Donald Trump Loses Weekend Delegate Fight in 5 States

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Zeke J Miller:

Donald Trump’s effort to reset his campaign following defeat in Wisconsin showed no signs of paying off this weekend, as a series of technical failures by his campaign set his hopes back even further.

From Thursday to Saturday, Trump suffered setbacks in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, South Carolina and Indiana that raise new doubts about his campaign’s preparedness for the long slog of delegate hunting as the GOP race approaches a possible contested convention. He lost the battle on two fronts. Cruz picked up 28 pledged delegates in Colorado. In the other states, rival campaigns were able to place dozens of their own loyalists in delegate spots pledged to Trump on the first ballot. This will matter if Trump fails to win a majority of delegates on the first ballot in Cleveland, as his delegates defect once party rules allow them to choose the candidate they want to nominate.

Trump’s campaign mounted a haphazard campaign for delegates in Colorado, where hundreds ran to be at large representatives in Cleveland at the state convention in Colorado Springs. The frontrunner’s advisers repeatedly instructed supporters to vote for the wrong candidates—distributing the incorrect delegate numbers to supporters. Cruz, who traveled to address the convention, swept the state’s 34 delegates on the back of a disciplined organizing effort, that included text message and video displays advertising his preferred slate.

In an appearance on NBC’s Meet The Press, Paul Manafort, the DC lobbyist-turned Trump convention manager accused Cruz’s campaign of engaging in “Gestapo tactics” as it looks to use the party rules to its fullest advantage, before trying to brush off the series of defeats.

Manafort has been tasked with professionalizing the ad hoc Trump organization and refocusing it around winning delegates. It’s a task that in many states is already too little, too late, as Trump has sacrificed delegate slots to rivals due to a lackluster organizing, or just apathy.

In Indiana, which holds its primary next month, Trump suffered setbacks even before the first vote was cast. Party leaders met across the state on Saturday to select three delegates from each of the state’s nine congressional districts. Nearly all of those selected are expected to be solidly anti-Trump. While Trump’s campaign encouraged supporters to apply to become delegates, the process is run by the GOP establishment, which has not warmed to the front-runner.

“The way the system works is, there are people who are involved, people who are known quantities, and that makes them more likely candidates to get these appointments,” said Thomas John, the GOP chair for the state’s 7th congressional district. State GOP leaders will select the statewide delegates at a meeting Tuesday, which is likely to have the same result.

In Iowa, where Cruz won the caucuses, he was able to pad his victory in the state’s district conventions by installing loyalists in all but one of the delegate slots up for grabs. Should the convention reach a second ballot, several delegates pledged to Trump would flip to Cruz.

And in South Carolina, where Trump swept the state’s 50 delegates, he lost five of six delegate slots in two congressional district conventions, eating further into his potential second-ballot support.

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The Cruz camp and GOP establishment leaders in Colorado strong-armed their way to a sweep by banning Trump delegates and omitting them from the ballots… and listing Cruz delegates TWICE!
Trump delegate (379) was not listed on the ballot while a Cruz delegate (378) was listed twice.
But, hey, it’s only politics.
From what I hear, many Republicans will be quitting the Party after all these antics.
Seems the old, ”all’s fair in Love and War,” applies to politics, too.

No, Trump can’t win
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/no-trump-cant-win/article/2588132?
If Republicans nominate Donald Trump, they nearly cede the White House to Hillary Clinton. Trump wouldn’t merely be an underdog in the general election. He would be the worst Republican nominee since Alf Landon 80 years ago.

The polls show Trump would be a disaster. To date, Trump’s message control has been a disaster, and it would be a disaster in the general election. His political inexperience, which has hamstrung him in the primary cycle, would be a disaster in the fall.

First, we should expect Trump to flop in the debates. Trump had success in GOP primaries, but there was a reason he called them off — refusing to participate in a post-Florida Fox News debate and ignoring Ted Cruz’s calls for one-on-one debates. Trump thrived in crowded debates where all he had to do was rudely put down Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio and where he could get away with always changing the topic.

In the less-crowded debates after South Carolina, Trump looked worse. Rubio exposed Trump’s utter shallowness on healthcare policy, and Trump found himself flailing in policy areas where he was way out of his depth. Recent interviews, in which television journalists Anderson Cooper, John Dickerson and Chris Matthews pressed Trump on abortion or nuclear proliferation, exposed his incompetence.

In a one-on-one debate against Clinton, Trump’s lack of policy knowledge and critical thinking skills would be glaring.

There’s also the boorishness problem.

Despite all the talk about equality and equity, and treating women the same as men, we don’t really live that way. Men are still expected to treat women with more courtesy than men treat other men. Put another way: You can be a boorish bully toward men in ways you can’t toward women.

Trump probably helped himself by interrupting, insulting and sneering at Bush and Rubio. It may have been deliberate on his part, but it’s also his personality. When he behaves that way toward Clinton, he will accomplish the incredible: making Americans feel sympathetic toward her.

AP-GfK Poll: Clinton has edge over Trump on range of issues
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AP_POLL_TRUMP_VS_CLINTON?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-04-11-09-39-51
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a stark warning for Donald Trump as he eyes a possible general election showdown with Hillary Clinton, Americans trust the Democratic front-runner more than the Republican businessman to handle a wide range of issues – from immigration to health care to nominating Supreme Court justices.

Even when asked which of the two candidates would be best at “making American great” – the central promise of Trump’s campaign – Americans are slightly more likely to side with Clinton, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.

Obviously neither the republican nor the democratic party care anything about the American citizen. Obviously we are already living in a dictatorship led by a muslim loving racist. Regardless the GOP can kiss my ass if the candidate is not the person the American citizenry wants. This is no longer about the candidate but the freedoms of the American citizen. The azzhats on the hill have gotten far too much wealth and power off the backs of taxpayers. Enough is enough.

Trump campaign must have a mole, flyers handed out by Trumps own people in one case, an erroneous number corresponded with a Cruz supporter. A second flyer handed out by the Trump campaign contained four mismatched names and numbers. How unfair that his own people are messing up his run.
What a cluster, numbers missing on the ballot, there were also discrepancies between delegate guides posted to the state party’s website and printed materials distributed by the state GOP. Mizel, for example, was listed on a delegate list on the party website as number #610, but a brochure from the state GOP listing delegates alphabetically cut off at #588.