Janell Ross:
The lasting image will be that of Ramos -- who serves as Univision's lead anchor and is effectively one of the (if not the) most powerful newsmen on Spanish-language TV -- being hustled out of the room after trying to ask Trump a question. Ramos, whose nightly newscast has been known to post ratings that top those of all three major English-language network news programs, has a history of holding presidential candidates very close to fire on issues he believes to be of deep concern to Latinos, such as immigration.
Trump actually said "Go back to Univision" to Ramos.
Greg Sargent:
The consensus among many of our wisest political observers is that Trump-ism is a real phenomenon, that it’s here to stay for the near future, and that it may pose a real long-term risk to the GOP. In a piece entitled, “Can the Republican Party survive Donald Trump?” Molly Ball reports that GOP donors and strategists are fretting that Trump has exposed the GOP’s “fault lines” on immigration in ways that could do the party untold damage in 2016.
And Time magazine reports that GOP pollster Frank Luntz held a focus group designed to plumb the sources of Trump’s appeal, and left stunned. “You guys understand how significant this is?” Luntz said afterwards. “This is real. I’m having trouble processing it. Like, my legs are shaking.”
So here’s a friendly reminder: this whole Trump mess probably could have been avoided. If Republicans had simply held votes on immigration reform in 2013 or in early 2014, it probably would have passed. That likely would have made it harder for Trump-ism to take hold to the degree it has so far.
Trump isn't just playing the GOP for fools. He's doing the same to the media. He knows they won't say his supporters are
xenophobes, racists and nativists. After all, why alienate viewers and readers?
TIME:
Much of Trump’s support in the room seemed to stem from a weakness in the Republican party. The 2014 midterms did not usher in the conservative renaissance Republicans expected. Obamacare has still not been repealed, Congress is looking less likely to override a veto on the Iran deal, and there are still 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
CNN:
David Duke, the anti-Semitic former Ku Klux Klan leader, praised Republican front-runner Donald Trump for his immigration policy proposals and said Trump is "the best of the lot."
After ranting about "Jewish supremacy" and Jewish domination of the media, Duke took time out of two of his radio programs last week to talk up Trump's candidacy as a "great thing," praising the Republican candidate's plan to deport the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.
TPM:
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC) said during an interview with CNN on Tuesday that if real estate mogul Donald Trump wins the party's nomination, it will be the end of the GOP.
"If Donald Trump is the nominee, that’s the end of the Republican Party," Graham said.
A twofer! See, I'm still of the belief that whereas Trump's 30% share love him, the other 70% don't. That means when they consolidate around one or two others, Trump loses (see
The Rise and Fall of Shooting-Star Candidates).
Of course, Super PACs that pay people to stay in losing races (I'm looking at you, Rick Perry) will draw this process out. In the end, Trump loses, but boy, is he causing damage on the way there.
Stuart Anderson:
The mouth that ate the GOP: Donald Trump's campaign couldn’t be doing more damage to Republicans' 2016 prospects if Democrats had designed it themselves
Evan Osnos with a long and interesting read:
The Fearful and the Frustrated
Ever since the Tea Party’s peak, in 2010, and its fade, citizens on the American far right—Patriot militias, border vigilantes, white supremacists—have searched for a standard-bearer, and now they’d found him. In the past, “white nationalists,” as they call themselves, had described Trump as a “Jew-lover,” but the new tone of his campaign was a revelation. Richard Spencer is a self-described “identitarian” who lives in Whitefish, Montana, and promotes “white racial consciousness.” At thirty-six, Spencer is trim and preppy, with degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago. He is the president and director of the National Policy Institute, a think tank, co-founded by William Regnery, a member of the conservative publishing family, that is “dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of European people in the United States and around the world.” The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Spencer “a suit-and-tie version of the white supremacists of old.” Spencer told me that he had expected the Presidential campaign to be an “amusing freak show,” but that Trump was “refreshing.” He went on, “Trump, on a gut level, kind of senses that this is about demographics, ultimately. We’re moving into a new America.” He said, “I don’t think Trump is a white nationalist,” but he did believe that Trump reflected “an unconscious vision that white people have—that their grandchildren might be a hated minority in their own country. I think that scares us. They probably aren’t able to articulate it. I think it’s there. I think that, to a great degree, explains the Trump phenomenon. I think he is the one person who can tap into it.”
And don't miss
Cheryl Rofer:
Last week's Associated Press story on nuclear inspections of an Iranian military facility left out key details on how inspections work, creating a misleading picture and introducing new controversy into the already heated debate on the Iran deal.
Speaking of which,
Max Fisher:
If one of the interest groups that opposes the Iran nuclear deal were to ask my advice for how to more effectively fight the deal — and I very much doubt that would happen, but bear with me for a moment — then here is what I would tell them:
You are losing the debate right now. Even with last week's lucky break — a misleading AP article that had Washington debating for several days whether Iran will "inspect itself" (it won't) — the net result was that two Democratic senators who were on the fence came out in support of the deal. Your ultimate goal, that enough Democrats oppose the deal that you can kill it in Congress, is drifting farther away.
The reason you're losing is that you're focusing almost exclusively on the aspect of the Iran deal where your argument is weakest: arms control and nuclear nonproliferation.
Instead, you should be focusing on the aspect of the deal where your argument is stronger, the experts are more sympathetic, and our allies are more divided: Middle Eastern security issues.
I think this argument would be so much stronger, in fact, that I'm baffled as to why you haven't taken it up — but I have a theory as to what may be holding you back.