My message to readers

I do not really have a high regard for Donald Trump, but this November he gets my vote. The reasoning is:

1. There are only two choices that really count;
2. Hillary Clinton is certain to try to move this country in the wrong direction, and
3. The only way to prevent this is to elect Donald Trump to the Presidency.

I hope most readers (and everyone else!) agrees.

Gay & lesbian rights and Donald Trump

I am on the e-mailing list of the Human Rights Campaign, mainly I think because I endorsed the gay marriage referendum in Maryland a few years ago. Unfortunately, the HRC has come out strongly against Donald Trump's candidacy, and in this action has forced me to strongly oppose this organization. Mr. Trump invited openly-gay industrialist Peter Thiel to speak at the convention last week. Mr. Thiel must have been worried about being booed for parts of his speech, but this did not occur. And Mr. Trump specifically complimented the delegates for that.

Donald Trump will not single-handedly make the GOP into a pro-LGB party, but he is working to move it in that direction. And HRC's backing of Clinton is working against Trump's attempts in that direction. I say “Shame on you!” to the HRC.

Endorsement for November

This blog endorses the Republican ticket for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency of the United States in November. This isn't quite the same thing as an endorsement of Donald Trump and Michael Pence—I would have preferred any of a number of Republicans who sought the post. But as it stands, it is necessary to vote for Trump and Pence to set this country in a proper direction, at least a better direction than the alternative would provide.

There is, in fact, a ticket I might prefer: the Libertarian ticket of Gary Johnson and William Weld, both experienced Governors with excellent records. But our election system guarantees they have no chance, and a vote for them helps Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine get elected. And it is preventing her election that is more important than Johnson's superiority over Trump. She would continue and expand the policies of the worst president in recent history: Barack Obama.

Donald Trump's approach to appointing people

There are a lot of things I do not like about Donald Trump, but in one way he's making me feel more comfortable supporting him (at least, in the general election). He's made some moves I think show his good talent in one area: appointing the people a President has to.

1. He has chosen Chris Christie to head his transition team. Governor Christie was early on my choice for the Presidency, and having run a state for several years he has the ability to help choose people for a Trump administration who would have the abilities to compensate for Trump's inexperience.

2. To reassure the Senate that his appointments to the Supreme Court will be more conservative than any Democratic president, he has said that he will rely on recommendations by the Heritage Foundation.

3. And finally, Trump's choice of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani to lead a commission on dealing with Islamic terrorism is a retreat from earlier proposals that just would not work — and were called out by Giuliani when he made them!

All of these selections make sense to me.

Donald Trump is starting to make the right moves

Now that Donald Trump is essentially guaranteed to get the Republican nomination for the Presidency, he has begun to make the preparations that a candidate needs to do. He has picked someone to head the transition team that will prepare, if he wins in November, the list of appointments Trump will have to make to replace the team chosen by President Barack Obama. And he picked well. The man he has chosen is one of the two people I would have chosen for the Presidency itself: Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. And I think with Christie in charge of the transition team, if we have a President Trump following the November election, we will have a good team working for him.

And now it's over

With yesterday's decision by John Kasich to end his campaign, Donald Trump has no opposition, and will be the nominee of the Republican Party for this year's Presidential election. He's not the one I would have wanted to see, but when it comes to November, I'll have to vote for him, given the opposition.

Kasich's leaving was fore-ordained. After Ted Cruz left, Trump was sure to make the 1,237 delegates he would need, so Kasich had no chance to get a later ballot where he might get the nod. It was futile to continue.

My wife has a visceral feeling against Trump. She will be supporting Clinton — even, just yesterday, gave the Clinton campaign a small sum of money — though she has some misgivings about her. For me, I'm more negative about Clinton than she is, and more willing to give Trump a chance, so my vote is going to go the other way. And in this very blue state, it won't make much of a difference. Clinton will win it. But I'm hoping Trump turns the polls around. We certainly don't need four years of Hillary Clinton after eight years of Barack Obama.

Right now, this blog is not endorsing Trump. That will happen if and when he is nominated. But on the chance that some unpredictable event happens that changes the picture of an inevitable Trump nomination, I'm holding up on a formal endorsement.

Ted Cruz has left the race…

…and while John Kasich continues to run — I got an e-mail from his organization today asking for funds — it doesn't really look to be at all likely that Donald Trump can be prevented from getting the nomination. The only way a contested convention can be brought about is if enough votes go to Trump's opponents to keep him from getting a majority of the delegates. And that would require Cruz to win a fair number. And he's not going to gain any more. So it looks as though Trump will be nominated.

I'm no fan of Donald Trump, as you know if you have been reading this blog. But in a race against Hillary Clinton, I have to support Trump. Clinton will continue President Barack Obama's unfortunate policies, and if anything, expand them. She was for Obamacare before Obama was. And she's exercised bad judgment in things like the e-mails.

Now I will not deny that Hillary Clinton is competent. But that makes the prospect of her in the White House even more of a scary proposition. While Trump's more outrageous proposals will never come to pass — Congress or the Supreme Court will knock them out — Clinton might actually get hers through, and I shudder to think of what she'll do, and this worries me more.

Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina really puzzles me. In 2010, she ran for the United States Senate in California, and I was hoping she would win, along with gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, but California has just become too “blue” to elect Republicans these days. (Arnold Schwarzenegger was an exception, but he was running in a field of over 100 candidates, and he was the best known, while the opposition was split.) Last year she decided to run for the 2016 Republican nomination for the Presidency, and though she was hardly my first choice, she was easily the best-qualified among the three that had no Governmental experience, so I was rather favorably inclined toward her. But I never anticipated the turn she has taken now.

When she withdrew from the race, it made sense because her polls were so low after an initial upward swing, but it troubled me to see her backing Ted Cruz. Still, I figured she was simply assuming that Cruz and Donald Trump were the only viable candidates, and she obviously did not like Trump. When subsequently she revealed that she had voted for Cruz even though her name was on the Virginia primary ballot, I cringed a bit, because at the time Virginia had its primary, there were others, such as Marco Rubio, who were still considered viable candidates.

And now she has accepted the role of vice-presidential candidate on the Cruz ticket. I never would have thought she'd be all in for Cruz to this extent. I'm obviously disappointed in Fiorina, and while previously I'd have thought she had a good political future (perhaps, now that she lives in Virginia, she could win a seat in the Senate), I've lot a lot of respect for her.

Donald Trump really won big

I am not very happy with Tuesday's results, and I'm getting more and more resigned to Donald Trump's nomination. If he does get the nomination, I'll hold my nose and vote for him in November, of course. The two main reasons are:

1. He's a clown and proposes all sorts of outrageous things, but we do have a Constitution, and most of his outrageous proposals will never happen, either because Congress will never pass such legislation for him to sign, or because the courts will knock them down, and

2. Hillary Clinton may be the most competent person running (assuming it's Trump against her!) but she wants to take this country in the wrong direction and she might actually succeed because she is so skilled. I'd rather take a Trump who might take us in unknown directions than a Clinton that I know will lead us in a bad direction.

So if it's Trump vs. Clinton, I'll vote for Trump, not very enthusiastically, but as the lesser of two evils. And if it's still possible to nominate someone else (as long as it isn't Ted Cruz!) I'll be a lot happier to vote the Republican line. (However, as I said in an earlier post, if Cruz is the nominee, my vote will go to the Libertarian or another minor party candidate!)

Two days till Primary Day…

…and as long as I can make it to the polls, I'll be voting for John Kasich. The polls all say that Donald Trump will win the state, but there seems to be some Kasich support in this district, and I'm hoping it shows that Kasich will win some delegates in the districts near Washington, D. C. (including the one I'm in). At least two of the candidates for my district seat in Congress on the Republican side have openly expressed their support for Kasich (one for Ted Cruz, and two haven't expressed support for anyone that I've seen), and this may be a sign.

Statewide, as I said, Trump will win it, but the polls differ on whether Kasich or Cruz will take 2nd place. I've seen recent poll results both ways.
Probably more eyes will be on Pennsylvania than Maryland, though. And That's probably justified because it's a bigger state. We'll be seeing results for a lot of the Northeast, though: from Rhode Island down to here, except for New York, which voted last week, every one of the Atlantic coastal states votes this Tuesday. It's going to be interesting!

I wish I could believe it!

There is a post I read yesterday, dated a week ago but first coming to my attention yesterday evening, by Seth Abramson on the Huffington Post site, with the title “John Kasich Will Be the Republican Nominee for President.” I really wish I could believe things will play out that way. It would cap a crazy primary election season with the best outcome I could possibly imagine: a Republican ticket that I could enthusiastically support.

The major premise of Abramson's post is that:

Donald Trump needs 1,237 delegates to win on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, and not only will he not get to that figure prior to the Convention — he’d need to win well over 50 percent of the remaining delegates to do so, and even during his current run as front-runner he’s only won 46 percent of delegates — he won’t even get close enough to that mark to pass it via uncommitted delegates at the Convention.

Ted Cruz and John Kasich staying in the race through Cleveland not only will ensure that Trump can’t get close to 1,237 delegates via primary and caucus votes, it will also ensure that both men have a reasonable delegate total by the time they arrive at the Convention — more than enough to keep both of them in the picture in the view of Convention delegates.

So far I think he is right. There is a good chance, even a likelihood, that the first ballot in Cleveland will sho no majority for either Trump or Cruz. However, in his next point he strays into unpredictable territory; whether it will come about is unclear to me:

Republican Party elders have more than enough clout to make sure that “Rule 40(b)” gets changed prior to or at the Convention, thereby enabling Republicans like John Kasich who haven’t won a majority of delegates in eight states to nevertheless be considered for the nomination.

I hope so; it is very important that that rule be changed, and I think the probability of this happening is high enough that I cannot be certain whether it comes about. Certainly, without the change in the rules, Trump gets the nomination, even if Cruz is the one pushing hardest to keep the rule.

The next two points are crucial, and I devoutly hope Abramson is right:

After the first ballot in Cleveland — during which no candidate will have the require[d] delegates for nomination — most of the delegates will be free to vote for whomever they wish, and while Ted Cruz has craftily planted his supporters in many delegations, it’s not nearly enough to get him to 1,237 delegates on the second ballot.

Whereas Ted Cruz is loathed by the Republican Party elite, has lost to Hillary Clinton in head-to-head polls 55 percent of the time since November 2015, and has no actual accomplishments in government to point to, John Kasich hasn’t lost a single head-to-head poll to Hillary Clinton in 2016, is broadly if imperfectly acceptable to both Party elites and movement conservatives, and is far and away the most accomplished Republican primary candidate left.

If “electability” were what mattered most, the second of these would be very important. Will it? Most certainly Kasich is hoping so. It's also what I really wish would happen. I think that last point is the key to Abrahamson's argument. But the next point is equally critical:

Marco Rubio has deliberately held onto his 172 delegates so that he can create a unity ticket with John Kasich in Cleveland — a ticket that will begin with somewhere between 350 and 600 delegates on the first ballot at the Convention, depending upon how many delegates John Kasich wins going forward.

Has Rubio held onto his delegates “so that he can create a unity ticket with John Kasich in Cleveland”? I can't read Rubio's mind. He certainly has a plan to be an influence on the result. So Abrahamson's next point is a given:

Rubio is certain not to give his delegates away for free, nor to give them to his arch-enemies Cruz or Trump, nor to — as some suppose — merely fade into the background when he was and remains among the most ambitious politicians in the Republican Party.

And the next point is also certainly true:

A Kasich/Rubio ticket would appeal to both mainstream Republicans (Kasich) and Tea Partiers (Rubio), to both white and Latino voters, to younger voters who want to see someone relatively young on the ticket, to those looking for a ticket whose members run the gamut from executive to legislative experience at both the state and federal levels, and to those who believe all members of a presidential ticket should hail from a major battleground state.

Yes, a Kasich/Rubio ticket would be acceptable to many Republicans and to people who might be persuaded to vote Republican in November. It would be more than merely acceptable to me: John Kasich started off as one of my two favorite candidates, and ever since Chris Christie dropped out has been my #1 choice; Marco Rubio was originally the person I thought would be the Presidential nominee, and one I would not have any qualms about supporting if he had been nominated. The question is not whether Kasich/Rubio would be a good ticket; it is one which I have already said I would support with enthusiasm. The question is whether all these pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which Abrahamson has put on the table will actually fit together to produce a Kasich/Rubio ticket in reality.

I hope so. I wish I could believe it will happen that way. Nothing could happen at Cleveland that would make me happier.

The primary in just over two weeks

In two weeks and a day, the state of Maryland will hold its primary elections. I have said that the only way I could vote for Donald Trump in the primary was if it looked like the only way to stop Ted Cruz. But all the polls show that in this state, Cruz is a distant third. So I can safely vote for my true first choice: John Kasich. And that is the way I will vote on the 26^th. And anyone else in this state that reads my blog, please do the same.

“I'm a Christian first”

Ted Cruz has been quoted as saying: “I'm a Christian first, American second, conservative third and Republican fourth.” Is this what we want for the Presidency? I think not.

Perhaps a clergyman, whose job is to serve God, should be “a Christian (or whatever religion he is) first.” But I think a President, whose job is to guide the country, has to be an American first.

While I don't like Donald Trump, I'd still take him over Cruz. My first choice is still John Kasich. But if, as Cruz has said, A vote for John Kasich … is a vote for Donald Trump, I say, “So be it.” I'd rather see Trump nominated than Cruz.

Whatever happens, I cannot support Ted Cruz

There are some signs that people who want to thwart Donald Trump's nomination as Republican candidate are coalescing around Ted Cruz. I am quite appalled at this. If Cruz is the nominee, for the first time in over 50 years I could not vote for the Republican candidate for the Presidency. It is clear. Ted Cruz is a religious fanatic, whose view of the Constitution is so far from mine, I could not vote for him. When I read things like

When Cruz says he wants to “reclaim” or “restore” America, he does not only have the Obama administration in mind. This agenda takes him much deeper into the American past. Cruz wants to “restore” the United States to what he believes is its original identity: a Christian nation.

it makes me shudder. This is not my America. I see our country as a pluralistic nation, one which may have a majority of its citizens Christians, but one equally open to all religions, which means the Government should be totally secular.

If it happens that I am forced to choose between Trump and Cruz, I will go with Trump. And if Cruz gets the nomination, though I cannot vote for Hillary Clinton, I will not vote for Cruz in November either. My vote will go to a third-party candidate: which one depends on who will be on the Maryland ballot.

John Kasich for President

The results are in on yesterday's primaries. Marco Rubio, who was the man I expected to be the eventual nominee, did so poorly in his home state of Florida that he quit the race for the Presidency. But John Kasich won Ohio. He won it big. The most recent polls showed him narrowly defeating Donald Trump in Ohio, with the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls showing a 39% to 35% margin. The actual results were 47% to 36%.

I had been withholding an endorsenment, though ever since Chris Christie withdrew, those who read this blog knew that Kasich was my favorite, only because Rubio was still an acceptable choice, and if I thought he was more likely to beat Trump and Ted Cruz, and Kasich did not, I wanted a chance to endorse him. But now the race is down to three men:

1. Donald Trump, an inexperienced-at-politics man whose knowledge of the Constitution is flawed and whose manner is decidedly un-Presidential,
2. Ted Cruz, a religious fanatic whose accession to the Presidency would really hurt our First Amendment rights, and
3. John Kasich, who has been such an outstanding Governor of Ohio that his popularity there, where they know him best, is immense.

With the above characterizations, it is clear that Kasich warrants my support. If it ever comes down to Trump vs. Cruz, I'd take Trump (unlike my wife, who has such a visceral dislike of Trump that she would certainly vote for any Democrat — even socialist Bernard Sanders, though she does not approve of his socialistic politics — to defeat him). But as long as Kasich is in the running, I have to say he is the best choice.

Rally around Cruz? Never!

An article on the Chicago Tribune website entitled “To stop Trump, GOP establishment must rally around Cruz.” The author, John Kass, claims that the only way for the establishment to stop Donald Trump is to back Cruz. And to me, generally supportive of the establishment, this article s plain and simple anathema. The fact is that Cruz represents everything bad within the Republican party. He is simply a bigot, far more than Trump. Note that John Fea of Religion News Service says:

Cruz wants to “restore” the United States to what he believes is its original identity: a Christian nation.

Fea's article is worth reading. And it points out that Cruz' attitude is disavowed even by many “evangelical Christians.” As a non-Christian myself, I believe that the vision of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and others of a nation with a total separation of church and state is the correct one. And no matter what else may be a point of agreement between myself and Ted Cruz, I cannot support him. He wants this to be a Christian nation, and that is not a nation in which I can live. I will even support Trump, if it is the only way to deprive Ted Cruz of the nomination.

Another case of strange bedfellows

Another candidate that I liked and respected has endorsed someone surprising. I was surprised to see Chris Christie, who was one of my two favorites for the 2016 nomination, endorse Donald Trump a few days ago. Now Carly Fiorina, who was not among my top favorites but who I liked enough to count her as someone I could happily endorse if she won the nomination, has endorsed someone I dislike more than Trump: Ted Cruz.

I think in each case the former candidates saw the likely matchup as a Trump-vs.-Cruz competition and endorsed the one they disliked least. Christie (who once was asked his beliefs on evolution and responded “That’s none of your business”) obviously agrees with me that religious beliefs should not override the Constitutional ban on establishment, and like me, he is trying to avoid a Cruz presidency. Fiorina, in her statement endorsing Cruz, said she was horrified by Trump. And she obviously sees Cruz as the best hope to beat him.

As for me, I'm more horrified by Cruz. Sorry, Carly. I like a lot about you, but between Cruz and Trump, I'll hold my nose and choose Trump.

In a Trump vs. Clinton election, the vote will be strange

I'd heard before of well-known Republicans who might vote for Hillary Clinton rather than see Donald Trump in the Presidency, and others, like Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who might go for a third-party candidate. Now along comes former Senator Jim Webb, who considered himself enough of a Democrat that he entered the competition for that party's nomination, who looks to be headed the opposite way.

This November may see some strange voting patterns.

Chris Christie endorsed Donald Trump?

I got a surprise today. One of the two candidates I considered my favorite at the start of this campaign, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who withdrew after the New Hampshire primary, gave his support to Donald Trump.

I guess, on the issues, they are not far apart. When I did a CNN questionnaire a while ago, it showed Christie #2 and Trump #3 in closeness to me. But Trump is someone without any governing experience (something I would think Christie would consider important), and he really turns off a lot of people. (Of course, Christie turns off a lot of people too, but not in quite the same way.) It's not a development I expected — I figured if anyone would get Christie's endorsement, it would be another governor, John Kasich.

Which should drop out? Kasich or Rubio?

I had lately been thinking that even though I preferred John Kasich to Marco Rubio as a candidate, the best thing for the Republican Party this year would be for Kasich to drop out and let the reasonable people in the Republican Party coalesce around Rubio to prevent Donald Trump, or even worse, Ted Cruz, from gaining the nomination. But I saw a post yesterday by Tom Bevan entitled “The Case for Kasich Staying In” which makes a case for the reverse, and I quote it in full:

Admittedly, 2016 is a year in which the electorate—especially the rebellious voters who have turned the GOP primary season upside down—aren’t putting a premium on political experience. But of the five Republican candidates left in the field, there's one person who has the traditional résumé indicative of a president of the United States.

That would be 63-year-old John Richard Kasich of Ohio. He’s a pro-life conservative who emphasizes the working poor. He’s a fiscal conservative who helped maneuver President Bill Clinton into balancing the federal books in the 1990s budget wars. He is also, not to put too fine a point on it, governor of a big Midwestern state with a significant distinction: No Republican has ever ascended to the White House without carrying Ohio.

And the Republican “establishment” is trying to force him out of the race.

I don’t have a horse in the GOP nomination fight, but it was hard to argue with Kasich, who said yesterday that anyone calling for him to leave the 2016 race needs to “chill out.” He has as much right to stay in this race as anyone else—and more than some. I’ll come back to that in a minute.

First, let’s talk about the panic that has gripped vast swaths of the Republican Party in the wake of Donald Trump’s smashing victory in Nevada on Tuesday. After months of denial about the strength of Trump’s appeal and wishful thinking about his imminent demise, the GOP establishment now fears that Trump is on the verge of running away with the nomination. Hence the frantic calls for some sort of “unity ticket,” or for Kasich and Ben Carson to get out—or even for Rick Perry, freshly cleared by the courts Wednesday of bogus and politically motivated charges, to get in as a third party alternative. Republicans are grasping for something, anything, to stop Trump before it’s too late.

The trajectory of this race reminds me of the plot of the classic 1983 anti-war movie “WarGames.” The film starts innocently enough, with a teenager trying to pirate the latest video games accidentally hacking into the U.S. defense network. The computer responds by asking the now iconic question in its halting, robotic voice: “SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?”

This is more or less how the Republican establishment viewed Trump’s entry into the 2016 race: a harmless diversion that would be over in a few weeks. Eight months later Donald Trump is at DEFCON 1, threatening to nuke the Republican establishment and win the nomination, and GOP elites are running around shrieking like Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy trying to break into NORAD and pull the plug on the whole thing.

Except it’s looking more and more like this movie ends with the computer winning. Trump heads into Super Tuesday on March 1 with the wind at his back. He’s leading in 10 of the 11 states up for grabs that day, with a combined 595 delegates in play.

The only state where Trump isn’t leading is Texas. Ted Cruz currently has a 5.2-point lead in the RealClearPolitics Average, though the most recent poll, by TEGNA/SurveyUSA, shows the two candidates tied.

Obviously, Texas is a must win for Cruz. If he loses his home state to Trump, his rationale for being the Trump-stopper is demolished. Similar tests awaits Rubio and Kasich on March 15, when both Florida and Ohio are up for grabs as winner-take-all states, for 99 and 66 delegates, respectively.

In Florida, polls taken in late January show Trump with massive leads and, equally as stunning, with support over 40 percent in a multi-candidate race. A new poll is expected later this morning from Quinnipiac University, which will take into account most of what has transpired in February and will give us a better understanding of where Marco Rubio stands in his home state.

In Ohio, there’s not much data to work with either. The most recent poll, also conducted by Quinnipiac last week, shows Kasich trailing Trump by five points, 31 to 26. Things could, and probably will, change by mid-March, but at the moment Kasich remains within striking distance.

Imagine we wake up on Wednesday morning, March 16, to find that Sen. Rubio has lost Florida to Trump, while Gov. Kasich has beaten Trump in Ohio. If that happens, how do Rubio’s supporters, which include much of the existing GOP officialdom, make the case that Kasich should defer to Rubio? Why wouldn’t the logical argument be the other way around?

Kasich bolsters his argument by pointing to the fact that he runs far better against Hillary Clinton in general election match-ups than either Cruz or Rubio. So why wouldn't establishment Republicans rally behind the most "electable" candidate who carries his home state in the primary?

As we’ve already seen, anything can happen in a race as crazy and unpredictable as this one. Which is why John Kasich has every right to stay in this contest through March 15 and let Republican voters in Florida and Ohio have their voices heard. Until then everyone should listen to Kasich and chill out.

An interesting point. And perhaps that is right. Let's see where things stand on March 15.