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Really? Saying you're in support of an issue in a closed room and actually voting on that issue(and putting your name out there) are two different things. Actions trump words every time.
As to the U. S. military being weakened under President Obama(Romney suggested this in 2012 and was proven wrong), here's where the U. S. military stands today.
Overall spending on national security includes the Pentagon budget as well as spending by other agencies, such as the Energy Department’s work on nuclear weapons. Spending increased in 2010 and 2011, but it has fallen every year for four years since then by a cumulative 15 percent.
National security spending made up 20.1 percent of the federal budget in 2010, but in 2015 it was 15.9 percent. Over the same period, spending fell from 4.6 percent of gross domestic product to 3.3 percent.
The most recent Obama budget proposed a 6.0 percent increase in the base Defense Department budget. He had requested more but the Republicans slashed that number.
In 2012, the Army had about 570,000 soldiers. Reductions over several years have taken it down to its current size of about 490,000. The Army plans to cut the regular Army from 490,000 to 450,000 by fiscal year 2018, or a total of 40,000 positions, saving $7 billion. But we're increasing special ops units.
In 1916, the U.S. Navy had 245 active ships. The number peaked at a massive 6,768 ships during World War II. The current number of active ships is 272. But naval warfare has changed a great deal in 100 years. As of today, the U.S. Navy has 11 aircraft carriers (plus the jets to launch from them), 31 amphibious ships, 14 submarines capable of launching nuclear ballistic missiles and four specialized submarines for launching cruise missiles. There are only 10 nuclear naval battle groups in the world. France has one. We have the rest.
In March 2015, the Navy set a goal for a fleet of 308 ships. Given the current shipbuilding schedule, that goal would not be met until 2022 at the earliest. That's if a Republican Congress will approve the budget.
The Navy is building 12 ballistic missile submarines to replace the current force of 14 beginning with the first hull in 2021. The Navy budgeted $103 billion.
The Defense Department is in the middle of the largest aircraft procurement ever for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Plans call for acquiring 2,443 joint strike fighters over about 20 years at a cost of nearly $400 billion. Last year, the Air Force awarded a contract for the long-range strike bomber. The cost estimate is $21.4 billion for the engineering and manufacturing development phase and then $550 million per aircraft for the first 21 of 100. The 100 planes are expected to be done by the 2020s.
Trump: "With all due respect, Hillary, I think you don’t have the balls for this job.”
Hillary: "Perhaps Donalid. But the advantage is, I don't have to think with them all the time."
Trump 75% chance of being the next President.
Clinton 20% chance of being the next President.
Sanders 4% chance of being the next President.
Rubio 1% chance of being the next President.
There's no way that there's a 3 in 4 chance that Trump is the next POTUS. He's going to go into the general election, assuming he even holds on to be the nominee, as an underdog to Clinton. It'll be his job to dig out from that hole and convince the vast numbers of Americans outside of his 35-42% of the Republican that he's offended, disgusted, and pissed off to come around and vote for him.
The minute you give off a vibe that suggests pandering or calculation (especially this year) like Al Gore, then you are going down (although some will still bring up the Supreme Court).
Rubio lost his brand when he got in the gutter and played the Trump game imho.
The thing with Rubio, though, is that he never was going to be the answer to the Trump riddle anyway. He was always an afterthought in this race, as he's only got the Minnesota caucus to show for all of the millions the establishment has pumped into him and for all of the endorsements they've sought out for him.
The establishment lost this race when they decided that they were going to try to prop Marco Rubio up as their alternative to Trump. There were far better alternatives than him, as he's basically the Republican version of Obama, only minus all of Obama's attributes.
All Trump has to do is repeat the words "she is bought" as many times as he can, over and over, and he will win the election.
He's going to have an awfully hard time making that charge when he starts raising money himself in the general election. She can also turn right around and say that he was one of those giving her the money and, therefore, that makes him an equal part of the problem.
A large part of Trump's appeal is his "self-funding", which is a myth in and of itself to begin with. There will be some who will jump ship once he breaks that promise and starts fundraising.
And Trump's antics are already showing to be a bit tiresome. If he just keeps repeating that she's "bought" and doesn't actually do anything to go into specifics on his plans, which he continues to refuse to do, Clinton will wipe the floor with him.
Trump cannot act the way he has in the debates in the general election. With there being at that point the very real opportunity to elect the first female president in the nation's history, him resorting to his childish and often times crude antics will only serve to make her look more and more presidential.
And all Clinton has to do is keep chiding him on his "hands" and he'll take the bait and say something stupid, like he did the other night. If he ventures into that territory on a debate stage with her, the campaign will end that night and lead to a Clinton landslide.
I still have some faith that we will vote in Bernie.
On German-based news media I read that there are plots in the work by the Republicans not to nominate Trump no matter the results in the various States.
They can alter the rules if necessary.
Is this a realistic scenario?
They're not going to alter the rules. If they did, Donald Trump would sue them and they'd lose miserably in court, possibly taking the party down with it.
But, they are only forced to nominate Trump if he reaches 1,237 delegates heading into the convention. He's only in the 300s right now, with Cruz trailing behind him in the mid-200s. If no candidate reaches 1,237, then the nomination goes to the convention and, quite frankly, all hell will break loose at that point.
The results of that could be staggering. The most likely scenario would be candidate with the most amount of pledged delegates emerging as the nominee so that they would appear to reflect the will of the people. But, if that person is Trump and they can't get him over the hump of 1,237 to secure the nomination, even after multiple votes in the convention, then the nominee could turn out to be anyone. There's talk that Mitt Romney could be put up for a vote. There's talk, although he's denied it profusely, that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who will preside over the convention, could go up for a vote and emerge as the Republican nominee.
=D>
If he goes down, there is always still hope next time:
In the actual debates all he has to do is keep repeating the same three words "she is bought" over and over. Literally, just same those three words in that order as many times as he possibly can in the time that is allotted to him, and he will win. Outside of the debates he has to get into specifics, which he should be able to do by June or when ever it is. Maybe this is just me, but I get the impression that Trump has plans for policy, but his plans aren't formulated enough to stand up to scrutiny yet, so he opts to simply avoid the topic. He wouldn't run if he didn't have at least some vague ideas.
Finally, on the subject of 'the first Women President', I was recently witness to a discussion between two older women. I did not influence this discussion one bit, but they ended the conversation by saying that they were both terrified by the experience of being in a plane with a women pilot. I swear I am not making this up, nor was a man making them think this way. They came to this conclusion on their own. My point being that only about a third of the population is 'ready' for a women president.
Tony Blair seemed a decent bloke .............. But was a bit of a dick.
Nick Clegg, seemed a decent bloke ............ But was a bit of a dick
David Cameron, seemed a decent bloke ...... But is a bit of a dick
So perhaps .....
Donald Trump seems a bit of a dick ......... But will be a decent bloke ! :))
By accident, of course....
These are the leaders of the world then:
Trump - Cameron - Merkel - Sarkozy - Orban - Erdogan - Putin - Netanyahu
Honestly, the world is going to hell... :(
Also, Americans are, despite the worldwide view of us, smarter than that. Trump just repeating that she's bought over and over again, especially when he's a member of the smaller of the two parties and has angered every single demographic out there, isn't a path to victory. It's too simplistic a strategy. The electorate has already proven that they're tired of the mud slinging in the debates and Trump just doing that shtick over and over would just further demoralize voters just like his references to his "hands" and his constant "flexibility".
The one flaw in this theory: Bernie Sanders failing to get the nomination, combined with 8 years of ineffective democratic rein will result in the lowest democratic turn out in history, allowing Trump to sweep his way into the White house. Republicans win when there is a low voter turn out.
Some scary shit indeed.
Trump's candidacy will re-invigorate the Democrats. The majority of people in this country do not want to see Donald Trump as president. Polls have showed this time and time again.
The Democrats will also get a chunk of angry Republicans voting for them as well. I'll be one of them if I can convince myself to hold my nose and vote for Clinton. If the vote was today, I wouldn't vote, but I've got eight months to convince myself to vote for Clinton, and there are many Republicans (even some in Congress) who have floated the idea that they might do the same.
There's also the other very real possibility to consider. There's talk now that the conservative wing of the Republican party may mount an independent bid for the White House. The idea being that in order to save the party they have to tank this particular election. A third party run by a conservative guarantees a Clinton or Sanders victory in November.
Now, with all that said, Trump does have a very real chance to defeat Hillary Clinton. It's just not going to be nearly as easy as you claim it will be. Clinton is a very experienced politician with a massive political machine. Trump, on the other hand, has none of those things going for him.
regarding your first paragraph- The problem is that barely anyone want's to see Hilary as president.
second paragraph- And the republican's will get a bunch of angry democrats, who wold rather vote for the 'free' candidate than the bought one. They will see this as being more of a protest vote. Either that or they won't vote at all.
third paragraph- you are right about this, I agree. Republicans would rather have an establishment candidate in office, even if it is a democrat. This could happen.
I think it comes down to momentum. Trump has the momentum currently. Clinton doesn't gain momentum by being the guaranteed nominee, in a way it works against her. She is very quiet in the headlines at the moment.
There is no republican that can take the steam from Trump and win it. The party is too fractured for that. It'll either be Trump, or it'll be a brokered convention, or, as you say, they'll get Romney or someone to run as a third party.
I think Cruz tonight will emerge as the guy that can catch Trump. It pains me to say that because I want to see Cruz as president even less than I do Trump. If Cruz wins Maine and then goes on to do well in Louisiana, then Cruz will be in great shape.
This would actually lead to Trump possibly contributing to his own demise in Florida. He's going for the "kill shot" on Rubio there. The problem, though, is that he's best served by Rubio staying in the race, as he helps split the anti-Trump vote. If Cruz does well tonight and then Trump finishes Rubio off in Florida, then Cruz emerges as a very viable threat to Trump and does have a chance to reach 1,237 delegates. Cruz currently trails Trump by less than a 100.
I don't think Romney will run as a third party candidate. The only way Romney is a presidential candidate in the general election is as the Republican nominee coming out of an open convention. The conservatives will prop some Tea Party lackey up as a third-party candidate and just hope to keep the Republican party from actually coming to an end after November.