04 May 2016

Trump is it

The BBC has an article (and its usual unbloggable video) about the end of the Republican party as we've come to know it:

Donald Trump (photo) has become the Republican presidential nominee in all but name, after victory in Indiana forced rival Ted Cruz from the race.
Trump, while unpopular with many in his own party, now has a clear path to the 1,237 delegates needed to claim his party's crown. That would mark a stunning victory for a businessman few took seriously when he launched his campaign last year. 
Bernie Sanders has defeated Hillary Clinton in Indiana's Democratic race. He trails Clinton in the all-important delegate count but, after this victory, he said the contest was still alive. "The Clinton campaign thinks this campaign is over. They're wrong," he said. 
Cruz' advisers had targeted Indiana as the Texas senator's best hope of halting Trump's march to the nomination. "We gave it everything we've got, but the voters chose another path," he told supporters in Indiana.
His departure means Trump is now the presumptive Republican nominee, with plenty of state contests this month and next to reach the 1,237 delegates required to win.
The New York City businessman is the first nominee since Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 to lack any previous experience of elected office.
Ohio Governor John Kasich has vowed to remain in the Republican race, but trails far behind Trump in terms of delegates.
Just after the announcement of the end of his campaign, Ted Cruz accidentally struck his wife, Heidi
The Cruz party is over; analysis by Anthony Zurcher, BBC News, Indianapolis:
Turn out the lights, the party's over. Ted Cruz and the #NeverTrump movement threw everything they had at Donald Trump in Indiana, and it wasn't enough. It wasn't even close to enough. They outspent him by more than a million dollars. Cruz practically took up residence in the state for the past two weeks. He named Carly Fiorina as his running mate. Nothing worked.
If there was a defining moment of the Indiana campaign, it was Cruz' fruitless attempt to reason with a group of pro-Trump supporters. Every argument he advanced was rebuffed. Every bit of evidence of Trump malfeasance was denied. Cruz was shouting in the wind.
In the coming days there will be a great reckoning, as the party comes to terms with the prospect of Trump as their standard bearer in the autumn. Some will make peace. Some will despair. Others will say "I'm with her" and reluctantly move to Hillary Clinton's camp. It will be an unprecedented spectacle in modern political history.
"It is a beautiful thing to watch, and a beautiful thing to behold," Trump said during a victory speech. "We are going to make America great again."
He praised Cruz as a "tough, smart competitor", which marked a sharp reversal in tone after a day in which the two men slung mud at each other at close quarters.
"Trump has humiliated those who had faith that the Republican leadership could stop him, and proved that the party is full of bunglers akin to Homer Simpson", writes Stephen Stromberg in The Washington Post.
Cruz did not offer any congratulations or support to Trump, and did not even mention his name, Politico says, although he offered what it described as a veiled jab, saying that America was kind, "not boastful or mean-spirited".
Trump is well behind Clinton in national polls and is struggling to reunite voters who supported Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, says The New York Times.
The Huffington Post says that Sanders will benefit from Cruz' departure, as Trump concentrates his fire on Clinton, now forced to fight on two fronts, and news coverage focuses more on the Democratic race.
The verbal attacks reached a new level of intensity when Cruz attacked the billionaire businessman as a "pathological liar" and "serial philanderer".
That was provoked by a bizarre claim from Trump that Cruz' father was linked to one of the most traumatic episodes in American history, the assassination of President John F Kennedy.
It is now increasingly likely that Trump will face Clinton in the autumn in the battle to succeed President Barack Obama, who will be leaving the White House after two terms.
But Republicans have expressed reservations about Trump's outspoken remarks, which have offended women and Hispanics.
There are also concerns about some of his policies on immigration and national security, like building a wall on the southern US border (to be paid for by Mexico), a ban on Muslims coming to the US, and the killing of the families of terrorists.
Rico says he wonders if either the Republicans or the Democrats will exist as parties after this election... (And Homer was displeased with the comparison to the GOP.)

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