Okay, Trump's a Crude Load Attack Dog, Who The People Like Because He Is Saying Exactly What They Want to Say... But Let's Be Honest; Romney Was Correct About 43% Who Will V**e For A Skunk As Long As It's a Democrat Skunk, Stink Yes, But Will Keep The Free Stuff Flowing Their Way... So Trump, Rubio, Cruz, And Others Are Splitting Up The Other 57%... My Question: Is The RNC & GOP Big Shoots Willing To Give Hitlary The White House or Do They Want Trump To Clean Up The Last Eight Years Of Socialism In America??? Don D.
NEWSMAX
GOP 'Civil War'
Peggy Noonan - Friday, 08 Jan 2016
Donald Trump has been the "great disruptor" of the 2016 p**********l race and while Republicans continue to handle him the wrong way, Democrats are aggressively wooing the billionaire developer's supporters, says Peggy Noonan, who was special assistant to President Ronald Reagan.
"I do not understand the inability or refusal of Republican leaders to take Mr. Trump seriously. They take his numbers seriously they can read a poll but they think, as [former Florida Gov.] Bush said, that his support is all about anger, angst and theatrics," Noonan writes in The Wall Street Journal.
"That's part of the story, but the other, more consequential part has to do with real policy issues. The establishment refuses to see that, because to admit it is to implicate themselves and their leadership.
"Political consultants can't see it because they don't think issues matter not to them and certainly not to the dumb v**ers. But issues do matter, and Mr. Trump has functioned this year not as a great communicator or great compromiser, but as the great disruptor."
Noon writes that it reflects badly on the Republican Party, he has become the party's "2016 thought leader."
"[Sen.] Bernie Sanders has, in a way, had the wit to see this, which is why he said he is reaching out to Trump supporters."
Noonan says Trump, who has remained Republican p**********l front-runner since last summer, "brags that he has brought up great questions and forced other candidates to face them and sometimes change their stands and he has."
"He changed the debate on i*****l i*********n. He said he'd build a wall and close the border and as the months passed and his competitors saw his surge, they too were suddenly, clearly, aggressively for ending i*****l i*********n," Noonan writes.
Mr. Trump touched an important nerve in opposing the political correctness that has angered the American people for a quarter century.
He changed the debate when he asked for a pause in Muslim immigration until America 'can figure out what's going on.' In the age of terror, that looked suspiciously like common sense. Americans do not want America to become what Europe is becoming."
Noonan says that Reagan rightfully and successfully reached out to Democrats in 1984 and those who crossed over are still referred to as "Reagan Democrats."
"The [GOP] candidates are starting to throw hard punches. They're all trying to show they can float like a butterfly and sting like a bee a necessary talent if you make it to the general e******n," she says.
"No point in hand-wringing or telling them to stop on the grounds that what they're doing will produce, for the Democrats, a badly bloodied GOP nominee
The new Democratic Party, the one of the progressive left, has only a single unifying principle: winning. Hillary Clinton's opponents haven't laid a glove on her, and won't."
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/Peggu-Noonan-GOP-Civil-War/2016/01/08/id/708705/#ixzz3wgrzfGXwGOP Planning 'Firewall' to Stop Trump in South Carolina
By David A. Patten - Friday, 08 Jan 2016 - Newsmax
GOP leaders increasingly see South Carolina as their last best chance to stop Donald Trump's populist political juggernaut.
On Wednesday, influential South Carolina Republican Katon Dawson issued a plea for former President George W. Bush to step into the ring in the Palmetto State's Feb. 20 primary. Bush is quite popular among South Carolina Republicans, and Dawson called his involvement a potential "game changer."
"If [George W. Bush] engages, it will matter for his brother [Jeb Bush], but really, it will matter for the entire team," Dawson told Bloomberg News.
The Palmetto State appears uniquely positioned this cycle. While it follows Iowa and New Hampshire on the primary calendar, but is already drawing intense attention from candidates and pundits alike.
The pro-Jeb Bush Right to Rise PAC recently announced a $4 million TV ad buy in South Carolina.
On Tuesday, Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC unveiled its first TV ad there, touting the Florida senator's strong support for the U.S. military. The dollar value of that ad buy was not announced.
Trump is not expected to carry socially conservative Iowa. The New York Times reported Wednesday that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is seen as the prohibitive favorite there.
New Hampshire, however, is a quite different story. Trump appears dominant there, with roughly twice the poll numbers of his nearest competitor, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Assuming Cruz and Trump split the first two contests, South Carolina would occupy the key strategic spot on the e*******l calendar for 2016. As the last major primary before the March 1 "SEC primaries," it will turbocharge the campaign of whichever candidate wins.
The March 1 contests held 10 days after South Carolina involve 14 states, most of them in the South. They comprise over 40 percent of the 1,236 delegates needed to win the GOP nomination.
"Whoever wins South Carolina," says longtime conservative pollster Matt Towery, "is going to be viewed as the presumptive leader in all these other SEC primaries. Those who want to stop Trump have to make South Carolina their ultimate point of demarcation. For Trump, South Carolina needs to be a Maginot line that he crosses easily, then slips into the SEC primaries and does well."
The bottom line: A win in South Carolina could give Trump a boost that could carry him all the way to the nomination. But a loss could damage his momentum just as the critical, multi-state primaries arrive.
"He might survive an expected defeat in Iowa if he wins in New Hampshire," The Daily Caller's Stewart Lawrence writes. "But a subsequent defeat in South Carolina, especially if his loss marked a second victory for say, Cruz or Rubio, might well be devastating."
Party leaders in South Carolina and Washington, D.C., are well aware of the strategic timing.
Towery, the conservative InsiderAdvantage pollster, says it's obvious the GOP establishment won't be doing Trump any favors.
"The establishment Republican Party -- most of whom I know well, and I'm not putting them down -- but they make their bread and butter out of controlling people, or at least being hired to help them package themselves.
"So far, Trump has basically thumbed his nose at all of them and doesn't need them," he adds. "So of course they're all going to band together -- because this is their last stand."
Trump's poll numbers have been surging since the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. As the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses draw near, pundits no longer dismiss the possibility that Trump could ride a populist wave of v**er frustration all the way to the nomination.
That suggests South Carolina could be the last major speed bump between Trump and the convention in Cleveland.
The RealClearPolitics poll average for South Carolina currently shows Trump with 33.7 percent, Cruz at 19.3 percent, Rubio at 12.7, and Ben Carson at 11.3 percent. Jeb Bush is in single digits at 7.3 percent.
Towery likes Trump's chances of replicating the iconoclastic path Gingrich followed in the Palmetto State in 2012. He predicts Trump's rivals will try to find a wedge issue involving national security or defense. That could peel v**es from South Carolina's strong contingent of military v**ers.
Trump's poll numbers, and his drawing power at South Carolina rallies, have been thoroughly impressive. But may not find many friends in South Carolina political circles.
In the fifth GOP debate in Las Vegas, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, the favorite son who suspended his p**********l campaign, actually apologized for Trump's stance on Muslim immigration. "I am sorry," Graham declared, "he does not represent us."
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has become an oft-mentioned vice p**********l prospect, called Trump's proposal "absolutely un-American" and blasted him as "an embarrassment" to the GOP.
Matt Moore, the current chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, was equally critical, tweeting: "As a conservative who truly cares about religious liberty, Donald Trump's bad idea and rhetoric send a shiver down my spine."
Influential former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, who now runs the Heritage Foundation, used a more moderate tone. But even he told CNN that Trump's proposal to ban Muslims "is not who we are as Americans."
South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, a tea party favorite whose profile has been elevated by the B******i hearings, recently endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Rubio, the leading candidate currently occupying the race's establishment lane, has appointed several South Carolinians to top campaign positions.
The biggest endorsement still waiting in the wings may be that of South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. Scott has hosted several "Tim's Town Hall" meetings featuring GOP candidates. Although he has not yet signaled which candidate he will endorse, he appeared with Rubio at a Dec. 19 campaign rally in Anderson, S.C.
In some ways, South Carolina could prove to be a microcosm of the larger primary campaign. The test will be whether Trump's drawing power, combined with v**ers' intense frustration with the political status quo, will overpower traditional v****g patterns.
South Carolinians have a strong history of supporting the GOP's leading establishment standard-bearer. In 1988, South Carolinian primary v**ers broke for George H.W. Bush. In 2000, they supported his son, George W. Bush.
That pattern appeared to change in 2012, however, when former House Speaker Newt Gingrich scored an upset victory over eventual nominee Mitt Romney.
Towery, who has done extensive polling in South Carolina, describes it as "a prudent conservative state." But with the rise of the tea party in recent years, South Carolina's politics appear to be taking a more populist tilt. He says the party's establishment no longer exercises the tight control they once did. If so, that may provide all the maneuvering room that Trump needs to win.
Nationally, party leaders will have to tread softly in any attempt to influence the South Carolina outcome. Trump has pledged not to mount a third-party campaign -- which would likely doom the party's chances of defeating Hillary Clinton in November -- but only if he feels that he's being treated fairly.
Says Towery: "To everyone who says to me Donald Trump isn't a smart man,' I answer that as soon as they make their first billion dollars, I'll listen to what they say. When they get to $5 billion, I'll really listen.
"He's brilliant, and he's proved it by the way he's run his campaign."
© 2015 Newsmax.
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/GOP-Firewall-South-Carolina-Donald-Trump/2016/01/08/id/708708/#ixzz3wgtqv4f5