Cruz Caves In...

and withdraws from the GOP Presidential Sweeps, allegedly Kasich is soon to follow...
Um this was inevitable, Cruz and sixteen other republican aspirants underestimated Trump from the git-go, refused to coordinate until far too late and thought the answer (all but invalidated in the aftermath of the NH Primary) was to outflank Trump on the right.
It didn't work because Trump seized on the "myth of conservative grievance" and literally redefined conservatism as as a sort of one-stop shop for personal vengeance.
Audiences have been eating it up while experienced pols like Jeb Bush have been blathering on about abortion and social security privatization.
Its not that the Right Wing couldn't stop Donald Trump, it is rather that Trump reconfigured the very concept of "right wingedness" and sold it to a toxically alienated and aggrieved base.
And that aggrieved base has a point (up to a point), they are the likeliest to have their jobs abruptly outsourced, asking them to not respond as xenophobes to the perceived issues of illegal immigration seems a terrific stretch. To be sure, Trump has no answers to these issues that can work in the real world, but these people have at least been promised vengeance by The Donald and they will take that, if nothing else is on offer.
And that is what has brought a dangerously impetuous inexperienced authoritarian minded individual to the Brink of the US Presidency, the sheer mendacity of movement conservative politics and a cohort abused and sold out for far too long.
***
I also think, at the risk of a lot of criticism that it is getting time for Senator Sanders to take a good long look at the costs imposed on the Republic by prolonging his Campaign. Secretary Clinton on the other hand had best figure out a good and honest way to bring Senator Sander's base into her coalition....she is gonna need it, nothing is a lock this fall.
NOTHING.....

I was the Unwilling but Patient Recipient of a Telephone Push Poll

which all but promised me free hookers and gratis heroin if I just applauded loudly for lifting the charter school cap this November. There is as you may recall, a question on the ballot this November.
I made my indifference to the institution and my dislike of the funding mechanism plain but the whole turgid exercise staggered on for twenty minutes before petering out.
Disheartening I wonder who paid for this exercise in ideological warfare? Moreover aren't "push polls" antique weapons since they target land line telephones owners? Unless the plan is to get everyone fifty and over exercised about Dreaded Long Arm of the Teacher's Union.
I'm guessing its a little early spadework by the Governor whose lavish love for Charter Schools is a known fact, he is pretty much shut of of the RNC at this point so I wonder if Charter Schools aren't his big political project this year?
I could be wrong, again I have no evidence to back up these speculations....anyone who has some hard data feel free to comment.

Well Charlie Bakers appetite for Funny Money

continues unabated, the Globe reports he is indulging out of state donations from PACs representing interests with connections to State Government...some reformer eh?
Money is an intimidation tactic, pile enough if it up and you scare off rivals within and without your own party.
I suspect Baker is running his own private "money primary" he wants a big pile for re-election in 2018 and after that a fat rolodex to draw from should he set his sights on the US Senate.
Remember Bill Weld was Baker's chief sponsor and mentor back in the day, he tried to hand off an incumbent Governorship to his Running Mate Paul Cellucci in 1996 via a Senate Challenge to John Kerry....who can say if something similar isn't Charlie Baker's plan in 2020?
There is no other way to explain this save to note that "Charlie Baker Loves Money The Way a Hog Loves Slop" and nobody collections cashola like this unless they are either personally corrupt or else Have Big Electoral Plans, I myself tend to the later view.

I love how

Denny Hastert borrowed the Late James Michael Curley's old stunt of showing up for the Sentencing Hearing in a wheelchair.
What the hell it worked the child lusting bastard got a paltry five months in the clink thereafter the young boys of Chicago will have to listen closely behind them for the soft squeak of a wheelchair....assuming Hastert still needs it of course.
Because Denny Hastert is what you get when you repress and govern your sexuality by repressing and dominating others....
And yet I recall plenty of Republicans smirking at me and promising as soon as they were done removing Bill Clinton and Al Gore from office, Denny would be our next President.....
Be that as it may, Hastert is to be congratulated, the First US Speaker of the House to Graduate to the Sex Offenders Registry.

Cruz-Fiorina in 2016?

Tactically speaking this is a profoundly stupid move on Senator Ted Cruz's part....points up the fact that most of the Elite GOP haven't Got Clue One as to How to Manage a Brokered Convention (assuming they actually do have one, and I have my doubts).
YOU NEVER lock up the Vice Presidency before going into a contested convention, Ronald Reagan pulled that stunt in 1976 and it back fired spectacularly.  If your only hope is to force a decision on the second or third ballots then you need that glittering bauble called the Vice Presidency to beguile strategic if weak-minded GOP Elites.
Its exactly how John Nance Garner got on the ticket in 1932 as well as numberless others. Cruz may literally have partnered with Fiorina simply because she pisses off Trump and makes for decorous fake diversity optics, she is a public relations choice at best and bad choice otherwise since it closes off negotiations at the convention from the git-go.
At this point I'm back believing that it'll be Trump on the First Ballot when the dust settles...because if this is the best his opponents have to offer, the Developer is in Phat City fer sherrr.

Word on the street is...

That Governor Baker isn't stirring himself at all to put up any GOP candidates to challenge our all democratic congressional delegation in the general election this fall.
For us democrats that is good news in a short term tactical sense, as it allows fundraising and experienced Massachusetts activists and volunteers to "roam freely" and gravitate around the national race or captioned congressional races outside The Commonwealth.
Its also a confession that the state's GOP "bench" is awfully threadbare and the requisite number of credible candidates couldn't have been ginned up.
However in a strategic sense over the long term it sort of indicates that whoever the democrats run against Baker in 2018, it won't be someone out of our congressional delegation. That free ride this year and Charle's 2000% approval ratings will be motivation enough to sit on their hands en masse I suspect.
So as we go forward into the upcoming National Campaign lets keep in mind we are gonna need to mount a solid challenge to Baker in 2018, win or lose, I for one do not want a repeat of 1994's Roosevelt-Weld Debacle.
Just remember, after 1994 Weld took it into his Pride Swollen Head that he could knock off John Kerry in the 1996 Senate Race, and believe me kids, Ed Markey I'm sure recalls that one vividly, as should we all.

Cruz and Kasich are allegedly teaming up

against Donald Trump, dividing up the remaining primaries in a vain effort to prevent a first ballot victory for Donald Trump at the RNC this summer.
Too little too late and if I was John Kasich, I wouldn't believe God's Truth out of Ted Cruz's nasty little mouth.
A mouth ago this MIGHT have worked, might, the problem is, that Trump has consistently performed within his polling projections regardless of his verbal outrages, in the face of that, "coordination" among his rivals would at least prolong the season which is the best anyone in the GOP could hope for given the situation.
But coming now, forget it.
Trump is exploiting nigh Marxian contradictions that have festered within and without the GOP since it's Empire Days under Saint Ronald Reagan. I think a "brokered convention" is simply another advantage Trump situations, his opponents have been consistently under organized ideologically divided, religiously colonized and out hustled at every turn.
And anyway who is gonna "broker" that convention? Jeb Bush? Paul Ryan? Mitch McConnell? A vast cross section of ineptoids and cowards who have been nursed and preserved inside the "Conservative Echo Chamber" since they were children, they simply don't have the skills or the intestinal fortitude to prevail against a Donald Trump.
No...I expect some fireworks and then Trump will be nominated these guys are like the late French General Maurice Gamelin they keep promising a great counter offensive and nothing ever happens...and it won't happen at the RNC this summer believe me not with these jobbers in charge.