320 Years of History
Gold Member
Two days ago, Trump wrote an op-ed piece that appeared in The Wall Street Journal.
On Saturday, April 9, Colorado had an “election” without voters. Delegates were chosen on behalf of a presidential nominee, yet the people of Colorado were not able to cast their ballots to say which nominee they preferred.
A planned vote had been canceled. And one million Republicans in Colorado were sidelined.
In recent days, something all too predictable has happened: Politicians furiously defended the system. “These are the rules,” we were told over and over again. If the “rules” can be used to block Coloradans from voting on whether they want better trade deals, or stronger borders, or an end to special-interest vote-buying in Congress—well, that’s just the system and we should embrace it.
Let me ask America a question: How has the “system” been working out for you and your family?
I, for one, am not interested in defending a system that for decades has served the interest of political parties at the expense of the people. Members of the club—the consultants, the pollsters, the politicians, the pundits and the special interests—grow rich and powerful while the American people grow poorer and more isolated.
No one forced anyone to cancel the vote in Colorado. Political insiders made a choice to cancel it. And it was the wrong choice.
Responsible leaders should be shocked by the idea that party officials can simply cancel elections in America if they don’t like what the voters may decide.
The only antidote to decades of ruinous rule by a small handful of elites is a bold infusion of popular will. On every major issue affecting this country, the people are right and the governing elite are wrong. The elites are wrong on taxes, on the size of government, on trade, on immigration, on foreign policy.
Why should we trust the people who have made every wrong decision to substitute their will for America’s will in this presidential election?
Here, I part ways with Sen. Ted Cruz.
Mr. Cruz has toured the country bragging about his voterless victory in Colorado. For a man who styles himself as a warrior against the establishment (you wouldn’t know it from his list of donors and endorsers), you’d think he would be demanding a vote for Coloradans. Instead, Mr. Cruz is celebrating their disenfranchisement.
Likewise, Mr. Cruz loudly boasts every time party insiders disenfranchise voters in a congressional district by appointing delegates who will vote the opposite of the expressed will of the people who live in that district.
That’s because Mr. Cruz has no democratic path to the nomination. He has been mathematically eliminated by the voters.
While I am self-funding, Mr. Cruz rakes in millions from special interests. Yet despite his financial advantage, Mr. Cruz has won only three primaries outside his home state and trails me by two million votes—a gap that will soon explode even wider. Mr. Cruz loses when people actually get to cast ballots. Voter disenfranchisement is not merely part of the Cruz strategy—it is the Cruz strategy.
The great irony of this campaign is that the “Washington cartel” that Mr. Cruz rails against is the very group he is relying upon in his voter-nullification scheme.
My campaign strategy is to win with the voters. Ted Cruz’s campaign strategy is to win despite them.
What we are seeing now is not a proper use of the rules, but a flagrant abuse of the rules. Delegates are supposed to reflect the decisions of voters, but the system is being rigged by party operatives with “double-agent” delegates who reject the decision of voters.
[There is more, but I have nothing to say about it, so I haven't pasted it here.]
So, having read the editorial, what do I think about his comments and questions?
Red:
Here's the thing about the GOP/RNC: it can, at its discretion, change the rules and/or invent new ones, at any point that it wants to. Does it's ability and authority to do so seem democratic? Well, frankly, no, it doesn't. But then it doesn't need to actually be democratic because the GOP/RNC is not the government itself. It's a private organization, and as such it can create, revise, discard, structure and conduct its processes and rules for them whatever way it wants any time it wants to do so.
One need not like how it works in the GOP, but neither does one need to join the GOP. Most especially, Trump, with his $2B no less, didn't need to run as a Republican. He could have, and IMO should have, stuck with his initial approach of running as an Independent and focusing his vast resources on getting himself on state Presidential ballots and publicizing his platform. Ross Perot ran as an Independent and got ~20% of the vote. Comparing Trump's popularity with Mr. Perot's and perceiving it as being even greater, Trump would, IMO, have had a good shot of winning as an Independent.
Lastly, the direct primary has been evaluated critically. Research into its impact found that it largely had very little impact, with one exception.
For all the capriciousness the GOP may display at the national level, the "Colorado issue" is a state one. The fact is that each state (and each state's political party organizations) has complete control over how it chooses delegates to the respective party conventions. Colorado's GOP announced its approach to selecting 2016 election cycle delegates in August 2015.
Additionally, for all Trump's griping about the Colorado process for assigning delegates to the candidates, the fact is his campaign goofed in multiple ways.
As goes Trump and his "Colorado was rigged" cries...well, I'd be willing to be somewhat more sympathetic than I am (which is not much at all right now) were he routinely to have offered something other than unsubstantiated bombast. I honestly cannot say that I've seen him ever so much as attempt to present cogent and credible arguments or evidence in support any of his claims.
All I've yet to hear from Trump is one claim after another, all of which are predicated on my agreeing with it before he utters it. Thus his statements are of little value for, assuming I agree with them "from the get go," I sure didn't need him to tell me I'm right and that's it. And what he needs to do is present a good case that "we/he" are right in order to convert open minded and objective opponents. That approach just doesn't work for me because someday, he'll say something I don't agree with, and then I'll among the folks needing to be convinced, and the way Trump attempts to do so -- largely on the strength of his own word or worse, as an ad hominem plea based on himself -- just isn't going to do it.
Just now on CNN's Situation Room: Kristina Pearson, Trump's campaign national spokesperson stated that the Trump campaign knew what the rules were, presumably when they were changed in August 2015. (Interview with Wolf Blitzer.)
Blue:
First:
Second:
I can't speak for America, but I can for myself say, "Quite well, thank you."
And no, I'm not anywhere near as well off as Trump, but I am doing well enough that I haven't a reason to complain and so are literally millions of people. Some 29M+ people earn $100K+ per year based on the workforce consisting of ~150M people. One can assert that the quantity should be higher; I get that, but the the quantity isn't so low that Trump's assertions are warranted.
Green:
Members of the club also "read the writing on the wall" and direct their efforts accordingly. That's not one bit different than what Trump has done to create his own fortune.
Frankly, I think a lot of folks are in the Lewis-Kooning's situation instead of the Haynes'. I'm not of a mind to be too sympathetic to the former family. (Note: I don't know the finances of enough families to have this point of view on any basis other than my gut feelings and the fact that I know $100K+/year is enough to do alright in most places in the U.S. provided one's actual means and what one perceives one should be able to afford are in line.)
Hot pink:
And where was the deafening outcry against it? Nobody is making people belong to the GOP either. And the GOP is a private entity that is "owned," whether it's crossed folks' minds or not, by the folks who lead the party. That's no different for the GOP than it is any non-profit organization or company.
I'm not a Republican, but I suggest that rank and file Republicans should have (current events notwithstanding) taken a more active role in the management and rule making of their party. Perhaps they will do so going forward. Why rank and file Republicans think the party is supposed to represent them when they don't actively participate in its procedures and articulate how they want the party to work is beyond me.
Also, why Trump is even running now as a Republican and complaining about these particular issues is also beyond me, but that's his choice to make. I know only that the man's political affiliations have, like his rhetoric, been all over the place.
Purple:
Again, where was the thunderous outcry? Where were they protests? Why didn't the rank and file exert their weight of numbers? I can't say. I can say those things didn't occur, to the extent they did at all, with sufficient force to have an impact that endures and today satisfies the folks who are complaining.
Brown:
Argumentum ad populum
So he says, yet he's not put together and aired even as much of a supporting argument as do USMB members.
Black bold:
That will most likely become true upon the close of the NY GOP primary. It's not true today.
Olive green:
Financial advantage? What financial advantage? Has Trump forgotten that he is a multibillionaire?
He's self funding, right? That means all of his wealth is available to him. And what is he doing? Campaigning on the cheap. Fine that he is doing that; I'm not criticizing him for it. But the fact is that he's also gotten some $2B in free promotion.
Fluorescent Green:
This is the one thing that is unarguably true in the whole editorial.
Lavender:
Are they? Are they in Colorado supposed to do that? It seems to me that Colorado, as it's allowed to, chose to let voters choose delegates and allow delegates to vote for whom they wanted. That's called representative democracy rather than direct democracy.
In a representative democracy, the elected representatives are free to vote using their judgment. Only rarely do they even have enough direct input from enough constituents to even know what most of them want, that is to act as delegates rather than as trustees. Did the delegates have any such reliable input from the voters who elected them, the voters who acquiesced to the change in Colorado's rules? I doubt it...
Have the CO rank and file arisen to throw out their state GOP leaders who enacted the rule change? Not that I can tell. So just how ticked off are most CO GOP voters of the fact that Mr. Cruz won the CO delegates? Seems to me not very much.
On Saturday, April 9, Colorado had an “election” without voters. Delegates were chosen on behalf of a presidential nominee, yet the people of Colorado were not able to cast their ballots to say which nominee they preferred.
A planned vote had been canceled. And one million Republicans in Colorado were sidelined.
In recent days, something all too predictable has happened: Politicians furiously defended the system. “These are the rules,” we were told over and over again. If the “rules” can be used to block Coloradans from voting on whether they want better trade deals, or stronger borders, or an end to special-interest vote-buying in Congress—well, that’s just the system and we should embrace it.
Let me ask America a question: How has the “system” been working out for you and your family?
I, for one, am not interested in defending a system that for decades has served the interest of political parties at the expense of the people. Members of the club—the consultants, the pollsters, the politicians, the pundits and the special interests—grow rich and powerful while the American people grow poorer and more isolated.
No one forced anyone to cancel the vote in Colorado. Political insiders made a choice to cancel it. And it was the wrong choice.
Responsible leaders should be shocked by the idea that party officials can simply cancel elections in America if they don’t like what the voters may decide.
The only antidote to decades of ruinous rule by a small handful of elites is a bold infusion of popular will. On every major issue affecting this country, the people are right and the governing elite are wrong. The elites are wrong on taxes, on the size of government, on trade, on immigration, on foreign policy.
Why should we trust the people who have made every wrong decision to substitute their will for America’s will in this presidential election?
Here, I part ways with Sen. Ted Cruz.
Mr. Cruz has toured the country bragging about his voterless victory in Colorado. For a man who styles himself as a warrior against the establishment (you wouldn’t know it from his list of donors and endorsers), you’d think he would be demanding a vote for Coloradans. Instead, Mr. Cruz is celebrating their disenfranchisement.
Likewise, Mr. Cruz loudly boasts every time party insiders disenfranchise voters in a congressional district by appointing delegates who will vote the opposite of the expressed will of the people who live in that district.
That’s because Mr. Cruz has no democratic path to the nomination. He has been mathematically eliminated by the voters.
While I am self-funding, Mr. Cruz rakes in millions from special interests. Yet despite his financial advantage, Mr. Cruz has won only three primaries outside his home state and trails me by two million votes—a gap that will soon explode even wider. Mr. Cruz loses when people actually get to cast ballots. Voter disenfranchisement is not merely part of the Cruz strategy—it is the Cruz strategy.
The great irony of this campaign is that the “Washington cartel” that Mr. Cruz rails against is the very group he is relying upon in his voter-nullification scheme.
My campaign strategy is to win with the voters. Ted Cruz’s campaign strategy is to win despite them.
What we are seeing now is not a proper use of the rules, but a flagrant abuse of the rules. Delegates are supposed to reflect the decisions of voters, but the system is being rigged by party operatives with “double-agent” delegates who reject the decision of voters.
[There is more, but I have nothing to say about it, so I haven't pasted it here.]
So, having read the editorial, what do I think about his comments and questions?
Red:
Here's the thing about the GOP/RNC: it can, at its discretion, change the rules and/or invent new ones, at any point that it wants to. Does it's ability and authority to do so seem democratic? Well, frankly, no, it doesn't. But then it doesn't need to actually be democratic because the GOP/RNC is not the government itself. It's a private organization, and as such it can create, revise, discard, structure and conduct its processes and rules for them whatever way it wants any time it wants to do so.
One need not like how it works in the GOP, but neither does one need to join the GOP. Most especially, Trump, with his $2B no less, didn't need to run as a Republican. He could have, and IMO should have, stuck with his initial approach of running as an Independent and focusing his vast resources on getting himself on state Presidential ballots and publicizing his platform. Ross Perot ran as an Independent and got ~20% of the vote. Comparing Trump's popularity with Mr. Perot's and perceiving it as being even greater, Trump would, IMO, have had a good shot of winning as an Independent.
Lastly, the direct primary has been evaluated critically. Research into its impact found that it largely had very little impact, with one exception.
For all the capriciousness the GOP may display at the national level, the "Colorado issue" is a state one. The fact is that each state (and each state's political party organizations) has complete control over how it chooses delegates to the respective party conventions. Colorado's GOP announced its approach to selecting 2016 election cycle delegates in August 2015.
- How Do Caucuses Work In Colorado?
- Colorado Republicans cancel presidential vote at 2016 caucus
- 16 questions and answers about the 2016 GOP delegate fight
- Super Tuesday leaves Colorado GOP guessing
- Coloradans voted for those delegates on March 1, 2016.
- Coloradans knew that's what they were voting for, or at least should have seeing as they cast votes. (Individuals should have, if they had any integrity, abstained from the vote if they didn't understand what they were voting for. Note: "should" is not the same as "must.")
- Coloradans knew that the alignment of their chosen delegates would be determined at the Colorado GOP Convention.
- Coloradans knew they were choosing delegates who would be free to act as "trustees." They knew this because their March 1st vote didn't indicate how the delegates would be assigned to candidates.
- What Mr. Cruz did was lobby the chosen delegates to align with him, and he was very successful at getting them to do so.
Additionally, for all Trump's griping about the Colorado process for assigning delegates to the candidates, the fact is his campaign goofed in multiple ways.
- On Saturday, Trump backers passed out flyers at the convention site with official campaign slate of 13 delegates and 13 alternates accompanied by their three-digit number position on the 600-plus person ballot. Seven of the names, however, directed people to the wrong number and one delegate's name was misspelled. Other candidates did not have errors on their slates.
In one case, an erroneous number corresponded with a Cruz supporter. A second flyer handed out by the Trump campaign contained four mismatched names and numbers.
- One Trump alternate, Jerome Parks, was not on the numbers-only ballot at #379 — instead the ballot listed #378 twice.
- On Thursday, a Trump slate of three names in the 7th Congressional District convention contained two that weren't listed on the ballot. The campaign's state director, Patrick Davis, said they failed to pay the necessary fees to qualify.
- The Donald Trump campaign inadvertently guided its supporters to vote for a delegate pledged to support Ted Cruz.
- The Trump campaign hired its Colorado state director on Tuesday before the convention, leaving them "play catch up" in the 11th hour in an effort to organize in Colorado.
- At a congressional district convention, the Trump campaign handed out slate cards that featured two candidates who were not listed on the ballot.
- Trump didn't show up for the Colorado Convention, even though he knew his organization was in utter disarray there. What exec, principal or manager does that? Not one that I know of, at least none that hope to "right the ship."
As goes Trump and his "Colorado was rigged" cries...well, I'd be willing to be somewhat more sympathetic than I am (which is not much at all right now) were he routinely to have offered something other than unsubstantiated bombast. I honestly cannot say that I've seen him ever so much as attempt to present cogent and credible arguments or evidence in support any of his claims.
All I've yet to hear from Trump is one claim after another, all of which are predicated on my agreeing with it before he utters it. Thus his statements are of little value for, assuming I agree with them "from the get go," I sure didn't need him to tell me I'm right and that's it. And what he needs to do is present a good case that "we/he" are right in order to convert open minded and objective opponents. That approach just doesn't work for me because someday, he'll say something I don't agree with, and then I'll among the folks needing to be convinced, and the way Trump attempts to do so -- largely on the strength of his own word or worse, as an ad hominem plea based on himself -- just isn't going to do it.
Just now on CNN's Situation Room: Kristina Pearson, Trump's campaign national spokesperson stated that the Trump campaign knew what the rules were, presumably when they were changed in August 2015. (Interview with Wolf Blitzer.)
Blue:
First:
- Even as Trump rails against "the system," it's the very system that's made him a multibillionaire.
- It's also the very system that's allowed him to be the GOP frontrunner.
Second:
I can't speak for America, but I can for myself say, "Quite well, thank you."
- I went to school and did well (3.5 GPA or higher), which is what I was supposed to do and what "the system" required I do in order to be successful in it.
- Got accepted to a college/university and attended it.
- Planed on declaring one a major, but upon discovering that I liked a different and previously unexplored discipline more, selected that new discipline as one's major.
- Discovered that the leading companies in my chosen field offer internships.
- Called the firms to ask what I needed to do to get an internship with them and spoke impressively (conversation shows maturity, personality, responsibility and intellect across multiple dimensions) with the internship recruiter(s).
- The recruiter(s) noted that I impressed him to the point that he didn't feel the need to do an in-person interview and that if I wanted the internship they have, it was mine.
- Took the internship, performed well at it, and got offered a job that I began upon completion of my senior year in college provided I maintained my high level of performance there. (My GPA was 4.0, but 3.8 or higher is sufficient.)
- I graduated well (3.8+) from college, which is what I was supposed to do and what "the system" required I do in order to be successful in it, and I began working a few weeks afterwards.
- I performed well at my work, so the company offered to fund my MBA if I wanted to pursue one at one of their approved schools of business, but I had to agree to work for them for thee more years after graduating as a condition of accepting the offer.
- I accepted the offer and get my MBA and again graduated among the top 5% of my class.
- I returned to the company and fulfilled my obligation, and in the course of doing so, rose to the upper tier of mid-level management in the company.
- Out of the blue, a recruiter called and asked if I was interested in speaking with a competing company about a position there.
- I agreed to interview with the company.
- After the interview, I received an offer that tripled my already good salary. Just to see how far I could push them, I negotiated with my prospective firm and pushed the offer up to 3.5 times the salary I was then earning.
- I accepted the offer.
- I continued to be a high performer, which is what I was supposed to do and what "the system" required I do in order to be successful in it..
- Seeing my high performance, my superiors promoted me over the years and allowed me to direct/grow my career and company fortunes accruing from that growth the way I wanted.
And no, I'm not anywhere near as well off as Trump, but I am doing well enough that I haven't a reason to complain and so are literally millions of people. Some 29M+ people earn $100K+ per year based on the workforce consisting of ~150M people. One can assert that the quantity should be higher; I get that, but the the quantity isn't so low that Trump's assertions are warranted.
Green:
Members of the club also "read the writing on the wall" and direct their efforts accordingly. That's not one bit different than what Trump has done to create his own fortune.
Frankly, I think a lot of folks are in the Lewis-Kooning's situation instead of the Haynes'. I'm not of a mind to be too sympathetic to the former family. (Note: I don't know the finances of enough families to have this point of view on any basis other than my gut feelings and the fact that I know $100K+/year is enough to do alright in most places in the U.S. provided one's actual means and what one perceives one should be able to afford are in line.)
Hot pink:
And where was the deafening outcry against it? Nobody is making people belong to the GOP either. And the GOP is a private entity that is "owned," whether it's crossed folks' minds or not, by the folks who lead the party. That's no different for the GOP than it is any non-profit organization or company.
I'm not a Republican, but I suggest that rank and file Republicans should have (current events notwithstanding) taken a more active role in the management and rule making of their party. Perhaps they will do so going forward. Why rank and file Republicans think the party is supposed to represent them when they don't actively participate in its procedures and articulate how they want the party to work is beyond me.
Also, why Trump is even running now as a Republican and complaining about these particular issues is also beyond me, but that's his choice to make. I know only that the man's political affiliations have, like his rhetoric, been all over the place.
Purple:
Again, where was the thunderous outcry? Where were they protests? Why didn't the rank and file exert their weight of numbers? I can't say. I can say those things didn't occur, to the extent they did at all, with sufficient force to have an impact that endures and today satisfies the folks who are complaining.
Brown:
Argumentum ad populum
So he says, yet he's not put together and aired even as much of a supporting argument as do USMB members.
Black bold:
That will most likely become true upon the close of the NY GOP primary. It's not true today.
Olive green:
Financial advantage? What financial advantage? Has Trump forgotten that he is a multibillionaire?
He's self funding, right? That means all of his wealth is available to him. And what is he doing? Campaigning on the cheap. Fine that he is doing that; I'm not criticizing him for it. But the fact is that he's also gotten some $2B in free promotion.
Fluorescent Green:
This is the one thing that is unarguably true in the whole editorial.
Lavender:
Are they? Are they in Colorado supposed to do that? It seems to me that Colorado, as it's allowed to, chose to let voters choose delegates and allow delegates to vote for whom they wanted. That's called representative democracy rather than direct democracy.
In a representative democracy, the elected representatives are free to vote using their judgment. Only rarely do they even have enough direct input from enough constituents to even know what most of them want, that is to act as delegates rather than as trustees. Did the delegates have any such reliable input from the voters who elected them, the voters who acquiesced to the change in Colorado's rules? I doubt it...
Have the CO rank and file arisen to throw out their state GOP leaders who enacted the rule change? Not that I can tell. So just how ticked off are most CO GOP voters of the fact that Mr. Cruz won the CO delegates? Seems to me not very much.
