax] return, but I’m being audited now for two or three years, so I can’t do it until the audit is finished, obviously.”
Obviously.
Well, is the audit complete? If not, will Trump at least release previous years’ returns?
(The IRS has said that an audit is no impediment to public disclosure of a tax return; Trump’s lawyers may well be advising him to not release the returns for strategy purposes if he is being audited — but he is under no prohibition from releasing them.)
Shouldn’t Republican primary voters not have to wonder if there are any bombshells in a prospective nominee’s tax returns — especially with regards to someone with famously, ahem, opaque business practices — before everything is settled?
I filed my 1040. You filed your 1040. Your sister filed her 1040. Presumably Donald Trump filed his 1040.
The ball is in your court, Donald: Release your tax returns.
#352679
Hypocrisy alert! Sure this Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales may have just barred his cities workers from visiting so called Anti-LGBT states such as Mississippi and North Carolina that recently
#352680
State Democratic officials are facing mounting accusations they secretly coordinated with climate activists to investigate whether ExxonMobil hid the truth about global warming, as new documents show the collaboration went deeper than previously thought.
#352681
Share on Facebook 1 1 SHARES Look, I apologize for this headline. I have to report the news, and there just isn’t a more family-friendly way to report this one. These are just the facts. A Los Angeles artist named Ilma Gore painted a picture of Donald Trump in the buff that was, shall we say, unflattering to the size of his manhood. I feel | Read More »
#352682
Having your national field director quit just before a bunch of primaries seems... sub-optimal.
#352683
Members of the Democratic National Committee Rules and Bylaws Committee, from left, Donna Brazile, Elaine Kamarck and Alice Germond vote on what to do with Florida delegates during their meeting in Washington in 2008. Elaine Kamarck got her start in Democratic politics in the 1970s, at a time when political
#352684
Trump gets the support of 40 percent of Republican primary voters, while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz gets 35 percent.
#352685
Learn more about Ted Cruz: www.tedcruz.org Follow Ted: twitter.com/tedcruz Like Ted: fb.com/tedcruzpage Ted’s Instagram: instragram.com/cruzforpresident Dona...
#352686
Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet.
#352687
Donald Trump said that Cheri Jacobus wanted a job with his campaign. Jacobus has a different story.
#352688
It didn’t take a lot of money to beat Trump in Wyoming.
#352689
Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple reports that The New York Times is getting very serious about diversity goals in recruiting, hiring, and promoting. Chief Executive Mark Thompson raised eyebrows at a gathering of managers on the business and news sides of the newspaper. According to three Wemple sources, “Supervisors who fail to meet upper management’s requirements in recruiting and hiring minority candidates or who fail to seek out minority candidates for promotions face some stern consequences: They’ll be either encouraged to leave or be fired.”
#352690
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is ending his bid for a spot in party leadership next year, his office confirmed to POLITICO on Monday.
#352691
If there is one pattern that is emerging from this year's political campaigns, it is that rhetoric beats reality — in both parties. The biggest surprise among the Democrats is Bernie Sanders, and among the Republicans is Donald Trump.
#352692
Can we all agree that the cult of Trump is getting pretty damn scary?...
#352693
The Bernie Sanders campaign has asked a company to stop selling merchandise with the tagline "Bernie is my comrade."
#352694
Bill Nye fits perfectly in an era in which the public’s working definition of science is ‘the word I say whenever I feel as if I’m losing an argument.’
#352695
Catholic parishioners in Vermont reportedly are seeking a federal probe into whether Bernie Sanders’ wife committed loan fraud when she was president of Burlington College -- by allegedly exaggerating the amount of money the college could raise in order to secure millions for a land deal.
#352696
Get our Free Report on How to Prepare for the Death of the Middle Class: http://CrushTheStreet.com/future
#352697
At a senior staff meeting on Saturday, the GOP front-runner gave Paul Manafort more authority and approved a major spending increase.
#352698
Tens of thousands of voters, including high-profile celebrities such as Kaley Cuoco, Demi Moore and Emma Stone, have accidentally registered as members of a small conservative party in California, according to a new survey.
#352699
Happy Tax day :) Join the Johnny Cash infocenter facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jcinfocenter For more Johnny Cash visit: http://www.johnny-cash-infocenter...
#352700
On the eve of New York’s Republican primary, some remember when Mr. Trump engaged in a different type of battle in his home state: a dispute over rent-controlled apartments on Central Park South.
