"The GOP Is On The Verge Of A Meltdown": Senior Republicans Threaten To Vote For Hillary
28
February, 2016
With
Donald Trump set for a yuuge victory in tomorrow's Super Tuesday
slugfest - oddsmakers
see 80% chance of Trump being the nominee -
tensions are mounting dramatically within the Republican
establishment. As
The FT reports, many
mainstream Republicans believe Mr Trump would struggle to beat
Hillary Clinton and are urgently rallying around their man Rubio with
some senior Republicans saying privately that they might consider
voting for Mrs Clinton if Mr Trump were to end up as their party
nominee as
one conservative commentator exclaimed "we
are on the verge of a real meltdown in the Republican party."
Trump's
lead in the polls over his GOP nominee 'peers' continues to grow...
As
The FT reports, while
Mr Rubio and Mr Trump ramp up their attacks on each other ahead of
the March 1 primaries, Republican
grandees and lawmakers are turning to the Florida senator as they
become increasingly worried that the property tycoon could lock up
the GOP presidential nomination within three weeks.
They fear that a victory for Mr Trump could fatally fracture the party and prevent them from winning the White House in November.
Many mainstream Republicans believe Mr Trump would struggle to beat Hillary Clinton, the clear Democratic frontrunner after her resounding victory over Bernie Sanders in South Carolina on Saturday, given the comments he has made about Hispanics, Muslims, women, disabled people and people who have criticised his campaign.
But,
as the following chart shows, it's
far too close to call...
The
FT goes
on to note that Mr Trump on Sunday issued a thinly-veiled
warning that he would consider running as an independent.
“The Republican Establishment has been pushing for lightweight Senator Marco Rubio to say anything to “hit” Trump. I signed the pledge-careful,” he tweeted, a reference to a pledge that all candidates signed to back the party’s eventual nominee.
As
panic is setting in within The GOP...
“We are on the verge of a real meltdown in the Republican party,” Hugh Hewitt, the influential conservative radio talk-show host told ABC television on Sunday.
Some senior Republicans have said privately that they might consider voting for Mrs Clinton if Mr Trump were to end up as their party nominee. “You’ll see a lot of Republicans do that,” Christine Whitman, the former New Jersey governor who previously compared Mr Trump to Hitler, told the New Jersey Star-Ledger.
“We don’t want to. But I know I won’t vote for Trump.”
But
none other than Rupert Murdoch chimed in at the craziness and
infighting...
Rupert Murdoch
Both "establishment" Republicans and Trump need to cool it and close ranks to fight real enemy. Trump, Rubio, Kasich could all win general.
And
now the neocons are declaring war on Trump (as
The Intercept notes)...
Donald Trump’s runaway success in the GOP primaries so far is setting off alarm bells among neoconservatives who are worried he will not pursue the same bellicose foreign policy that has dominated Republican thinking for decades.
Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan — one of the prime intellectual backers of the Iraq warand an advocate for Syrian intervention — announced in the Washington Post last week that if Trump secures the nomination “the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.”
Max Boot, an unrepentant supporter of the Iraq war, wrote in the Weekly Standard that a “Trump presidency would represent the death knell of America as a great power,” citing, among other things, Trump’s objection to a large American troop presence in South Korea.
Trump has done much to trigger the scorn of neocon pundits. He denounced the Iraq war as a mistake based on Bush administration lies, just prior to scoring a sizable victory in the South Carolina GOP primary. In last week’s contentious GOP presidential debate, he defended the concept of neutrality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is utterly taboo on the neocon right. “It serves no purpose to say you have a good guy and a bad guy,” he said, pledging to take a neutral position in negotiating peace.
With
Trump’s ascendancy, it’s possible that the parties will re-orient
their views on war and peace, with
Trump moving the GOP to a more dovish direction and Clinton moving
the Democrats towards greater support for war.
Military Would Revolt Against Trump, Former CIA Director Says
28
February, 2016
Earlier
today, we noted that America’s presumed candidate for the GOP
nomination is busy
retweetingMussolini
quotes.
It’s
not entirely clear that Donald Trump understands the movement he’s
started. But America's entrenched political establishment is now
scrambling to understand how to deal with the Trump juggernaut and
it's not just politicians who are concerned.
Indeed,
former intelligence officials now say the brazen billionaire could
face a veritable security rebellion if he's elected.
“I
would be incredibly concerned if a President Trump governed in a way
that was consistent with the language that candidate Trump expressed
during the campaign,” Former CIA director Michael Hayden said,
in an interview with Bill Maher. Hayden also says that the armed
forces would simply refuse to follow Trump's orders were he to be
elected and follow through on his campaign promises.
Here's
what Hayden had to say about Trump's promise to kill family members
of ISIS: "God, no! Let me give you a punchline: If he were to
order that once in government, the
American armed forces would refuse to act. You
cannot—you are not committed, you are not required, in fact you’re
required to not follow an unlawful order. That would be in violation
of all the international laws of armed conflict. There
would be a coup in this country."
Would
Trump face a military coup or would Trump simply commandeer the
military? You decide. Here's the clip:
Here's some mainstream coverage
Tulsi Gabbard talks Sanders endorsement
Super Tuesday scenarios: Can Bernie
Sanders stop Hillary ...
Super Tuesday scenarios: Can Donald
Trump be stopped?
Caught On Tape: Aggressive Time Reporter "Choke Slammed" At Trump Rally By Secret Service
Donald
Trump is causing quite the ruckus in American politics.
What
started as a parody campaign has now, nine months later, mushroomed
into a legitimate bid for the White House. That's upsetting to the
political establishment on both sides of the aisle and now, both the
media and America's entrenched political establishment are struggling
to come to terms with the brazen billionaire's success.
Last
week, in what some view as a prelude to a fascist future for America,
Trump suggested he would change libel laws in order to give himself
greater scope to sue journalists who pen negative articles about him.
But as you'll see from the clip shown below, he may have had a
legitimate reason for his position.
Here
is the start of the altercation:
"I
never touched him," Morris says, in what appears to be a lie.
Moments
ago the Secret Service officially admitted that the photographer
really did attack a secret service agent, who perhaps was expecting
the altrecation to be with a paid Trump bodyguard, which would allow
him to claim media repression.
It
did not quite work out that way.
As The
Hill adds, in
an afternoon blog post, Time confirmed that Morris was the
photographer involved and explained, step by step, what the magazine
believes happened.
"TIME
has contacted the U.S. Secret Service to express concerns about the
level and nature of the agent’s response. Morris has also expressed
remorse for his part in escalating the confrontation," according
to the post.
A
spokesman said in the statement, “We are relieved that Chris is
feeling OK, and we expect him to be back at work soon.”
The
reporter, Perticone, published additional
video on Twitter he
says occurred moments before the interaction between the security
guard and Morris "got physical."
The
guard says to Morris, "Get in the pen." Morris is then
heard to say, "F--- you."
Also
shown in Perticone's second video are African-American protesters
walking past the press pen chanting and shaking their fists.
WSET
reporter Annie Anderson posted a third
video in
which she says she interviewed Morris as he was being escorted out of
the Trump rally.
In
the video, Morris says, "I never punched him. I never touched
him. At the very end I tried to show ... the press lead what he did
to me. And I said he choked me so I put my hand on him. And that's
when I was arrested."
Which
is odd, because it doesn't appear that Morris was actually arrested
at any time during the encounter
Donald
Trump Is Winning
Because White America Is
Dying
Noam
Chomsky says Trump's rise is partly due to deeply rooted -- and
potentially fatal -- feelings of fear and anger.
By
Matt Ferner
29
February, 2016
February
29, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Huffington
Post"
- Noam Chomsky, the renowned scholar and MIT professor
emeritus, says that the rise of Donald Trump in American politics is,
in part, fueled by deeply rooted fear and hopelessness that may be
caused by an alarming spike in mortality rates for a generation of
poorly educated whites.
“He’s
evidently appealing to deep feelings of anger, fear, frustration,
hopelessness, probably among sectors like those that are seeing an
increase in mortality, something unheard of apart from war and
catastrophe," Chomsky told The Huffington Post in an
interview on Thursday.
Trump's
rise as the Republican presidential front-runner has been confounding
for Americans across the political spectrum. The bombastic,
billionaire demagogue has won three
of the first four primary states and holds a lead in the
polls, both nationwide and in upcoming primary contests. He now
appears poised to take an insurmountable
delegate lead over the next several weeks, based on a
platform of hate and vitriol targeted
at women, Latinos, Muslims and otherminorities.
A
legion of less
educated, working-class white
men has fueled Trump’s rise. And while many say the business mogul
is capitalizing on their fears about the
perceived decline of white dominance in America, Chomsky
says there may also be more existential forces at play.
Life
expectancy, in general, has increased steadily over time. And thanks
largely to advances
in health care, many people around the world live longer lives.
There are exceptions, of course -- during war or natural
catastrophes, for example. But what’s happening now in America, he
says, is “quite different.”
Despite
vast wealth and modern medicine, the U.S. has lower average life
expectancy than many
other nations. And while the average has
been increasing recently, the gains are not evenly spread out.
Wealthier Americans are living longer lives, while the poor
are living
shorter ones.
Poorly
educated, middle-aged American white males are particularly
affected, multiple recentstudies
suggest. While Americans from other age, racial and ethnic groups are
living longer lives than ever before, this particularly segment of
the population is dying faster.
A study
on the issue found that the rising death rate for this group
is not due to the ailments that commonly kill so many Americans, like
diabetes and heart disease, but rather by an epidemic of suicides,
liver disease caused by alcohol abuse, and overdoses of heroin and
prescription opioids.
“No
war, no catastrophe," Chomsky says, has caused the spiking
mortality rate for this population. "Just the impact of
policies over a generation that have left them, it seems, angry,
without hope, frustrated, causing self-destructive behavior."
That
could well explain Trump’s appeal, he speculated.
In
an interview with Alternet this
week, Chomsky compared the poverty that many Americans now face with
the conditions an older generation confronted during the Great
Depression.
“It’s
interesting to compare the situation in the ‘30s, which I’m old
enough to remember,” he
said. “Objectively, poverty and suffering were far greater. But
even among poor working people and the unemployed, there was a sense
of hope that is lacking now.”
Chomsky
attributes some of that Depression-era hope to the growth of an
aggressive labor movement and the existence of political
organizations outside of the mainstream.
Today,
however, he says the mood is quite different for Americans who are
deeply affected by poverty.
“[They]
are sinking into hopelessness, despair and anger -- not directed so
much against the institutions that are the agents of the dissolution
of their lives and world, but against those who are even more harshly
victimized,” he said. “Signs are familiar, and here it does
evoke some memories of the rise of European fascism.”.
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