Last Call For Dissed Christie

What a precipitous fall for New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie. He's run into a massive backlash over his failed presidential campaign and recent endorsement of Donald Trump.  Now papers in his home state are calling for the governor's resignation, the largest of which is the Newark Star-Ledger. Their editorial board is now openly calling for Christie to step down.

Gov. Chris Christie has made it abundantly clear that governing New Jersey is a distant second priority for him, far behind the demands of his personal ambition. 

He has answered every crisis with neglect during his disastrous second term. 

Atlantic City is about to go bankrupt, and yet he sat on a reform package for six months without explanation. The transit system is in disrepair, with our link to New York City vulnerable to a crippling breakdown, and he watches passively as the transit fund drifts toward bankruptcy. New Jersey's fiscal crisis is the nation's second worst, and he has charted no viable path toward a political deal. 

All this is infuriating when you consider that Christie possesses the political talent to steer the state towards safer ground. He made that clear in his first term, when he scored substantial wins on a centrist agenda. 

But if his first term showed that he has the talent, his second term has shown that he lacks the character. 

His craven endorsement of Donald Trump is only the final blow, the moment when he lost any last shred of credibility. His fulsome praise of Trump, after his stinging condemnations only a few weeks ago, is impossible to believe.

New Jersey's paper of record ends with a brutal assessment of Christie's multiple failures:

Our hope is that the calls for his resignation grow into a roar, that it includes Republican voices, and that Christie finds some face-saving way to step aside. 

Failing that, we can only hope that he takes a moral inventory of his own conduct and changes course. If not, it will be time to consider a recall election. 

The best answer for New Jersey would be for the governor to quit on his own. It's time for fresh leadership in this state. Christie has done enough damage.

He won't step down of course, and the editorial makes no mistake in falsely believing Christie possesses the moral character to do so at all.  It's very apparent however that Christie's higher political ambitions are done.

Couldn't have happened to a more deserving pile of garbage.

Flipping The Script On SCOTUS, Con't

So, what is President Obama's plan to get his Supreme Court nominee a hearing?  The first obstacle is Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, the current Senate Judiciary Chair. Grassley has vowed that President Obama's nominee won't get consideration at all, letting the rest of the Senate Republicans off the hook.

Only one problem.  Grassley is up for re-election.  And President Obama knows how to play this game.  First the left hook:

President Obama is vetting Jane L. Kelly, a federal appellate judge in Iowa, as a potential nominee for the Supreme Court, weighing a selection that could pose an awkward dilemma for her home-state senator Charles E. Grassley, who has pledged to block the president from filling the vacancy. 

The F.B.I. has been conducting background interviews on Judge Kelly, 51, according to a person with knowledge of the process. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is closely guarding details about Mr. Obama’s search to fill the opening created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. 

The president is expected to make his selection in the next couple of weeks, a decision that could reshape the court for decades but faces heated opposition from Republicans in Congress. 

Mr. Grassley is at the center of that fight as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a post in which he alone can decide whether to hold confirmation hearings on a nominee. Like the panel’s other Republicans, he has vowed not to take any action until after the November election, arguing that the choice should be left to the next president.

And then when you've got them stunned, you land the right cross.

Former Iowa Lt. Gov. and Secretary of Agriculture Patty Judge will enter Iowa’s U.S. Senate race, multiple sources confirmed to The Des Moines Register Thursday. 

Judge, a Democrat, will challenge long-time incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has been under fire in recent weeks over his refusal to hold confirmation hearings for a successor to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died unexpectedly earlier this month. 

Sources in Washington, D.C., and in Des Moines – including people who have spoken with Judge as recently as this morning – confirmed to the Register that she will announce her candidacy on Friday. 

Judge told the Des Moines Register late last week that she was considering a run, largely because of Grassley’s stance on the court vacancy. 

"I don’t like this deliberate obstruction of the process,” she told the Register last week. “I think Chuck Grassley owes us better. He’s been with us a long time. Maybe he’s been with us too long.”

Boom, baby.  Suddenly Grassley has a formidable challenger to his seat in Patty Judge, and she has an immediate issue to run on, for Jane Kelly is an eminently qualified federal judge whom Grassley himself recommended to the bench.

If you doubted Barack Obama on this, doubt no more.  Do not be surprised if Jane Kelly is his pick.

Debbie Has To Go

I've been calling for DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign for months now.

Schultz has been an unmitigated disaster as DNC chair, with the Democrats losing the House and Senate under her tenure and giving Republicans that largest margin in the House in three generations. Now she sandbags the President on Iran? 

Unacceptable. She's clearly more afraid of AIPAC than Democrats, and that alone is a serious problem. But when that turns into direct action against the President of her own party and his signature foreign policy achievment, she can't be shown the door quickly enough. 

I'm tired of her losing. I'm tired of her running against Barack Obama and losing to Tea Party Republicans. I'm tired of her idiocy. 

She needs to go.

With Super Tuesday out of the way and Clinton on the clear path to the nomination, it's time to clean house so we can clean House, if you know what I mean.  The only way we get what both Hillary and Bernie have been calling for is a Democratic Congress, and nobody has been worse at that since Schultz took over in Obama's first term only to run into the buzzsaw that was 2010 midterm elections.

Enter Chuck Pierce, who reminds us that Schultz is now actively working to create legislation that will help big banks and wreck any wort of financial sector reform.

It is time for her to go. More important, it's time for Hillary Rodham Clinton to insist that she go.

In addition to putting the Congress behind some of the worst predatory bastards in America, this move also gives the lie to anything HRC says about her dedication to reigning in financial crimes. Moreover, this puts the DNC squarely on the other side of the issue from both Bernie Sanders and Senator Professor Warren and, therefore, on the other side of the issue from about 90 percent of some voters she is going to need desperately in the fall. (The payday loan industry always has been something that jumps on SPW's last nerve). This latest move by DWS completely undermines the work of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, which already is under siege from a number of different directions and will be one of the prime targets of any Republican president also armed with a Republican Congress. And can I imagine Herr Trump talking shameless ragtime about payday lenders as part of his absurd kabuki financial populism? You bet I can.

Yeah, this is long overdue.  We need somebody in the DNC now with the goal of winning back Congress, and Schultz is not it.  Not even close.

She's got to go.

StupidiNews!

• Astronaut Scott Kelly has returned from his year aboard the ISS as NASA will look at how his body has changed compared to his twin brother and former astronaut Mark Kelly.
• Scientists have discovered ancient fossils of fungus strands thought to be over 440 million years old, making them Earth's oldest-known land organism fossils.
• Ben Carson has effectively suspended his presidential campaign and will not attend tonight's GOP debate in his home state of Michigan.
• Fracking pioneer Anthony McClendon has died in a single-car accident in Oklahoma the morning before he was to face federal grand jury charges of bid rigging in oil drilling leases.
• New federal regulations to authenticate student information for college loans are causing headaches for students, parents, and universities.

Last Call For Going Postal

House Republicans are so hideously awful that they barely even name post offices after people who actually deserve post offices named after them.

The House of Representatives spent its legislative day Tuesday naming nine post offices. Only one generated any opposition: A proposal, from Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.), to name a post office in Winston-Salem, N.C., for the late poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou. 

The bill honoring Angelou, famed for her autobiographical works and her recital at the 1993 inauguration of President Bill Clinton, passed overwhelmingly but not unanimously. Nine members, all Republicans, opposed the honor: Mo Brooks (Ala.), Ken Buck (Colo.), Michael Burgess (Texas), Jeff Duncan (S.C.), Glenn Grothman (Wis.), Andy Harris (Md.), Thomas Massie (Ky.), Alex Mooney (W.V.) and Steven Palazzo (Ala.). 

Only Grothman discussed his opposition on the House floor: “I think people should investigate Maya Angelou a little bit, and I’ll suggest perhaps if you want to investigate a little bit further that perhaps you Google ‘Maya Angelou’ and look at other articles in places like the American Thinker or the American Spectator.”

Yeah, and that's my Congressman, Thomas Massie, voting against naming a post office for Maya Angelou.  Asshole.

Luckily he has a challenger in November.  Meet Calvin Sidle, folks.  Good luck to him, and if you can donate a few bucks, do so.

I'll find out more about him here in the next few weeks and we'll get something going.  I'm tired of Massie's glibertarian nonsense.

Meanwhile, In Kentucky

It must be real fun for people to pretend that Trump isn't a real threat to people of color.

7. This young student was repeatedly shoved/harassed from every angle by the white supremacists AND others. pic.twitter.com/uRpZr9R7oc

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) March 2, 2016

This is from Trump's rally Tuesday in Louisville, but hey, it's okay.  Trump's not a real threat, and people aren't really gonna vote for him, and they'll get sick of him and go home or something and everything will be fine, right?

Right?

Putting On A Clinic In Texas

Texas's TRAP laws. designed to close most of the state's abortion clinics with increasingly draconian state regulation, now go before the Supreme Court in oral arguments today. ABC News reporter Kate Shaw explains:

First, a little background. In 2013, Texas passed the two laws at issue here: 1) a requirement that abortion providers have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital; and 2) a requirement that abortion facilities comply with the requirements for ambulatory surgical centers.

The plaintiffs in the case are clinics and doctors that provide abortion services, among other things; Whole Woman’s Health is one of those clinics. They have challenged the Texas laws, arguing that there’s no evidence that the laws promote health and that they’re really about impeding women’s access to abortion. If the laws go into effect, they claim, the number of clinics in Texas will drop to 10 or fewer (the laws are largely on hold at the moment, while the Supreme Court considers the case).

Dr. John Hellerstedt, the Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services -- the agency that enforces the challenged laws -- argues in response that Texas is just trying to ensure patient safety and improve standards of care. He also argues that it’s the job of legislatures, not courts, to decide whether laws like these are medically necessary.

It's important to note that these are the same TRAP laws Gov John Kasich has installed in Ohio, closing half of the state's abortion clinics there in moves that could leave Cincinnati as the largest metropolitan area in the country without a single abortion provider.

This has the potential to be the most important abortion case in nearly 25 years. The two most significant abortion cases the court has decided -- Roe v. Wade, in 1973, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in 1992 -- found that the Constitution protects a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy, at least prior to viability, but also found that states have a legitimate interest in regulating abortion. But the court hasn’t provided much guidance about when state regulation crosses the line, and this case could do that.

There are at least three possible outcomes (and they mostly turn on Justice Kennedy, who holds the key vote in this case). First, if Justice Kennedy thinks the regulations have gone too far, they’ll likely be struck down 5-3, which will make it harder for states to pass abortion regulations that seriously interfere with women’s ability to obtain abortions. If Justice Kennedy concludes that the Texas laws are permissible, the court will likely divide 4-4, affirming the lower court opinion and leaving the regulations in effect, but making no law for the rest of the country. And there is a third possibility -- that the chief justice could hold the case over for re-argument some time next term, when the court may have a ninth justice in place.

The good news is for now, with the passing of Justice Scalia, there won't be five votes to make Texas's TRAP laws viable nationwide.  The bad news is that there will be enormous pressure by Republicans on Chief Justice Roberts to punt until they allow a replacement (which if a Democrat wins in November and the GOP keeps the Senate may be never.)

But Zandar, you say, Republicans can't "pressure" Roberts to do anything, right?

Oh sure, in a perfect world  But Roberts saw how Republicans de-legitimized everything President Obama did over eight years, and Roberts doesn't want to be the same way.  Surely any decisions that the GOP doesn't like would be attacked as illegitimate for only having 8 justices.

But they can't do that when they are the reason no justice can even be considered, right?

Do you think anyone will be able to stop them?  Our media and voters haven't so far.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton notched multiple wins in Super Tuesday primary contests, but rivals Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Bernie Sanders won several states as well.
• Several Gulf of Mexico oil drilling projects will be coming online in 2017, pushing output to a record 1.8 million barrels per day.
• Jordanian security forces have killed seven militants in the city of Irbid as dozens of suspected Islamic State members were rounded up in sweeps.
• The US Commerce Department says that Chinese steel sold unfairly in the US will trigger heavy import duty penalties meant to help domestic steel mills. 
• The 2015 Turing Award has been given to the two "grandfathers of modern cryptography", Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, for their lifetime of work in the field.

Last Call For Flipping The Script On SCOTUS, Con't

Meanwhile in Washington, Senate Republicans are again saying that they will refuse to even consider any Obama nominee to replace Scalia.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Obama what he’s been telling reporters and constituents: that the next occupant of the Oval Office should be the one to fill the court vacancy.“I told the president what I’ve been saying for close to two weeks now,” McConnell said.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also attended the meeting, as did Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Judiciary Committee ranking member Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Vice President Biden, who helmed the Judiciary panel during his Senate career.

The meeting was brief, providing another sign that neither side is backing down in the partisan battle over replacing the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

“We killed a lot of time talking about basketball,” Reid said.

The White House and Senate Democrats have ratcheted up the pressure on Grassley in recent days in hopes that he might be shamed into holding hearings. The Iowa senator controls the committee that oversees Supreme Court nominations.

But Grassley indicated he’s not going to budge. Instead, he offered a constitutional defense of the Senate’s decision to postpone the matter until 2017.

“I said this is more basic than just the stuff we’ve been talking about. You have a certain view of the role of government. We have a different view of the role of government,” Grassley said, paraphrasing the conversation.

Grassley argued that Obama’s aggressive use of executive authority makes it virtually impossible for Republicans to put another one of the president’s nominees on the court, likely tipping its ideological balance.

“You believe you’ve got a pen and a phone and you can do certain things Congress won’t, and you’re looking for the court to back you up, and we just don’t agree with that,” he said.

Reid had a blunter take.

Obama has won time and again against these clods, so we'll see what happens after we can put a face to the nominee and a story behind them.

“They were adamant. They said, ‘No, we’re not going to do this at all,’ ” Reid told reporters on the West Wing driveway.

Trump Cards, Con't

Greg Sargent goes over the two-front strategy Dems have for beating Trump in the general: going after Trump as woefully unfit for office, and appealing to those fed up with the system enough to consider voting for him.

All signs are that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are headed for smashing victories today in multiple primaries across the country that could very well put both on a clear path to the nominations of their respective parties. Which means it isn’t too early for Democrats to start seriously pondering how to handle Trump in the general election. 

Today’s New York Times delivers the most comprehensive report yet on the evolving Dem strategy. It’s worth dividing the Dem approach into two categories: First, there are the attacks that are designed to tear Trump down in the eyes of core Dem constituencies (minorities, single women) and groups of gettable swing voters (suburbanites and college educated whites). This will rely heavily on attacking Trump’s temperament as unfit for the presidency and deeply dangerous on a global scale; highlighting Trump’s virulent xenophobia and degrading comments about immigrants, women, and Muslims; and his murky business dealings, which will be pressed into service to paint Trump as a scam artist who has fleeced working people. 

You might call those the low-hanging-fruit attacks on Trump — the gimmes. After all, it’s easy to conclude Trump is a deeply toxic figure who would drive up turnout among core Dem groups in a huge way and dramatically alienate and frighten certain swing voters. That’s very likely to happen. 

The second aspect of the thinking about Trump is, to my mind, more interesting and potentially very important. It is rooted in an effort to understand the actual sources of Trump’s appeal, which he has retained in spite of all of his visibly despicable character traits:

[Campaign manager Robby] Mook and his colleagues regard Mr. Trump as a wily, determined and indefatigable opponent who seems to be speaking to broad economic anxieties among Americans and to the widely held belief that traditional politicians are incapable of addressing those problems. Publicly, the Clinton operation is letting the Republicans slug it out. But privately, it and other Democrats are poring over polling data to understand the roots of Mr. Trump’s populist appeal…. 

Mrs. Clinton’s uneven performance with male voters so far, especially white men, could create an opening for Mr. Trump to attract Democrats and independents who are socially and culturally moderate and open to his call for a strong military, fearless foreign policy and businessman’s approach to the economy. Those voters could give him an edge in places like North Carolina, which Mr. Obama won in 2008. But Clinton advisers also worry about Ohio, Florida and Democratic-leaning states in presidential elections that Mr. Trump has vowed to contest, like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

This is welcome news for those who don’t relish the idea of a Trump presidency. Initial reports suggested that Democrats were mostly planning to re-purpose the 2012 attacks on Mitt Romney, as a predatory capitalist, against Trump. But such an attack arguably would not be reckoning with the important differences between Romney and Trump, as well as the true sources of Trumpism’s success. Romney was running (mostly) as an economic technocrat who would spur a faster recovery where Obama failed, in hopes of winning a referendum on the incumbent’s sluggish economy. So Dems had to use Romney’s business career to viscerally undermine the notion that his approach to the economy — a call for “getting government out of the way” that Dems branded as “you’re on your own economics” — would actually help struggling Americans.

So yes, the Dems are definitely taking the notion of running against Trump in the general very seriously.  What I'm afraid of is Democrats starting to run against Obama and the people of color that make up the majority of the Democratic party in order to get angry Trumpbros to vote for them.  To her credit, Hillary has done a much better job of running with Obama than against him, Bernie not so much.

We'll see where all this settles out, but at least for now I'm operating on "running against Trump in November".

But He Makes The Yooge Trains Run On Time

A letter to the Financial Times from a couple in Indianapolis is raising eyebrows about why the wealthy and educated would vote for Trump.

  

"Sir, My wife and I are affluent Americans with postgraduate degrees. We are socially liberal and fiscally mildly conservative. We are not the sans-culottes you see as the prototypical Trump voter. We are well aware of his vulgarity and nous deficiency yet we contemplate voting for him. Why?

Electing the standard-bearer of the Democratic Party seems purposeless. The neanderthal Republicans barely respected the legitimacy of Bill Clinton's or Barack Obama's election, let alone that of Hillary who would arrive tainted with scandal and the email lapses hanging over her head. We would get four years of gridlock and "hearings". The Republican tribunes, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, are backward, foolish, and inexperienced. John Kasich, a moderate with extensive governmental experience and a willingness to compromise, is an also-ran. That leaves The Donald, really a moderate in wolf's garb, who would owe nothing to either party and might strike deals, for instance on tax reform.

Yes, we cold be like the good citizens who voted for a "tameable" Hitler in 1933 to get things back on track. But the alternatives look worse."

Jon and Elsa Sands
Indianapolis, IN, US

Well then.  If you think that the Country Club wing of the GOP won't get behind Trump, remember:

1. He can be controlled once he gets into office.
2. Tax cuts for the rich!
3. He'll make the trains run on time.

So if you're expecting a large uprising of wealthy GOP moderates to resist Trump...naah.  He's one of them, and they're okay with that.  

StupidiNews!

• Both parties are heading into Super Tuesday this year with nominating contests in 13 states and enough delegates at stake to give frontrunners Trump and Clinton big leads.
• Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura says he'll mount a third party run for president if Bernie Sanders loses the Democratic nomination contest.
• Lawyers for Apple and FBI Director James Comey will both testify before the US House on Tuesday regarding a federal order to unlock the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters.
• Construction workers at Tesla's battery "gigafactory" near Reno, Nevada have walked off the job over a union labor dispute, saying contractors are bringing in workers from other states.
• After millions of miles on the road, one of Google's self-driving cars has gotten into an accident, striking a bus while trying to avoid sandbags on the road.

Last Call For Network News

Well, at least CBS CEO Leslie Moonves is being honest here.

Leslie Moonves can appreciate a Donald Trump candidacy.

Not that the CBS executive chairman and CEO might vote for the Republican presidential frontrunner, but he likes the ad money Trump and his competitors are bringing to the network.

"It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS," he said of the presidential race.

Moonves called the campaign for president a "circus" full of "bomb throwing," and he hopes it continues.

"Most of the ads are not about issues. They're sort of like the debates," he said.

"Man, who would have expected the ride we're all having right now? ... The money's rolling in and this is fun," he said.

"I've never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going," said Moonves.

You think ol' Les here is going to be hurt in any way by a Trump presidency?

I'm thinking...no.

Rally Points

Nate Silver says the math doesn't add up when it comes to Republicans backing Trump, in particular conservatives who've long hated him and found him distasteful, or something.

If a realignment is underway, then it poses a big empirical challenge. Presidential elections already suffer from the problem of small sample sizes — one reason a lot of people, certainly including us, shouldn’t have been so dismissive of Trump’s chances early on. Elections held in the midst of political realignments are even rarer, however. The rules of the old regime — the American political party system circa 1980 through 2012 — might not apply in the new one. And yet, it’s those elections that inform both the conventional wisdom and statistical models of American political behavior. 

This doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be completely in the dark. For one thing, the polls — although there’s reason to be concerned about their condition in the long-term — have been reasonably accurate so far in the primaries. And some of the old rules will still apply. It’s probably fair to guess that Pennsylvania and Ohio will vote similarly, for example. 

Still, one should be careful about one’s assumptions. For instance, the assumption that the parties will rally behind their respective nominees may or may not be reliable. True, recent elections have had very little voting across party lines: 93 percent of Republicans who voted in 2012 supported Romney, for example, despite complaints from the base that he was insufficiently conservative. And in November 2008, some 89 percent of Democrats who voted supported Barack Obama after his long battle with Hillary Clinton.

But we may be entering a new era, and through the broader sweep of American history, there’s sometimes been quite a bit of voting across party lines. The table below reflects, in each election since 1952, what share of a party’s voters voted against their party’s presidential candidate (e.g., a Democrat voting Republican or for a third-party ticket). There’s a lot of fascinating political history embedded in the table, but one theme is that divisive nominations have consequences.

ELECTION	DEMOCRATS	REPUBLICANS
1952	23%	8%
1956	15	4
1960	16	5
1964	13	20
1968	26	14
1972	33	5
1976	20	11
1980	33	15
1984	26	7
1988	17	8
1992	23	27
1996	15	19
2000	13	9
2004	11	7
2008	11	10
2012	8	7

Silver has a mild point.  Reagan Democrats in 1980 and 1984 did make a difference, as did the Dems who jumped ship on McGovern in 72. and those elections certainly broke that mold, but look at the last 4 presidential elections.  

There's very little party-flipping, and what does happen effectively cancels out.

So no, I see something very close to what we've seen before, somewhere around a meager 10% of voters switching up, and it happening on both sides, effectively neutralizing the phenomenon.  90% of voters are going to stick with their party in November.

Another massive Democratic defection like 1972 or 1980 isn't going to happen in our heavily partisan body politic.  Worst case scenario is 1992, where about 25% of voters switched up, but it happened on both sides, and that was with Perot clogging up the works.

I don't think you'll see mass defections on either side.  Too much tribalism. 

Trump Cards, Con't

WaPo's Philip Rucker and Robert Costa document the atrocities as the GOP goes into full Conserva-Schism ahead of Super Tuesday.

The implosion over Donald Trump’s candidacy that Republicans had hoped to avoid arrived so virulently this weekend that many party leaders vowed never to back the billionaire and openly questioned whether the GOP could come together this election year.

At a moment when Republicans had hoped to begin taking on Hillary Clinton — who is seemingly on her way to wrapping up the Democratic nomination — the GOP has instead become consumed by a crisis over its identity and core values that is almost certain to last through the July party convention, if not the rest of the year.

A campaign full of racial overtones and petty, R-rated put-downs grew even uglier Sunday after Trump declined repeatedly in a CNN interview to repudiate the endorsement of him by David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Trump had disavowed Duke at a news conference on Friday, but he stammered when asked about Duke on Sunday.

Marco Rubio, who has been savaging Trump as a “con man” for three days, responded by saying that Trump’s defiance made him “unelectable.” The senator from Florida said at a rally in Northern Virginia, “We cannot be the party that nominates someone who refuses to condemn white supremacists.”

The fracas comes as the presidential race enters a potentially determinative month of balloting, beginning with primaries and caucuses in 11 states on Tuesday. As the campaign-trail rhetoric grew noxious over the weekend, a sense of fatalism fell over the Republican firmament, from elected officials and figureheads to major donors and strategists.

“This is an existential choice,” said former Minnesota senator Norm Coleman, who is backing Rubio. Asked how the party could unite, Coleman said, “It gets harder every day when you hear things like not disavowing the KKK and David Duke. It’s not getting easier; it’s getting more difficult. . . . I’m hopeful the party won’t destroy itself.”

The choice for voters is not simply one of preference but rather a fundamental one about the direction they want to take the country, with the insurgent Trump promising utter transformation.

“For many Republicans, Trump is more than just a political choice,” said Kevin Madden, a veteran operative who advised 2012 nominee Mitt Romney. “It’s a litmus test for character.”

Madden, like some of his peers, said he could never vote for Trump. If he is the nominee, Madden said, “I’m prepared to write somebody in so that I have a clear conscience.”

And ladies and gentlemen, I am here to call absolute BS on the notion that Republicans would ever sit out, write-in, or flip to the Dems to avoid Trump.  The racism Trump demonstrates has been at the heart of the GOP for decades and it hasn't bothered their consciences yet.  Why would it start now that Trump has figured out how to win with it?

Unlike some Democrats, who I really do believe would vote for Trump to sabotage the country if their candidate doesn't win the primary, the GOP hates Democrats more than they like themselves, it is what always has united them.  The notion that they would vote for Sanders or Clinton instead of Trump is laughable, as laughable as the notion that they will write in Romney or someone else, or that the GOP will split into a third party.

Maybe, maybe they will stay home.  Maybe a few.  But considering Mitt Romney got 60 million votes in 2012 and everyone basically hated the guy, Trump will get at least that in 2016 and probably more.

Why?

The support for the loud, obnoxious racist demagogue is baked in, folks.  Tens of millions of Americans are perfectly okay with it.  And they're going to vote for Trump.  Let's get this notion that Republican voters don't know what they're getting with Trump out of the way. They know exactly what they are getting, and he's winning for a reason.

Republicans could have chosen to stop Trump at any time.  They haven't.  They won't.  Stopping Trump is up to the rest of us.