Trump will be the GOP nominee

The Republican Party establishment just had their worst nightmare delivered on a steaming, stinking plate of misogyny, xenophobia and overt racism. There is the age-old cliché that whomever wins the Republican primary in South Carolina will become the GOP nominee in November.

He not only won the Palmetto State, Trump also won the Granite State — New Hampshire. It doesn’t matter if the Ted Cruz campaign cheated in Iowa, Trump would have still come in second.

Cruz, as you may recall, had done calls in Iowa telling voters Dr. Ben Carson was suspending his campaign, citing an interview Carson did with CNN in which he said he would be going home to rest and pick up a change of clothing after the Iowa Caucuses.

Even with his perceived dirty tricks in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Cruz couldn’t manage more than a third place finish in either state.

Cruz’s dirty politics has been documented: The Carson calls in Iowa and most recently former Cruz Campaign communications director Rick Tyler’s tweet showing Marco Rubio allegedly telling a Cruz staffer there weren’t may answers in the Bible.

The exact opposite was true and when the Rubio campaign let it be known what Rubio had actually said, Tyler deleted the offending tweet and put up another apologizing for the “error.”

And then, when Tyler was on MSNBC waiting to be on a panel, he got up and walked off the set, to everyone’s surprise. As it turns out Tyler was fired. Apparently at least one head had to roll and since he wasn’t the candidate, it was Tyler’s head served on the platter. The Cruz campaign wants everyone to believe neither the candidate nor his campaign managers had any idea what Tyler was doing.

At any rate, after Iowa Cruz has been a third place finisher and Marco Rubio hasn’t won anything yet. He gives speeches like he’s the big winner and maybe he is. With Jeb! out of the race the Big Money Donors might see Rubio as the establishment candidate — Rubio was a Teabagger when he ran for his Senate seat, but now he’s the establishment guy.

As for Trump, he’s never finished lower than second and he’s won two out of three states. South Carolina is a “winner takes all” primary in which the winner gets all 50 delegates. On top of that Trump is expected to easily win the Nevada Caucuses and the conventional wisdom — which has been turned on its head this election season — is that Trump will run the table from here until June.

Rubio or Cruz might win a Southern state or two, but if Trump won South Carolina, he can win Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi too. Cruz could carry Texas, but Texas conservatives seem to love guys with an “Up yours” attitude towards everything they hold on to as worthy of their scorn. So it’s a good bet — a really, really good bet — Trump takes Texas, with its 155 delegates.

It’s important for the Cruz and Rubio campaigns to gain some ground on Trump between now and March 1 — Super Tuesday. Thirteen states, many of them in the SEC (Southeastern Conference), will go to the polls or caucuses on March first.

In 2012 Mitt Romney won six of the 10 Super Tuesday states. In 2008 Senator John McCain won nine of the 21 Super Tuesday states and in 2000, that last time the GOP had an open race before George W. Bush was given the presidency (by the Supreme Court), W swept Super Tuesday.

• As did Al Gore for the Democrats.

The Super Tuesday states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia all hold primaries. Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota and Wyoming hold caucuses.

If Trump rolls through next Tuesday’s voting and wins all or more of those 13 states — and most people are convinced he will at least take a big majority of them — he will be halfway to the number of delegates needed to win the nomination outright. The GOP nominee needs 1,237. Trump now has 67 and his next closest challenger, Ted Cruz, has 11. Marco Rubio, who is convinced for some reason he’s gong to win it all, has ten.

I have fantasies too and quite frankly mine are more attainable than Rubio’s fantasy of winning 1,237 GOP delegates. Okay, mine are far-fetched too, but still, I do have my picks for Wednesday’s $236 million Powerball Lottery. Once I win that everything else just falls into place: house in Malibu next to Beyoncé and Jay Z, a Ferrari, Lamborghini and Aston Martin DB5 in the garage with a Vincent Black Widow … you get the picture.

• Just an aside: the strange — and dangerous — feature of the Vincent Black Widow is this: it doesn’t really have a frame. It as two: the front forks and frame are bolted directly on to the front end of the motor while the rear is bolted on to the back side of the motor. With a top speed of 220 MPH it earned its name as the Black Widow.

Let’s say Trump gets two-thirds of the available 642 delegates on Super Tuesday: that’s 436. It’s not quite half way there, but as the old saying goes: “In horseshoes and hand grenades …”

Most analysts are predicting Trump will get at least 600 delegates out of Super Tuesday.

Today Republican voters in Nevada will be caucusing and Trump is going to easily win the Silver State. You might be thinking, “With so many Hispanics in Nevada, especially Las Vegas, why wouldn’t the two Hispanics in the race win?”

Two reasons: number on being the vast majority of Hispanics voted for either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in the Democratic caucuses that took place this past Saturday so they won’t be taking part in the GOP caucuses. The second reason — and this gets kind of dicey since it has to do with national origin — in the hierarchy of Hispanic America out here in the West, people of Mexican heritage sit atop the food chain and Cubans, the national heritage of both Cruz and Rubio, are at or near the bottom. My Hispanic friends really dislike Colombians as well, so there might be a little bias going on.

I kid you not. Two of my Hispanic friends explained this to me in relation to everything involving our Hispanic neighbors. On The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore Monday Night comedian Grace Parra did a humorous explanation of it and earlier in the day a guest on MSNBC did a serious explanation of the Hispanic hierarchy. Mexican-Americans rule and the others fall into line and let me tell you, they ain’t votin’ for no stinking batches … oh wait, that’s sorta from Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

At any rate I’ve been told, twice now on television as well as personally, Hispanics in the West dislike Cubans so much they won’t vote for either of the two candidates of Cuban heritage — even if they were to vote Republican.

Apparently it has to do with this whole “illegal immigrant” thing. Cubans can enter the U.S. just as illegally as any other Hispanics, but because they are fleeing Fidel and Raul Castro, once the Cubans set foot on U.S. soil they are granted immediate asylum. Mexicans and other Central and South Americans can and are deported.

There are other reasons of course …

So, Nevada Republicans are in love with that “Make Mexico pay for the wall!” BS Trump is peddling and his “EFF YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON” attitude towards the people he doesn’t like. Nevada has 30 delegates at stake and it would be a complete surprise if Trump got less than 25 of them.

Unless a miracle of Biblical proportions takes place between now and the end of the primaries, Donald Trump will be the GOP’s candidate for president. What the GOP establishment now needs to worry about is whom Trump might pick for his running mate. Not only could it be another Sarah Palin — it could be Sarah Palin again. Remember her rambling … speech, if you want to call it that … when she endorsed The Donald in Iowa? “Oh my goodness gracious! What would the [Republican] establishment know about conservatism?”

Well, that if they thought their goose was cooked when John McCain picked you as a vice presidential candidate in 2008, they now see the bones of the GOP and “conservatism” going up in the ashes of the funeral pyre.

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And now that Trump has knocked Jeb Bush out of the race — nicely played Donald — the Bush followers have started their circular firing squad. One SuperPAC donor, Jamie Wareham, told NPR “I hoped there would be a change at the top when in the early, mid-summer it was clear we had the wrong people leading the campaign.”

He dumped on Bush campaign manager Danny Diaz in particular, saying, “His major accomplishment prior to being hired was losing the Ken Cuccinelli campaign in Virginia. So he had no successful experience. Though he did have experience.”

A flurry of GOP political operatives then came to the defense of Diaz and the guns started firing. Maybe Bush was just a terrible candidate and Trump put the spotlight on his terrible campaign? “Please clap.”

The Bush SuperPAC, Right to Rise USA, spent over $100 million trying to make their guy live up to the hype of a year ago when everyone and his political pundit wannabe brother typing away in Mom’s basement said Bush would be the locked-in choice of the GOP and the only candidate that could possibly beat Hillary Clinton in a general election.

Now we have doubts about Clinton being the Democratic nominee and Marco Rubio is running around telling whoever is still listening the Democrats are afraid of him being the nominee. BTW: have you noticed people have stopped talking about that allegedly important endorsement from South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley?

In one sense Rubio is right because Donald Trump is a far more entertaining candidate than anyone else that is running (or has run) this year. We would surely miss that if he wasn’t the GOP nominee.

My Follow Up Post

Top photo: Sarah Palin endorsing Donald Trump in Ames, Iowa. Is he wincing in emotional pain? Could this be the scene at the Republican National Convention if Trump gets to pick his running mate? Is the GOP wincing in pain yet? (YouTube)