10 March 2016
Nearing the Crest of the Wave
by J.R.Thomas
Briefly, on the USA primaries, where the current excitement is too fascinating to ignore:
There have been nine primaries since Super Tuesday. Trump has won five, but except in Mississippi by much narrower margins than forecast; and he lost Idaho, Kansas, and Maine to Ted Cruz – and Puerto Rico to Mario Rubio. That does suggest The Donald is looking less like a steam roller than he did a few days ago, and it is certainly invigorating the Cruz campaign. Cruz is now on 347 delegates to Trumps 446; with Rubio on 151 and Kasich 54.
This is dangerous territory for punditry, as there seems to be neither rhyme or reason to most of these results. Next week come Florida and Ohio, where the winner takes all the delegates. If Trump wins both those – it looks as though he will win Rubio’s home state of Florida but not Kasich’s home state of Ohio – he will bounce well ahead in the delegate count.
Can the GOP leadership stop him? Currently smear campaign is being run on Trump’s business practices (we are not suggesting that this is coming out of the GOP, but certainly it is not unwelcome to them) and it does seem to be working a little. Trump has widely franchised his name to so many users – especially in leisure and education – Trump University!-that it not surprising that there are enough dissatisfied customers to whip up some embarrassing stuff in the largely anti Trump media.
The Republican leadership has floated the idea that whatever happens (presumably as long as Trump does not score more than 50% of delegates) there could be a brokered convention – i.e. a candidate will be chosen to be the recipient of all the none-Trump votes and they will be declared the nominee. That would make for a rumbustious convention indeed.
We will look at the Democratic struggle next week, but will whet your appetite by saying that it was also a good week for challenger Bernie Sanders, who scored a big surprise in Michigan. Hillary has not wrapped up yet.
And we close with a Sanders throwaway remark that has caused both outrage and belly laughs – “When you watch these Republican debates, you know why we need to address the mental health issues in this country.”
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