All the media are missing the real story tonight:
Finally, the way is clear for John Kasich, the last hope for sane Republicans everywhere.
No more distraction from that Cruz guy, whom John Boehner summed up so neatly. The nation has dodged a bullet, but it still has a howitzer round coming on, name of Trump.
Finally, Kasich has a shot at some of the press attention he deserves. And, one hopes, notice from the voters. Just enough to keep delaying Trump getting that magic number. Just enough to stay alive, to remain the one alternative going into Cleveland.
And where else can the Bushes and the Lindsey Grahams and the Romneys now turn? It’s time for them to line up behind a guy they actually respect for a change. They’ve tried the opposite course, and it didn’t work.
Oh, they all said he was crazy. And just watch — by tomorrow the calls for him to drop out will be legion.
But he won’t pay attention. He knows what he’s doing. He knows it’s a hoop and not a “ring.” His gameplan has always been to make it to a contested convention. He’ll keep playing with only four guys on the court, like Coach Norman Dale, and everyone will call him mad.
Except Shooter, sitting alone in a dark corner of the bleachers grinning and shaking his head, the one guy in the gym who knows what the coach is up to, and admires him for it.
In case you haven’t picked up on it, I’m Shooter. You see me at 2:37 in the clip above…
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I knew Jimmy Chitwood. John Kasich is no Jimmy Chitwood.
Which states will Kasich win? When will he pass Rubio to reach third place?
By the way, Trump had almost as many votes in Indiana as Hillary and Sanders combined.
As I said on a previous post, he doesn’t have to win any more states. He’s already won. He’s the last viable candidate seeking the Republican nomination. He’s the GOP’s only chance to win in the fall, and hold on to Congress. Any Republican who doesn’t see that is nuts…
He can’t win. He is down 40 points to Trump in West Virginia and California. The few states that Cruz might have done better in will go to Trump now. Trump is on a clear path to the first ballot no matter how much wishing, hoping, and dreaming you do. Kasich is a dead man walking.
It’s going to be difficult for him to win when Trump will sweep the remaining states. Maybe Kasich can park cars at the convention.
You do understand that he HAS to win some states, right? If he doesn’t, Trump is the nominee easily with plenty of delegates to spare. I’ll give Kasich a 50/50 chance in Oregon and Washington, which are really Democratic states. But unless Kasich wins California, it is over…
“He’s the GOP’s only chance to win in the fall, and hold on to Congress.”
In that case, they’ve already lost.
Kasich isn’t even worthy of talking about, even with Cruz out of the way Kasich will still struggle to get 10% of the vote. He needs to stop wasting his time and money.
Kasich needs Jimmy Chitwood to stand up at the town meeting and say, “I think it’s time for me to start playing again. Only one condition: I play, Coach Kasich stays…”
A more plausible hail Mary for Republicans is to get a mainstream Republican to run as a third party candidate and win enough electoral votes to send the election to the House. Romney? Rubio? Nobody would accuse them of deserting the party.
As much as I prefer Kasich to Trump, a contested convention is really not a good idea at this point. If the Republican party were to try to bypass Trump at convention it would cause an uprising, both verbal and physical. It could possibly start a civil war. Crazy? Maybe, but I look at Trump’s supporters and feel the anger in the air. I think it could happen. Talk about disaster!
As bad as Trump is, Cruz was the toxic one in the GOP field.
I hope people in the GOP stop trying to out right flank each other; it is a dead end strategy for actually winning the general election. I heard again last evening before he dropped out how Cruz has run a textbook GOP campaign. They meant t as a compliment; it should not be.
We need candidates – and parties – who play to win. What we have now are candidates and parties who play to terrorize the other kids in their own sandboxes. The moral bankruptcy of this is just staggering.
Ted Cruz’s strategy of working hard to be disliked inside the Beltway in order to be liked outside the Beltway was a costly strategy for someone seeking a presidential nomination the “traditional” way. The nomination of each party is, in the end, a party process, not a public process. The leaders of that party—the senators, governors and congressman—have to run on the ticket with the presidential candidate and they have to govern with the eventual president. So they have a deep and serious interest in who the nominee of their party is. As Cruz tried to move to an inside game, he needed them and they just weren’t there with him.
We have always had divisions between political parties in this country but in the past and remembering with a sense of nostalgia, they found a way to work together. I am not sure when nor can an exact date be applied that can pinpoint when the division(s) started the disastrous course of widening to the point we are today. It is not a clear cut time but a slow then suddenly rapidly increasing division and the opportunists who took advantage of our differences to parlay them into the vitrolic atmosphere we are living in today. And, it seems to have no end in sight.
We are facing an election that will place one of the most unqualified occupants in the White House for the first time in our history. It makes no difference whether it is Hillary or Trump, neither one is worthy to occupy the seat as head of the most powerful country in the world today. Many will use the excuse that one is not as bad as the other but in almost every way imaginable, each one is just as bad as the other in every way possible.
Hillary is no different than Trump because in the end, neither one is running for the good of the country, each one is running for their own self satisfaction, self aggrandizement, and hunger for power and the prize is the most powerful position in the world, the presidency of the United States of America.
The “Trail of Tears” is an apt comparison to the trail of defeated opponents left behind by Clinton and Trump and one of them will occupy the White House come January of 2017. And if anyone believes Clinton or Trump can pull this country together unless one is wearing blinders and lives in a cave, they are delusional. If anything, it will only increase the anger, dissatifaction, unrest, and further divide this nation.
The other harsh truth is that Clinton’s standing outside our borders is only slightly higher than Trump’s.
Once someone on his team sees this post, Kasich will no doubt be calling me for advice. I know just what I’m gonna tell him:
I would feel SO smart if I understood everything Shooter was saying there.
I get that he’s saying Cedar Knob has no tall players, and you’ve got to keep them back from under the boards and make them take long shots.
Why not play them man-to-man? Is it that a good zone will squeeze out short players, whereas little guys are too nimble to keep up with man-to-man?
And what does he mean by “No drive, 12 foot in?” Does he mean Cedar Knob has no such drive, or that you have to deny them the ability to drive in that zone? Or does Hickory lack that ability? The lack of a subject in the sentence is confusing.
Also, what does he mean by “squeeze ’em back in the paint?” It seems to me by the context that Hickory needs to squeeze them back out of the paint altogether, if you want them chucking it from the cheap seats.
Did Coach Dale understand him? I think he did…
Remember in “Blazing Saddles,” when the old prospector addressed the town meeting in Authentic Frontier Gibberish?
Maybe Shooter was speaking in Authentic Hoosier Basketball Gibberish…
A well played zone defense allows pressure by more than one player on the person with the ball. I remember a friend with twins who told me that as the children aged he had to transition from man-to-man to zone, i.e., focusing attention where it was needed.
Well, I totally understand it with regard to child-rearing.
When my wife learned she was pregnant with our third, her obstetrician, who I think had six kids, said adjusting to this one would be the hardest, because it would be the first time we were outnumbered.
When two kids are crying, they can each be comforted by a parent. When there are three, man-to-man isn’t possible. And they’re a bunch of mites, so the analogy works… 🙂
“By the way, Trump had almost as many votes in Indiana as Hillary and Sanders combined.”
And by the way, Doug, overall Hillary has a nearly two million vote lead over Trump (and Sanders has outpolled Cruz). How much that matters is hard to say; nobody really expected Indiana to make a difference in the Democratic race (Hillary barely contested it), but on the Republican side all knew it was going to be decisive. Hot races attract voters. The general will be different.
“Overall” vote totals don’t matter in an electoral college system. All that matters are the swing states. Hillary can rack up the votes in blue state and it won’t make a difference if she goes on to lose Ohio, Florida, Missouri, etc. Indiana was red in 2012. Trump’s showing last night would suggest he has a shot there. He has to win all the states Romney won plus some combination of (Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Colorado, New Mexico) that gets him 64 more electoral votes. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan could get him 54. New Jersey is worth 14. He wins those Romney states plus those 4 and he’s the next President. Are we all sure that Hillary is a lock in the Rust Belt?
Hillary is absolutely NOT a lock in the Rust Belt, if you count coal country in the belt…
That’s why Trump being nominated is such a disaster for the United States of America. Hillary. Could. Lose.
Breaking news: Kasich is suspending his campaign; presser at 1700.
Yes, I have a separate post on that…