Hey, Everybody, It's Not Okay to Denounce Trump Anymore MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, back on February 29: Donald Trump's failure to explicitly disavow the Ku Klux Klan and former Grand Wizard David Duke is "disqualifying," Joe Scarborough declared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Monday. "It's breathtaking. That is disqualifying right there. To say you don't know about the Ku Klux Klan? You don't know about David Duke?" the co-host said during the opening segment of the show after remarking upon Trump's feigned ignorance of the group and Duke during an interview with CNN on Sunday, two days after he explicitly disavowed the group in a news conference. The "most stunning thing" about the latest development, said Scarborough, a southerner himself, is that the latest maneuver "isn't buying him a single vote." "I mean is he really so stupid that he thinks Southerners aren't offended by the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke? Is he really so ignorant of Southern voters that he thinks this is the way to their heart -- to go neutral, to play Switzerland when you're talking about the Klan?" Scarborough asked. "And to say he doesn't know enough information about the Klan to condemn them -- exactly what does Donald Trump expect to learn in the next 24 hours about the Klan." Scarborough also wrote that day: Why would the same man who claims to have "the world's greatest memory" say "I don't know anything about David Duke" just two days after he condemned the former Klansman in a nationally televised press conference? And with that amazing memory, how could Donald Trump have forgotten that he himself refused to run for president as a Reform Party nominee in 2000 because "Klansman" David Duke was a member of that same party? These are questions that have no good answers for a Republican Party on the verge of nominating a man who sounds more like a Dixiecrat from the 1950s than the kind of nominee the GOP needs four years after losing Hispanics by 44 percent, Asian Americans by 47 percent and black Americans by 87 percent. Sunday's distressing performance is just the latest in a string of incidents that suggest to critics that Donald Trump is using bigotry to fuel his controversial campaign . . . The harsher reality is that the next GOP nominee will be a man who refused to condemn the Ku Klux Klan and one of its most infamous grand wizards when telling the ugly truth wouldn't have cost him a single vote. So is this how the party of Abraham Lincoln dies? One month later, and Joe Scarborough is a lot madder at conservative critics of Trump than the candidate himself -- even though the arguments mirror the ones the MSNBC host made back at the end of February. He writes this morning: Actually, what is most astonishing is the rising level of rage among Trump's political enemies from inside the Republican establishment. Many of my conservative friends are sounding as arrogant and unmoored as left-wing pundits let loose on MSNBC during the Bush years. Suggesting that faithful Christians and life-long conservatives like my brother cannot support Trump while believing in Jesus is offensive enough. But denigrating millions of working-class Americans let down by a quarter century of Bush-Clinton rule as drug addicts or white supremacists is even more destructive to the conservative cause. See, when Scarborough denounces Trump for sounding like a "Dixiecrat from the 1950s" or "running on bigotry", it's different. Scarborough continues: The conservative movement, the Republican Party and our constitutional republic will survive Donald Trump's candidacy. Maybe it's best to hold off on the political purges for now and believe, like Reagan, that our best days just may lie ahead. Wait, a month ago, this was how the Party of Reagan died, but now it's time to hold off on a purge -- the GOP will survive? Why the State Conventions Matter So Much Right Now There's a reason most people, even most people who follow politics, don't pay a lot of attention to how the convention delegates get selected. Most years, it doesn't matter: The front-runner wins by such a wide margin that the question of who goes to the convention and does the voting is entirely symbolic. But obviously, this year is not like most years. So as noted in Friday's Jolt and a now-infamous television appearance, the rules for each state's delegation are set by each state's party, and clear enough if you bother to look them up. For example, here's Iowa: Saturday, April 9, 2016: Republican Party District Conventions convene in each congressional district to choose the state's district delegates to the Republican National Convention according to the results of the Precinct Caucuses. Each of Iowa's 4 congressional districts is assigned 3 National Convention delegates. Saturday, May 21, 2016: The Iowa State Republican Convention officially convenes. 15 of 30 National Convention delegates are selected according to the results of the Precinct Caucuses. The State Convention as a whole chooses Iowa's statewide delegates (10 base at-large delegates plus 5 bonus delegates) to the Republican National Convention. In addition, 3 party leaders, the National Committeeman, the National Committeewoman, and the chairman of the Iowa's Republican Party, will attend the convention as pledged delegates by virtue of their position. Are Iowa delegates free to pick someone else after the first ballot? Yes! "Iowa's National Convention delegates are bound for the first ballot unless only one candidate is nominated at the Republican National Convention. In that case, Iowa's delegates are bound to vote for that candidate on the first ballot providing that candidate received votes in the Precinct Caucuses." These rules, in most cases, are on the state party's web site or at a site like GreenPapers. They're not secret. They're not locked away in the warehouse that has the Ark of the Covenant. 
You may recall that on caucus night, Ted Cruz got eight delegates, Donald Trump got seven, Marco Rubio got seven, Ben Carson got three, and Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich and Mike Huckabee got one each. No matter who gets selected to go to Cleveland at the district conventions and the state conventions, they have to sort themselves out to vote the way those caucus results shake out . . . on the first ballot. After that first ballot, those 30 delegates can vote any way they want. If they want to keep voting for the guy they voted for in the first round, they can do that. The candidates can urge them to support another candidate, but they're not obligated to follow the candidate's instructions. In other words, it matters a great deal whether the people going to Cleveland are dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporters, Cruz supporters, or prefer some other option. In Arizona, all 55 delegates are obligated to vote for Donald Trump on the first ballot -- it's a winner-take-all state. But Cruz's campaign is putting the pieces in place to have a lot of their friends sent to Cleveland as part of the Arizona delegation. They'll vote Trump on the first ballot, and then switch to Cruz on subsequent ballots. It's a similar story in North Dakota, Tennessee, and Louisiana. You'll hear a lot of accusations from Trump fans that this is "cheating" -- even though the rules are clear: in most of these states, delegates are only obligated to vote for the candidate they're bound to on the first ballot. The Trump campaign is free to bring their people to the county, district, and state conventions and use their numbers to get their people sent to Cleveland instead. At this point, it appears the Trump campaign just isn't paying close attention to this part of the process. And according to some reports, the candidate knows it: But when Mr. Priebus explained that each campaign needed to be prepared to fight for delegates at each state's convention, Mr. Trump turned to his aides and suggested that they had not been doing what they needed to do, the people briefed on the meeting said. There's still time for Trump to win these fights, but this means his state operations have to realize that the effort continues after primary election day. They've got to go to those county, district, and state party meetings and make sure their loyalists are represented in the delegate pool. You would think that the guy who touts himself as a masterful dealmaker would have learned to read the fine print by now. You Would Think She Never Met an Immigr- Oh, Wait, Wait, Never Mind! A quote like this . . . "I have nothing against Mexicans, but if they [come] here -- like this 19-year-old, she's pregnant, she crossed over a wall that's this high" -- she lowers her hand to 4 inches above her wall-to-wall carpeting. "She gives the birth in American hospital, which is for free. The child becomes American automatically. She brings the whole family, she doesn't pay the taxes, she doesn't have a job, she gets the housing, she gets the food stamps. Who's paying? You and me. "As long as you come here legally and get a proper job . . . we need immigrants. Who's going to vacuum our living rooms and clean up after us? Americans don't like to do that." . . . would ordinarily bring accusations of xenophobia and anti-immigrant attitudes. Of course, the speaker is Donald Trump's first wife, Ivana, who was born in Czechoslovakia and became a naturalized citizen in 1988. ADDENDA: The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. has a peculiar addition . . . 
Yes, that's Kevin Spacey as the fictional President Frank Underwood from House of Cards.  | 
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