America is at war because of its policies and the transition from one administration to another. The U.S. Senate flatly refuses to fill a Supreme Court vacancy until a recent president takes office. The economy seems to have almost stopped growing.
The federal government is deeply in debt to the tune of $19 trillion, and Congress is having trouble approving a budget for the coming fiscal year. And the former TV star, who says he will need people around him who understand how government works, is getting closer to winning the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
Wait, it’s getting worse. The Republican Party is currently talking about the possibility of convening a contested convention if Donald Trump fails to gain the majority required to nominate delegates.
Trump, who has been calling on his supporters at rallies to “brutalize” protesters and “give them a hard time,” has warned his party that if he comes close to the nomination but is denied it in July, things could get really ugly.
“I think there would be riots,” he told CNN News.
Calmer voices in the party leadership have dismissed the notion that a convention fight could ensue, saying Trump likely will have 1,237 delegate votes to lock up the nomination at the end of the primaries.
But Trump’s remaining opponents, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, show no signs of backing down anytime soon — and will likely fight all the way to the convention in case Trump runs out of delegates.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who suspended his campaign, also has no intention of releasing his delegates.
For these three contenders, the contested convention remains a real possibility.
Meanwhile, Kasich’s clear victory in Ohio on Tuesday sent a troubling signal to the Trump campaign about its weakness in a key swing state that will be crucial in the general election — especially in the northern rust belt states.
Republicans can’t win the presidential election without winning Ohio, and Trump is particularly unpopular there.
In exit polls, more than half of Ohio Republicans said they would not vote for Trump in November — the highest percentage to say so in any of the contests conducted on March 15.
Another pre-election statistic that has so far worried Trump’s team in voting in primaries and party meetings is his inability to break the 50 percent threshold.
He won in Florida with about 45.8 percent, but his three rivals won nearly 51 percent of the remaining votes.
In North Carolina, Trump won about 40 percent of the vote, but nearly 57 percent voted for one of the other three.
In Illinois, Cruz, who finished second, Kasich and Rubio won nearly 59 percent of the total vote, while Trump won just over 40 percent.
And in Missouri, where Trump and Cruz were nearly tied at 40 percent, his opponents won more than 56 percent of the vote.
Throughout the Republican primary season, there were reports that Democrats were moving to vote for Trump, believing he would be the easiest candidate to defeat in the general election.
And on Election Day, of course, those voters will vote for Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump.
However, in the game of presidential nominations, everything depends on the number of delegates, and in this respect Trump has achieved an impressive series of victories that have put him far ahead of his competitors.
Still, his negative views are very high, as confirmed by exit polls in Ohio and data from other polls across the country.
It’s also tough to watch him overcome his reputation as a caustic, self-centered, insult-hurling and inflammatory tough guy. Unless he decides to reinvent himself between now and the July convention in Cleveland.
That is unlikely, though he has suggested the tone of his campaign could change once he wins the nomination and is ready to take on Clinton head-to-head in the general election.
After eight professionally challenging and economically painful years of Barack Obama’s presidency, this was supposed to be a slam-dunk election for Republicans, who had been politically depressed in the second half of the decade.
In the last two elections, they won control of the House of Representatives and then the Senate, increased their influence in gubernatorial positions even in the most Democratic states, and strengthened the Republican Party’s control of most state legislatures.
All that is left for Republicans is to win a White House that will fix the economy, cut spending, and reform the anti-investment, anti-jobs, anti-growth tax code that is holding our country back.
There are those who believe the economy can’t get much worse, but the reality is that it can and will unless we radically change the government’s policies of overspending, restricting economic activity, and robbing the luxurious.
Obama’s economy grew just 1 percent in the fourth quarter and is forecast to do little to improve in the first three months of this year.
US factory production rose a disappointing 0.2 percent in February after a moderate 0.5 percent enhance in January.
Obama’s economy is so faint that the Fed, under Obama’s hand-picked chairwoman Janet Yellen, postponed an interest rate enhance until Wednesday and lowered its economic forecasts for this year.
The country was ready for a recent GOP administration, not a third Obama term as Hillary promised.
But fate may have dealt the GOP a bad political hand this election year. Most Republicans in Congress view Trump as completely unprepared for the presidency. And Cruz is disliked, if not hated, by most lawmakers.
Not long ago, Hillary was given a political toast. Now he has a good chance of becoming our next president.
