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Just a few months ago, few would have predicted that John Kasich would be one of the last three candidates standing in the GOP presidential primary. Now, a lot of GOP voters are looking at Kasich with fresh eyes and considering voting for him. However, that's not an easy decision for a lot of principled conservatives. Kasich expanded Obamacare in Ohio, and on top of the law being broadly unpopular with the American electorate, it's particularly unpopular with Republican voters. But given that the GOP frontrunner has repeatedly praised socialized health care, you'd think Kasich's policy transgression could be overlooked. Unfortunately, Kasich is making that very, very hard to do. As we saw last night at CNN's town hall, he sanctimoniously keeps insisting that expanding Medicaid in Ohio to get his hands on Obamacare money was the right thing to do, and he portrayed it as a smart fiscal decision. The former assertion is highly debatable, and the latter is utterly delusional. Here's the transcript of Kasich explaining himself on CNN [I've abbreviated it a bit to make it more germane]:

It's passed time for Kasich to QUIT.

It does my heart good to see millions of Americans rising up and boldly proclaiming that we are DONE with Washington politics as usual.

Hunkered behind a MacBook decorated with stickers that read "This laptop was brought to you by capitalism" and "TRUMP 2016," Jake Lopez bounces T-shirt slogans off his friend Ian McIlvoy.

But delegate loyalty is impossible to guarantee in the state's unbound delegation.

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Seven months ago, after he signed a pledge to support whoever won the GOP nomination, Donald Trump said, “I see no circumstances under which I would tear up that pledge.” #ad#That was then. Today we see a different Trump. On Sunday, he told Chris Wallace of Fox News that while he wanted “to run as a Republican,” he wouldn’t rule out an independent or third-party race this fall. “We’re going to have to see how I was treated,” he warned. GOP leaders should have known better than to have taken his pledge seriously. As the Associated Press pointed out in September 2015, his record on honoring contracts is at best spotty: When lender Boston Safe Deposit & Trust refused to extend the mortgage on his Palm Beach resort, Mar-a-Lago, he ceased making loan payments until the bank capitulated in 1992. In his book The Art of the Comeback, Trump proudly recounts forcing his unpaid lenders to choose between fighting him in bankruptcy court or cutting him an additional $65 million check. Afraid of losing their jobs, the bankers folded, Trump says. Reince Priebus, the chair of the Republican National Committee, has dismissed the chance of a Trump independent bid as “posturing.” Robert Eno of Conservative Review noted last week that Trump could be kept off many state ballots by “sore loser” laws that bar a candidate who has run in a partisan primary from running in another party in a general election. “If Trump were to wait until after the Republican National Convention to declare an independent candidacy, he could only compete for a maximum of 255 electoral votes,” Emo concluded. “This means he cannot win the presidency were he to wait until after [the] convention to run an independent bid.” #share#But many Republicans worry that Trump could still play “spoiler” by merely threatening to run an independent campaign. “Sore loser laws don’t hold up well in court,” says Richard Winger, the editor of Ballot Access News. “They also aren’t easily enforced. John Anderson ran as an independent in all 50 states in 1980 after ending his Republican campaign, and not one of the sore-loser laws was enforced against him.” Even if they were enforced, Trump could easily evade them. Winger says it would be easy to put Donald Trump Jr., the real-estate mogul’s son, on state ballots and make it known that if the Trump ticket won a state, its pro-Trump electors would in reality be voting for the elder Trump. RELATED: To Defeat Trump, Let History Repeat Itself It’s true that deadlines for collecting ballot signatures in several states will have passed by the time the GOP convention begins, but a man of Trump’s wealth could probably rent a ballot line on many states from several smaller parties that are already on the ballot. “In at least 13 states, parties ranging from Reform to American Independent could nominate Trump and give him a ballot position,” Winger says. Of course, in such a scenario, Trump would know that he probably wouldn’t win a majority of the Electoral College. And by making it more likely that Hillary Clinton or another Democrat would win key swing states such as Virginia and Florida, he would destroy the Republican nominee’s chance of winning the White House. RELATED: Why a Contested Convention Favors Cruz Trump may indeed be bluffing about an independent candidacy, and RNC Chairman Priebus seems to think so. “Some candidates think that, you know, there’s leverage to be had over making these kinds of statements,” Priebus told ABC’s This Week today. “There’s no leverage over us. We’re going to administer the convention the same way. And if the candidate can get to a majority on their own, then they’re going to be the nominee. But no amount of leverage and statements are going to change it.” Priebus went on to say that every GOP candidate had signed pledges to support the nominee in exchange for access to the RNC’s valuable voter data and registration lists. But raising that issue is probably a futile talking point. #related#The real issue is how Priebus and his fellow GOP leaders will respond to the Trumpian squeeze plays. Already, Trump ally Roger Stone is warning that “Trump Nation” will organize “days of rage” at the GOP convention if their man is treated unfairly. “Days of rage” is a historic reference to the riots that broke out at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. As Donald Trump piles up more rookie campaign mistakes and his momentum stalls, he is clearly developing a Plan B for the Cleveland convention. Call it “The Art of Intimidation.” Republican leaders shouldn’t twist convention rules in Cleveland to block Trump’s nomination. Nor should they disrespect his voters. But they also should call out the veiled threats from Team Trump for what they are: a form of political blackmail. And no party seeking a mandate to govern should surrender to such lowball tactics. — John Fund is NRO’s national-affairs correspondent.

Steven Shepard of Politico wrote an important article last week about Donald Trump’s “rock bottom” ratings with women. And his low standing with women has certainly become a much-discussed topic among pundits analyzing the Donald Trump candidacy. #ad#An overlooked story, however, is that Hillary Clinton, who might become the first female president in the history of the United States, isn’t far behind in her unfavorability ratings among women. Our just-released poll shows that Donald Trump has a 68 percent unfavorable rating among women. But 58 percent of women say they view Hillary Clinton unfavorably. In fact, Hillary’s unfavorable rating was two points higher among women than it was among men. Hillary’s unfavorable rating was two points higher among women than it was among men. Secretary Clinton (whom the FBI will apparently soon interview, in connection with her national-security e-mail scandal) and her allies in the media are relentlessly hammering Donald Trump to raise his unfavorable rating among women. They want to make sure that Trump’s negatives among women are higher than her negatives are among women. In this way, gender rather than issues or character would become the defining factor for women’s votes. But Hillary Clinton’s negatives among women voters are broad and deep. Our poll results, which mirror those of many other recent media polls, show that Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable ratings outweigh here favorability ratings in these areas: In every region: In the East, 39 percent view her favorably; 53 percent view her unfavorably; in the Midwest, her ratings are 36 percent favorable to 62 percent unfavorable; in the South, 36 percent favorable to 60 percent unfavorable; in the West, 38 percent favorable to 54 percent unfavorable. Among women on the right and in the center: Her ratings among Republican women are 9 percent favorable to 90 percent unfavorable; among independent women, they are 24 percent favorable to 65 percent unfavorable; among conservative women, 10 percent favorable to 88 percent unfavorable; among moderate women, 42 percent favorable to 50 percent unfavorable. Among white and Hispanic women: Among white women, her ratings are 30 percent favorable to 65 percent unfavorable; among Hispanic women, they are 41 percent favorable to 56 percent unfavorable. Among women of all ages: Women younger than 55 have a 37 percent favorable to 58 percent unfavorable view of Clinton; women older than 55 have a 37 percent favorable to 60 percent unfavorable view. Among women of all incomes: Her ratings among under-$60K-per-year households are 39 percent favorable to 56 percent unfavorable; among over-$60K-per-year households, they are 34 percent favorable to 61 percent unfavorable; among working women, they are 39 percent favorable to 59 percent unfavorable; among self-employed women, they are 28 percent favorable to 69 percent unfavorable; among retired women, 36 percent favorable to 51 percent unfavorable; among unemployed women, 42 percent favorable to 46 percent unfavorable. By religion: Protestant Women have a 33 percent favorable to 63 percent unfavorable view of Clinton; among Evangelical women, it’s 31 percent favorable to 66 percent unfavorable; among non-Evangelical women, it’s 40 percent favorable to 54 percent unfavorable; among Catholic women, it’s 35 percent favorable to 59 percent unfavorable. There are, in fact, very few segments of the female electorate who have an overall favorable view of Clinton, and she still has significant negatives in her narrow base: Jewish women hold a 54 percent favorable to 46 percent unfavorable view; among liberal women, it’s 68 percent favorable to 30 percent unfavorable; among Democratic women, it’s 71 percent favorable to 26 percent unfavorable; among African-American women, it’s 86 percent favorable to 10 percent unfavorable. Sixty-two percent of the remaining undecided voters, in a head-to-head contest between Clinton and Trump, are women. The opinion of Hillary among these undecided women is overwhelmingly negative: 6 percent favorable to 82 percent unfavorable. Among all voters, three in ten, 30 percent, are unfavorable to both Clinton and Trump. Among these who are unfavorable to both, 60 percent are women. They’d vote for Trump 39 percent to 33 percent. So both the leading candidates have very high unfavorable ratings among women. This portends an ugly battle to come. But winning ugly is still winning. That’s Hillary Clinton’s ironic strategy. — John McLaughlin and Jim McLaughlin are Republican strategists and partners in the national polling firm McLaughlin & Associates. They are not aligned with any presidential candidate or super PAC.

Brookfield, Wis. — One week before Wisconsin’s presidential primary, Ted Cruz stood before hundreds of supporters in this Milwaukee suburb and cast the contest in sweeping terms, framing it as a “battleground” where forces opposed to Donald Trump could turn the momentum of 2016 campaign against him. “The entire country is focused on the state of Wisconsin,” Cruz said. “And right now in the state of Wisconsin it’s neck and neck — Donald Trump and I are effectively tied.” #ad#Cruz was underselling his own support in the state, where he had already pulled comfortably ahead of Trump, according to private and public polling. But he was right about one thing: Wisconsin is being watched by Trump’s adversaries around the country. And what they see is not just an opportunity to defeat the Republican front-runner on April 5, but a formula for denying him the nomination outright. Trump’s negatives are sky-high, particularly in populous southeastern Wisconsin, in part because of relentless attacks on his candidacy from the state’s influential conservative talk-radio hosts. Two outside groups, the Club for Growth and Our Principles PAC, amplified that assault by blanketing Wisconsin’s airwaves with anti-Trump ads. The state’s GOP establishment, led by Governor Scott Walker, reacted to the winnowed primary field by rallying around Cruz as the best bet to topple Trump. And swarms of pro-Cruz volunteers and super-PAC workers descended on the state, seizing on the lull in the primary schedule to out-organize the competition as they had done in neighboring Iowa. “It was a perfect storm, if you will,” says Matt Batzel, the Wisconsin-based head of American Majority, a conservative activist group. “A lot of people talked about Trump having a ceiling of 30 to 35 percent in other states. But we actually see that in Wisconsin, and it’s because of those factors working together.” The result: Cruz has pulled away from a battered Trump over the last two weeks and is poised for a resounding victory in Tuesday’s primary. “We’re going to have a solid win,” says state senator Duey Stroebel, Cruz’s Wisconsin chairman. “He’ll beat Trump by at least eight points, easy.” Cruz has pulled away from a battered Trump over the last two weeks and is poised for a resounding victory in Tuesday’s primary. Indeed, Cruz’s “neck and neck” talk did not reflect his team’s bullishness, which was detectable even before a crucial 24-hour stretch last week seemed to seal Trump’s fate. Tuesday afternoon, hours after Walker’s endorsement, Trump’s campaign manager was charged with battery against a female reporter. The next day, Trump stepped into fresh controversy after saying that if abortion were illegal, then women who have abortions should face “some form of punishment.” (Cruz pounced; Trump later reversed himself.) Capping it off, Wisconsin’s top pollster, Marquette Law School’s Charles Franklin, released a survey Wednesday showing Cruz up ten points on Trump, 40 percent to 30 percent, and Trump’s negatives surging statewide. (Marquette’s previous poll in mid February also showed Trump at 30 percent, which at the time was enough for a ten-point lead over a larger, still-fractured Republican field.) This turnaround isn’t surprising to the Cruz campaign, which weeks ago identified Wisconsin as fertile ground for both their operation and the anti-Trump movement. “Once we get there and introduce ourselves, we can very quickly make it a race like Iowa,” Chris Wilson, Cruz’s pollster and data guru, predicted in late March, before Cruz and his allies arrived in Wisconsin. The question no longer seems to be whether Trump will lose Wisconsin on Tuesday, but whether Cruz’s victory will truly signal a tipping point in the race — by arresting Trump’s momentum and also by providing a blueprint for halting his march to 1,237 delegates. “If Trump loses [Wisconsin], the wheels will be off Trump Express and it’ll be the beginning of the end for him,” Brent Bozell, a prominent conservative leader and Cruz supporter, tweeted Wednesday. “Crash and burn, Donald!” *    *    * There’s an assumption that Cruz would earn all 42 of Wisconsin’s delegates with a comfortable victory, shutting out Trump. But that’s highly unlikely. Wisconsin awards 18 at-large delegates to the statewide winner, but also three delegates to the winner of each of its eight congressional districts. While Trump could be crushed in the white-collar Milwaukee suburbs, his support appears steady in the rural northern and western parts of the state. He is heavily favored to win the seventh and third districts, and he should be competitive in the eighth and sixth, which encompass the Fox Valley, an unpredictable region where the demographic differences between southeast and northern Wisconsin collide. Whatever the result there, Trump should pick up at least six and perhaps as many as twelve delegates from Wisconsin. “I think two is likely, three is reasonably possible, and four is even possible,” Franklin says of Trump’s potential congressional district wins. Walking away from Wisconsin with a dozen delegates or fewer isn’t ideal for the front-runner, but at this stage, every bound backer is critical. An overlooked obstacle for Cruz is the continued presence of John Kasich. Even though the poorly funded Ohio governor pulled his radio ads from Wisconsin early last week, effectively ceding the state to Cruz, he remains a threat in the affluent “WOW” counties of Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington. “I certainly think Cruz is an odd standard-bearer for Republicans in that area,” Franklin says, “but that’s the position they’re in because of their disdain for Trump.” Kasich topped 20 percent statewide in the Marquette poll, largely on the strength of his support in metro Milwaukee, and Cruz kept dumping anti-Kasich mailers in those areas through week’s end. It proved that Kasich’s relative popularity with upscale white-collar voters remains a threat to Cruz — in Wisconsin’s case, he could steal enough votes to hand a suburban district to Trump, or even win one outright himself, further muddying a Cruz victory statewide. #share#Even if Cruz does win a lopsided victory on Tuesday, Trump’s immediate collapse is doubtful. A two-week break occurs between Wisconsin and the next primary on April 19, an extended hiatus during which accounts of Trump’s unraveling are certain to echo. But the state that is voting on April 19 happens to be New York. All four polls there in March, including a Quinnipiac survey last week, show Trump carrying at least 50 percent of the vote. That’s significant: While New York’s 95 delegates are awarded via a winner-take-most system — inviting Cruz or Kasich to win delegates in certain districts — anyone hitting 50 percent in a district takes all three of its delegates. The same 50-percent rule applies to the state’s 14 at-large delegates. If Trump takes a vast majority of New York’s delegates, as seems likely, he’ll have momentum heading into the April 26 “Acela Primary,” when nearby Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island vote. With the exception of Pennsylvania — a volatile “loophole” contest where 17 delegates are awarded to the statewide winner, but the remaining 54 are elected directly on the primary ballot — those states look solid for Trump, regardless of the results in far-away Wisconsin on April 5. It could be a very different story, however, as the calendar turns to May and two states are tested as potential bulwarks against Trump’s march to the nomination: Indiana and Nebraska. *    *    * Trump will probably emerge from April 26 with about 900 delegates, which means he cannot afford to be shut out in either Indiana on May 3 or Nebraska on May 10. And yet those are the two remaining states where the formula used to defeat Trump in Wisconsin will be most aggressively applied. A Midwestern state with Republican voters clustered around Indianapolis and scattered across more rural areas, Indiana will be familiar terrain for Cruz and his team, who will target the state with a well-financed, exhaustively organized effort similar to those they mounted in Iowa and Wisconsin. Nebraska, another deep-red stronghold in the Midwest, will receive similar attention from both Cruz’s campaign and the #NeverTrump movement. And in both states, anti-Trump efforts are likely to receive a boost from prominent conservative office-holders — starting with Mike Pence in Indiana and Ben Sasse in Nebraska — who have made known their discomfort with Trump and who will undoubtedly enlist their networks to organize against him. The stakes are enormous: Indiana awards 57 delegates, 30 to the statewide winner, the other 27, three apiece, to the winner of each of its nine congressional districts. Nebraska awards all 36 of its delegates to the statewide winner. Depriving Trump of all or nearly all of the combined 93 delegates from Indiana and Nebraska could strike a decisive blow to his effort to reach 1,237. Voting with Nebraska on May 10 is West Virginia, which holds another unpredictable “loophole” primary where all of the state’s 31 delegates — 22 statewide, and nine from three congressional districts — are elected directly on the ballot. Given that Cruz has outmaneuvered him in such grassroots affairs, including in Colorado and North Dakota this past weekend, Trump seems unlikely to collect many delegates in that contest. A total of 375 delegates are up for grabs in the race’s final stretch, from May 17 to June 7. But assuming that Trump is still hovering somewhere around 900 — having been essentially shutout since April 26 — he would need to win roughly 90 percent of those remaining to hit 1,237. The key contests for those hoping to squeeze Trump into such a precarious position are Indiana and Nebraska. That’s quite improbable: Both Oregon on May 17 and South Dakota on June 7 are closed, proportional primaries, conditions that in Trump’s best-case scenario make it possible for him to take roughly half the delegates at stake. And Montana’s June 7 winner-take-all caucuses — with 27 delegates on the line — are ripe for Cruz, who has dominated western caucus contests. The key contests for those hoping to squeeze Trump into such a precarious position are Indiana and Nebraska. If Cruz and allied forces can stifle Trump in those states (and any others along the way), they’ll make it nearly impossible for him to hit the 1,237 mark, and Wisconsin will be looked back upon as the catalyst: the state that wrote the playbook for defeating Donald Trump. #related#Jason Storms, a 37-year-old pastor and anti-abortion activist in Wisconsin, embodies that playbook. Cruz was not his first or even his second choice in 2016. But determined to stop Trump, Storms signed on with a pair of Cruz super PACs that employed 20 full-time door-knockers in the final two weeks before Wisconsin’s primary — and 40 on the final weekend. “Not many people were paying much attention to Wisconsin as being a real factor in this race,” Storms says. “Now they are.” Batzel, the Wisconsin-based activist, attended the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference this past week to instruct fellow organizers in grassroots-training seminars. “People kept asking, ‘What did you guys do?’ and ‘How did it work in Wisconsin?’” Batzel says. “They’re hoping our result gives them some momentum — and some ideas — to stop Trump.” — Tim Alberta is the chief political correspondent for National Review.

As the state prepares to vote on Tuesday, the candidates are at it again, circling and prodding each other in a final sprint before the high-profile contest.

Ted Cruz has for the most part run a lonely campaign. He’s had very little institutional support. And much of conservative talk radio, shockingly, hasn’t been there for him, feeling the pull of Donald Trump instead. Wisconsin is different. Scott Walker has thrown his full support behind Cruz, and talk radio hosts in the state are with him rather than Trump. Wisconsin is not Nevada or Mississippi and was going to be a tougher state for Trump, and the mogul clearly hurt himself with his attack on Heidi Cruz, among other things. But it surely matters that Cruz is less lonely than he has been elsewhere (if Cruz over-performs and wins the late-deciding vote, the Walker endorsement will be a big reason why). The lesson for the party should be clear–if you want to stop Trump, don’t stand on the sidelines, don’t obsess over Cruz’s imperfections or past slights, get out there and back him.

Sad!

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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...

On Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, host Zakaria seemed to be doing an impression of the type of super-biased political panel one would expect to find at MSNBC in the form of four liberals pitted against one moderate Republican and no conservatives discussing the role of racism in opposition to President Barack Obama. The accusations of racism against conservatives included The New Yorker editor David Remnick charging that George H.W. Bush used "racist memes" to win the 1988 presidential campaign and repeating a discredited claim of Ronald Reagan using a racist "dog whistle" by talking states' rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, during his 1980 campaign.

Donald Trump may have zero delegates from North Dakota

Who benefits from the introduction of the national living wage?

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Trump yet again earns Four Pinocchios. No matter how you slice it, the math simply does not add up.

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"It's how he gins up anger among so many," Kelly said.

It's not everyday that a college student finds themselves thrust into the middle of a hotly contested presidential election.

It does my heart good to see millions of Americans rising up and boldly proclaiming that we are DONE with Washington politics as usual. To all of those who want to take America back, who want to re…

It's so predictable. Whenever a government or leader follows the left's playbook and the results "uexpectedly" don't turn out to be anywhere near what was desired, it isn't the policies' or the leader's fault. No-no-no. During the Mayor David Dinkins era in New York City, it was because Gotham had become ungovernable by any human being – until Rudy Giuliani took over. During the Carter Era, the conventional wisdom was that America had become too unwieldy and ungovernable — until Ronald Reagan righted the ship. We're now hearing a similar refrain about the U.S. economy after seven-plus years of Keynesian economic policies, except that, as we'll eventually see, it involves recycling. On Friday, Jacob Davidson at Time.com engaged in a lengthy excuse-making exercise (HT Hot Air Headlines; bolds and numbered tags are mine):