INDIANA TODAY – AT 12:18 P.M. ET: Indiana is voting today in what could be the decisive primary on the GOP side. Conventional wisdom holds that if Trump wins, especially if he wins big, he will have a clear path to the nomination. And I think the conventional wisdom is right.
At the same time, the ugliness of this primary season cannot be overstated. I've seen rough campaigns, but nothing approaching the sheer viciousness on the Republican side, with candidates attacking each other in wild, undisciplined assaults. There is real hatred. The party is tearing itself apart, with venerable conservative institutions like The National Review subjected to the most vile rants. Ronald Reagan, who authored the GOP's "Eleventh Commandment," that thou shalt not criticize another Republican, must be spinning in his grave. Consider this, from The Hill:
Ted Cruz laid into Donald Trump with his most personal and toughest criticism since the GOP presidential campaign began, calling him a "pathological liar" on Tuesday who doesn't understand the difference between the truth and lies.
Cruz prefaced his comments by saying that for the first time, he wanted to say exactly what he thought of Trump after the front-runner suggested Cruz's father might have had something to do with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The Texas senator accused Trump of being both disingenuous and self-aggrandizing, saying Trump was a "narcissist" at a level "I don't think this country has ever seen."
"Donald Trump is such a narcissist that Barack Obama looks at him and says, 'Dude, what's your problem?' " Cruz said.
“Whatever lie he’s telling, in that minute he believes it, Cruz added. "But the man is utterly amoral. Morality does not exist for him.”
He criticized Trump for tweeting an unflattering picture of his wife, Heidi Cruz, saying it is just one piece of evidence that Trump is scared of “strong women.”
“It’s why he went after Heidi directly, attacked her and smeared her," Cruz said. "Heidi isn’t pretty enough for him. ... Donald is a bully. ... Bullies don’t come from strength, they come from weakness. ... There’s a reason Donald builds giant buildings and puts his name on them everywhere he goes."
"Donald has a real problem with women," Cruz continued.
COMMENT: And that's only a sample...and I'm afraid much of it is true. Whether you are for or against Trump, he has injected a kind of poison into this campaign that is an insult to the presidency. I am willing to keep an open mind, but I wish he would provide some evidence that my concerns about his character are misplaced. He can't seem to rise to that point, and he'd better learn fast.
May 3, 2016 |