By Patrick Buchanan
The Wisconsin primary could be an axle-breaking speed bump on Donald
Trump’s road to the nomination.
Ted Cruz, now the last hope to derail Trump of a desperate Beltway elite
that lately loathed him, has taken the lead in the Badger State.
Millions in attack ads are being dumped on the Donald’s head by super PACs
of GOP candidates, past and present. Gov. Scott Walker has endorsed Cruz.
Conservative talk radio is piling on Trump.
And the Donald just had the worst two weeks of his campaign.
There was that unseemly exchange with Cruz about their wives. Then came
the pulling of the woman reporter’s arm by campaign chief Corey Lewandowski, an
atrocity being likened by the media to the burning of Joan of Arc.
Then there was Trump’s suggestion, instantly withdrawn, that if abortion
is outlawed, then women who undergo abortions may face some punishment.
This gaffe told us nothing we did not know. New to elective politics,
Trump is less familiar with the ideological and issues terrain than those who
live there. But the outrage of the elites is all fakery.
Democrats do not care a hoot about the right to life of unborn babies,
even unto the ninth month of pregnancy. And the Republican establishment is
grabbing any stick to beat Trump, not because he threatens the rights of women,
but because he threatens them.
The establishment’s problem is that Trump refuses to take the saddle.
Again and again, he has defied the dictates of political correctness that they
designed to stifle debate and demonize dissent.
Trump has gotten away with his insubordination and shown, with his crowds,
votes, and victories, that millions of alienated Americans detest the
Washington establishment and relish his defiance.
Trump has denounced the trade treaties, from NAFTA to GATT to the WTO and
MFN for China, that have de-industrialized America, imperil our sovereignty and
independence, and cost millions of good jobs.
And who is responsible for the trade deals that sold out Middle America?
“Free-trade” Republicans who signed on to “fast-track,” surrendered Congress’
rights to amend trade treaties, and buckled to every demand of the Business
Roundtable.
The unstated premise of the Trump campaign is that some among the Fortune
500 companies are engaged in economic treason against America.
No wonder they hate him.
As for Trump’s call for an “America First” foreign policy, it threatens
the rice bowls of those for whom imperial interventions are the reason for
their existence.
If the primary goals of U.S. foreign policy become the avoidance of
confrontations with great nuclear powers and staying out of unnecessary wars,
who needs neocons?
Should Trump lose Wisconsin, he can recoup in New York on April 19, and
the following week in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and
Maryland.
Yet, a loss in Wisconsin would make Trump’s climb to a first-ballot
nomination steeper.
Still, if Trump goes to Cleveland, having won the most votes, the most
states and the most delegates, stealing the nomination from him would split the
party worse than in 1964.
The GOP could be looking at a 1912, when ex-President Theodore Roosevelt,
who won the most contested primaries, was rejected in favor of President Taft.
Teddy walked out, ran on the “Bull Moose” ticket, beat Taft in the popular
vote, and Woodrow Wilson was elected.
Cruz says the nomination of Trump would mean an “absolute trainwreck” in
November. But, Cruz, 45, with a future in the party, would be foolish to walk
out as a sore loser, as Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney did in 1964.
A Cruz rejection of a nominee Trump would mean the end of Cruz. The elites
would hypocritically applaud Ted’s heroism, publicly bewail his passing, then
happily bury and be rid of him.
Cruz, no fool, has to know this.
If the nomination is taken from Trump, who will be 70 in June, he has
nothing to lose. And as “Julius Caesar” reminds us, “such men are dangerous.”
Trump and Cruz, though bitter enemies, are both despised by the
establishment. Yet both have a mutual interest: insuring that one of them, and
only one of them, wins the nomination. No one else.
And if they set aside grievances, and act together, they can block any
establishment favorite from being imposed on the party, as was one-worlder
Wendell Willkie, “the barefoot boy of Wall Street,” in 1940.
All Trump and Cruz need do is instruct their delegates to vote to retain
Rule 40 from the 2012 convention. Rule 40 declares that no candidate can be
placed in nomination who has failed to win a majority of the delegates in eight
states.
Trump has already hit that mark. Cruz almost surely will. But no
establishment favorite has a chance of reaching it.
With Cruz and Trump delegates voting to retain Rule 40, they can guarantee
no Beltway favorite walks out of Cleveland as the nominee — and that Ted Cruz
or Donald Trump does.
No matter who wins in Cleveland, the establishment must lose.
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