Thread: Pat Caddell: GOP Establishment ‘Using Cruz as Cats-Paw’ to ‘Nominate an Establishment

Pat Caddell: GOP Establishment ‘Using Cruz as Cats-Paw’ to ‘Nominate an Establishment Figure’

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by JOHN HAYWARD
31 Mar 2016

Pollster and political strategist Pat Caddell, a mainstay of the “Political Insiders” roundtable on Fox Report Sunday, joined SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon on Thursday’s edition ofBreitbart News Daily to talk about the state of the Republican primary race and the hopes of the GOP establishment for an eventual nominee other than the current candidates running in Wisconsin.

Caddell didn’t like the intensity of the personal attacks between the Trump and Cruz camps, especially since the looming possibility of a brokered convention would make it difficult to unite the party for the general election under the best of circumstances. Party unity after an ugly, personal brawl between Trump and Cruz will be even harder, especially if the Republican Establishment is still plotting to brush both of them aside, and insert an entirely different candidate after the first round of voting at the convention.

On that subject, Caddell speculated that many of the delegates Donald Trump has won during the state primary races have been set up as “faux delegates” who will abandon him after the first round of voting, possibly allowing the Party to introduce an entirely new candidate, such as current Speaker of the House and 2012 vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)
.Caddell said he believes the GOP Establishment is “using Cruz as a cats-paw.”

“Look, you don’t really think that Jeb Bush, and Lindsay Graham, and some of those who have endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) … you don’t really think they want Ted Cruz, do you?” Caddell asked. “They’re using him to stop Trump.”This strategy will face a crucial test in Wisconsin’s primary on Tuesday, where Caddell noted the generally reliable Marquette poll was showing “a huge surge for Cruz.” He found such a surge believable, given that Governor Scott Walker and other potent political forces in the state have aligned behind the senator from Texas, while Trump has been “off-balance” in Wisconsin.

“I think the odds are the Trump is the decided underdog right now,” said Caddell, predicting that a big Cruz win in Wisconsin would make it “very difficult” for Trump to collect the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the first round of balloting at the Republican National Convention. Also, a loss in Wisconsin will “energize” those who wish to block Trump from winning the nomination.

“It depends on how he recovers, and how the electorate that’s been pushing him recovers,” said Caddell. “There’s a Quinnipiac poll out this morning that shows him with 56% of the vote in New York. He’s never been higher than 30 in Wisconsin, but he’s going back to his home territory. New Jersey is winner-take-all. California is a big campaign.”

If Trump can’t recover and get the delegates he needs, Caddell thought Senator Cruz would likely find himself discarded after the first ballot at the convention, his usefulness to the Party bosses at an end.

“If they can stop Trump, then Cruz will pick up some more on the second ballot… but I don’t think they’re gonna nominate him,” he explained. “I think they will then move to nominate, to try to nominate an Establishment figure, someone who hasn’t run. I think that will blow the Republican Party up.”

Caddell said the GOP Establishment is “terrified of Trump,” and also opposed to Cruz, because “they are worried about their arrangements being broken up, their power.”

He said these Establishment politicians would “absolutely” rather lose the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton than win with Trump or Cruz. Conversely, the voters who have propelled Trump and Cruz to victory over a platoon of more Establishment-approved candidates are unlikely to “reconcile” themselves to an Establishment pick inserted at the Republican National Convention.

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00AM to 9:00AM EST.

You can listen to the full interview with Pat Caddell below at the link:

http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2016/...ublican-party/

Karl Rove starts pushing.

Karl Rove: Scrap Trump, Cruz, Kasich and Go With a 'Fresh Face'


(Getty Images)

Friday, 01 Apr 2016 10:44 AM

GOP powerhouse Karl Rove says he'd like to see Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich booted in the race for the Republican presidential nomination so that a fresh face can emerge to help the fractured party win the White House.

"A fresh face might be the thing that could give us a chance to turn this election and win in November against Hillary," Rove told Hugh Hewitt, the syndicated radio personality.

"If we have somebody who we think has been battle tested, and has strong conservative principles and the ability to articulate them, and they are nominated at this convention, there will be a lot of acrimony from the people who were seeking the nomination.

"But if it's somebody who has those convictions that they can express in a compelling way, we could come out of the convention in relatively strong position."

Rove, a Republican political consultant who served as senior advisor and deputy chief of staff in the George W. Bush administration, added:

"In terms of being able to match somebody head to head against Hillary Clinton, that's going to be difficult to do."

Rove said Trump — whose recent gaff about punishing women who have illegal abortions has hurt his campaign — must begin to act "in a presidential manner" if he hopes to win the nomination.

Cruz, he believes, is "somewhat" more electable than Trump, but like the billionaire developer the senator from Texas is behind Clinton in a number of polls.

http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/karl.../01/id/721835/

See this is the sickening mindset of the Republican Establishment. After candidates and supporters have spent 9 months or more in races for the nomination, Karl Rove dares to say "oh just scrap them". This is a sickness that's not just destroying our party, it's the same sickness that's destroyed our country "scrapping" American Workers, American Citizens, American Taxpayers, and the United States. Instead of fixing the problems, just scrap it all for a new country, for new citizens, for new alliances.

It's a sickness that has infested our convention and nomination process to protect open borders and free trade treason. The RNC made a huge mistake outing Michael Steele and replacing him with Priebus.

As an evangelical, I am appalled at the extent to which Christian conservatives are ruining the country. From what I understand, Karl Rove was one of the inside group of Texans who somehow rose to political power because of their connection to various Texan groups, including religious ones. He was nick named "Turd Blossom" by friends, a group of too young for Vietnam War upper middle class activists intoxicated with their growing influence in the Texas scene. So heady with their influence that they let close Jewish friend Jack Abramhoff involve himself in a financial scandal that landed him several years in the federal penitentiary. Obviously, they did not follow the proverb to "Hold back those headed for destruction." even with a close comrade.This sounds very harsh and judgemental----but they are generally not experienced enough in political decisions to really understand what they are doing, but have such a sizable society that counter productive ideas can easily be harbored. They talk to each other, and reinforce popular ideas---that most other people don't get.

My first big contention was in the prelude to the Iraq invasion. In fairness, there were a lot of military veteran Democrats that also supported this---buoyed up by the fairly easy success of George HW Bush's Operation Desert Storm. Being a member of a union that has a lot of military vets, you can always tell when they are going on the warpath: the caps come out! They want to make sure everyone knows who they are---even if they were involved in the equally stupid, misplaced VietNam war. And this is true for Democrat members as well as Republican ones. So....they all thought "Another easy victory." But when this does not happen the blamegame starts. But where evangelicals played a decisive role, is because Texas is one of those places where there are fierce views: counter to the UN, positive to doom and gloom, positive to military spending and big business. So Texas fundamentalists with a few other cooperators managed to convince Texas President GWB, that an Iraq invasion was simply written in the stars. They convince him that it was a necessary and inevitable step to upholding THEIR view on biblical religion. This has, in hindsight, caused a huge political disaster with the American public, who lost hope of the promised easy victory and rebelled by voting in an radical progressive leader instead.

The second big blunder, IMO, was the antagonism towards Mitt Romney in 2008. Not sensing that some form of emotional healing from the Iraq disaster would be appropriate, evangelicals still persisted in their know-it-all approach to US politics by rejecting Romney only because of his denominational background. Here was a proven politician, incidentally popular in probably the most liberal state in the country. Not ultra conservative, but at least someone who could beat a wet behind the ears Democrat. Once again, the fundamentalists abandoned ship and left the country feeling the pain of the Obama regime. Faux-hero John McCain never really stood a chance. By the time of Romney's actual nomination in 2012, the tentacles of Democratic machinery were too deeply embedded in the critical battleground states. Democrats are professional political activists. That is what many of them live for. Romney had gone from a powerful position, with the electorate in 2008, to defending a very weakened, embattled political ideology.

So, now once again the usual fundamentalists are in a panic that the worldly Trump will be their downfall. Probably they should have some worry: Because they have been blowing it big time through the last decade and a half of US policy decisions. But once again they are acting from knee jerk emotions rather than a calculated logic. It should be clear to anyone trying for office is that there is a powerful backlash to politics as usual in the minds of the American public. Evangelicals, unfortunately, have contributed to much of the politics as usual disillusioning. And maybe we would be a lot better off if they simply would stick to their specialty of religious beliefs and spiritual practices.

Unless they actually want the barbarian hordes overwhelming us, just as the ancient Romans were.

Captainron wrote:

So, now once again the usual fundamentalists are in a panic that the worldly Trump will be their downfall.

And that it's in a nutshell. Trump is worldly. He knows the international world far better than anyone in the race including Hillary Clinton, because he's been in that world doing business for a long time. He is a cosmopolitan, which is an advantage not a disadvantage. A cosmopolitan is the "worldly person", someone familiar with other countries, well-traveled and in his case highly-invested. Yet, he is not a globalist. His knowledge creates his concern for our country. A cosmopolitan while knowledgeable of worldly affairs and matters, is still a patriotic citizen. By comparison, the globalists running our country now and who want to run it are the traitors who prefer the new country, the new citizens and the new alliances, throwing American Citizens, American Workers and American Taxpayers on the scrap heap, taking the scrap value to line their pockets like copper thieves and rewarding their friends who paid them for it a New World Order.

Trump will be their downfall, and work, hope and pray we must that he is victorious, otherwise we will be defeated.