Drumpfobia splits the GOP

It's been a heady few days in the race for the White House. Chris Christie was the first high-profile establishment Republican to come out for Trump, but he's getting more and more company. Sorry Chris, that VP slot may no longer be the slam dunk it looked like at the time!

Herman Cain has clambered aboard the Trump bandwagon. That means that both black candidates from the last two election cycles are now Trump supporters. Pulls a bit of rug out from under that "Trump = racist" meme, doesn't it? That meme is of course the touchstone of the white liberal intelligentsia, the same folks who still think, this late in the game, that Hillary has any "liberal" cred whatsoever.

Rick Perry has signed up. He's a serious enough guy in traditional GOP circles. But he's got nothing on Darth Cheney, who, much to our surprise here at Falling Downs, has climbed aboard too.

Maybe it was the heart transplant?

And then there's Sheldon. Sheldon and Donald have at times been bitter rivals. I think in the course of their rivalry, Sheldon has perhaps prevailed in the net worth rankings. But he's gotta have nothing but respect for Trump for the way he has steam-rolled over the duds Sheldon was financing. The fact that Sheldon can admit his mistakes says a lot about the man... he's not a complete shitbag after all!

Meanwhile, back in Crawford, W has poutily declined to support the "presumptive" GOP nominee. Seems the entire Bush clan are having a group sulk because Trump made mincemeat out of Jeb without really trying. Jeb wasted what, $150 millions on his DOA campaign?

Holy Christ! It's not hard to see why the Bushes are bitter!

Paul Ryan still has wet dreams about being in the oval office himself someday, so he's hedging his bets. And when I say "in the oval office" I mean sitting behind the big desk. The reason he's hedging his bets is because there's a lot of GOP bigs coming out, if you can imagine such a thing, for Dem front-runner Hillary!

Most of the PNAC crowd is way inclined to get behind Hillary, and it's not hard to see why. Trump is a loose cannon. He's unpredictable. He could conceivably do all kinds of scary shit; get along with Putin, stop overthrowing governments we don't like, abrogate the trade deals that have disembowelled America's working class, and so on.

Hillary, on the other hand, is gonna continue the tried and true course of perpetual war and the never-ending sell-out of working Americans. Let's face it - that's a formula that works for a huge slice of the American oligarchy!

So we've got a Manhattan lib hi-jacking the GOP, and a Dem candidate far to the right of the GOP candidate...

Best race ever!...

End Times indeed!

Chris Christie first establishment Republican to break ranks and back Trump

The think tank here at Falling Downs once pegged Christie as the guy to beat for the Republican nomination. That was before Bridgegate though, and we correctly called that as the deal breaker in Christie's run for the White House more than two years ago.

So what's going to be the quid pro quo for today's endorsement? There's the obvious innuendo floating about that Christie is desperately angling for the VP slot, and perhaps that's the case. On the other hand, there's more than a little truth in Christie's claim that Trump is the only guy who can beat Hillary.

How do we know it's going to be Hillary? As they say, the fix has been quite obviously "in" from the beginning. Machine politics is being micro-managed much more efficiently on the Dem side. Bernie's popular appeal isn't going to upend the Democratic establishment like Trump's is in the process of doing on the Republican side.

What Bernie and Trump have in common is that they are both, for lack of a better word, "protest" candidates. They both appeal to voters who have lost faith in the political establishment. Assuming that Hillary becomes the candidate, Bernie's disillusioned followers will be more likely to vote for the other anti-establishment candidate than for Hillary.

Trump has no official political baggage, but even a casual perusal of his public positions on any number of issues suggests that he's got more in common in terms of principles with Bernie than with the GOP establishment. Sure, he dismays the purveyors of political correctitude with his bellicose populism, but at heart the man is a dyed in the wool East Coast Liberal.

That's why, from the point of view of the Trump camp, taking on an establishment running mate like Christie would be risky. It would suggest that Trump is on the way to being co-opted.

Giuliani may be yesterday's man but still craves the limelight

There he was on CNN with that Brit who got Larry Kings time slot, railing against Obama.

Obama failed in Benghazi blah blah blah failed the people of New York City blah blah blah...

Oh give it a rest Rudy! Who gives a shit what you think?

Maybe that Brit, but you've got no constituency otherwise.

Rudy spends his days conning naive clients into retaining his lobby firm to wield its ever-diminishing influence on their behalf.

Meanwhile, current mayor Mike demonstrated how light he is on his feet (not to be confused with being "light in the loafers") by cancelling the New York Marathon this afternoon after assuring the world it was on right till he announced it wasn't.

That's a fellow who knows which way the wind is blowing.

Bloomberg and Republican governor of New Jersey Chris Christie (never accused of being light either in his loafers or on his feet, by the way...) both endorsed the black dude this week.

No wonder Rudy is shouting in his interview!