Pearls Before Swine on Campus Free Speech.

A bit at the heart of why some people who shouldn’t much like Donald Trump based on his politics (What brand of conservative are you?  The answer is the one that values bombast above all else.  See hereabouts.) throw some support for him.  And so comes in the case of the Portland State University student who started up a Students for Trump group, and ended up shouted down by protesters.  The name “Students for Trump”?

If this was Students for Cruz or Students for Kasich, they probably would have shown up and screamed at us, but it wouldn’t have been as interesting and it wouldn’t have been on this same level.

All right.  So this is just a students Conservatives or Republicans group, with the moniker “Trump” tossed in as act of provocation.  Oh, for the good old days when you knew “Students for Goldwater” was actually for Goldwater.

I disagree with much of his economic policies. What I like about him is that he is a symbol of reaction.

Interesting that he embraces that word.  But I suppose.

If we go ahead and assume that Paul Ryan would really want to be one of those “Presidents”…

… and, as evidence, we might point to the fact that he tried to be vice-president four years ago…

you have to know that the way to not do so is to win out in a brokered and bitterly divided convention, of modern historical anomaly, where he wasn’t even an option going in…

… hell.  Better to be the Republican vice president this time around, coming out of that thicket.  See Roosevelt, circa 1920.

Something like the luck Mitt Romney had in not winning the nomination in 2008, even if 2012 didn’t work out for him either.

Wait.  What are the political repercussions of this?  I mean, this brought down Iceland’s Government, and is making Great Britain’s sweat, and Russia proclaim an American plot.  (Interesting, in that the haven-chill tossles Edward Snowden back to a “Man Without a Country” status.)

But.  What of Wyoming?  Surely… hm.

I am fascinated by the Ted Cruz campaign slog through New York.  The premise of how he’s campaigning in New York is that Ted Cruz is searching about through districts in in New York with just about no Republicans, out of the delegate rules that give a candidate some delegates for winning congressional districts.

The problem is that these areas are right about the wheel-house of Ted Cruz’s anti – “New York Values” line.

So what we get here is that human interest type story of political coverage, where Ted Cruz goes to eat matzo in Brooklyn.

And, yep, there it is… put on your yarmulke!

So.  We’ll see if he manages to fish out what he’s aiming for here — the exciting phantom delegate search where a smidgeon of Republicans who shook his hand as he braved the surrounding New York Values — and salvages a coup from out of this looming Trump landslide on Tuesday.

I’m… skeptical.

If Donald Trump becomes the Republican Party’s nominee, Utahns would vote for a Democrat for president in November for the first time in more than 50 years, according to a new Deseret News/KSL poll.
“I believe Donald Trump could lose Utah. If you lose Utah as a Republican, there is no hope,” said former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, a top campaign adviser to the GOP’s 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney.
The poll found that may well be true. Utah voters said they would reject Trump, the GOP frontrunner, whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is the Democratic candidate on the general election ballot.

The immediate problem, I suppose, is a “gaffe” (Can you call it that?)

Trump made news in heavily Mormon Utah on Friday by wondering aloud at a Salt Lake City rally whether former presidential candidate Mitt Romney was actually Mormon, though Trump would later suggest he was just implying that Romney wasn’t very smart, because “The Mormons are very smart people. I know many Mormons.”

Prediction: Republicans win Utah.  We are in a bit of “this” territory with party loyalties, after all.  And Utah’s not voting for a Socialist.

The “52 Year Rule” for the Republican Party — things go haywire every 52 years — 1912, 1964, and now 2016…

And what to expect in a contested convention, which was par for the course not too long ago in our history.  (Of course, it produced presidents such as … James Garfield… men who had not much interest in being president.  Maybe we can end up with something like that this time around?)

More likely, because “contested convention” is now synonymous with “party chaos”, and how can you trust a party in power after all the chaos — watch for the November Thumping from Hillary Clinton.  [Somehow Trump has to win with no woman voting for him, and no Latino voting for him.  Basically.]

Just a few weeks ago Priebus said the odds that there would not be a brokered convention were “85, 90 percent.” However, the launch of the website suggests the RNC is beginning to prepare for the reality that there could be one.

In a sense, this is good.  If Politics are to be an appendage of the Entertainment Industry — what, with a Reality TV Star the front-runner of a political party — might as well make what had become a boring block of dreck “entertaining”.  (Of course, it’ll be glossed over in parliamentary procedures designed for the purpose of tediousness.  Watch to see recalibrations of “Stop Ron Paul” for “Stop Donald Trump“.)

As for the “52” designation — it’s possible this a pattern search — sure, a mid-point between 1912 and the Taft — Roosevelt split (two political insiders, worth pointing out) and the Trump ascension in the Republican Party happens to be a historical fight / conservative ascendancy.  But was 1952 and Eisenhower — Taft any less eventful or dramatic?

With the Democrats — the years that hang over everything as chaotic and divisive markers are 1860, 1896, 1924 and 1968.  Splinters come about in 1948, which reverberate from 1860, but that one produced a winning candidate, so it falls apart in the same way 1952 does.