quote:

Originally posted by Ironbutt:
Cruz, Kasich, Bush, etc are career politicians & are just showing their true colors. With any luck this will be career ending for them all & be a wake up call for the rest of the Republican party to get their heads & asses wired together.

That's not likely to happen though, because the American public has a very short memory. Hell, most Americans have already forgotten the recent terrorist attacks on our soil, in Europe & all the cop asassinations & are moving on to more important matters, like how much ass one of the Kardashians showed yesterday on her Twatter page.

Many have forgotten the 2016 election and it has not happened yet.
No kidding. I have been asked a few times when the next election is as the asker is just tired of all this.

Cruz this morning

http://www.politico.com/story/...ment-reaction-225943

He walked the Texas delegation through his thinking in giving Wednesday's speech, saying that he had given the Trump campaign ample warning that he was not planning to endorse the Republican Party nominee and that they had spoken three days ago, when the Texas senator made clear that an endorsement would not be forthcoming.

But he did not rule out an endorsement in the future.

“I am watching and listening to make that decision," Cruz said. "The election isn’t today. What I don’t intend to do is go out and throw rocks at Donald. I don’t intend to criticize him."

Nodding to the boos he received on Wednesday night as he left the convention stage, Cruz urged Trump supporters to "not just scream and yell and attack anyone who would dare question our candidates."

"Are you going to vote for Trump?" a delegate demanded. "I will answer the same way I'll answer many many times," Cruz said. "I am doing what millions of Americans are doing. I'm watching, I'm listening. As I told you last night the standard I intend to apply is, which candidate I trust to defend our freedom, be faithful to the Constitution.

"But I can tell you I'm not voting for Hillary," he added.

***************

Cruz is talking as if he really has lost touch. He is in his own little world. Very similar to the delusion that appeared to rule Kasich.

Cruz won't acknowledge that Trump is the Republican candidate.

quote:

Originally posted by justjoe:
Cruz' speech was disgraceful, and revealed a selfish, phony, politician. He opened with the cheapest trick of the slick pol, The Tear Jerker. We've heard it a thousand times from Democrats, especially. It usually involves a child, cancer or some other tragedy, a pathetic letter or a tearful plea to the slick pol.

Every time he made what he thought was a winning point, he paused and smirked. "I am so wonderful!" His voice is oilier than his hair. On and on he went, a longer speech than even Donald's kids delivered, treating us to his exalted vision of ... well, of himself. And the wonder of his politics.

He tried to return to the story of the Dallas LEO's little girl that he was exploiting so shamelessly, but the crowd had had enough of this desperate little ego that would not leave the stage. They drowned him out with boos.

Trump's appearance while Ted was still flailing away on stage was the equivalent of the hook.

Goodbye, Ted, and good riddance to bad rubbish.

Sadly, just like Klinton and Obama, there will always be people that think he is a patriot. They will go to great lengths to defend him, but have little substance to defend him with.

These people have been sold a bill of goods so badly that they are desperate for their own reasons to believe. And they exit reality in an attempt to defend their positions. When the candidate who claims he is the one with integrity, shows again and again that he has none, or at the very least it is for sale at the right price......Houston, they have problems.

I'm not dogmatic about politics. Anyone with a functional brain stem understands that it is about two things- Power and Money. Cruz's little sell out was financed by a promise from some where that he will get one or both. Anyone who thinks that last nights move was idealistic is a fool.

quote:

"But I can tell you I'm not voting for Hillary," he added.

Gosh, thanks so much, Ted. You slimy bastard.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
Cruz this morning

http://www.politico.com/story/...ment-reaction-225943

Cruz won't acknowledge that Trump is the Republican candidate.

It's obvious that he doesn't get why Trump is the candidate chosen by the people. He doesn't see himself as part of the establishment but in reality he is part of it.

He'll never be POTUS.

quote:

Are you going to vote for Trump?" a delegate demanded. "I will answer the same way I'll answer many many times," Cruz said. "I am doing what millions of Americans are doing. I'm watching, I'm listening. As I told you last night the standard I intend to apply is, which candidate I trust to defend our freedom, be faithful to the Constitution.

Pathetic. Who cares what you think Ted? You lost fair and square, now be a man and back the winner.
I now realize two things. First, I once thought Donald was a bit harsh to call him "Lyin' Ted.". But I now see he sniffed out exactly the kind of man Cruz is way before most of us did.
- Second, Cruz is that thinned skinned jerk who likes to dish it out to others, but can't take it himself. He criticized Trump plenty, but his ego is sooo fragile he can't forgive any criticism.
It should've been a clue when Everyone who knows Cruz can't stand him. Ugh.

I voted for Cruz in the primary and I even gave money to his campaign. I'm embarrassed.

He will never get another dime from me nor my vote. What an angry child. "I didn't win the game so I'm taking my football and going home."

He's the only person to ever be ruffed up in a primary campaign.

He calls himself the anti-establishment candidate? What he did last night shows his true colors....

"I know you the little people voted and overwhelmingly elected Trump, but I, Ted Cruz, know better. I should have won and because I didn't win, I will not support the winner you selected."

That, Cruz, is the type of establishment mentality we Americans hate!

Bye Bye Ted. Yes, you are a loser in every way.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
Cruz this morning

http://www.politico.com/story/...ment-reaction-225943

Cruz won't acknowledge that Trump is the Republican candidate.

Well, that should tell you everything you need to know. Puerile behavior. Write him off. He's not a leader. He's an egotistical politician and nothing more.

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:

quote:

Originally posted by arabiancowboy:
What do you know about NATO? Do you think all 28 nations always honor their article 5 pledge? Did they all send troops to Afghanistan when we invoked article 5? So you honestly think it is in the US interest to go to nuclear war with Russia over tiny Baltic states that have no actual meaning to us? Do you think Muslim Turkey is our ally and we should go to war to defend them?

Fuck NATO, it's an organization whose time is gone. Nowadays it will serve to precipitate WW3 more likely than do us any strategic good. It protects us from no one. I liked during the campaign when trump said we would leave NATO. What is its purpose? Of course we should Welch on it, they have welched on us.

Now this is not my election, but NATO happens to be my alliance. In fact the US is the only member to ever have invoked Article 5, which is rather ironic given that it was always considered the indispensable partner to help defend the European members against the immediate Soviet threat from an ocean away. Thus NATO was never seen as protecting the US (because the latter could protect itself) - other than in the global strategic way of forward defense and the free world finding political strength in unity against Communism.

As it is, every NATO partner did indeed deploy forces to Afghanistan - some in small numbers, but with considerable effort in relation to their national military strength. On another board, a Lithuanian (one of those tiny Baltic states) recently pointed out that during the 2008 elections in Afghanistan, theirs was the secondmost-deployed military in NATO there; just two combat companies in total terms, but this out of a single brigade's worth of land forces largely made up of non-deployable conscripts (by my rough calculation, this is akin to the US deploying two brigades). They also lost nine KIAs and 92 WIAs in ISAF, in addition to two KIA in Iraq (not a NATO operation).

The Eastern Europeans which now feel threatened by Russia have been particularly engaged in Afghanistan (and also Iraq) overall compared to many bigger Western members. Poland took over a brigade-level provincial command; they lost 37 KIA. But even Iceland, which has no military at all, deployed some coast guard personnel IIRC to secure Kabul airport. Altogether, NATO partners lost slightly over 1,000 KIAs in Afghanistan compared to about 2,200 Americans.

I note that the value of relationships with allies is one of those "our guy, the other guy" items in US politics. If the other guy snubs them by sending back Churchill busts from the White House and cancelling plans to build missile defense sites in Poland, people are duly outraged. If our guy announces he's going to make those wortless freeloaders pay for the priviledge of American-provided security or cut them lose, they cheer him on. I guess it's just human nature.

I would love to discuss this further, but don't want to gum up this thread. Good post but I stand by my opinion that NATO is no longer in the US interest.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
Cruz this morning

http://www.politico.com/story/...ment-reaction-225943

Cruz won't acknowledge that Trump is the Republican candidate.

Well, that should tell you everything you need to know. Puerile behavior. Write him off. He's not a leader. He's an egotistical politician and nothing more.

"I had to speak the truth," Cruz said in a brief interview following his speech. "It's going to be an interesting couple of days. The chips will fall where they may."

Indeed they will.

Why Cruz felt the need to come to convention and make that speech, I have no idea. He would have been much better off staying home.

quote:

Originally posted by ChicagoSigMan:

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
Cruz this morning

http://www.politico.com/story/...ment-reaction-225943

Cruz won't acknowledge that Trump is the Republican candidate.

Well, that should tell you everything you need to know. Puerile behavior. Write him off. He's not a leader. He's an egotistical politician and nothing more.

"I had to speak the truth," Cruz said in a brief interview following his speech. "It's going to be an interesting couple of days. The chips will fall where they may."

Indeed they will.

Why Cruz felt the need to come to convention and make that speech, I have no idea. He would have been much better off staying home.

We all would have been.

Cruz needs to take his goofy ass back to Canada.

Trump knew about the content of the speech and let him press on.

Let Cruz hoist with his own petard.

He keeps doing stuff like this, he's gonna put a lotta snakes in Hillary's head.

Sun Tzu would smile.

Yep Trump knew no endorsement was coming accord to Cruz 3 days prior and that Cruz provided his speech several hours prior and they let him go on.

Basically used Cruz to stir up the people, and followed it up with Newts speech that lambasted Cruz..

Trump is pretty good at this stuff....

There is a line from "Lawrence of Arabia" that applies to Cruz:
"Give thanks to God, Brighton, that when He made you a fool, He gave you a fool's face"

The First Rate ass clown took the most destructive path, with full forethought, given his knowledge of the precise wording of Ted Cruz's speech. Instead of accepting the support, he decided to rally around the lack of an endorsement. If voting for Donald Trump is voting your conscience, what was wrong with the speech?

This is What Ted Cruz REALLY Proved Last Night
Last night, Ted Cruz proved a lot of things about himself and about the things he believed. But the most important thing he proved was about Donald Trump's supporters: he proved that they are more interested in settling perceived grievances with the Republican party than they are in actually winning the White House.

Here's how I know: Mike Pence gave a speech last night. Pence is the party's Vice Presidential nominee. The success of his speech is a big deal to the success of the party's ticket in November. It's important for Pence's speech to make a big splash and a big impression on the population. Much, much more important than whether or not Ted Cruz endorsed him or not.

And yet, if you check social media and in the news, the Trump supporters might as well have not even seen Mike Pence's speech. None of them are talking about it. None of them are the slightest bit interested in what Pence brings to the ticket or his vision for America. On the other hand, they are hopping mad and incessantly bitching about Ted Cruz not endorsing Trump - in spite of the fact that the first words out of Cruz's mouth were congratulating Donald Trump for his victory, and in spite of the fact that he did not say a single negative word about Trump, and additionally in spite of the fact that he encouraged people not to stay home in November.

Let's be clear about something: contrary to what a bunch of ill-informed Trump supporting idiots are saying on Twitter, Cruz's speech - including the absence of an explicit endorsement of Trump - was pre-cleared by both the RNC and Trump. his speech, including the non-endorsement of Trump, was not a surprise to the RNC or Trump in any way. Even Donald Trump himself admitted this on Twitter, and for once Trump's twitter is not full of crap. I began to hear reports in the afternoon that Cruz told the RNC that he would not endorse Trump, and that the RNC was exerting a lot of pressure on him to change his mind, but that he firmly told them that he would not. He said he would congratulate Donald Trump, would avoid saying anything negative about Trump, and talk about the principles he stood for. The RNC and Trump both agreed to let him proceed with the speech as is. So the idea that Cruz sprung this on them as some sort of surprise is absolute BS.

Another piece of BS that has been circulated by the RNC to throw dirt on Ted Cruz is that he gave different remarks on stage than the prepared ones he submitted to the RNC for review. Unfortunately, the RNC screwed themselves on this score by sending to media organization prepared copies of Ted Cruz remarks which show that Cruz said exactly what his prepared remarks indicated.

In fact, in response to the news that Cruz was going to make a speech that did not explicitly endorse him, Trump intentionally chose to escalate the situation by leaking the news to friendly delegations and instructing them to boo Cruz to make this a bigger deal that it otherwise would have been. If Trump's delegates had not booed and caused a ruckus, but instead had remained silent or applauded at Cruz's exhortation to vote for down ticket races, everyone today would be talking about Pence and his speech, and the discussion would be about positive things associated with Trump and Pence and how they are going to move forward after the convention to at least possible victory.

But that is not what Trump's supporters are interested in. They are interested in having a constant object of hatred and scorn, and it's preferred if the target is a Republican. This is the driving force behind their support for Trump, principles be damned. Trump knows it too, which is why he was perfectly happy to let Ted Cruz go on stage, as long as the signal was clearly sent to his supporters that Ted Cruz is supposed to be the new object of hate.

Trump's supporters really and truly don't understand how well he constantly plays them. He treats them exactly like he treats his reality TV audience, and he knows that the successful ingredient to any "reality" TV show is the character who everyone loves to hate. I really only watched the first season of The Apprentice and for that season it was Omarosa. I assume subsequent seasons of The Apprentice had it but pretty much every reality TV show includes this character on purpose - for Survivor it was Richard Hatch, The Bachelor had Courtney, and so on and so on. "Reality" TV understands that nothing keeps viewers coming back like someone they want to see get "kicked off," preferably in some humiliating fashion.

Trump has played that note to perfection throughout the GOP primary, leading his slobbering mass of followers from one object of hatred to another. You can tell they are buying into it from the way they talk about Trump's opponents, and the way they take glee at Trump's utter destruction of them. The idea of Trump winning is really beside the point for them - they want to see people lose.

There's a reason Trump continues to do this to Republicans even throughout his own convention - it's because he can't put Hillary in that position with the general voting public - which still dislikes him more than it dislikes her. So instead he continues to litigate the GOP primary endlessly, pulling his supporters along and pointing them at objects of Republican hatred and destruction all along the way.

I dunno. I've heard a lot of well-intentioned Republicans like Paul Ryan and Scott Walker make impassioned pleas this week to get on board the Trump Train for the sake of winning against Hillary. What I can't understand is why these people can't see that winning against Hillary isn't the point of what either Trump or his followers are doing. They're just working out perceived grievances with the GOP, and when they get bored with Ted Cruz, they might well fixate on you next, if that's what Trump tells them to do.

The time for focusing on beating Hillary has passed. That ship sailed when the party didn't feel like defeating Trump was an important enough reason to unite behind Cruz (or someone else, I would have taken any of the other candidates, personally). Trump himself isn't going to focus on it, and neither will his supporters. So why are you begging conservatives to join in the destruction of their own party?

quote:

Cruz

"Once a sleezeball, always a sleezeball." Anonymous (but quoted frequently)

^ need a tissue for that malarkey-laden tear fest?

quote:

Sun Tzu would smile

Indeed.

Ferreting out the rats, en masse.

So why isn't Kasich at the convention? I don't remember any real nasty stuff between Kasich and Trump. I recall Trump saying that Kasich needed to get out but I don't recall any name calling or anything that would keep him from attending. Am I forgetting something? What is his problem?

quote:

Originally posted by gw3971:
What is his (Kasich) problem?

Ego and panties in a knot.