Robert Campbell

Michael, Republicans at Trump rallies in Wisconsin don't care what Trump says about Scott Walker? Apparently Walker has only ever existed as a very-short-run Presidential candidate. One who opposed Donald Trump, no less. End of bio. No other place in the cosmo-drama for him. Let's talk about Donald Trump's "perfect statistics," the ones he trots out each time he indicts Scott Walker... At the Appleton rally, Trump read some handwritten markings off a couple of pieces of paper. One was his claim that the unemployment rate in Wisconsin is presently... 20%. Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm Average U-3 (the conventional "unemployment rate") for Wisconsin in 2015 was 4.6% (below the national average). We all know what's wrong with the conventional unemployment rate. So, OK, let's go with U-6 (sometimes called the "underemployment rate"). For Wisconsin in 2015, the average U-6 was 8.3%. Again, below the national average. Without giving numbers, real or invented, Trump also talks about labor force participation being low in Wisconsin. It's down from 2007, but at 68.7% for March 2016 it's about 5 points better than the national average: http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-vs-scott-walker-1459722449 Lying about a Republican governor's record for political gain. It would all make perfect sense if Trump were a Democrat. Robert

Michael, The analyses I've read agree that Cruz can't get to 1237 before the convention. But neither can Trump, unless on an outside chance he gets there on June 7 (the day of the last primaries). And after all of his stomping, Trump will have to have enough to win on the first ballot, or the delegates who were initially bound to support him will start defecting. Clobber, subordinate, and discredit all the Republicans, then it will be the easiest thing in the world to defeat the Democrats. What a plan! Robert

Michael, What should he do? You know, like, maybe get his priorities straight? What is the point of making multiple stinks, pretending that Megyn Kelly has it in for you—then consenting to be interviewed by Maureen Dowd, who you know for sure has it in for you? Is that going to make Donald Trump more popular with female voters? So if Trump succeeds in stomping every Republican political figure, and discrediting every media outlet that isn't constantly hostile to Republicans, he's going to win the presidency in a walkover. Is that how you see it working? Robert

Michael, This may in fact be a distorted rendition (without quite the right percentages for Trump or Kasich) of a poll by ARG, which is just now listed in the Real Clear Politics roundup. The ARG is the only one within the last two weeks to show Trump ahead in Wisconsin. Robert

Michael, Trump could announce that he was dropping out of the race and you would find a way to minimize it. Robert

Jonathan, Lewandowski worked for Ney for several years. He's claimed he never had any idea Ney was on the take. A Congressman's campaign manager has no idea that the Congressman is on the take? (It's not as though Ney was particularly careful.) If Lewandowski weren't now working for Donald Trump, would you be inclined to believe his denial regarding Bob Ney? Why not apply the same evidentiary standards to Corey Lewandowski that you apply to John McCain? Meanwhile, please explain what you think I believe happened that is actually physically impossible. Robert

Michael, Has Trump given one speech (or press conference) in Wisconsin, in which he has not carved out time to trash Scott Walker? If you find one, please post a link. Bernie Sanders has been running full-tilt against Scott Walker, to the point of claiming that Walker is killing people (by refusing to expand Medicaid). Of course, he's bemoaned every measure to curb the unions. That's what you'd expect from a Democrat, trying to fire up the hard Left portion of the party's base. What's Trump's excuse? Besides, the more Democrats in Wisconsin get fired up to vote for Bernie, the fewer will be voting for Trump in the Republican primary. Robert

Jonathan, Wow. Meanwhile, you were incredulous when I referred to Corey Lewandowski as a bad actor. He got his big break when Bob Ney hired him to manage his reelection campaign. Do you remember Bob Ney? Robert

Michael and Adam, I notice you've both been quiet about Donald Trump's walkbacks. Not the one on punishing women who get abortions. The walkback on tweeting an unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz next to a flattering picture of Melania Trump. Even a walkback on whether Corey Lewandowski should have apologized to Michelle Fiedls. Donald Trump tries to stomp Megyn Kelly, repeatedly. Then he gives an interview to Maureen Dowd. Are you beginning to see why I think Trump is so busy stomping Republicans (and media outlets who favor them) that he won't even be able to get started on stomping Democrats? Robert

Uh, Michael, Ted Cruz must have first said he believed in God well before there was an Obamacare. Even before there was the sketch of an ambition, on the part of Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Max Baucus, and Nancy Pelosi, to foist something like that on everyone. Robert

Michael, Appears to have been a screwup. Today Google shows no Fox poll with that date. Today's RCP Average shows no Fox poll with that date, either. Robert PS. See below for the ARG poll, which this may have been a distorted reference to.

Michael, Well, since Jeb and Marco dropped out, the Anyone but Cruz campaign has effectively been identical with the Trump campaign. Kasich's efforts have been a pale imitation of Trump's. If Trump doesn't get the nomination on the first ballot in Cleveland, there will be a Stop Cruz movement orders of magnitude more furious than any we've seen up to now. Robert

Michael, If you were following any of it, you know that the struggle against Obamacare's been going on, more or less continuously, for 7 years. Donald Trump deigned to join it when, exactly? Robert

Michael, He might have given money to Chucky or Hillary because (at the time, in that avatar) he actually supported something they were after. Just a thought. Why, after all, did he give money to Scott Walker? Did he have business in Wisconsin at the time, for which wheels needed greasing? And wasn't all this wheel greasing precisely what he now affects to deplore? (Well, maybe not with ethanol mandates, maybe not with taking private property for private use, maybe not with a few other things, but by and large.) Enough for now. I remain intensely curious as to the actual effectiveness of re-stomping Walker in Wisconsin, but it's the voters there who will have to tell us the answer. Robert

Michael, When did Donald Trump come out, definitively, against Obamacare? Surely you would know. Robert

Really? Trump's supporters would not be stomping a lot of the people they've set out to stomp, unless he had persuaded them to. For instance, did most Republicans in Wisconsin despise Scott Walker, before Trump tried to get them to despise him? We'll know, soon enough, how well the trying to get has actually worked. Robert

Michael, When did Donald Trump actually come out against Obamacare? And when did he stop saying complimentary things about single-payer (such as the National Health Service)? He threatened to sue the Cruz campaign for simply presenting his positions over time on a number of issues. Trump had, in fact, been all over the map on each of them. As for giving money to members of the Gang of Eight... well, you don't perceive it as a problem that Donald Trump gave money to Chucky Schumer? He had one opponent with a history of major cozying up to Chucky Schumer—"Lightweight" Marco Rubio, now duly stomped and out of the race. How does having given money to Chucky Schumer (my spellchecker keeps wanting to call him"schemer") make Donald Trump the best candidate for Republicans to support? His remaining opponents haven't given money to Schumer. That will get even more interesting if Trump becomes the nominee. He'll be running, in all probability, against Hillary Clinton, after giving money both to her and to her family slush fund foundation. it seems like your arguments frequently fall back into "My guy's lies are better than your guy's." Is that a way to get anyone to support your guy? Robert

Michael, Do you mean, rather, that we really shouldn't listen to everything Donald Trump says while campaigning? It would be much easier to support him, if one tuned out most of what he was actually saying.... Robert

Michael, Let's indeed refer back. You seem confident that everyone Trump has stomped will become his humble servant. Robert

Jonathan, Do you really think that John McCain spent 5 1/2 years in the Hanoi Hilton, being starved and tortured for a good portion of his stay, out of a desire for political power? He retired from the Navy on a disability, because since his visit to the Hilton he has never been able to raise his arms above his head. I do not care for most of what McCain has done while in politics—whether it was cozying up with crooked S&L operators, or suppressing free speech with campaign finance legislation, or turning into a deer in the headlights when Lehman Brothers went under, or dumping on his few decent Republican colleagues in the Senate as "wacko birds." He should have left office years ago, and I hope he loses his primary this year. But, really, Donald Trump's remark was as vile as anything that ever gets said in politics. It didn't cost him politically, though. What costs Trump, as maybe he's been learning in the last two weeks, is walking back one of his vile remarks. Robert

Michael, If the stomping works half as well as you want it to, Ted Cruz won't be in the Senate. If he is really a stealth theocrat, he shouldn't be in the Senate anyway. He shouldn't be in politics at any level. If he really cheated on his wife with 8 different women (or if enough people find it useful to believe something along those lines, even if the story has no foundation in fact), he'll likely not be running for reelection in 2018. Besides, if somehow he survives the stomping and re-stomping politically, what makes you think that for the rest of his life he will want to do one solitary thing for Donald Trump? Ben Carson and Chris Christie have, so far, been willing to serve Donald Trump. How many of the others whom he has stomped and re-stomped will be inclined to do so? Robert

If The Donald is half as smart as people believe him to be, he won't have boasted about it. And after the "subhuman mongrel" episode, neither should anyone else. Robert

Michael, I am going to keep my comments about Scott Walker to a minimum between now and Tuesday night. The primary results from Wisconsin will tell us, pretty exactly, what the payoff has been to Trump's strategy, not of running directly against Ted Cruz or John Kasich, but of re-stomping Scott Walker. Data beat prognostications, every time. The question is not whether Donald Trump has denied anything about the struggle against rule by the public employee unions in Wisconsin. The question is whether he has ever so much as acknowledged its existence. What did he say when he gave money to Scott Walker's reelection campaign? (You know, the donation that led Walker to present him with a plaque?) I don't know. Do you? In order to run Walker down, as responsible for all the inexplicable political hatred that Trump somehow imagines is unique to Wisconsin, he has to at least pretend not to know what the fighting has been about. And, hey, this is Donald Trump. It's quite possible he never did know. Robert

Michael, Never heard Mr. Miller speak From this sample, he comes across as a deeply dishonest wannabe demagogue, who will probably not be very successful in that line of work because he hasn't one ounce of his current boss's skill or pizazz. On how much of his alleged inside information, never previously reported by any media outlet, does his former employer, Senator Sessions, actually back him? What he is trying to insinuate is that Ted Cruz = Paul Ryan = Barack Obama = the Bush Family = Washington, DC = the Communist Party of China = .... He cannot afford to have in his audience anyone inclined to make distinctions. Did Ted Cruz vote for or against the Gang of Eight bill? Mr. Miller knows the answer. He must be hoping that no one else cares to know it. Robert PS. As I'm sure has been pointed out on this site by others, "currency manipulation" or "currency cheating" is a not very nice way of describing what central banks do. The United States also has a central bank.

Michael, You have said we must listen to everything that Donald Trump says while campaigning, then ignore what anyone not equipped with a magic decoder ring would see as its plain meaning, because what he says is of no consequence compared to what he--currently does? has done? will do? Do you have a position of your own on ethanol mandates, or will you wait for whatever it is that Trump decides, should he be elected, then proclaim it infinitely wise and good? I don't count any of those presently running for President as Randian heroes. Never was tempted to. Least of all am I inclined to equate Donald Trump with Howard Roark. Would you really be so ready to despise Ted Cruz, make him out to be a stealth wannabe theocrat, and seek to run him out of politics entirely, if he were not running in opposition to Donald Trump? Robert