Will GOP Elite Derail Trump Train, Make Big Mistake on the Lake?

• Plans already under way to convince delegates to abandon GOP frontrunner.

By John Friend —

Senator Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz (R-Texas), the GOP establishment, and many segments of the mainstream mass media are working overtime to prevent billionaire Republican presidential hopeful Donald J. Trump from obtaining the GOP nomination and, potentially, the White House.

Trump and his campaign staff, including most notably Paul John Manafort, Jr., a veteran political consultant who recently joined the Trump campaign, are on the offensive, openly declaring that the system is “rigged” and corrupt following Cruz’s recent voterless victories in both Colorado and Wyoming, where it has been alleged delegates supporting Trump were systematically disfranchised and marginalized.

Trump supporters held a large rally in Colorado on April 15 to voice their frustration with the delegate process, which they argue is unfair, confusing, and outright rigged to prevent maverick candidates such as Trump from winning. Despite his popularity, Trump did not win even a single delegate in the selection process in Colorado, where no vote was taken.

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“They’re taking your vote away,” Trump told supporters at a recent rally in New York, where the leading GOP candidate has been campaigning the past week. “They’re disfranchising people.”

Trump continued:

I say this to the RNC and I say it to the Republican Party: You’re going to have a big problem, folks, because the people don’t like what’s going on. What we have going is a movement. Now, they’re trying to subvert the movement. They can’t do it with bodies. They can’t do it with people because they don’t have near the people that we have. So what they’re trying to do is subvert the movement with crooked shenanigans. And we’re just not going to let it happen.

Trump and his supporters have consistently voiced criticism directed against both the Cruz campaign and the GOP establishment, who they argue are working behind the scenes to undermine Trump’s candidacy and steal delegates from the populist front-runner.

“We should have won a long time ago but we keep losing where we’re winning,” Trump noted during the rally. “Today, winning votes doesn’t mean anything!”

In addition to dealing with the corrupt nature of the Republican nomination process, Trump is also facing hostile media coverage and large organized protests at his rallies and campaign events. Trump’s campaign and message have triggered hysterical and unhinged reactions from leftists and anti-Trump protesters for months now. In recent weeks, radical feminists, anarchists, and other leftists disrupted the inaugural meeting of the “Students for Trump” group at Portland State University, resulting in the meeting being entirely shut down. During a recent rally in Portland, a self-professed transgender individual spit in the face of a Trump supporter and then shouted: “I’m a tranny. Go ahead, punch a woman!”

At Tulane University in New Orleans, the Kappa Alpha fraternity enraged minorities and social justice warriors by building a wall made with sandbags with the message of “Make America Great Again” written across it. The makeshift wall, which was built on private property to surround the fraternity house, is constructed each year as part of a long-standing tradition of the fraternity. In a video posted on YouTube, a group of black anti-Trump protesters are shown dismantling the wall, throwing the sandbags into the street.

Latino students and other leftists at Tulane defended the actions of the individuals who tore down the wall, arguing that the wall was “filled with connotations of hate and ignorance.” Ana De Santiago, a member of Tulane’s Generating Excellence Now & Tomorrow in Education (GENTE) group, and other leftists took to social media to generate support for the individuals who tore down the wall.

“These connotations most directly mocked the experiences of Latino immigrants and workers throughout our nation,” Ms. Santiago wrote on Facebook. “By writing Trump in large, red letters across the ‘wall,’ KA [Kappa Alpha] changed what was a tradition of building a wall into a tradition of constructing a border, symbolizing separation and xenophobia. This issue not only affects Latinos but all other marginalized immigrant groups in this country.”

Dillon Pérez, an associate of Ms. Santiago, stated: “We fully understand that KA has a right to freedom of speech, especially on their own property, and GENTE respects that. However, KA’s right to free speech does not protect them from the consequences of their speech; KA’s right to free speech does not negate our right to freedom of speech to respond to their actions, make our sentiments clear, and find solidarity with others who see KA’s actions as being intolerable on Tulane’s campus.”

Trump supporters on college campuses across America continue to be targeted by the enforcers of political correctness. On a number of college campuses recently, Trump supporters have used sidewalk chalk to write pro-Trump messages on campus, once again creating controversy for a simple expression of the First Amendment. Earlier this month, Hailey Puckett, a member of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s student government coalition, was asked to resign by her fellow coalition members after it was discovered she had participated in chalking pro-Trump messages on the school’s campus.

So much for free speech, at least when it comes to expressing support for Trump.

The Trump team certainly has its work cut out for itself as the primaries wrap up on June 7 and the GOP prepares for the Republican National Convention, where a candidate will be nominated to run in the 2016 general election.

Despite a commanding lead in the overall delegate count and a crushing lead in overall votes, where Trump currently has over 2 million more votes than his nearest rival, the prospect of a brokered convention and eventual nomination of Cruz is a very real possibility.

Will the GOP party establishment and Cruz campaign derail the Trump train? Time will tell, and there’s no doubt Trump will be fighting until the very end.

John Friend is a California-based writer who maintains a blog.

Will GOP Make a Big Mistake on the Lake?

• Plan to betray Donald Trump in Cleveland could mean millions of Republican voters will defect from GOP

• Democrats have already ensured Hillary victory

By Patrick J. Buchanan —

In the race for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump would seem to be sitting in the catbird seat. He has won the most states, the most delegates and the most votes—by over 2 million. He has brought out the largest crowds and is poised for huge wins in upcoming primaries.

Yet there is a growing probability that the backroom boys will steal the nomination from him at a brokered convention in Cleveland.

In early April, Colorado awarded all 34 delegates to Senator Ted Cruz (Texas). The fix had been in since August, when party officials, alarmed at Trump’s popularity, decided it would be best if Colorado Republicans were not allowed to vote on the party’s nominee. After all, these poor folks might get it wrong.

In South Carolina, where Trump swept the primary, a plot is afoot for a mass desertion of Trump delegates after the first ballot. The Republican Party in Georgia, another state Trump won, is also talking up delegate defections. In state after state, when Trump wins and moves on, the apparatchiks arrive—to thieve delegates for Cruz.

“This is a crooked system, folks,” says Trump, “the system is rigged. . . . I go to Louisiana. I win Louisiana. . . . Then I find out I get less delegates than Cruz because of some nonsense. . . . I say this to the RNC. I say it to the Republican Party: You’re going to have a big problem, folks, because the people don’t like what’s going on.”

Something rotten is also going on in the Democratic race.

Senator Bernie Sanders (Vt.) was on a roll, having won seven straight primaries and caucuses. Yet he keeps falling further behind.

“I watch Bernie, he wins. He wins. He keeps winning, winning,” said Trump in Rochester. “And then I see, he’s got no chance. They always say he’s got no chance. Why doesn’t he have a chance? Because the system is corrupt.”

Sanders seems to be shorted every time he wins a primary or caucus. And the insurmountable hurdle he faces was erected against folks like Sanders some time ago—the 700-plus superdelegates.

These are Democratic congressmen, senators, governors, and party officials. By more than 10-1, close to 500 of these superdelegates have lined up to back Hillary Clinton and stop Sanders.

The Democratic Party believes in democracy, up to a point—that point being that Democratic voters will not be permitted to nominate a candidate to whom the party elites object.

Richard Nixon’s 49-state triumph in 1972 cured the Democrats of their naive belief in democracy. The George McGoverns and Bernie Sanderses can run. But they won’t be allowed to win.

Yet, since it is Trump and Sanders who have stirred the greatest passion and brought out the biggest crowds, if both are seen as having been cheated by insiders, then the American political system may suffer a setback similar to that caused by the “corrupt bargain” of 1824.

Andrew Jackson ran first in the popular vote and the Electoral College, but was short of victory. John Quincy Adams, who ran second, got Speaker Henry Clay to deliver the House of Representatives, and thus make Adams president. Clay became Adams’s secretary of state.

In 1828, Jackson got his revenge, winning the presidency. Clay would never make it. On his deathbed, Jackson confided that among the great regrets of his life was that he did not shoot Clay.

While the turnout in the Democratic primaries and caucuses has not matched the Obama-Clinton race of 2008, Sanders has rallied the young and working class, turned out the biggest crowds, and generated the greatest enthusiasm.

But on the Republican side, the party has had the largest turnout in American history. And the reason is Trump.

And if, after having won the most votes and delegates, Trump is seen as having been swindled out of a nomination he won, by intraparty scheming in Cleveland, the GOP could suffer a self-inflicted wound from which it might not recover.

Another matter that could prevent a return to national unity? The deepening split over trade and foreign policy, both between the parties, and within the parties.

Sanders, recently, was saying that what disqualifies Mrs. Clinton as president is her support for free trade deals that gutted American industry and cost millions of jobs and her support for an Iraq War that was among the costliest, bloodiest blunders in U.S. history.

On both issues, Trump agrees with Sanders. Cruz, an uber-hawk and free trader, is more aligned with Mrs. Clinton.

If the “America first” stance on foreign and trade policy, close to a majority position today, is unrepresented by either party this fall, and we get a free trade, pro-war president, the divisions within the country will widen and deepen.

If Sanders and his revolution are sent packing in Philadelphia, and Trump is robbed in Cleveland of a nomination Americans believe he won, political disillusionment, and political realignment, may be at hand.

Patrick J. Buchanan is a writer, political commentator, presidential candidate and author.