Ted Cruz's Win in Wisconsin Proves No One Can Unify the GOP

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/36259-focus-ted-cruzs-win-in-wisconsin-proves-no-one-can-unify-the-gop

Donald Trump was handily defeated by Ted Cruz in the Wisconsin primary last night. Can Cruz’s victory mainly be attributed to big spending by stop-Trump super-pacs and the Trump campaign’s recent calamities, or is Cruz connecting with voters?

I’d vote for the former. Trump has said that he could win elections even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue. He came close to testing that theory by defending his campaign manager’s assault of a female reporter, taking multiple abortion stands, and adopting a policy on nukes that seems to have been gleaned from Dr. Strangelove. The #NeverTrump forces in Wisconsin, led by the state’s powerful local conservative-talk-show stars, capitalized on every blunder. But the notion that there’s a mass movement within the national GOP for Cruz either among Republican potentates or within the grassroots is a fantasy. Cruz appeals to the hard-core right and Evangelicals and that’s it. This is likely to become more evident than ever as the primary moves on to New York and Pennsylvania.

Remember the constant refrain that Trump can’t clear 50 percent in any state? Well, Cruz didn’t either in Wisconsin, just as John Kasich failed to do so in his single win in his home state of Ohio. The simple truth confirmed once more by Wisconsin is that no one can. A contested convention in which the various camps conduct trench warfare to win over, steal, or bribe unbound delegates seems near-certain. And then what happens? This has been the week of the Paul Ryan scenario, in which the Speaker of the House, a true-red conservative acceptable to many factions of the party and backed by the Koch brothers’ clout and cash, magnanimously overcomes his professed reluctance to a presidential draft and rides to the rescue.

Dream on. If that happens, there will be a wholesale revolt by the grassroots. Trump and Cruz are favored by the vast majority of the Republican electorate; they collectively racked up 83 percent of the Wisconsin vote. There will be those riots Trump has promised, and there could be a third-party bid just large enough to assure defeat in November (if it wasn’t assured already).

[Hortensis]

1. Let's hope so! That any of these dangerous and

dysfunctional anti-democratic extremists can be this close to the presidency is a failure of democracy. We the people have to be wiser.

Speaking of which, about depending on that Republican "grass roots" to save us from an extremist right-wing presidency and SCOTUS...

[PATRICK]

2. Cruz is hated

because he has screwed the party bigtime from the inside but they need him to hit the outsider with the same people they despise and who strangely are the most or only motivated voters the party has. With problems like this maybe they should move what's left down to Uruguay(apologies, I don't mean to dump our waste products on foreign shores).

A brokered convention likely will have Cruz as Veep for his pains in stopping Trump. Ah, the party of fear and loathing in its final manifestation!