We're In a Mess. So Speak Your Mind and Let the Cards Fall Where They May.
A few points from my remarks to the Hilton Head Republicans this past Wednesday . . . My colleague, Jonah Goldberg, recently wrote that "This ends in tears no matter what. Get over it and pick a side." As of last night, there have been 21 million votes cast in the GOP primary. There were 19 million cast in 2012; you have to give Donald Trump credit for at least some portion of that surge in turnout. So far, 7.8 million votes have been cast for Donald Trump -- that's about 37 percent. Next highest is Cruz with 5.7 million, or 27 percent; Rubio with 3.4 million, about sixteen and a half percent, 2.8 million for Kasich, about 13 percent. Arizona was supposed to give us a sense of how things would look in a one-on-one fight between Trump and Ted Cruz. John Kasich didn't really spend much time or money in Arizona. Trump crushed him, 47 percent to 24 percent, and Kasich still got 10 percent. Last night Rubio picked up 70,000 votes in Arizona, which was more than Kasich did, meaning Kasich came in fourth in a three-man race. This is why early voting in primaries is a terrible, terrible idea. And now the race is in a form of stasis for a while. There are only two contests in the coming month: Wisconsin on April 6 and New York on April 19. As you probably know, National Review formally endorsed Ted Cruz. The fact that we have to urge people to unite behind Cruz indicates how little natural inclination there is among non-Trump Republicans to unite behind Cruz. You may recall that for most of last summer, when the likes of Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal were critical of Trump, a lot of people remember Cruz's NOT criticizing Trump and attending Trump's rally against the Iran deal. For some inexplicable reason, Cruz's rivals, with the exception of Carly Fiorina, cannot stand him. Ben Carson still blames him for the Iowa rumor. According to Politico, Cruz reached out to Rubio about a unity ticket and Rubio turned it down. (For what's worth, Cruz said it wasn't true.) Trump will probably not win 1,237 delegates. There are 944 remaining; he needs 500. The most likely scenario is that he wins close to -- let's say, 94, 95 percent of what he needs. And the delegates will have a difficult time not giving him the nomination if he's that close to the threshold and no one else is close to Trump. Here is all of the head-to-head polling in March: The Quinnipiac poll had Hillary beating Trump, 46 percent to 40 percent. The CBS/New York Times poll had Hillary over Trump 50 percent to 40 percent. CNN poll, 53 percent to 41 percent. ABC News/Washington Post poll, 50 percent to 41 percent. NBC News Wall Street Journal poll, 51 percent to 38 percent. These are very consistent numbers, usually a ten-point or so spread. Recall that back in 2008, seen as a disaster for Republicans, Obama beat McCain by seven points. People say, "Oh, you can't look at head-to-head polling right now." Except Donald Trump has close to 100 percent name recognition, and very few Americans don't have an opinion of him. Quinnipiac poll: 61 percent of registered voters said they feel unfavorably towards him. CBS poll: 57 percent. Quinnipiac found 54 percent of registered voters said they "would definitely not" vote for Trump in the general election. Depending on which poll you look at, 35 to 37 percent of Republicans are thinking of voting third party or looking for another option in November. You know how we laugh that only 37 percent of Americans think Hillary Clinton is honest and trustworthy? Only 27 percent say that about Donald Trump. The Republican party is about nominate the one guy who nullifies all of Hillary Clinton's weaknesses. This comes as we're trying to keep the Senate with a challenging map, and Democrats need 30 seats to win back the House. Maybe there is some hope that if a Hillary Clinton presidential victory is seen as a landslide, Republicans in Congress will be able to persuade voters, "You need us there to prevent Hillary and the Democrats from duplicating the worst of the early Obama years." We have a president who acknowledged the Brussels bombing for 50 seconds yesterday at the beginning of a speech in Cuba, and who offered his most detailed comments about the attack from a baseball stadium in Cuba in an interview with ESPN. We have good reason to be mad about that. We have good reason to be mad about the broken promises on a secure border from 1986 to after 9/11 and in 2006. The problem is that right now, the most likely path ahead is President Hillary Clinton -- an outcome that doesn't alleviate our anger one bit. Meanwhile, Those Allegedly Boring Republicans Actually Get Stuff Done Let's check in with the first guy to leave the 2016 Republican presidential primary: Gov. Scott Walker has had a bigger impact on Wisconsin's public universities than any governor in decades, and he is among the most aggressive governors in the country in reshaping higher education, experts say. Walker has cut funding for the University of Wisconsin System by hundreds of millions of dollars, frozen undergraduate tuition and approved legislation that shifts power on UW campuses toward administrators and away from faculty, while also weakening those professors' protections from layoffs. The governor's influence has also extended into the administration of the UW System, which has hired a longtime friend and political confidant to one of its top positions and is governed by a Board of Regents made up almost entirely of his appointees. Noel Radomski, an expert on the history of the UW System, said Walker's influence on higher education has been greater than any Wisconsin governor since Patrick Lucey merged UW-Madison with the rest of the System in the 1970s. The new tenure policy, changes Walker sought to the UW System's mission statement and pushes to cut regulation of the for-profit college industry have made him one of the most active governors in the country on higher education topics, said Thomas Harnisch, director of state relations and policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. "Walker has sought to redefine the foundational policies and practices of universities," Harnisch said. "I can think of no other governor who has pursued all of those policy changes in recent years." Under Walker, Wisconsin changed the tenure system to add provisions for layoffs when an academic program is discontinued as well as systemwide post-tenure reviews, which include a process for remediation, and eventually, termination for underperforming professors. (Notice these are described as "controversial." Why? ) Needless to say, the professors howled. A lot of Americans are angry that higher education is so expensive, so intractably required for so many good jobs, and so hit-and-miss in its capability to prepare young people for the requirements of a competitive workplace. Here we have a Republican governor who pushed through actual reforms and changes that enact accountability and make college more affordable. But instead, the GOP primary electorate appears to prefer the guy whose idea of higher education was "Trump University." 'Guard! My Library Was Better in My Old CIA Black Site Prison!' Fun facts you learn while reading former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden's Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror: p. 237, Regarding the treatment of prisoners at Guanatanamo Bay: Detainees could also draw on a library and a collection of music and videos (although some complained that the offerings were less robust than at their black site). Turns out that Harry Potter books were immensely popular. p. 293: Regarding the style and strategy Major General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, a powerful and elite branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. Soleimani famously sent a text message to Iraqi president Talibani for the U.S. Commander: 'General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qasem Soleimani, control policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. The ambassador to Baghdad is a Quds Force member. The individual who's going to replace him will be a Quds Force member." Such remarkable confidence, even a touch of messianic triumphalism, and this without a nuclear weapon. p. 316: Regarding foreign leaders, and how they see America: Amrullah Saleh, the young Panjshiri Tajik who headed up the Afghan National Directorate of Security, was, as I've mentioned, bright, honest, curious, self-taught, and well read. During an early evening stroll through Colonial Williamsburg -- one of those cultural events we relied on to cement liaison relationships -- we passed the old House of Burgesses (home of the first democratically-elected legislative body in the British American colonies). Amrullah looked puzzled and then asked, "Where are the walls?" "Walls?" "Yes. To protect them from the people." Things, of course, were different in Kabul -- and in Amrullah's entire life experience. ADDENDA: The world's a mess, and the GOP primary looks like the Hindenburg crashing into the Titanic. But even with all the problems piling up, we can put all our divisions aside and offer warm wishes to Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner, and their newborn child, Theodore. 
"That's a great name!"  | 
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