Thread: Memo to Donald Trump: Forget the zingers and insults, it’s time to get back to winnin

Memo to Donald Trump: Forget the zingers and insults, it’s time to get back to winning

By Charles Hurt - - Thursday, April 7, 2016

Losing sucks. Especially if you are not accustomed to losing and Donald J. Trump has built his whole campaign on being a winner who wins.

Campaign slogan: America doesn't win anymore. Elect me and you will start winning again. In fact, he promised, you will win so much you will get tired of all the winning.

So it is very hard for Mr. Trump, today, to be right smack in the middle of the longest, darkest slump of his campaign.

It has been more than two weeks now since he last won a contest. That was the Arizona primary last month where he beat Ted Cruz by 18 points and snapped up every single delegate the state had to offer.

It will be another 12 days before Mr. Trump has a realistic shot at winning another contest.

This week's loss to Sen. Ted Cruz in Wisconsin particularly stung because the state was ripe for an upset victory that would have silenced Mr. Cruz's argument for continuing on even though he has no realistic hope of clinching the nomination without extraordinary efforts at the convention this summer.

Wisconsin was a ripe opportunity for Mr. Trump because it was an actual primary where voters simply cast ballots, just like they will do in the general election in November. Because of his appeal to a broader cross-section of voters, Mr. Trump has won most primaries, especially open ones like Wisconsin's where anybody can vote regardless of party registration.

Mr. Cruz usually struggles in these contests and does much better in the convoluted party caucuses and state conventions that restrict who may participate.

General election candidates who emerge from open primaries almost always do better than candidates who emerge from caucuses and conventions because open primaries are a better barometer of the coming moods and dynamics of a general election.

So the question is: Why didn't Donald Trump upset Ted Cruz in Wisconsin and put this thing away already?

The obvious main reason is that the establishment GOP have soiled their britches at the Trump juggernaut and dutifully coalesced behind Mr. Cruz. It is really amusing to watch Mr. Cruz work so hard at their behest after he has spent so many years at least appearing to be a thorn in their side. (Does Mr. Cruz really think they will rally to his side once — they hope — he has dispatched The Donald?)

But there is another, bigger and more important reason Donald Trump did not upset Ted Cruz in Wisconsin: Mr. Trump did not play to win. Instead, he played — as he often does — to land hard punches, zing vicious insults and score meaningless points.

This is what makes his presidential campaign so damned entertaining.

But now it is time to win. Now is time to start playing president and appeal to new voters who have serious and understandable concerns about his temperament and grasp of the issues. His speech at AIPAC where he laid out clear — and totally unabashedly correct! — policy positions was a terrific start. He should do many more of those and fewer rambling Trump infomercials.

It is time now for Mr. Trump to hang up his Twitter spurs, holster his six-shooter loaded with insults and set into full gallop for the horizon before the sun sets on him and his campaign.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...-back-winning/

Mr. Hurt, you've written some really nice and accurate articles about Donald Trump. Don't go wacko-bird on us now. Trump hasn't said anything offensive to anyone or about anyone except his opponents and people who absolutely deserve it. What you're dribbling about today is telling Donald Trump to stop doing something he never did in the first place because you read an article or watched a TV commentator lying about what he said or didn't say.

The chattering classes never stop. They live in their little bubble, where illegal immigrants are serving them their deli lunch and wine, instead of stealing their job or running them over with an uninsured auto. Or they are in the university system, where more tuition paying (and taxpayer subsidized) students, simply feather their cushy retirement a little more. Even if those students are carrying USA-made technology back to their home countries to eventually put us out of business. Or maybe they are the entitled millenial generation, schooled in the faux reality of civil right struggles and non threatening internationalism, where the US is the main source of obstruction to their perfectly harmonious fantasy world.

Yes, the chattering classes never stop.

Exactly, Captain Ron. "chattering classes" .... perfect description.

I don't know who first came up with the term. "Talking heads" are pretty much the same thing. Nobody wants to work at anything anymore. Just be a chattering, talking head.

It wouldn't be so bad if they knew something. But too many of them don't know a thing and don't want to. Can you believe that Ted Cruz has been in the race for President going on 13 months. He announced in March of 2015. And there has been no discussion of his US Supreme Court cases? On the one hand they hang their hat on this as some positive making him seem real smart to them, but only 1 journalist even bothered to look them up and write an article about it and only then, he only presented the case facts on 2 of the 9 cases.

These cases are very telling about him. Maybe now that he's doing a little better, he'll more attention and someone in MSM will ask itself, "hey what about his supreme court cases, what were they all about".