***Horse Race LiveWire*** Summer Bummer: GOP Fight Drags on to Convention

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Breitbart News

Welcome to Breitbart News’s daily live updates of the 2016 horse race.

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All times eastern.

10:15: Establishment Gov. John Kasich is apparently helping outsider Donald Trump stay ahead of anti-establishment Sen. Tex Cruz.

10:05: Donald Trump advisor Stephen Miller comments about foreign policy issues.

10:00: Gov John Kasich, former managing director at Lehman Brothers, offers up an campaign ad:

9:50: Ex-Gov. Bobby Jindal now backs Donald Trump, although reluctantly, reportedly saying on MSNBC that:

“The GOP establishment is done for,” he told host Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s “Meet the Press.” “This race shows that” …

“If it comes down to Donald Trump and [Democratic presidential front-runner] Hillary Clinton, I would certainly support Donald Trump as the Republican nominee,” he said.

“I didn’t wake this morning a big fan of Donald Trump,” the Louisiana governor added. “I hope it’s not him [as] he’s not my favorite. I think Donald Trump’s wrong on a whole host of issues.”

9:45: Mickey Kaus’ 5 cents on the Donald Trump and the SCOTUS nomination.

9:40: Ann Coulter is dancing on Sen. Marco Rubio’s political grave.

https://twitter.com/LukeBrinker/status/709892021390020609

9:33: Sen. Ted Cruz is taunt Donald Trump for avoiding one-on-one debate.

9:30: Establishment hero Sen. Marco Rubio never saw what hit him out of the race;

6:35: A lot of clueless/insular D.C. denizens from across the political spectrum may be eating their words soon:

6:13: [Tony Lee: Funny seeing all of the comparisons between Obama ’08/Rubio ’16 and where Rubio’s campaign went wrong in the various process-oriented stories. It’s not that complicated, folks. In 2008, Obama was aligned with his party’s base against the Iraq War and brought in new black voters who felt the party’s establishment had taken them for granted. In 2016, Rubio was not aligned with his party’s base on amnesty while Trump, who is, is bringing in working-class voters who believe the GOP has been taking them from granted. John Edwards’s “Silence is Betrayal” speech at Riverside Church didn’t help Clinton either during the 2008 election cycle. This ain’t rocket science. ]

6:10: Cook Political Report: Upcoming Calendar Favorable to Trump:

The upcoming calendar is favorable to Trump. The south and Midwest have all pretty much weighed in at this point. Cruz didn’t do as well in the south as he should have. Kasich didn’t do as well in the Midwest as he should have. Now, it’s now time for the west and northeast to have their say. On the one hand, the blue states up in mid-April (New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania) should favor the more establishment candidacy of Kasich. In 2012, Romney easily defeated Rick Santorum in these states. However, Trump has a regional appeal that makes him uniquely positioned for these states. And, despite early predictions that closed primaries, as most of these northeastern states will be, would hinder Trump, he’s managed to win in both open and closed contests. It’s easy to see how Trump carries not just New York, but also Rhode Island, Delaware, and even Connecticut.

Moreover, Trump continues to win among ‘somewhat conservative’ Republicans, the group of voters that have proven to be the most predictive of winning the nomination. Of the 20 states that have voted – and have exit poll data – Trump has carried the ‘somewhat conservative vote in 16 of them, including wins last night in Illinois, Florida, North Carolina and Missouri.

Trump’s immigration stance will help him in Arizona on March 22, a winner take all state with 58 delegates. And, we should expect him to do well in blue-collar areas of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Washington state.

Moreover, the map isn’t all that favorable to Cruz. Not only are the northeastern states a cultural mismatch for Cruz, there are also few remaining caucuses left on the calendar. Caucuses, with their more socially conservative constituency and emphasis on grassroots organizing, have been great for the Cruz campaign. Of the 21 states that vote between now and June 7, however, only four hold caucuses. Cruz is the only candidate with the money and the expertise to compete in the arcane congressional level delegate fights in delegate rich states like California and New York. That may be enough to fracture the vote enough to prevent Trump from getting the total number of delegates he needs, though it might not prevent a Trump “win” in the state.

 

6:02: The Americans returns tonight and is adopting Trump’s slogan to promote its heralded program:

5:58: Coulter:

5:55: Gotta love politics. Cruz fans (Wasserman is editor of Cook Political Report and not a partisan), who cheered the campaign for opening up offices in Florida, now upset that Kasich is running ads in Utah.

5:50: Trump will be on O’Reilly Factor. Cruz will be on Megyn Kelly’s show tonight.

5:4o: Trump received more votes in Ohio than Hillary Clinton.

5:32: Trump supporter Scottie Hughes tells Wolf Blitzer on CNN that riots “aren’t necessarily bad things.” Earlier in the day, Trump’s senior policy adviser Stephen Miller said Trump was speaking “metaphorically.” Hughes, to say the least, is not the best surrogate for Trump (not sure if she is an official surrogate for the campaign). Miller and Sarah Huckabee Sanders do much more good for the Trump campaign.

5:30: Kasich up with new ads in Utah:

5:22: CNN boss Jeff Zucker points out that Trump has made himself available for interviews and candidates who are losing the race–and their allies–can’t have it both ways when they, for months, were not as available.

To TVNewser: “At the debate down in Miami, I spoke to [Ted] Cruz’s four top aides, and offered them numerous options to come on for one-hour interviews, phone calls, town halls, etc. They all said, ‘yes yes, we want to do that.’ And then when we followed up with the invitation, it’s all ‘no.’ My point is, you can’t have it both ways. So I actually reject that premise that we’ve given too much attention to him.”

5:20: Sanders campaign seeing Wisconsin as “showdown” state. Sanders camp says primary process not a matter of “delegate arithmetic.”

5:17: Bobby Jindal tells Chuck Todd that it is more likely that Trump will appoint a conservative to the Supreme Court than Hillary Clinton.

5:15: Chuck Todd: ‘The Republican Establishment Basically Is Dead’

5:10: Ivy Leaguer McEnany Defends Palin on CNN of All Places

[Tony Lee: A Breitbart News reader e-mailed me this morning and said he was shocked that a CNN contributor actually defended Sarah Palin on the network yesterday. After checking the game tape, so to speak, it turns out that the reader was talking about Kayleigh McEnany’s appearance on Tuesday’s edition of Wolf.

When asked if Palin’s endorsement benefited Trump, she said that “it plays into the image of Donald Trump being for everyday Americans. Sarah Palin may not speak like an Ivy League professor in the most flourished rhetoric we would like but she is real and authentic and she resonates with voters because of that.” Her comments were more refreshing because, as Blitzer pointed out, McEnany went to Harvard.

Take it from me, it takes someone who has been in elite academic/social circles to 1) be secure, 2) not need to be accepted by them, and 3) see the ridiculousness of those cultures, especially how they look down on “outsiders” like Palin.

McEnany, who is also an ardent Trump supporter, is a breath of fresh air on CNN. So is Jeffrey Lord. Almost everyone else from the “right” that CNN has on is either a hack who speaks inside-the-beltway gobbledygook or just uninteresting/not compelling/boring/stale to regular Americans. Yawn. They have “political professional” stamped all over them and desperately seem like they want nothing more than the adulation of their MSM “bettors.” McEnany obviously isn’t one of them.

The types of people inside the Beltway who reflexively hate Palin have a few things in common: 1) they are usually miserable, self-loathing people who are unhappy with their lives; 2) if they don’t have Ivy League pedigrees or have not been in elite social circles, they desperately crave to be in that “crowd” and see bashing Palin as their ticket to get in those circles; 3) if they have Ivy League pedigrees or have been in elite social circles, they are snotty elitists against whom Americans are revolting; 4) they were probably dweebs growing up and are trying to re-live their childhoods in D.C. by trying to turn D.C. into “Hollywood for ugly people.”

More importantly, though, they don’t realize how counterproductive it is to mock Palin for not speaking the King’s English. Is it any surprise the same idiots who mocked Palin ridiculed Trump’s syntax? And is it any surprise how gloriously it backfired? In what may be one of the most important articles written about this election cycle, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry wrote in The Week:

As many critics gleefully point out, Trump is not very good with the English language. He certainly doesn’t speak like someone you would think of as a presidential candidate. It’s not just his Northeastern accent. He occasionally screws up with spelling and grammar.

Trump gets mocked a lot for this. Especially on Twitter, and especially by people like me — card-carrying members of the media elite. On Friday morning, Trump misspelled “honor” and “lightweight” on Twitter. The high priests of Manhattan media were almost beside themselves with delight.

So let me say this in a way you elites can understand: As David Foster Wallace explains in a brilliant essay on English usage, there isn’t just one “English.” As elite liberals are apt to understand in other contexts, what we call Standard English is really just one dialect of English — the English of rich, educated, largely white English speakers. There are many other dialects in English, associated with different regions, ethnicities, classes, and so on.

Trump speaks the language of his voters — unlike other presidential candidates, and unlike people who go on TV to be professional pundits. And what does Trump tell these voters? That the elite are against them. That they despise them. And what do elites do? Prove Trump right by sneering at a Trump trait that he shares with many of his voters.

Trump and his voters don’t speak Standard English, nor do they speak its cousin dialect, Politically Correct English. As Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum points out, many people dislike political correctness, not because they secretly harbor bigoted views, or because they have a principled belief in a culture of free inquiry, but simply because Politically Correct English is a foreign dialect, which changes frequently and unpredictably. And if you don’t always master its nuances, you might suffer withering social opprobrium. (You’re not exactly sure what gender to refer to Caitlyn Jenner as? You bigot!)

As the French thinker Pierre Bourdieu pointed out many decades ago, such systems of etiquette often function as ways for the ruling class to control the ruled, enforce class privilege, and keep the ladder to the upper class nice and slippery. And this particular form of social control only seems to be exercised against one type of person.

Trump connects with the white working class, with the socially downtrodden, with the frustrated and despairing, and with the poorly educated and financially struggling not in spite of his rough-edged manner of speaking, but because of it. The wealthy, urban elite ought to remember that before they turn Trump’s misspellings into a cocktail party punch line.

It’s worth nothing that Rubio’s campaign went in the toilet as soon as he started mocking Donald Trump’s spelling errors on Twitter.]

4:42: Van Jones concedes Trump can beat Hillary Clinton on CNN.

4:40: We have the Clinton campaign right where we want them:

4:30: Maybe they will join the 500 members of the GOP Smart Set to start a third party that will do as well as the No Labels movement (but at least the incompetent Smart Set consultants will get paid for another election cycle–and that’s all that matters to them) :

4:17: Michael Jordan? More like Harold Miner.

4:10: So, so, so angry/unhinged. Glenn Beck now calls Kasich a “son of a b*tch.”

This is what Beck Tweeted last night without any sense of irony:

 

Flashback: Beck reportedly made fun of a woman’s miscarriage, made racist jokes on his radio program.

4:05: The Republican establishment and those in the conservative industrial complex seem so upset/angry/bitter that they have become irrelevant this election cycle because voters they thought were their minions just aren’t listening to them or doing what they want them to do:

4:01: Kasich will appear on PA ballot. 

3:52: Ouch [Tony Lee: Cruz may have lost all of his momentum when he reflexively blamed Trump for the Chicago chaos just like Rubio’s downfall started when he decided to go against his brand, take the advice of the idiotic and clueless GOP SMART SET, and lob personal attacks agains Trump]:

https://twitter.com/MattSDavid/status/710060896534536192

3:50: Romney ’12 vs. Trump ’16:

3:48: Memo: Voters don’t like your friends:

3:30: Breitbart’s Joel Pollak: Donald Trump Invite Roils Pro-Israel AIPAC Conference

3:2o: Haley now for Cruz:

3:17: Cruz campaign warns against rule changes:

3:15: Because they mobilized their base voters while their opponents could not. This ain’t rocket science:

3:10: Trump thrilled he won Missouri:

3:05: Stossel:

2:45: Michelle Obama won’t run for president:

2:42: Sheldon Adelson open to supporting Trump.

2:40: And these reliable voters are going to turn out for Clinton? Meanwhile, first-time voters are actually going to the polls for Trump:

[Tony Lee: Paul Ryan does not speak the language of this election cycle. Mr. Powerpoint talks about issues like Romney without the ridiculous “who let the dogs out?” moments. No passion. Say what you want about Jack Kemp, who was Ryan’s mentor, but Kemp was from outside the Beltway. Quarterbacking and captaining the Buffalo Bills (working-class town) and San Diego Chargers (diverse region) allowed him to genuinely connect with working-class Americans and those living in, in Kemp’s words, the ghettos and the barrios. Ryan, meanwhile, is a creature of the Beltway and sounds more like a career political staffer than an inspirational politician. His pitches seem tailor-made for Kemp’s dreaded “boardroom.” He would be one of the worst candidates for this anti-establishment election cycle no matter what the “GOP Smart Set” charter members who cheered Rubio’s attacks on Trump that ultimately put the nail in the coffin in Rubio’s campaign think. And that’s the bottom line.]

2:32: Paul Ryan says he won’t be the nominee. 

2:30: [Tony Lee: So much for all of the Clinton campaign shake-up rumors. The Clinton team does seem like a dysfunctional baseball team. But it seems like winning cures all ills.]

2:27: New Kasich video:

2:25: One of the most annoying mainstream media “journalists” who feels a compulsive need to insist he is “objective” again proves he is not. Would he have said the same thing if Obama were a Republican?

 

Perfect response:

2:23: Cruz on Garland nomination:

“Merrick Garland is exactly the type of Supreme Court nominee you get when you make deals in Washington D.C. A so-called ‘moderate’ Democrat nominee is precisely the kind of deal that Donald Trump has told us he would make – someone who would rule along with other liberals on the bench like Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor. Make no mistake, if Garland were confirmed, he would side predictably with President Obama on critical issues such as undermining the Second Amendment, legalizing partial-birth abortion, and propping up overreaching bureaucratic agencies like the EPA and the IRS. We cannot afford to lose the Supreme Court for generations to come by nominating or confirming someone that a dealmaker like Donald Trump would support. Washington dealmakers cannot be trusted with such crucial lifetime appointments.

“I proudly stand with my Republican colleagues in our shared belief – our advice and consent – that we should not vote on any nominee until the next president is sworn into office. The People will decide. I commend Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley for holding the line and ensuring that We the People get to exercise our authority to decide the direction of the Supreme Court and the Bill of Rights.”

2:04: Wasn’t it Schumer’s goal to make the GOP a permanent minority with the Gang of Eight amnesty bill?

2:01: Left-wing Scandal (Hillary Clinton recently visited the show’s set and took selfies with the show’s stars) will reportedly feature a Trump-like character who will run against Mellie Grant in the presidential primary. The show already has a candidate running who wants “free college.”

1:59: Rubio butt of joke on even THE TENNIS CHANNEL:

You know it’s bad when Sports Illustrated writer and Tennis Channel contributor John Wertheim, while describing Alexander “Sascha” Zverev’s thrashing of Gilles Simon on Tuesday, said Simon was knocked out “like Rubio.”

 

1:57: Trump:

1:55: Sanders campaign huddled about what to do after Tuesday’s crushing debates. They then declare that Tuesday was the “high water mark” of Clinton’s campaign:

1:52: Fox News confirms debate cancellation:

1:50: Clinton’s statement on Obama’s Supreme Court nominee:

1:14: Victory lap continues.

1:00: Kasich testing some new wordplay.

12:58: Report: DEBATE CANCELLED.

12:53: Vox dot com jumping on the Hot Take Dogpile:

12:50: Rubio HQ clears out.

12:47: Kasich encourages students to reach out to lonely peers.

12:29: Debbie Wasserman Schultz says Kasich and Cruz have no path to the nomination.

12:27: Kasich rally in Pennsylvania:

12:25: New Trump Instagram ad calls Hillary a “punchline” among the bad guys of the world:

View this post on Instagram

Is this what we want for a President?

A post shared by President Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on

12:14: Kasich aide says the governor will skip the next debate if Trump does.

12:11: Data.

12:06: Florida Governor Rick Scott has endorsed Trump.

GOVERNOR RICK SCOTT CALLS ON REPUBLICANS TO COME TOGETHER

I’m asking all Republicans today to come together and begin preparing to win the general election in November.

With his victories yesterday, I believe it is now time for Republicans to accept and respect the will of the voters and coalesce behind Donald Trump.

This has been a hard fought primary, with an outstanding roster of excellent candidates, including two of Florida’s favorite sons, and several Republican Governors who are close friends of mine.

But the voters are speaking clearly – they want a businessman outsider who will dramatically shake up the status quo in Washington.

When I first ran for Governor the political class and party leaders opposed me with great vigor, and some even said if I won the primary they would never vote for me. But the voters had other ideas, and they are the only ones who count.

Here’s what really matters – we have to elect a Republican in the fall in order to grow jobs, rebuild our military, and put a person who respects the Constitution on the Supreme Court.

This is the stuff that truly matters.

If we spend another four months tearing each other apart, we will damage our ability to win in November. It’s time for an end to the Republican on Republican violence. It’s time for us to begin coming together, we’ve had a vigorous primary, now let’s get serious about winning in November.

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