Republicans sewed this one good establishing a deep root that has now spawned the monster Venus Flytrap that is the Donald Trump candidacy, eating everything that comes close to it. The New York Times' Tom Friedman explained that voters are listening with their guts and not their ears and that they're making a gut connection with Donald Trump. Right... but for all the non-Trump supporters it's more of a gut-wrenching connection. However, after being complicit in so many promises broken and the zero-sum politics that has obstructed the passage of any meaningful legislation, what did the Republican establishment expect?
This was clearly, sadly, reinforced on today's program during the interview with Ted Cruz who doesn't even understand (or he does and that makes it deplorable) that he's the problem. He's the poster-child for zero-sum politics, and he's the zero in the equation.
Kristen Welker succinctly pointed to the reason why Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) will never be the president of the United States, ever, and that is the 2013 government shutdown that he engineered. It accomplished nothing with the exception of actually going against Republican principles because it cost us money and accomplished nothing - governmental wasteful spending. On top of that, it gave the Republican party a deep-bruise black eye that they've worn since then all the way up to the moment of the Trump candidacy announcement. Not good.
The National Journal's Ron Fournier counted nine times that Senator Cruz did not answer the question of whether he would support Donald Trump of not if he were the nominee. Mr. Fournier threw in that if Cruz can't even answer that question what about the tougher ones that come with being president. (Go back to the last paragraph. Ever.) We get it, Senator Cruz can not concede anything as he stated but the fact is that just as he has done with his colleagues, he's done with the electorate - alienated too many of them with extreme positions delivered with a prickly demeanor. Look past John Boehner's Lucifer in the fresh comment to what he said after, describe Cruz as a miserable son of a bitch.
And now, whether Senator Cruz will admit it or not, Donald Trump has wrapped up the primary and is going to be the party's nominee. Mr. Trump is going to win in Indiana on Tuesday, Mr. Cruz's last stand state, and then the Texas senator is going to have to give serious thought to that question he couldn't answer today. He's going to have to come to grips with something that most Americans already knew. Ever. Coming out in the press - which by the way, cudos to Mr. Todd for defending against Mr. Cruz lousy charge that the media is comprised of liberal partisan Democrats, something that Fox News contend with - is that the Republican establishment doesn't have the stomach for a contested convention.
So given the eye-opening new reality upon us, we pray that Mr. Friedman is way off in his postulation that we're one large October/November terrorist attack away from a Trump presidency because as he continued to opine that he thinks this is the worst time to conduct foreign policy. Suffice to say that there is so much nuance required that a thorough understanding of foreign policy is a necessity.
It's not ISIS that is the greatest danger, but weak and failing governments as CIA Diretor John Brennan mentioned in his interview that create the environment for terrorist organizations like Boko Haram and ISIS exist and thrive. But on this fifth anniversary, to the day, of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the thought of him makes us think of Abu Musab al-Zarquawi who founded Al Qaeda in Iraq and whose methods are still earnestly believed in and practiced by the organization that it spawned, ISIS. Zarqawi has been dead for ten years so it is a phenomenon as Mr. Brennan pointed out, not confined to the territory in Iraq and Syria. ISIS, as we know, has a presence in Libya, Europe, Philippines, among others so keeping that in mind along with the Zarqawi dynamic, we agree that killing ISIS' present leader Al-Baghdadi is important, but only symbolically, not as much in the practical sense we're afraid.
With not only ISIS because all the other challenges the U.S. faces in the world, one teleprompter speech from Mr. Trump is not reassuring. It didn't take Thomas Friedman to tell us that Mr. Trump hasn't done his foreign policy homework to know that fact, though we're glad he said it.
The thought of Donald Trump making such careful decisions makes us a little queasy, to be honest.
Our advice, from here to November we'd advise to not eat too much because there are going to be a lot of gut-wrenching and gut-clenching moments coming up on this roller-coaster ride of a general election, and you'll want to keep it down.
Panel: Tom Friedman, The New York Times; Kristen Welker, NBC News; Ron Fournier, The National Journal; Doris Kearns-Goodwin, presidential historian
One more thing...
Good panel today, serious discussion, in which we appreciate the contributions of context that Dr. Goodwin provides such as the "American First" rhetoric in Donald Trump's speech, and that it was first a movement in American politics in 1939 that became tinged by Charles Lindbergh's anti-Semitism, yes that Charles Lindbergh. However, is it us or does Dr. Goodwin just have an awful sense of comic-timing. All her attempts were awkward to say the least.
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