Billionaires lining up for Trump aren’t sure where to send their money

[bemildred]

Leading Republicans are increasingly anxious that presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is lagging far behind Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton when it comes to having an organized network of big-money allies, triggering a chaotic scramble to set up a clear super PAC structure.

Because Trump condemned such entities throughout the primary contest, there is no dominant group ready to channel the resources of the billionaires lining up to back him, including casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has signaled plans to inject tens of millions into the race.

That leaves Trump advisers, GOP strategists and major donors puzzling over a key strategic question: Where should the six- and seven-figure contributions go?

Clinton’s allies have built a deeply funded constellation of independent groups, and her main super PAC is readying a $130 million ad blitz that will kick off just weeks from now. The fundraising imbalance is acute: The top three super PACs supporting Clinton had collected about $80 million through the end of March, compared with just $8 million by several potential Republican presidential players including American Crossroads, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/billionaires-lining-up-for-trump-arent-sure-where-to-send-their-money/2016/05/15/aa7896e2-1953-11e6-9e16-2e5a123aac62_story.html

[bemildred]

1. Little Is Off Limits as Donald Trump Plans Attacks on Hillary Clinton

Donald J. Trump plans to throw Bill Clinton’s infidelities in Hillary Clinton’s face on live television during the presidential debates this fall, questioning whether she enabled his behavior and sought to discredit the women involved.

Mr. Trump will try to hold her accountable for security lapses at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and for the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens there.

And he intends to portray Mrs. Clinton as fundamentally corrupt, invoking everything from her cattle futures trades in the late 1970s to the federal investigation into her email practices as secretary of state.

Drawing on psychological warfare tactics that Mr. Trump used to defeat “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, “Little Marco” Rubio and “Low-Energy” Jeb Bush in the Republican primaries, the Trump campaign is mapping out character attacks on the Clintons to try to increase their negative poll ratings and bait them into making political mistakes, according to interviews with Mr. Trump and his advisers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/us/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html

[bemildred]

2. Can The GOP Hold The Senate By Pretending Donald Trump Doesn't Exist?

Republicans hoping to hold onto their seats in the Senate are already running their races publicly like Donald Trump is invisible -- and hoping voters don't make the connection.

"Listen, it doesn't matter who is the presidential candidate, you've got to run your own campaign in your state and do it with the issues that are important to the people in your state," said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) who is fighting to win his seventh Senate term in November.

Grassley is one of nearly a dozen potentially vulnerable Republicans facing re-election this fall who have to contend with Trump at the top of their ticket. He has won at least 60 percent of the vote every time he's run for re-election, but he is facing what may be his hardest election yet.

"I'm running my own race" is a common refrain for down-ballot candidates when a party leader casts a dark shadow over the election. It was the strategy Democrats deployed in the 2014 midterm election when Obama was unpopular in the South. How did that go? Republicans gained nine Senate seats and retook the majority that cycle.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/go-it-alone-is-the-gop-plan-to-keep-the-senate

[Arkansas Granny]

4. Republicans will wear DT around their necks like an albatross.

[bemildred]

3. How Donald Trump Made Wall Street Kiss His... Ring

The No. 1 thing for me is that I grew up a Republican,” Anthony Scaramucci was telling me last week, inside the Bellagio Hotel and Casino, in Las Vegas. Scaramucci, who is known affectionately on Wall Street as “The Mooch,” is a man of many talents. The former Goldman Sachs private-wealth manager runs the successful hedge fund SkyBridge Capital. He’s also an owner of the Hunt & Fish Club, a Midtown Manhattan restaurant that caters to Wall Street types who neither hunt nor fish. (It does, however, feature a nice kosher ribeye for $61.)

The Mooch also throws the annual SALT Conference, which is fast becoming the hedge-fund industry’s equivalent of the Allen & Co. Sun Valley confab. SALT is set, almost too perfectly, in Vegas. Scaramucci and I were speaking after a dinner with SALT grandees including John Boehner, T. Boone Pickens, Ken Griffin, David Petraeus, Larry Summers, and, somewhat curiously, Will Smith. (I was part of the festivities; this year, I interviewed my Vanity Fair colleague Michael Lewis.)

But the Mooch’s latest trick may be his newfound political flexibility. Two months ago, I attended a luncheon at the Hunt & Fish Club to which Scaramucci invited the renowned pollster Frank Luntz in order to show a number of videos illustrating Donald Trump’s strength as a candidate. The Mooch, who had initially supported Scott Walker before turning to Jeb Bush, was noticeably chastened by the presentation. “I’m going to say one last thing to the Democrats here, because I really don’t want Trump to be president, so I want you to listen very carefully, O.K.?” Scarmucci declared that afternoon. “He was underestimated by Walker and his team. He was mis-underestimated—which is a George W. Bush word and which doesn’t exist—he was mis-underestimated by the Jeb Bush team. Now he’s been completely mis-underestimated by the entire Republican Party. And when she”—referring to Hillary Clinton—“talks about him, she sounds and smells like she’s already underestimating him. So I’m just giving you guys a heads up. Do not underestimate the guy.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/05/how-donald-trump-made-wall-street-kiss-his-ring

[bemildred]

5. The Republican Party now belongs to Donald Trump

When Donald Trump became the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee, he successfully reversed the ruling order of the Republican Party. Those who were last are now first. And for the first time in decades, someone had united the non-conservative factions of the Republican Party.

Is it any wonder Republicans seem disoriented?

The conservative movement, whose ideas long dominated the Republican Party, had its natural base in the anti-New Deal middle West and the individualist far West. Theirs was a synthesis of Robert Taft's conservatism and Barry Goldwater's austere individualism. Eventually, this movement assimilated to itself the churched evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons of the Moral Majority, along with hawkish neoconservative intellectuals. Naturally, this coalition was on the side of business owners ("You didn't build that&quot , free trade, and unrestricted immigration. It was hawkish and moralizing, and its intellectuals had a preoccupation with sound doctrine. They talked about capital-P Principles. These were the conservatives who came to dominate the party after the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions.

But now, at the moment of that coalition's strenuous exhaustion, Donald Trump has built a new coalition that draws from everyone else in the Republican fold. And he won.

http://theweek.com/articles/624183/republican-party-now-belongs-donald-trump

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

6. They could give it to charity

Most of them are fairly old and you can't take your money with you when you die.