A long-time friend of the blog writes:<\/p>\n
\nIn Trump, we have many things- a candidate who is a master at marketing, a candidate who thinks he is in a popularity contest, a candidate who believes that the country is his personal reality show.<\/span><\/p>\n
Among the speeches during the last 3 days, most haven’t really had a clear message for what the Republican is, just that it isn’t Hillary’s party. My own cynicism rears when that is the main message, especially with a party that nominates a Presidential candidate who admits to donating to the Clintons.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
All duly acknowledged.<\/p>\n
\nSo, with my own feelings of dislike for Trump, I really want to high five Ted Cruz for his speech. It took skill to do that. Bravery. A true leader who is more concerned about doing what is right rather than what is popular.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Of course, I’m not gullible enough to believe that Trump had no idea that Cruz would do this. As I said earlier, this is his reality show. Now, the focus is off of Melania’s speech. The focus is off of Pence, who may not draw in the ratings that Trump is looking for. No, with the conflict that Cruz brought, ratings for tonight’s episode will possibly be even higher.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
To me, Trump’s convention is not offering anything serious, anything that demonstrates an understanding of the needs of the country. It is only giving me further proof of the narcissism of this man. Regardless of the outcome of the election this year, it is going to be a long 4 years.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
All of that could be exactly right. \u00a0And I could be overthinking (or over-crediting the thinking of others).<\/p>\n
But hear me out.<\/p>\n
What was conservatives’ biggest beef in 2008 and 2012? \u00a0That their champions, such as they were, bowed out and faded away in a lavender cloud of conciliation. \u00a0They went on to stay home in droves in November.<\/p>\n
Trump faces the same problem in spades; grass-roots movement conservative Republicans and conservatives staying home in November.<\/p>\n
But what if Trump were to give those conservatives a figurehead who\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0<\/em>going to shake hands and congratulate Trump on a job well done? \u00a0Who would spend the next four years – and especially the next three months – keeping the bloody shirt flying?<\/p>\n
It won’t\u00a0hurt\u00a0<\/em>Trump – nobody whom Ted Cruz could influence is going to vote for Hillary.<\/p>\n
But it could – perhaps – help Trump down the ticket, in the conservative places where Trump needs every possible vote to turn out, to try to keep control of the Senate in friendlier hands this fall.<\/p>\n
Crazy? \u00a0Or Crazy like a WWF marketer?<\/p>\n
We’ll see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A long-time friend of the blog writes: In Trump, we have many things- a candidate who is a master at marketing, a candidate who thinks he is in a popularity contest, a candidate who believes that the country is his personal reality show. Among the speeches during the last 3 days, most haven’t really had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-16","category-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59663"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59664,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59663\/revisions\/59664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}