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Post by Admin on May 4, 2016 19:01:02 GMT
Thirteen months after launching his campaign for president on the promise of being the purest conservative in the contest before a large and exuberant crowd, Ted Cruz ended it abruptly Tuesday night in a cavernous room here in front of a small group of downtrodden supporters. Acknowledging that he had no path forward against Donald Trump, the senator from Texas suspended his bid in the state he had hoped would keep him afloat until a contested Republican convention, where his strong relationships with party activists would help him claim the nomination. Instead, his final speech was met with gasps and shouts of “No!” After weeks of telling backers he planned to become his party’s standard-bearer at the Cleveland convention, he explained that the razor-thin track he was pursuing to the nomination was gone. “Tonight, I’m sorry to say, it appears that path has been foreclosed,” he said. “Together, we left it all on the field in Indiana.”
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Post by Admin on May 6, 2016 18:54:58 GMT
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) on Thursday declined to support presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, saying that he would be willing to do so if the real estate mogul could unify a bitterly divided Republican Party. “I’m just not ready to do that, at this point, I’m not there right now, and I hope to, though, and I want to, but I think what is required is that we unify this party,” Ryan said on CNN’s “The Lead,” in an interview with host Jake Tapper, when asked if would support Trump. “And I think the bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee.” Ryan, who serves as co-chairman of the GOP convention in Cleveland, became the highest-ranking Republican to openly question whether he would support Trump, who finished off his last opponents, Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, in Tuesday’s Indiana primary. “We’re not there yet,” Ryan said of party unity.
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Post by Admin on May 8, 2016 19:02:34 GMT
Ted Cruz suspended his campaign but earned 562 delegates along the way, according to CBS News estimates, and John Kasich also ended his campaign, having won 152 delegates. For example, many states bind their delegates to their presidential candidates for the first convention ballot unless the candidate "releases" their delegates. Other state parties say delegates are bound to a candidate unless the candidate "withdraws." To confuse the situation further, it's not always clear whether suspending a campaign qualifies as withdrawing. Nevertheless, even if Cruz and Kasich publicly endorsed Trump, their delegates would not automatically go to the presumptive Republican nominee. While some of their delegates may turn uncommitted, it looks like Trump may need to earn most of his future delegates on his own -- by winning them in the remaining primaries.
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Post by Admin on May 9, 2016 18:59:22 GMT
Trump thinks the US foots too much of the bill for Nato and that other allies should spend more on their own protection and even defend themselves with nuclear weapons, if necessary in the case of Japan and South Korea. "Of course they should pick up all the expense. Why are we paying for this?" Mr Trump said again this week on American television. His comments were widely reported in Japan with one of the biggest newspapers, Asahi Shimbun, saying "Triumphant Trump takes most of Japan by surprise as well". Japan spends $1.7bn in direct support for the American military bases. The US is set to spend $5.5bn in 2016 to maintain its military bases there. But the cost of returning American troops based Japan or South Korea back to the US would be even bigger. Mr Trump also misses the ways in which America benefits from these alliances: the military presence underwrites the global system, helping to secure shipping lanes for example, the freedom of which is essential for global commerce. Speaking in Washington at an awards dinner at the Atlantic Council this week, former Secretary of Defence Robert Gates said that "contrary to the views of some politicians, continuing American global leadership is in our own economic, political, and security interest, not simply and only an altruistic act." He did not name Mr Trump but had a stark warning, saying "America turning inward not only will make the world more dangerous for others, but also for us." This is what Mrs Clinton believes too but writing in the Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius warned that "if Clinton can't counter Trump's 'America first' rhetoric and make the case that U.S. leadership is still crucial for our security, she won't be a strong president. And she won't have public support for the policies needed to rebuild US credibility." Before she can start worrying about public support for her policies as president, Mrs Clinton still needs to make the case to American voters that her vision of American power and leadership will serve them, their economy and their jobs, better than Mr Trump's worldview.
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Post by Admin on May 21, 2016 19:00:42 GMT
The appetite so many GOP voters had for a populist economic message so fundamentally divorced from anything we have heard in recent political history. This observation fits neatly with a theory set forth by two political scientics, Gary Miller and Norman Schofield, in a 2003 paper published in American Political Science Review. In short, they argue that our two dominant parties are constantly realigning, with the dominant issues oscilating between social and economic. Using their model, the 2016 election begins to make far more sense: Ever since Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy brought many disgruntled former Democrats (the Populists) into the Republican party, the parties have more or less been held together on social issues. Working-class social conservatives, many of whom would benefit from the economic liberalism of the Democratic party, have nonetheless stuck with the Republican party. On the other hand, many highly educated, upper-middle class voters—the so-called “socially liberal, fiscal conservatives”—have gone for Democrats (the Cosmopolitans).
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