"Trump’s campaign long ago spread beyond early-to-vote states" by Julie Bykowicz Associated Press February 22, 2016
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s unorthodox bid to win the Republican presidential nomination has some distinctly traditional trappings: offices and employees across the country.
Trump, the winner in two of the first three states in the presidential primary season, has long been laying the groundwork for more victories in March, when two dozen states go to the polls, new campaign finance reports show.
The billionaire has vowed to spend ‘‘whatever it takes’’ to lock up the GOP nomination. He has so far invested about $17.5 million into his bid, a fraction of what most of the other candidates are spending.
But Trump has been able to pump money into employees and offices in part because he saves cash in important ways: He doesn’t do traditional fund-raising, which can be pricey, and has done far less advertising than is typical for a leading presidential candidate.
The robustness of Trump’s field operation as outlined in the January fund-raising reports looks more like that of Democrats Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton than any of his four Republican competitors....
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Trump was WAY AHEAD of everyone else as they were scrambling to win one of the four early contests?
"Will the battle for the South decide both nominating contests?" by Matt Viser and Annie Linskey Globe Staff February 22, 2016
WASHINGTON — The day after South Carolina elevated three Republican candidates, the presidential contest entered a new phase of campaigning in scattered states that can best be reached by airplanes instead of buses.
A dozen states are scheduled to host nominating contests on Super Tuesday, just eight days away, when the South is prepared to flex its muscle in American politics with the power to go a long way toward settling both nominating contests. On the same day, a handful of northern states, including Massachusetts, will also vote in contests that Governor John Kasich of Ohio hopes will keep [his candidacy] alive.
This new terrain will open both presidential primaries to a far more diverse group of voters. It will force the campaigns to prioritize where to spend their time, and it could reward the better-funded candidates.
Why? It didn't help Bush.
Donald Trump enters the crucial next week with numerous advantages, including that Kasich is still a force in the race who could prevent Marco Rubio from consolidating more mainstream Republican support.
“There’s not been a good history of people taking on Trump,” said Chip Saltsman, a Tennessee-based Republican consultant who ran Mike Huckabee’s 2008 and 2016 campaigns. “The long and windy road to the White House has been littered with bodies of people who thought they could take on Trump.”
Strikingly, the questions around the Republican field are the same ones that have been there for six months. There’s still consternation around Trump, and his enduring support. Rubio has tremendous potential but has not won a state yet. And Ted Cruz has yet to prove he can move beyond his evangelical base.
The South has been Cruz’s firewall, but that wall is showing some signs of structural damage. For months Cruz has emphasized his strength among evangelical Christians. That coalition helped him in Iowa, but he is struggling to broaden his appeal, and exit polls in South Carolina showed Trump did better than Cruz among evangelicals.
Of course, the opposite was true with the "entrance" polls in Nevada.
Cruz started the month with $13.6 million in his campaign account, more than any other candidate, according to filings released on Saturday. Rubio had $5 million, while Kasich had $1.5 million. Trump had $1.6 million, but the billionaire who is self-funding his campaign could add more at any time.
Most of the focus during the first three states has been an effort at grabbing momentum, beating expectations, and doing enough to justify staying in the race. But now candidates must begin to keep an eye on amassing delegates.
Among Republicans, Trump is dominating with 67 delegates, followed by Cruz with 11, Rubio with 10, Kasich with five, and Ben Carson with three.
For Republicans, whose Nevada caucus will take place Tuesday, 595 delegates are at stake March 1, with 80 percent of those coming from Southern states. The biggest haul of the day is the 155 delegates in Texas, which is Cruz’s home state.
Some Republicans are hoping that former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s exit will allow Rubio to consolidate establishment support. But even assuming that Rubio would have inherited all of Bush’s voters in the first three states, it would not have been enough for him to win any of them.
Kasich, the only governor left in the race, is banking on northern and Midwestern states carrying him forward....
Seriously, how can the Democrat in Republican clothing win the nomination ignoring the South?
Unless his sole purpose is to deny Trump delegates?
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The race has been reset, I'm told.
"Donald Trump’s success worries GOP governors" by Jim O’Sullivan Globe Staff February 22, 2016
WASHINGTON — Faced with the rising prospect of Donald Trump as their party’s nominee, Republican governors traded concerns over the weekend about the political fallout facing state GOP candidates who would share the ballot with him.
Several governors gathered here for a national conference said worries surged over the weekend with Trump’s consolidation of his front-runner status. Some hinted at a coordinated response to limit collateral damage caused by a Trump candidacy on Republican candidates for governor, Congress, and state legislatures.
Trump’s divisive campaign, they fear, will push voters to support Democrats instead, or not vote at all.
Governor Bill Haslam of Tennessee said his colleagues had held “a lot of conversations about impact” and the importance of the party finding a presidential nominee who can win in November.
It's looking to me like he can.
I mean, with the organization and money, why couldn't he?
“I think this will be a telling week,” Haslam said Sunday. “Obviously, the field narrowed some, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see several governors come out this week” to endorse a candidate from the field of Trump’s competitors.
Which will only help Trump.
Several governors said that if Trump were to secure the nomination, candidates for offices from governor down the slate should focus on local issues rather than try to confront Trump or emulate him.
On Friday, at a downtown hotel, Republican governors heard privately from Karl Rove, formerly the chief political adviser to President George W. Bush and a frequent Trump critic.
OMG!
Rove painted an unfavorable picture for Republican electoral prospects if Trump sits atop the ticket. Polls have shown him performing poorly among women and minority voters, two groups the party needs to attract in greater numbers than it has in recent elections.
This is the same guy who said Romney won in 2012 even after Fox called it for Obama, right
The guy whose SuperPAC candidates failed miserably last time out?
Related: Obama Has Destroyed the Democratic Party
How odd.
I'm told the Democrats need white voters, especially white men, to win.
Have you had it with the crap narrative coming from the pre$$ like I have?
The specter of down-ballot repercussions from moderate voters because of Trump’s bombast has haunted establishment Republicans for months.
If nothing else, we can thank Trump for that.
But after his landslide victory in South Carolina’s primary on Saturday, the concern appeared to ratchet up among leading party figures from outside Washington.
“This divisiveness needs to stop,” said Governor Phil Bryant of Mississippi, a Republican.
During a closed-door meeting Saturday amid the bipartisan National Governors Conference meeting, Bryant said, Republican governors discussed the potential for partywide damage to their brand and the need to be “supporting civility” during the remainder of what has been a testy campaign.
Their "brand," huh?
That would seem to suggest we are being SOLD SOMETHING!!!!!!!!!!
He cited the electoral aftermath that Republicans felt after President Richard Nixon’s resignation as a historical reference.
“We’ve got to be very careful who our nominee’s going to be, and I hope that’s somebody that can try to bring people together, not just Republicans but independents, and I think the, as we call them, Reagan Democrats as well,” Bryant said.
Yeah, well, those ARE the Trump voters, moron!
Governor Charlie Baker, who has occasionally criticized Trump and endorsed Chris Christie days before the New Jersey governor dropped out of the presidential race, acknowledged “a lot of nervousness.”
“I would describe the governors on both sides as having a certain fascination with what’s going on,” Baker said.
Wary of the passionate enthusiasm for Trump among his supporters, some governors in town for the winter conference declined to offer anything beyond bland appraisals of the political climate.
But, privately, several governors and senior aides said that, even more than Trump himself, their failure to anticipate the electorate’s hankering for such a candidate has been disquieting for them....
Well, if you guys weren't deaf and blind to the will of the people it wouldn't be that way.
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Related:
Baker taps wealthy donors in bid to shape Mass. GOP
He backed the wrong horse but he is very popular!
Cruz fires spokesman over tweet about story falsely accusing Rubio of negative comment about Bible
Trump and the pride of ‘holy ignorance’
I ignored those; however, the question remains: how will I vote next week?
I'll let the Globe decide for me.
Editorial Massachusetts voters must stop Donald Trump
Whadda you mean I can't vote?
Mass. group pushes for automatic voter registration
Early returns:
"Kids have thoughts about presidents — past, present, and potential" by Eric Moskowitz Globe Staff February 16, 2016
Cameron Spear, a Weymouth second-grader, favors Lincoln for his integrity (“He was always honest.”) and gives no quarter to bullying, be it in school or a presidential debate.
Speaking of bullies....
Obama was a frequent favorite of the kids queried, along with Lincoln and Kennedy. But at the next crafts table, one second-grader surprised his mother and aunt by picking Richard Nixon — “because it has ‘Nix’ in it,” the boy, 8-year-old Jake Nix, quickly explained as the adults exhaled.
Jake’s cousins picked George Washington.
“He looks cool, and he was in the Army,” said Andy Bamberg, 10, a Brookline fourth-grader.
Eight-year-old Billy Bamberg liked Washington for his wig.
“He looks like a girl,” he said.
Jake, up from Orlando, made a prediction about which candidate he thought would be elected “in like November or October” — Donald J. Trump.
“I just like him,” he said, as mother Susie Nix and aunt Jennifer Lee looked wide-eyed again. “No reason.” Then thought for a beat. “Oh I know! Because Jimmy Fallon copies him.”
They took turns naming candidates.
“Jeb Bush,” Billy said.
“Barry Sanders,” said Jake, momentarily mixing up the “democratic socialist” with the ex-Detroit Lion.
Jake guessed that Sanders was the youngest candidate; Billy knew otherwise.
“He’s 150,” he said. “Probably.”
Carefully scrimshawing a Kennedy-esque sailboat into a bar of soap, Kate Novack, 9, had no trouble with the Vermont governor’s name.
“I want to vote for Bernie Sanders,” she said. “He has his own ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s.”
Kate said she loves going to the polls with her parents when they cast ballots in Waltham, feeding them into the machine afterward and collecting “I Voted” stickers. The Mount Alvernia Academy fourth-grader knew that Hillary Clinton was a former first lady and “spoke about women’s rights.”
Playing in the windows after making Kennedy-era astronaut puppets, sisters Maria and Katerina Zimplas of Needham traded biographical details about Obama.
“He has two daughters!” said Maria, 9, a John Eliot School fourth-grader. “He’s from Hawaii.”
“He has a dog,” said Katerina, 8.
Their friend, Ilinca Doros, began naming candidates.
“Let’s see, there’s Hillary Clinton, there’s Jim Bush,” she said. “The rest I just know from last name: Cruz, and Tramp, and Sanders.”
A home-schooled Wellesley fourth-grader, Ilinca knew that Obama was the 44th president and that Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill, had been the 42nd.
“I calculated down,” she explained, adding that she had not yet picked a candidate. “I want to look into all of who the people are before making a choice.”
The Zimplas sisters said the next president should keep us safe. Ilinca prized protecting the rain forest.
And Kensie Santiago-Winters, a 5-year-old from Malden who could almost name two presidents (“Barack Obama and Martin Luther King”), offered this sage advice:
“Take care of the world,” Kensie said, before pressing a purple magic marker lengthwise to his lips, “and be nice.”
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NDUs:
State reprints thousands of primary ballots due to printing error
Oh, I'm sure the AccuVote system is fine.
Nevada caucuses are Trump’s to lose — and he still could
Looks like Rucker took a punch to the face, huh?
Donald Trump notches another win in race for GOP nomination
Trump has 79 delegates, Cruz has 16 and Rubio has 15. John Kasich has five delegates and Ben Carson has three. It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.
All of a sudden the entrance polls are fine!
Cruz, Rubio in tight race for second in caucuses
Caucus-goers in Nevada make their voices known
Shouts of ‘liar’ taking toll on Cruz’s campaign
The Nevada caucuses are a mess. Again.
The whole election has been.
Carson questions Obama blackness in fading campaign
That's a mess I don't want to get involved in nor can I, for I am a old white man.
UPDATE: Donald Trump Is Right – Here Are 100 Reasons Why We Need To Audit The Federal Reserve
That may stop him. You cross those things and bad things happen to your head.
