Title: GOP Consultant Lays Out New Genius Plan to Take Down Trump: ‘How Brutus Killed Caesar,’ Get Close Then ‘Shiv Him in the Ribs’ Source:
Breitbart URL Source:http://www.breitbart.com/big-govern ... ose-then-shiv-him-in-the-ribs/ Published:Aug 23, 2015 Author:Matthew Boyle Post Date:2015-08-23 07:02:43 by cranky Keywords:None Views:2042 Comments:14
The geniuses in the Washington, D.C.- centered GOP establishment have a new plan to take down 2016 Republican frontrunner Donald Trump: Infiltrate his inner circle posing as an ally, then use their fabricated support of him to secretly plot to take him down.
But now they all admit: They were wrong, Trump is real, and he has a serious shot at winning this thing.
Just like Humphrey Bogart said in Casablanca, I was misinformed, Alex Castellanos, one such consultant, said of Trump in an interview with Bloomberg Politics on Friday. Hes grown. He started off as the anti-Washington candidate, the angry mans candidate, now hes becoming not just an anti-them vote but a pro-him. Hes becoming the Make America Great Again candidate and that gives him room for growth.
Anybody who discounts Donald Trumphes going to be around through the convention nowI think is making a mistake, Castellanos added.
From there, the conversation turned to how Castellanos thinks Trump might be taken downand who might do it. He said:
Well you have two angles to look at thathes sitting on a bunch of people down there on the conservative side. Hes sitting on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). I doubt Ben Carson is going to do anything about that, but at some point Ted Cruz is going to wake and figure this race is going to end and Im never going to catch up. Then on the other side, the establishment side, you can wait a little longer. Whether its a Carly Fiorina or a Jeb Bush or a Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), dont stand in front of the tsunami right now and just coalescebecome a better, stronger candidate so you can be in the lead when everyone turns not to Trump but to the anti-Trump.
WATCH: CASTELLANOS DETAILS NEW PLAN TO TAKE OUT DONALD TRUMP
When asked, if he were running strategy for those wanting to take Trump down, how he would do it, he compared the effort to how Brutus murdered Caesar. Castellanos said:
The best way to do it is how Brutus killed Caesar. Get real close, snuggle up, and shiv him in the ribs. In other words, hug the message but not the messenger. We understand the frustration in America, we know why you hate Washington. Your country is on the verge of decline, its going over a cliff, and nobodys doing anything about it. We get it. Donald Trump and I agree on that, but let me tell you now what were going to do. Take his energy, take his heat, and use it to fuel your engine. Turn his heat into your action and be there, you hope, when voters actually get serious about this and say you know what, I agree with him but hes not a president.
This is the same Castellanos who just a few days earlier called for a cleansing of the Republican Party after what he then expected would be an inevitable collapse of Trumps campaign. Just a few days later, Castellanos has clearly changed his tune.
The democrats may be evil, but you have to hand it to them when it comes to staying on message and being effective in getting what they want.
Their message is simple, and all their candidates are singing from the same hymnal:
1. All problems can be solved by more regulations and more government 2. When regulations or government are the problem, more regulations and more government is the solution
Republican (establishment) on the other hand stands for nothing - therefore it will fall for anything.
So phase one of "What Do We Do With Trump" - which involved among other things having Fox News attempt to take him down - has failed.
Phase two will be "Maybe We Can Co-opt Trump". After all, in his heart he IS one of us.
If that fails, I wonder what will phase three be?
"Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD . . . "
You could always claim he is Poppy Bush's illegitimate brother.
Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
There is something Caesarian about Trump's persona.
Castellanos is laying out a straightforward political strategy. It's not especially brilliant as it is the only thing any of the consultant class will be advising the other candidates to do.
They believe that Hurricane Donald will pass in due course, leaving the fundamentals of the race they anticipated largely unchanged. However, weathering the Trumpstürm will shorten the window for any other GOP candidate to knock out Bush and his huge donor base.
What is most interesting is Trump's own real antipathy toward Bush.
Its also possible that a Trump who is losing would be more erratic than the one who is winning. His numbers are going to come down, and then hes going to panic, a Trump friend told me. He doesnt believe it will ever happen. He has not confronted this in his mind, says another conservative who knows Trump well. So, if you think Trump has been unpredictable now, just wait. The things that have already come out of his mouth are so much worse than so many things that sunk Herman Cain and the other flavors of the month last time, another Trump friend says. Its not hard to imagine Trump launching a kamikaze mission against the candidates left standing
When if? Trump withdraws from the campaign, he will no longer have a ready landing pad on television. (His Apprentice deal with NBC has been canceled, too.) This is a prospect that is likely terrifying for Trump and should, in turn, be terrifying for Bush. In a recent phone call with a longtime friend who has been acting as an informal adviser, Trump warned: If Im going down, then Bush is going down with me. Hes not going to be president of the United States.
I do enjoy the idea of Trump going kamikaze on Bush. But this is the likely setup for a Trump third-party run. Bush somehow wrestles the nomination away from Trump and Donald decides that "he's not going to be president of the United States". And how would that be accomplished in a Jeb-vs-Hillary race? By Trump running third-party, handing the election to the Xlintons. Notice that Trump never says anything comparable to that about Hitlery for some reason. Not after he paid her to attend his wedding (he says) and she then dissed her attendance of the wedding and Trump didn't unload on her with both barrels for snubbing his I-paid-Hitlery-to-attend-my-wedding story but just kinda shrugged it off (unlike his many hardcore attacks on other Republican candidates).
When asked, if he were running strategy for those wanting to take Trump down, how he would do it, he compared the effort to how Brutus murdered Caesar. Castellanos said:
As a consultant he stands to net thirty pieces of silver, so it seems Judas would be a more likely role model. GOPe policies are much like the actions of Judas anyway.
And how would that be accomplished in a Jeb-vs-Hillary race?
How, indeed?
In a Jeb-vs-Hillary race, Trump doesn't get on all fifty ballots.
Last election, only Republicrats had presidential candidates on all fifty ballots. Neither Libertarians nor Greenies fielded presidential candidates in all fifty states.
Hard to win the electoral college if you're not on every ballot (Nv doesn't allow write-ins, for example).
There are three kinds of people in the world: those that can add and those that can't
In a Jeb-vs-Hillary race, Trump doesn't get on all fifty ballots.
He might. Or come close enough it makes no difference. He might do better than Perot on the ballot process if he can keep his supporters on-board and fired up.
I'm not sure what the deadlines in various states are to petition a new party onto the ballot.
The remnants of the old Reform Party are still on the ballots in many states. At least, they have been in recent years. In some states, they have fallen off the ballot. I think that Alan Keyes took over the CA Reform Party and it was still in play in the 2012 election.
So Trump, with his message about illegal immigration and bad trade deals, kind of fits that Perot/Buchanan demographic. Certainly, they would love to have a candidate with Trump's brand name to draw a bunch of new people into the old We The People and Reform Party circles.
Check out the states where you only need to pay a filing fee and/or gather 10,000 signatures. Check out the Reform Party and Constitution Party listings. You might easily co-opt some of these organizations with a candidate like Trump. He would be a dream come true for them to have as their nominee.
Ballot access doesn't seem like that much of an obstacle. In some states, they do require a lot more signatures on petitions and strict rules about who can collect signatures and certifying the signatures and such.