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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: 2121
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. “He’s grown. He started off as the anti-Washington candidate, the angry man’s candidate, now he’s becoming not just an anti-them vote but a pro-him. He’s becoming the Make America Great Again candidate and that gives him room for growth.” “Anybody who discounts Donald Trump—he’s going to be around through the convention now—I think is making a mistake,” Castellanos added. From there, the conversation turned to how Castellanos thinks Trump might be taken down—and who might do it. He said: Well you have two angles to look at that—he’s sitting on a bunch of people down there on the conservative side. He’s 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 I’m never going to catch up.’ Then on the other side, the establishment side, you can wait a little longer. Whether it’s a Carly Fiorina or a Jeb Bush or a Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), don’t stand in front of the tsunami right now and just coalesce—become 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, it’s going over a cliff, and nobody’s doing anything about it. We get it. Donald Trump and I agree on that, but let me tell you now what we’re 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 he’s 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 Trump’s campaign. Just a few days later, Castellanos has clearly changed his tune. 
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 10.
#5. To: cranky (#0)
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. It’s 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 he’s going to panic,” a Trump friend told me. “He doesn’t 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. It’s 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 I’m going down, then Bush is going down with me. He’s not going to be president of the United States.”
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).
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.
I'm not up on state and federal campaign filing laws, either. But I'd bet real money that the Republicrat national committees have rigged it so they get choose who wins the election. And they do that by controlling who gets on the state ballots.
#11. To: cranky (#10)
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.
A recently maintained page, chock full of party and election facts: Ballotpedia: Ballot access for major and minor party candidates 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.
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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).
NYMag's Gabriel Sherman on the worst-case scenario:
#8. To: TooConservative (#5)
And how would that be accomplished in a Jeb-vs-Hillary race?
#9. To: cranky (#8)
In a Jeb-vs-Hillary race, Trump doesn't get on all fifty ballots.
#10. To: TooConservative (#9)
I'm not sure what the deadlines in various states are to petition a new party onto the ballot.
Replies to Comment # 10.
#12. To: cranky (#10)
End Trace Mode for Comment # 10.
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