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Cruz continues to win delegates in Colorado and Iowa

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Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and Heidi Cruz
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and Heidi Cruz

Colorado doesn’t have a primary like other states. Delegates are elected at a convention. Colorado has 37 delegates in total, so let’s see what happened with them.

Leftist CNN reports:

Ted Cruz on Saturday clinched the support of every pledged delegate in Colorado, capturing all of the final 13 delegates who will go to the national convention in July and demonstrating his organizational strength in the all-important delegate race.

Even though voters didn’t head to the polls Saturday, Cruz’s strength here could help deny Donald Trump the 1,237 delegates that he needs to clinch the nomination.

Cruz’s victory Saturday, combined with delegates he had already earned, hands him 30 of the 37 delegates across the state who are legally bound to support him on the first ballot at the convention, along with four other delegates who gave him verbal commitments of support.

[…]In this first round for the GOP, Team Cruz once again proved its mettle — far outpacing the efforts of Trump and Kasich in the scramble for delegates at each of the congressional district gatherings this week.

How come Cruz gets all the delegates? Is he cheating?

CNN explains that he is not cheating:

In yet another sign of his airtight ground game, Cruz spoke before a huge screen displaying his slate of delegates for the final 13 spots, and he noted that his slate was also printed on the bright orange T-shirts that his many volunteers were wearing on the state convention floor.

Trump’s campaign, by contrast, initially distributed fliers listing the campaign’s national delegate candidates that were riddled with errors. The flier displaying the Trump slate is supposed to be the tip sheet that party members use to fill out their ballot. But on the first slate that the Trump campaign was giving out, more than a half dozen of their delegate candidates were listed with the wrong delegate number. At least one of the delegate numbers corresponded to a delegate supporting Cruz.

The Trump campaign reprinted the flier, but the second flier also included several errors.

I saw somewhere that the Trump campaign is accusing the Cruz campaign of stealing all the delegates, but the CNN report shows why that’s not true. Trump is losing the delegates because his campaign is not working as hard nor as intelligently as the Trump campaign.

What about Iowa?

Meanwhile, delegates were also being selected in Iowa on the weekend.

The leftist Des Moines Register reports:

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz captured 11 of the 12 national party convention delegates chosen at four party meetings held across Iowa on Saturday.

The near-sweep in Iowa’s four congressional districts is the latest evidence of a well-organized national effort by Cruz to secure support from the activists who will formally nominate a Republican presidential candidate later this year in Cleveland.

That support could be crucial in the event that no Republican candidate clinches the nomination before convention — an increasingly likely prospect as the race between Cruz, Donald Trump and John Kasich drags on.

Well, this time Cruz cheated for sure, how else can we explain his getting 11 out of 12 delegates?

The Des Moines Register says no, though – no cheating again:

The Cruz campaign’s successes on Saturday come at the expense of Trump, the Republican race’s putative front-runner, whose campaign had vocal groups of supporters at each convention but showed little organizational prowess and will send zero committed delegates to Cleveland.

Delegates’ supported candidate will not matter in the national convention’s first round of balloting, but it could be decisive in subsequent rounds, as delegates are unbound from the results of their states’ primaries and caucuses and allowed to vote their conscience.

[…]The Cruz campaign demonstrated a strong organization from the outset of Saturday’s contests, peppering convention attendees with pro-Cruz text messages throughout the day and handing out half-sheets of paper at all four convention sites identifying slates of Cruz-aligned candidates for national convention delegate, national convention alternate and the nominating committee.

And there are still more delegates to go, and the Cruz campaign is working on them as well:

Iowa will send a total of 30 delegates to the national convention — the 12 selected on Saturday, 15 “at-large” delegates elected as a slate at next month’s state convention and three statewide party leaders.

These delegates are not able to vote for Cruz in the first round, life the Colorado ones can. Still, if we end up with a contested convention, most of them will go for Cruz. I have to say, it’s nice to have such a smart candidate who is so organized. I like having the smartest person – it’s like having William Lane Craig in the debate.

It seems to me that the more “closed” the process is for selecting delegates – Democrats and Independents cannot cross the aisle to vote – the better Cruz does. The exit polls show that Trump does very well with people who are liberal on fiscal, social and foreign policy. If the liberals and moderates are not allowed to pick the candidate, then Cruz does really well. Maybe in 2020, we should have only closed primaries?

News

Ted Cruz courts delegates in Colorado and North Dakota, ahead of Wisconsin stand

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Conservative women rallying to Cruz in Wisconsin
Conservative women rallying to Cruz in Wisconsin

Let’s start with an article about Cruz’s get-out-vote plan in Wisconsin, from the radically leftist Politico.

Excerpt:

Just as in Iowa, Cruz arrived in Wisconsin before Trump, has worked it harder and stayed longer. He’s delivered speeches at rallies across the state, shaken hands at a sandwich shop, fought for votes at a fish fry and promised to bring back American jobs at a factory in Oshkosh.

Cruz has opened a “Camp Cruz” to provide free housing for volunteers who make the trek to the voter-rich Milwaukee region, as he did in Des Moines; he has again slammed Trump for refusing to debate him; and he has tried to fend off a third candidate (then Marco Rubio, now John Kasich) from serving as a spoiler.

[…]Cruz has the backing of one of the state’s leading right-wing talk radio hosts (Charlie Sykes in Wisconsin, Steve Deace in Iowa), one of the state’s leading social conservative groups (Wisconsin Family Action PAC now, The Family Leader in Iowa) and another extensive and deeply organized grass-roots network fueled by county chairs blanketing the state and a long list of supportive faith leaders. He spent Saturday night here in Ashwaubenon, screening a Christian film — just as he did in West Des Moines last fall.

The Christian film this time was “God’s Not Dead 2”, and it features two well-known Christian apologists – J. Warner Wallace and Lee Strobel. You can read more about what Ted thought of the movie.

The Politico article continues:

[T]he biggest differences between Iowa and Wisconsin appear only to benefit Cruz. Then, he was under fire from the political establishment — from the popular Republican governor there (Terry Branstad) to national leaders like Bob Dole. Now, Cruz has the backing of Wisconsin’s popular governor, former rival Scott Walker appears in one of his closing TV ads, as well as support from key figures in the state Legislature, including the majority leader and the Assembly speaker, both of whom previously supported Rubio.

The local conservative talk show hosts love Cruz, and they are attacking Trump for attacking Walker’s successful conservative reforms:

Local talk-radio hosts have pilloried the front-runner for denigrating Walker when he was still in the race and in recent days.

“When Donald Trump comes into Wisconsin, knows nothing about our state, trashes all the work we’ve done, trashes our governor, trashes our party, we take it personally,” said Vicki McKenna, another prominent conservative radio host. “It’s just spectacularly stupid.”

Cruz, on the other hand, has taken full advantage of the two weeks leading into Wisconsin that are uninterrupted by any other primary or caucus, McKenna said.

“He’s actually got people here in Wisconsin advising his campaign; he’s made an effort to understand even district to district, county to county,” she said.

[…][Governor Scott] Walker and Carly Fiorina spent days crossing the state stumping for Cruz. Walker’s wife, Tonette, joined Cruz’s wife, Heidi, for a Saturday sprint, hitting three stops along with Utah Sen. Mike Lee.

Wisconsin votes on Tuesday, but there is more going on with the delegates from states that have voted already.

Delegates and the GOP Convention

Even though the delegates who attend the conference from each state are bound in the first round(s) to vote according to the primary / caucus election results for their state, they are released to vote how they want in later rounds of voting. If Trump shows up at the convention in Cleveland and doesn’t have 1,237 votes, then he won’t win the nomination in the first round. If no one gets 1,237 votes, then the convention becomes a “contested” convention. That’s when having true conservative delegates become crucial, because delegates vote according to their conscience in the 2nd round and later. (Some unbound delegates can even vote their conscience in the first round).

The Cruz campaign knows this, and they are trying to make sure that the delegates who picked are genuine conservatives and are members of the Republican Party.

Conservative Review reports on North Carolina delegates:

In North Carolina, Donald Trump won 30 bound delegates at the primary, and Ted Cruz won 27.  That is for the first ballot, where delegates are officially bound.  District Conventions were held in four of the state’s thirteen congressional districts last weekend.   A grassroots activist in North Carolina provided Conservative Review with the results of those districts.  Nine of the 12 delegates elected yesterday are definitely Cruz supporters and have worked to elect Cruz for a significant period of time.  Two others identified themselves as Cruz supporters at the convention so that 11 of the 12 are Cruz supporters.

The Washington Times reports on Colorado delegates:

Ted Cruz on Saturday picked up the first six of 37 Colorado delegates to be chosen before the Republican National Convention, giving his candidacy a boost entering this week’s Wisconsin primary. The six delegates, three each from 1st and 6th congressional districts, shut out would-be delegates for businessman Donald Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich at party assemblies.

[…]Delegates from Colorado’s other five congressional districts are to be selected at assemblies leading up to Saturday’s Colorado Republican Convention in Colorado Springs, which Mr. Cruz is expected to attend.

Leftist CNN reports on North Dakota delegates:

Ted Cruz claimed a majority of delegates in North Dakota on Sunday — though the delegates are not bound to him, so their loyalty remains uncertain.
North Dakota Republicans selected 25 national delegates and, of those, 18 were on a list of preferred delegates that Cruz circulated — a clear win for the Texas senator.

North Dakota delegates are “unbound”, so they get to vote however they want from the first round on at the convention.

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News

CBO: Unemployment rises to 9.1% in 2013, health care spending doubles by 2022

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Here are the raw numbers from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, as reported by CNS News:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is projecting that if changes in federal taxing-and-spending policies already enacted and set to take effect at the beginning of next year do in fact take place, the unemployment rate will climb to 9.1 percent.

In a report released on Aug. 22, An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022, CBO’s baseline projections show that by the fourth quarter of 2013 the national unemployment rate will be 9.1 percent.

[…]Widely referred to as the “fiscal cliff,” the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and over $1 trillion in automatic defense and discretionary cuts as a result of last year’s failed budget deal are set to take effect in January 2013.

[…]If no action is taken by Congress, current CBO projections show that unemployment will not return to pre-recession levels until 2017.

And more CBO: federal health care spending will exceed all discretionary spending by 2016:

Under current law, federal health care spending is on pace to exceed all discretionary spending by 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The change is due to large increases in Medicare and Medicaid spending and added spending under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) over the next decade, a feat the Tax Foundation calls a “truly unprecedented and scary” scenario.

The nonpartisan tax research group analyzed recent CBO projections of the budget for 2012 to 2022, finding that over the next decade Medicare spending will increase from $550 billion to $1.064 trillion, while Medicaid would more than double from $253 billion to $592 billion.

In addition, new exchanges and subsidies under Obamacare will force mandatory healthcare expenditures to grow from $25 billion to $181 billion in 2022.

“In total, healthcare entitlement spending is due to more than double, from $828 billion this year to $1.837 trillion in 2022,” according to the Tax Foundation.

“This means healthcare spending will overtake all discretionary spending in 2016 – Obama’s last year in office if reelected,” the group said.

And more CBO: taxes will shoot up by more than 30% between 2012 and 2014:

The amount of money the federal government takes out of the U.S. economy in taxes will increase by more than 30 percent between 2012 and 2014, according to the Budget and Economic Outlook published today by the CBO.

At the same time, according to CBO, the economy will remain sluggish, partly because of higher taxes.

“In particular, between 2012 and 2014, revenues in CBO’s baseline shoot up by more than 30 percent,” said CBO, “mostly because of the recent or scheduled expirations of tax provisions, such as those that lower income tax rates and limit the reach of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), and the imposition of new taxes, fees, and penalties that are scheduled to go into effect.”

The U.S. economy, CBO projects, will perform “below its potential” for another six years and unemployment will remain above 7 percent for another three.

And the GAO reports that the Obama administration has waived work requirements for welfare programs, which reduces revenues from employee income taxes and increases spending on welfare programs.

Now you might expect that the Democrats would have some bold plan to tackle unemployment, spending and high taxes. And they do!

Bold policy ideas at the Democrat National Convention

Take a look at this video on bold, innovative tax policy from the DNC convention:

That will fix unemployment for sure.

And they want to augment that tax policy with some reasonable pro-growth regulations:

If you don’t think that this is a good plan to solve our economic problems, then Democrats will say that you’re a racist homophobic Islamophobic sexist bigot.