Donald To Get Trumped By Rules Committee?

The GOP is working very hard not to suffer a self inflicted wound but if they repair the damage done the cure will likely fracture the party.

You see, the Republicans do not trust you, the voters, and they set rules so that they can select who they want to run for the presidency. Last cycle they imposed rules that were specifically designed to keep Ron Paul out of the process. Even though they have had four years to change it they have not done so.

If things ended today Donald Trump would be the only candidate, under the Romney rules of four years ago, who qualifies for the nomination.

The rule they wrote to exclude one they did not desire will likely force them to accept one they do not desire.

Here are some excerpts from the linked article. They come from people who will sit on the rules committee. I will translate them so you will know exactly what your task masters are saying:

“I’m not a big fan of the eight-state threshold. I think that’s an artificial number,” said David Wheeler, a rules committee member from South Dakota. “It was designed to prevent Ron Paul delegates — their votes from being counted. I don’t think it’s necessary to do that this year.”

Interpretation: We used this process to deny a candidate and his supporters from having their voices heard because we, your elitist masters, did not want Ron Paul’s delegates to be counted. Your vote means nothing to us.

“We don’t want to give the impression that we are leaning one way or the other in support or trying to hold somebody else back,” said Sandye Kading, the other South Dakota delegate on the rules committee.

Interpretation: We definitely are leaning for anyone but Trump but we don’t want it to look like that so we will play games and tallk about fairness and placate his supporters but we do not favor him and want anyone but him so much so we might all vote Democrat if Trump wins.

“They’ve created these goofy, bogus primaries out of whole cloth,” said Haugland, who argues that conventions are largely irrelevant if the party’s delegates are meant to slavishly follow the results of primaries and caucuses.

Interpretation: We have these primaries and it gives people the idea that their vote matters. We should not be bound by their votes and delegates should be free to vote for whom they want regardless of the outcome of the primary contests. The primaries are bogus because we should have the final say and not have to worry about the results of some sham elections. We know what is best for you.

The news today discussed the Democrat Primary process and their super delegates. They are delegates that are not bound to any election result or candidate. These are used to ensure the party picks the nominee and not a bunch of rube voters.

It appears as if the Republicans have their own process to disenfranchise voters in their party.

If the Republicans change the rules to keep Trump from getting the nomination then all hell will break loose and the party will pretty much be over. Millions of people will sit out the November election and the Democrat will win. We will have a Socialist as our president if this happens.

The party will scream that it is not right and that vows were made to support whomever the nominee ended up being. They will say these things without seeing the irony in what they are doing with their rules change.

But that’s alright. You have no say in the matter now shut up and go vote for whom we tell you.

Just for transparency, I am not a Trump supporter (or anyone else right now). I am listening and watching and I will decide by the time my primary rolls around. Having written that I do not want to see him screwed by the party. If he wins then he should be on the ballot and there should be no rule changes or games played to manipulate the process.

If that happens I see a few possibilities. Trump runs as a third party candidate and the Democrat wins. Millions od disenfranchised Republican voters stay home in protest and the Democrat wins. None of the candidates is deemed worthy so a person who never ran or one who dropped out is selected by the committee. In that case people stay home and the Democrat wins.

Playing games with the rules is what got them in this mess. They changed them to harm Ron Paul and now they want to change them to harm Trump and to avoid a problem of their own making. They had four years to do it but then again, no one knew a guy like Trump would run.

Or take the lead.

Or might actually win.

Now they are scrambling to undo the damage they caused.

And these people want to lead us.

Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
Big Dog

Gunline

Teacher, Barack Cheated

Yesterday the news was in bold letters across Drudge with follow up red letter links. Hillary Clinton’s campaign accused Barack Obama of plagiarism. There were side by side shots of Deval Patrick and Barack Obama and Obama’s words were nearly identical to those of the Massachusetts Governor. It was later revealed by Obama that he used Patrick’s words and that he should have attributed them and for his part, Patrick said that he encouraged Obama to use them. Obama is correct, he should have attributed them to the source but he did have permission to use them. There are newer allegations today by the Clinton campaign showing that Obama has used Patrick’s words at other times.

The use of the words of others without attribution is disturbing even though Obama had permission to use them because without attribution he is giving the appearance that he came up with them and they are his thoughts. Joe Biden was forced from the presidential race years ago for using someone’s words without attribution (he did not have permission either). Certainly some words and phrases are so famous they need no attribution because people know the source but for the most part, borrowed words and phrases should be attributed to the source.

While it is disturbing it also appears as an act of desperation on the part of the Clinton camp. These kinds of claims basically tell the world that you are not able to attack the substance of the candidate’s positions so you are going after these types of issues. The major problem is that someone will pour over Clinton’s words and find where she has used something without attribution. Of course, this is not uncommon in politics because many of the buzz words are used by everyone. Change is the theme of a lot of people but until Obama started parading it around the others did not make it central. Once it was working for him Hillary became the candidate of change. Then, they all became change agents of some sort. Catch phrases are just that and none of these candidates has a copyright on them even though Obama played tit for tat by saying Hillary had used his words.

This whole issue looks more like the squabbles of kids on the playground rather than the actions of people who want to have the the most important job in this country. Clinton might have been better off not addressing it (she will wish she had not if they find she did the same thing) and leaving it for the media (she certainly knows how to leak things to them) and Obama would have been better off to just say he should have attributed it and then moved on. As it stands now, they both look like children trying to play an adult’s game.

Each of their supporters will use this episode to spin things in favor of their candidate but in the end they both end up looking like immature school kids playing games where Hillary looks like a whiner (teacher, Barack said so and so) and he looks disingenuous (I am saying this from the bottom of Patrick’s heart).

I guess one cannot blame Hillary because she is dropping like a rock and she needs something to throw him off track. In the end, this will end up being more divisive for the Democrats and since the Clinton campaign is out with new allegations, it looks like this will not blow over any time soon. The only thing Obama has going for him is that words are the only thing put in his mouth unlike what happens with a certain Clinton in office…

I can only hope it puts a big enough dent in his armor to force a brokered convention. That is where the real fun will be.

Big Dog

Between Barack and a Hard Place

Hillary Clinton finds herself in deeper trouble as two more primaries loom on the horizon prior to her firewall states of Texas and Ohio. The latest polls from Texas show that Obama has now taken a lead there and only trails Hillary by 2% among Hispanic voters. That vote was Hillary’s ace in the hole and if she does not have a larger lead in the demographic the fat lady will be warming up her vocal chords.

The saving grace for Hillary is that a large number of Super Delegates are from the old Democratic establishment. They are a bunch of old white guys who have a lot of sway within the party and many of them are not elected to an office so they will not have to worry about the wrath of the electorate, at least not as far as they are personally concerned.

Hillary is basically toast as far as the primaries go. She cannot catch Obama and neither of them will earn enough delegates to win the nomination outright. Hillary stands to gain the lion’s share of delegates from Florida and Michigan should the DNC relent and allow those delegates to be seated. This is seen as unlikely since the events were not properly contested and if anyone wants to talk about disenfranchising a black guy, this would be the ultimate event to do so.

A more likely event is that the uncommitted Super Delegates will go against the will of the people and cast their vote for Hillary thus giving her the nomination over the person who received the most votes from the electorate. There are some SDs who are switching their committed vote from Hillary to Obama but there will not be enough of them to offset the old establishment should they decide that Hillary should get the nod. For all their claims of diversity the overwhelming number of SDs are old white men and they just might not like the idea of running a black guy for the top spot.

Either event is likely to throw the Democratic Party into a state of turmoil. If Hillary is selected the black voter will finally understand the betrayal that has been the Democratic Party. Blacks have been taken for granted for years but every election cycle the Democrats promise them the world only to forget about them until the next election. Trillions of dollars have been spent on the war on poverty and many are no better off than they were four decades ago when the war began. If ever there was an indication that we should pull out of a war, that would be it. The black voters finally see one of their own reach the pinnacle with a chance to make history by being elected the first black president in the history of this country. If they get screwed they might stay home or cast protest votes for the Republican nominee. In any event, maybe they will finally understand what has been happening all those years they ignored the signs that they were being used.

On the other hand, if Obama is selected the women voters, Hillary’s largest demographic, might feel betrayed by the old white men and take out their frustrations in a similar fashion. Hillary was supposed to win, it was her turn. There were a lot of women who got excited when she entered the race and they are still strongly supporting her so much so that Oprah Winfrey, one of the most successful women in the world, received a great deal of grief and talk of betrayal because she chose to back Obama. These are two very determined groups and they make up a huge portion of the electorate. Ticking them off will not be good for the Democratic Party.

Howard Dean is losing sleep at night thinking about the possibility of a brokered convention. He might be a whack job but he is not stupid. He realizes all too well that these scenarios could play out just as I described and tear his party apart. If it happens it will only lend credence to the saying that the Democrats always find ways to lose. The best he can hope for is for one of them to drop out but that does not appear likely. He can hope that one will wrap up the nomination but that appears just as unlikely so it will be down to the convention and the nightmare of negotiations. Even if they persuade Clinton and Obama to take a deal, say where she is the nominee and he is the VP (or vice versa), they run the risk of alienating the supporters of the one who gets to play second fiddle. I can hear it now “why does the black man have to be second to a white woman” or “why does she have to be second to a man, isn’t a woman good enough to be first?”

These things are all possible and no one can guarantee that either would accept the terms. Would you want to be Obama and be third in line behind Hillary and Bill? The Democrats have a long hard road ahead of them and this is not going to be easy. In addition to risking losing voters they need to worry about losing control of Congress. If they tick off enough of their base those voters might stay away or vote for Republicans for Congress. If the DNC is not careful it could lose it all.

That, of course, is a worse case scenario but it is not out of the realm of possibility. The Democrats have a way of mucking things up and they seem to have done so this time. The SDs were supposed to be helpful but now it appears as if the whole idea might have been a bad one.

Regardless of what happens this will be fun to watch. I personally hope this goes to a brokered convention. I might actually watch it just to see the comedy unfold. My party is pretty uneventful so I might as well enjoy the antics on the other side…

Big Dog

Others with interesting posts:
Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Nuke Gingrich, Faultline USA, third world county, 123beta, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Celebrity Smack, Cao’s Blog, Dumb Ox Daily News, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Imagine that, I Actually Agree with Al Sharpton

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I do not care for Al Sharpton because he is a race baiting poverty pimp.I believe that he only takes up causes that will get him in the spotlight and when a black person is the victim. He ignores non blacks in the same situations and to top it off he incites riots where people get killed. However, he wrote a letter to the DNC with regard to the delegates from Florida and Michigan. In the letter, Sharpton stated:

Some have said that not seating delegations from Florida and Michigan disenfranchises Democratic voters — especially African American voters — from those two states. That claim, if true, should have been made many months ago before the decision was made to strip these states of their delegates, and, once the decision was made, it should have been vigorously objected to and contested by those who felt it disenfranchised voters. To raise that claim now smacks of politics in its form most raw and undercuts the moral authority behind such an argument. Drudge

I don’t know how it would particularly disenfranchise blacks in Florida but he is right in the overall assessment. They took a decision many months ago and they have to live by that decision. People who are objecting should have done so back then. Of course, Sharpton is motivated by the fact that his candidate, Barack Star Obama, is in the lead and he does not want that taken away. If Obama were behind but had won those states, Sharpton would want them seated. Hillary, for her part, is now trying to get the delegates seated because she is losing. She did not protest before because she thought she would have won it all by now.

I have no dog in that fight because I am not a Democrat but as an observer I will say that they made rules that stated if a state held its primary before February 5th then that state would lose its delegates (except the two usual starter states). Florida and Michigan were warned and they did it anyway which means they should have to live by the rules. If candidates did not agree then they should have been talking about it when the decisions were taken (why were some of the others allowed to go early).

Having said that, I would not be surprised to see the DNC reverse course and allow the delegates. This would give Hillary a big lead and she might pull off the nomination. That would fracture the Democratic party and many Obama supporters would stay home or jump ship on election day. The Democrats always have inventive ways to lose elections and it would not surprise me if the party elite decided to do this to help the Queen get to the throne.

Personally, I would like to see just that take place.

I would also ask the media and all the other nitwits who said George Bush was not a legitimate president if that would make Hillary an illegitimate nominee. After all, she would be selected, not elected and that has been the cry of the left for nearly eight years.

Hillary cannot get enough delegates to win outright but she might do well in several large delegate states. If so, neither will win the required number and the convention will be brokered. That is when the bloodbath will begin and it will be quite a bit of fun to watch.

Big Dog

Others with interesting posts:
Outside the Beltway, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Right Truth, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, Conservative Cat, Adeline and Hazel, Pursuing Holiness, third world county, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, A Newt One, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.