March Madness: The road to the Final One

By

LeRoy Goldman

Guest Columnist

Asheville Citizen-Times

March 18, 2016

Initially there were 22 individuals running for President, 17 Republicans and 5 Democrats. Today only five remain, Clinton, Sanders, Trump, Cruz and Kasich. Virtually all of the conventional thinking by the soothsayers in both parties has been proven ridiculously wrong.

On the Republican side, while the pundits were right in anticipating a dog fight, most of them expected that the nominee would be an establishment Republican like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, or Mitt Romney, while dismissing the candidacy of Donald Trump as an irrelevant and horrible joke.

On the Democratic side the pundits confidently expected that Hillary Clinton’s nomination was inevitable, and that her opponents would be handily and quickly swept aside.

In last Tuesday’s primaries Hillary Clinton ran the table in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois and Missouri. Donald Trump prevailed in all of them but Ohio where John Kasich won. With his loss in Florida, Rubio suspended his campaign.

In the all-important delegate count, Clinton has about 1,565 delegates to Sanders’ 858. Winning the Democratic nomination requires 2,382. On the Republican side, Trump has about 690 with Ted Cruz at 420, Rubio at 172, and Kasich at 138. Winning the GOP nomination requires 1237 delegates.

Neither race is over, and here’s why: Bernie Sanders has enough money to fight on all the way to the convention. More importantly, he may have an ace in the hole that he wisely never mentions — the FBI investigation of Clinton. If that investigation comes down hard on Clinton, her campaign will self-destruct and hundreds of her unbound superdelegates will jump ship.

If Trump falls short of 1,237 delegates on the first ballot at the convention, a distinct possibility, that triggers a contested convention. And maybe, just maybe, enough delegates will have a “Come to Jesus” moment and realize that both of their front runners are November losers. If so, all bets are off.

I know enough about presidential elections and how atypical this one is to not pretend that I know how it will sort itself out at the conventions this summer and at the ballot box in November. But I do know that the Road to the Final One leaves little room for a result that repairs the rupture in our politics and restores governance. But little room isn’t no room.

Of the five left standing, one has not yet demonstrated anything beyond braggadocio that serves his purpose of inflaming the legitimate frustrations of scores of millions of Americans who have been abandoned by the powerful and politically correct in both political parties. He’s Elmer Gantry channeling Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot.

Another is an individual who is obsessed with winning at any cost and is also distrusted by a large majority of the American people, including many in her own party. She’s Tricky Dick in drag channeling her husband.

Another is a candidate so dogmatically rigid that he makes President Obama appear flexible. He’s Joe McCarthy channeling Barry Goldwater.

The fourth is a candidate who repeatedly calls for a political revolution, but lacks the courage to lead it by his refusal to confront Hillary over her allegiance to Wall Street, her failings as Secretary of State, and the fact that she’s not “Fighting For Us”, but rather for herself. He’s Henry Wallace channeling Eugene V. Debs.

The fifth is different. He is humble, not arrogant. He’s not obsessed with winning the White House. He has a solid record of accomplishment as governor of a Rust Belt state that was hammered by the economic meltdown of 2008-09. He has succeeded in reaching across the aisle to forge workable policy and legislative coalitions with Democrats. He was re-elected two years ago by carrying 86 of Ohio’s 88 counties, including Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), while also winning an astounding 26 percent of the African-American vote in a state the GOP must win in November. He’s himself channeling Harry Truman.

However, among the five left standing, he’s dead last. Most Americans have never heard of John Kasich. Most talking heads wrote his candidacy off long ago. He’s only won a single state, his own. But, if Trump and Cruz prevent each other from wining a majority of delegates before the convention, Kasich’s competence, compassion, and common sense may enable him to unify the party and lead them to the victory in November that otherwise will be lost.

Perhaps 2016 will be the year a “Bubble Team” is the Final One.

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From Lincoln to Trump: Republican Party is dead 

By

LeRoy Goldman

 The Charlotte Observer March 3, 2016

It's time for truth telling. After a run lasting 150 years, the Republican Party is dead. Its demise can be grasped in six words, from Abraham Lincoln to Donald Trump.

When Donald Trump began his run for the Presidency last year few paid attention, including the Republican Party's hierarchy. They considered his candidacy a joke. Even as the size of the crowds that thronged to hear him speak grew, the GOP elders scoffed and belittled Trump. Their confidence in their cataclysmic blunder shines a bright light on how far out of touch they have become.

Today Trump is on his way to the nomination in Cleveland this July. He basically ran the table in the Super Tuesday primaries. There is every good reason to believe he will slam the door shut on his Republican rivals, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, in the two winner-take-all primaries in Florida and Ohio on March 15.

Beware the Ides of March! Turns out that Trump is Shakespeare's modern day Soothsayer. And the Republican Party is Julius Caesar – soon to die.

I first smelled this GOP “Peasant Revolt” coming at a church dinner the Wednesday night before the presidential election in 2008. With the election only six days away one of the individuals at my table said confidently, “John McCain's going to win in a landslide.” Another chimed in, “Obama’s not an American.” A third said,“And he’s a Muslim.” My wife kicked me under the table. Her kick said, “Don’t open your mouth, stupid. It’s hopeless.” I complied and didn't say, “You're all wrong.” Six days later Barack Obama won in an electoral landslide.

That barely concealed Republican fury in 2008, which has been festering ever since, is now out in the open. Donald Trump has legitimized it. It's the fuel that propels his candidacy, his inevitable nomination, his defeat in November and the death of the Republican Party.

One of the clear markers indicating that this nation is in severe trouble is our penchant to not take responsibility for failure, but rather to assume victim status and point the finger of blame at others. That is precisely what many in the GOP grassroots and positions of power will do when the Republican tent collapses on them.

But the GOP collapse can have a useful purpose not just for conservatives but also for healthy political discourse and, more importantly, for effective governance going forward.

Everybody knows Washington is hopelessly broken. Most Americans know that the blame for the breakdown rests at the feet of both political parties and their grassroots. Most of us know that neither party is able or willing to take the steps or run the risks attendant to repairing the damage.

So long as we have a Republican party shackled to the notion of dismantling the federal government and a Democratic Party shackled to the government's unbridled growth, we will remain locked in an unwinnable zero sum game. The Obama presidency proves that point. Swapping out Obama for Hillary will change that not at all.

But out of the ashes of the fire that will soon destroy the GOP it is possible that there might emerge a movement that not only reconstitutes the building blocks that created the Republican Party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Reagan, but also one that sees the necessity for and knows how to reach out to millions of Hispanic and African-Americans whose values are no different than those of Abraham Lincoln and those who followed in his footsteps. That would change everything.

But first, we need a corpse.

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TRUMP AND SANDERS: THE NOT SO ODD COUPLE

TRUMP AND SANDERS: THE NOT SO ODD COUPLE

By:

LeRoy Goldman

February 29, 2016

Back in 2011 Mike Tower, a good friend and then op-ed columnist for the Hendersonville Times- News, and I founded CAPAU, Citizens Against Politics As Usual. We believed, and still believe, that the Democratic and Republican parties are corrupt. We hoped that CAPAU would ignite a grassroots movement to bring about urgently necessary political reform in America. We were wrong.

That CAPAU was stillborn had nothing to do with the fact that Mike and I were right in knowing that politics in Washington no longer served the American people. And now the fat's in the fire.

The political establishment in Washington now confronts its worst nightmare. It has lost control of its ability to manipulate you and me. That is the controlling reality of the 2016 election.

But wait, some of you will say. This ferment has without doubt taken control of the Republican contest, but Hillary Clinton, the Democrat's establishment candidate, is now on her way to the nomination. After all, she defeated insurgent Bernie Sanders in Nevada and overwhelmed him in South Carolina. On March 1st it's likely she will win most of the SEC primaries by running up huge margins among African-American and female voters. Her campaign would have you believe her nomination and election in November is in the bag. Maybe, maybe not.

Most voters would agree that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are mirror opposites. One is a brash, trash talking billionaire who operates in capitalism's fast lane in Midtown Manhattan. The other is a subdued, polite speaking Socialist turned Democrat from rural Vermont. Those differences, while real, miss what's really important, their similarity.

Both are insurgents who have successfully tapped into immense voter anger. Both are infusing the political process with new voters. Many Trump voters are people who have not voted in years because they have been turned off by Washington. Many Sanders voters are young people who have never voted before, and are energized by Sanders' call for reform.

In 2016 the number of Republicans voting in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina was 20% higher than it was in 2012. The increase for the Democrats, while substantial, is harder to quantify because Obama was unopposed in 2012.

The political class in Washington can't comprehend why Trump can be so offensive and yet keep winning. Moreover, many of them continue to believe that Trump will self destruct. Perhaps, but I doubt it. About 70% of the American people, including large numbers of Democrats, believe America is in decline. Trump not only gives voice to that despair, he promises to end it. Trump's bombastic message is an undeniable and alluring message of hope.

If the Conventions nominate Trump and Clinton, fasten your seat belt. The central dynamic of the Fall campaign will be change versus same old, same old. What Donald Trump will unleash on Hillary Clinton will make his assaults on Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz look tame by comparison. With either Marco Rubio or John Kasich as his running mate his, we're going to take back our country message, may well add more purple to the Electoral College map.

Finally, Hillary's clear road to the nomination, singularly dependent on African-American block voting, is not certain. Bernie Sanders will not go quietly into the night. He has ignited a movement, and he knows it. He's got plenty of cash, a message that resonates with millions of dispossessed Americans, and, most importantly, he may be the beneficiary of the joker in the deck this Spring. The joker's name is, FBI.

The FBI investigation into all that surrounds Clinton, her private email server, and possible breaches of national security is on the way. FBI Director James Comey will not permit politics to taint the investigation. An adverse finding against Clinton will destroy her, and Bernie knows it. Stay tuned.

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By:

LeRoy Goldman

Guest Columnist

February 21, 2016

Scalia was a man for all seasons

BlueRidgeNow.com

With all respect to John Roberts, the Supreme Court has lost its chief justice. The tragic and unexpected death of Antonin Scalia will have consequences that go far beyond what's being reported in the press. 

Those reports focus on the fact that the high court is now deadlocked in a 4-4 ideological split between liberals and conservatives, and that the president and the Republican-controlled Senate are deadlocked over how and when to fill Scalia's seat.

In fact, the philosophical deadlock within the court and the partisan political deadlock between the president and the Senate stand as proxies for the disintegration of the federal government over the past quarter-century. That this deadlock goes beyond the president and Congress to the Supreme Court is especially troubling.

One does not have to be brilliant or superbly well educated to know that the words on the west and east pediments of the Supreme Court, “Equal Justice Under Law” and “Justice The Guardian Of Liberty,” ring hollow when the people see the court and its decisions in major cases as simply a zero-sum game reflecting the nation's political polarization.

The spectacle that is about to unfold regarding the president's nomination of an individual to fill the vacancy and the Senate's action thereon will be disgusting political theater of the absurd. Moreover, it will be the opening move on the political chessboard that will likely be repeated three or four more times during the tenure of the next president. That is a genuinely terrifying prospect.

But that is where we are, and it is also why the sudden and unexpected loss of Scalia is so harmful. He was head and shoulders above his colleagues on the court in many ways. But it was his superiority in one realm that made his role on the court unique. Whether one agreed with Scalia or not, there is no doubt that he reached his decisions because he had an organizing theory that guided his reasoning, decision-making and writing.

That theory is a combination of originalism and textualism. Scalia's use of those two principles led him to argue that the interpretation of the Constitution or a law should be based upon its text and what reasonable people at the time of its adoption would have defined its meaning to be. This approach generally rules out any attempt to interpret the meaning of a statute by relying on non-textual sources such as legislative intent.

Perhaps the most powerful and imaginative use of originalism and textualism by Scalia was that it provided him with a way to successfully confront what he believed were the excesses of liberal jurists dating to the Warren court. Scalia and other conservative justices took umbrage as liberal judges infused their own ideological views into their opinions as scantily clad constitutional law.

Geoffrey Stone, professor of law at the University of Chicago, wrote recently that a way to prevent this abuse would be “for judges to take a consistently deferential approach to the judgments of the elected branches of government.” But such an approach creates a new problem. Stone wrote, “But Scalia and his fellow proponents of originalism recognized that such an across-the-board commitment to judicial restraint was inconsistent with the understanding of the framers of our Constitution, who clearly anticipated that judges play an important role in enforcing constitutional guarantees.”

Thus, the challenge was how to navigate between the need to sometimes be deferential and the need to sometimes be aggressive. Scalia's brilliance enabled him to successfully navigate these constitutional cross currents. His approach was breathtakingly simple. Use restraint unless the original text mandated otherwise.

Thus, Stone argued that “it would be appropriate for courts to invoke the Equal Protection Clause to invalidate laws that deny African-Americans the right to serve on juries, but not to invalidate laws that deny gays and lesbians the right to marry, because the latter was not in any way anticipated by the 'original meaning' of the Equal Protection Clause.”

Scalia was an American original, “A Man For All Seasons,” like Sir Thomas More who, as you will recall, was the 16th century lord chancellor of England who refused to sign a letter to the pope urging him to annul the marriage of King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon so the king could marry Anne Boleyn. More's resistance cost him his life, and near its end he said, “And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?”

I can see the irrepressible smile on Scalia's face and the twinkle in his eyes as he paraphrases Sir Thomas More to the court's four horsepersons of the left.

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at:  EmailMe

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By

LeRoy Goldman

Blueridgenow.com

1-30-2016

The Donald has awakened the force

As an independent, I plan to vote in the Republican presidential primary in North Carolina this year because that’s where the real action is. Although I don’t yet know which Republican I’ll vote for, I doubt it will be Donald Trump.

The explanation is simple: Trump’s campaign thus far is devoid of substance. He has yet to offer, and may never offer, any coherent set of proposals that he would implement if elected president of the United States.

Given the magnitude and complexity of the challenges the nation faces on the home front and internationally, Trump’s unwillingness or inability to articulate how he would overcome those challenges is thus far disqualifying. His repeated assertion that he would make America great doesn’t pass the smell test. It doesn’t pass Ronald Reagan’s Trust, But Verify standard because there’s precious little to verify.

But that said, Trump not only won’t go away, he continues to lead his Republican rivals by large margins. Most of his GOP rivals have chosen not to confront him for fear it would be curtains for their campaigns. A few have now begun to attack him out of desperation. It may be far too few, and far too late.

The Democrats and their allies in the media and academe first ignored Trump, believing his candidacy was a short-lived joke. Now, realizing it’s no joke and that it has had a life of its own, they are at the barricades engaged in an all-out effort to destroy him. Their vulnerability is that they do not adequately comprehend the magic in Trump’s bottle and the threat it poses to the status quo they so desperately wish to maintain.

There’s no mystery about Trump’s magic. The public’s outrage at Washington has at long last hit critical mass. The anger is white-hot and palpable. The fury is Trump’s propellant. Trump’s faithful supporters have gotten the self-serving, deceitful Washington establishment in their cross hairs.

The public’s outrage is increasingly directed at all those inside the Beltway who have convinced themselves that they can flaunt their oath of office and get away with it because the American people are too stupid to tumble to their game.

Trump has indicted the entirety of Washington’s ruling oligarchy: President Barack Obama, Congress, the judiciary, and the unaccountable and invisible monstrosity known as the federal bureaucracy. His rivals, whether Republican or Democrat, can’t lay a glove on him because those who support Trump instinctively understand that virtually all his rivals have something in common, something they abhor, a perpetuation of Washington thumbing its nose at folks like you and me.

Trump’s force and its staying power are elemental and easy to grasp. They come down to this: Folks like Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush are cunning liars. What counts is not what they say they disagree about, things like Obamacare, immigration and ISIS. What counts is what they have in common, unbridled ambition to win an election and then spend the next four years spinning their way to re-election.

When an aroused citizenry makes those connections, the nation is in uncharted and turbulent water. And there’s more. Citizen outrage is not limited only to Republicans. What the pollsters, pundits and political class don’t yet adequately grasp is that there are also millions of Democrats who are ready to jump ship. When the Clinton campaign “Feels The Bern” in Iowa and New Hampshire by Feb. 9, its smug confidence will disintegrate into terror.

The nightmare for those who must find a way to destroy Trump is that their weapon of choice, political correctness, won’t work this time. Calling him a bigot, a racist, a bully, vulgar or a jerk won’t drive him to ground as it has done to so many before him. Remarkably and delightfully, the political correctness crowd has met its match. And that is long overdue and welcome indeed.

I have no idea whether Trump fully understands what his candidacy represents and what propels it. Surely he knows he’s a lightning rod, and he knows that lightning is a force that can’t be harnessed, even by an entrenched and corrupted political class in Washington.

Perhaps The Donald is cagier than most realize. What if he believes he doesn’t need to address substance and policy until after he’s the GOP nominee? What if he’s right?

Who knows? Maybe we won’t have to wait till 2017 for Hollywood’s version of chapter eight of “Star Wars.” Perhaps the awakened force of the American people will be made manifest in 2016 in ways no one could have foreseen. The dark side inside the Beltway trembles!

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at:  EmailMe

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Trump’s, Sanders’ success result of anti-PC public

By:  LeRoy Goldman

Special To The Observer

The charlotte Observer

1-27-2016

The 2016 presidential sweepstakes aren’t playing out according to script. Hillary Clinton seems less and less inevitable. Her improbable foe, Bernie Sanders, continues to gather momentum. That momentum comes not from the political class, but from the people, people fed up with those who preach political correctness while profiting from the Washington establishment and its nexus with power centers of immense wealth.

For the Republicans Donald Trump continues to lead the crowded GOP field regardless of what he says or does. The Republican establishment and the party power structure first believed that ignoring him would suffice. They believed his intemperate, politically incorrect tirades would capsize his candidacy. When that didn’t work they maneuvered to get him to sign a pledge that he would not run as an independent candidate. Now they are attempting to destroy him.

But none of the efforts to silence Trump or Sanders is working . Why? Maybe the answer hides in plain sight. What if the power brokers in both parties are guilty of the same blindingly stupid mistake? What if they have taken the whimsical advice of baseball great, Satchel Paige, who said, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you”? They have, because looking back at what’s gaining on them brings into focus a reality so threatening to the perpetuation of their vested self interest that it must be denied.

What’s gaining on both political parties is the fury of the American people. Sanders’ and Trump’s momentum are being propelled by that fury. Washington is about to meet its match, and the 2016 election will be nothing short of unpredictably transformational.

The origin of political correctness decades ago was innocuous enough. Putting boundaries around offensive, hurtful speech and behavior seemed reasonable. But it has been transmogrified by elitists into something so pernicious that most Americans now rightly reject it. No longer sensible or silly, it has become an instrument aimed at not only changing behavior, but also at stifling free speech. Today’s virulent form of political correctness demands conformity to its strictures and shows little mercy in punishing those who dare to challenge its expanding hegemony.

The American people reject the PC strait jacket. A Fairleigh Dickinson University poll last fall found that 68 percent oppose political correctness. More importantly, this view is not held exclusively by hard right Republicans. It is shared by 62 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of independents, 81 percent of Republicans, 72 percent of whites, and 61 percent of nonwhites.

Donald Trump’s appeal is rooted in his opposition to political correctness. What’s now clear is that, if it’s OK for a presidential candidateto confront PC for the evil that it has become, then it’s OK for all of the rest of us to do so too. Trump has let the genie of outright opposition to political correctness out of the bottle. And it’s going to resonate across the entire political spectrum.

When we get into the fall campaign, if it’s Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton, the political class, the pundits, and those in the media and academe who cloak discrimination in the name of making the world safe for diversity will be in for a rude awakening that will violate their “safe spaces” and arrive without “trigger warnings.”

Regardless of whether Donald Trump wins the GOP nomination or the presidency, his legacy as a trail blazer is already secure. And that’s a very good thing.

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Will Paul Ryan come to the rescue of the GOP?

By:

LeRoy Goldman, GUEST COLUMNIST

Asheville Citicen-Times

1-25-2016

When the President comes to Capitol Hill to deliver the State of the Union message to Congress and the American people, his arrival in the House chamber is announced by the House Sergeant at Arms who cries out for all to hear, “Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States”.

When that next occurs after the election this coming November, where will Paul Ryan be? Will he be seated in the Speaker’s chair on the rostrum, or will he be standing immediately behind Sergeant at Arms, Paul Irving? The answer to that question may not be as apparent as it seems.

Last Sept. 25, House Speaker John Boehner stunned Washington by announcing his resignation. By Oct. 8, the House Republican Caucus was set to vote on Boehner’s successor. It was widely assumed that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy had the inside track. But that day McCarthy abruptly dropped out. The vote was postponed. Chaos ensued.

Paul Ryan, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, had intended to give the nominating speech for McCarthy. When McCarthy threw in the towel, Ryan immediately issued a statement saying he was not interested in the job. He said, “I will not be a candidate.”

But on Sept. 20, only 12 days later, the mounting drumbeat for Ryan had grown to a crescendo, and Ryan said he would consider seeking the post if the Republican Caucus would unite behind him and accede to his conditions.

On Sept.29, the GOP Caucus elected Ryan Speaker of the House by a vote of 236-9. In his address to the House that day he said, “Let’s be frank: The House is broken. We are not solving problems. I am not interested in laying blame. We are wiping the slate clean. How reassuring it would be if we finally got our act together...if we actually fixed the tax code, put patients in charge of their health care, grew our economy, strengthened our military, lifted people out of poverty, and paid down the debt.”

Five weeks later Ryan in a speech at the Library of Congress laid out his detailed vision for a confident America at home and abroad. But before he plunged into the substance of his remarks he said, “This country has big problems. If we do not have a President who will work with us, we will not solve those problems.”

To chart a different course Ryan argues the GOP must not only win the White House in 2016, he believes that it must also win a mandate. And he argues that winning a mandate requires the GOP to offer ideas. And that requires them to actually have ideas. In other words, he rejects fully the notion that all the GOP need do is to oppose the Democrats. That won’t work.

Even more striking is the yawning chasm between Ryan’s concept of an inspirational and policy driven Republican agenda and the absence of such an agenda to restore America’s greatness offered by the GOP frontrunner, Donald Trump. Ryan has challenged his party to put up or shut up. Trump has told friend and foe alike to buzz off. They are operating in parallel universes. How much better would it be if they were in direct competition with one another.

However, a year ago Ryan took himself out of the 2016 presidential sweepstakes. He told NBC News, “I have decided that I am not going to run for President in 2016.”

Earlier this month, however, Ryan moderated a policy seminar in Columbia, South Carolina on poverty in America and how to better deal with it. It was sponsored by the Jack Kemp Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. Some of the Republicans running for President attended. Trump and Ted Cruz did not.

Sometimes events overwhelm intentions. And that is what may be happening now behind the scenes. It is increasingly clear that none of Trump’s opponents is able to lay a glove on him, let alone offer a forward-looking agenda that would result in the election of a Republican president next November.

Ryan surely knows that the agenda he is proposing cannot be implemented by or from the House of Representatives. Only a President with an electoral mandate can do that. Last fall a reluctant Ryan, when asked, rescued the House GOP. At the Republican Convention next summer, Paul Ryan may be asked to ride to a far bigger rescue. He’ll be there. He’s the convention chairman.

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