From the news desk of Reach More Now in Fort Worth, Texas. This is Ray Mossholder and this is Campaign 2016: Trump Trumps The Nevada Caucus
If I had been one of the six Republican candidates tonight and saw the chaos taking place that Nevadans call a caucus, I would have been disgusted and angry. The disorganization, plus the huge crowds, meant that there never will be a really reliable count for all the voting that went on. As one person described it to a reporter “Insanity ruled the night!” Here are just a few of the comments tweeted as the night went on:
A tweet: “Caucus volunteers are wearing Trump cap and Trump shirt. (They are not allowed to show preference). Some of the volunteers are actively bullying folks and not checking IDs.
A Rubio staff member tweeted: “They didn’t ID one of our staff. We alerted the site manager.”
Another tweet: “40 to 50 loose ballots on table. The vote counter looked at them and put them under envelopes.
Yet another tweet: “Elderly couple calls the Rubio line. Says ‘We’ve been registered R’s our whole life. They said we weren’t in the system.”
Another tweet: “IDs are not being checked and ballots are being handed out willy-nilly. Some guy voted for Trump twice.”
Still another: “They just announced that they’ve run out of ballots because they ‘weren’t expecting a crowd this size.”
Running out of balance was a constant in many polling places as the night went on.
Here’s another tweet: “Reno is running out of English ballots – incredible that they have Spanish ballots and amazed about the turnout.
Another: “People registered for Precinct 1303 in Sierra Vista showed up to a caucus. There was literally no site set up.”
A tweet from a high school precinct: “It’s about to get ugly here. How so? Yelling, swearing, disorganized. People are (censored!)
The Nevada Republican headquarters sent out a note on twitter. It read “Obviously we take reports of double voting very seriously and we will be reviewing ballots. There is a master sign in sheet that we will be checking closely as well. In terms of running out of a ballots, we were prepared for that and more were on-site in a matter of minutes. Other thing to know is because you have multiple precincts in one spot, not the entire place was in chaos, just a few that were rushed which contained problems.” You think!?
So when the insanity was done and the votes were counted, how did the results line up?
Donald Trump hit the jackpot! As Politico wrote it “Donald Trump trounced his rivals, notching his third consecutive victory and giving the Manhattan mogul even more momentum heading into Super Tuesday next week, when voters in more than a dozen states will cast their ballots.”
The people of Nevada were more angry at our government than any state that has voted thus far. 57% of Nevada caucus goers said they were “angry” with the federal government. A totally different 36% said they were dissatisfied. That makes it total of 91% of the people! More than 60% said they want someone that is outside the political establishment who has no political experience to fix it.
Donald Trump ended up with 42.6% of the vote. Marco Rubio was second with 24.9% (that’s almost 1 out of 4). Ted Cruz was third with 21.4% (that’s a little more than 1 out of 5). Doctor Ben Carson was fourth with 6.3% (that’s a little more than 1 out of 10). And John Kasich who already knew that his message wouldn’t resonate well in Nevada and didn’t actively campaign in that state, ended up with 3.6%, which may have been more than he expected.
Donald Trump has said numerous times that he does not like caucuses. He might change his mind after tonight!
If the good old boys of the GOP continue any further to work against Trump, they will show their hand – That they want to keep control of who wins so much that they are willing to do it with their power whether or not America’s voters strongly prefer to select the winner themselves. The leaders of the Grand Old Party are looking not very grand but very old tonight. My prediction is that the Republican Party is about to go through a huge change for the better in 2017.
The next debate for all of the Republican candidates still running is Thursday night in Houston, Texas, and can be seen nationwide on CNN. I’ll see you then.
From the news desk of Reach More Now in Fort Worth, Texas, this is Ray Mossholder and this is Campaign 2016: the Republican Nevada Caucus Has Begun
It’s all in the cards tonight for the Republican candidates at the Nevada caucus which just began ten minutes ago – and, once again, Donald Trump is holding the winning hand. Maybe that’s why his parents gave him his name of Trump. He seems to be trumping all the other candidates everywhere he goes. Iowa is the one exception where Cruz beat him. But he was a heavy second and sprang from that first caucus to this one, with winning hands all the way. Tonight in Nevada he is ahead in the polls by 25% over his second rival which is expected to be either Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio who are neck and neck.
The Donald already got some great news today and his campaign staff probably all got raises. The news is that Donald Trump now has a lead over both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in the national polls. If it were possible to change bets in the middle of a horse race, people would be rushing to the windows to put all their money on Donald Trump for president. At this point in time, looking nationally, something terrible would have to happen to him to cause him to lose now.
The Grand Old Party will get a real facelift if Donald Trump is elected. So will Washington DC and the government. That’s why the political bigwigs desperately want to see him stopped. As a political outsider, Donald is like that buck Gary Larson drew a cartoon about that had a huge target on his chest. Another deer looks at him and says “Bummer of a birthmark!”
The good old boys of the GOP – the Karl Rove elites – are having nightmares day and night over what this will mean for them. Everyone from President Obama to Harry Reid are no shaking in their boots. I’m told that in just thinking about it, Barack has lost his last twenty freethrows! The drums to drum Trump out of the race began just as soon as the laughter died out when Donald Trump said he was going to run. They had no idea at the time that he was talking about running the tables state after state.
I probably should be saving those comments for after Super Tuesday, March 1st, when so many states will be voting and more than a third of the delegates will be decided, but I marvel at the fact that it doesn’t matter what the frontrunner says or does, it doesn’t matter what he does with his hair, it doesn’t even matter how many times he’s been married, it is “Trump! Trump! Trump!” all over the United States, and watching his poll numbers climb higher and higher, the cry for Trump to be president is highly contagious.
Some who can’t get past the bird nest that is on top of Donald Trump’s head will tell you the Trump is all talk and no substance. But that’s not at all true. Like what he says or not, Donald is laying out what he will do if he has the privilege of getting into the Oval Office that will actually bring the kind of changes America thought our first black president would bring us. And the reason that the good old boys or Wall Street have no power over the Donald is because he is paying all of the costs to run for president out of his own pocket. He doesn’t have lobbyists, George Soros-types, or even the Republican Party to be beholding to. He is a very rich outsider whose plans, when examined, tend to give him the votes he needs. Those who still hate any idea of the Donald Trump presidency are now saying “The best thing about Trump vs. Clinton is one of them has to lose!”
As for Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, in many ways both of them believe that this is do or die. Both want to at least finish second. They need that position going towards the brick wall, Super Tuesday. Ted finished first in Iowa, but so did Hillary Clinton and Rick Santorum in 2012. And how much good did that do for either of them? Cruz knows he can’t look for a huge evangelical vote in Nevada. Besides, Trump seems to be getting the evangelical vote in a much larger capacity than Ted Cruz.
Marco Rubio told his supporters “I think Nevada is the most unpredictable of all the races we’ve had so far.….We’ll see.”
This is been a tough week for Ted Cruz. Denying that he has been dishonest, he fired his senior campaign aide this week, saying that it was this man who was responsible for the lies that were spread through television ads, mailers, and Robocalls in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and this week, Nevada. Loved as a conservative, for being a fiery orator, and for his outspoken Christian stance, with another third-place finish following his third-place finish in South Carolina, Ted Cruz could be finished.
Marco now has a whole lot more money in his wallet. When the darling of the good old boys, Jeb Bush, resigned after the results were in in South Carolina, they chose Marco Rubio as their new poster boy. Now the millions of dollars will go to his campaign to do everything possible to still trump Trump. Rubio is handsome, a dynamic speaker who spells out what he would do as president both nationally and internationally if elected.
Along with the huge boost of PAC money, Rubio has a couple of other things going for him. He lived in Nevada when he was a boy, and being a Cuban descent will help him too because of the large concentration of Latinos who live throughout Nevada.
Marco Rubio has also proven that he is made of Teflon. Two gaffes that could have sunk a lesser man, have now been overlooked. First, there was his Republican reply to one of President Obama’s State of the Union addresses that made him appear as if he were speaking from a hideously dry desert. As he spoke to the American people, he guzzled bottled water throughout his message. America laughed, Democrats mocked; and he did look silly. Then there was the second to last debate where he kept repeating himself about President Obama knowing what he is doing in office with all the decisions Obama has made. The crowd and most of the other candidates disagreed vehemently. The newspaper writers gave him a really hard time on that. But he came back the last debate verbally sounding like a genius.
One thing I’ve always thought doesn’t make a lot of sense – the symbol of an elephant representing either party. Elephants never forget. Americans always do.
As for the other two contenders – Ohio Governor John Kasich and former neurosurgeon Doctor Ben Carson – Kasich did not campaign in Nevada because he considered it a wash. He’s already gone to Virginia and then Georgia where his political beliefs he believes will be far more accepted by the voters. By the way, the Republican elite have already tried to pay a lot of money to John Kasich if he will just drop out now. But he won’t. He still believes in his platform and will keep telling America’s voters exactly what he would do as president. The reason the Karl Rove-ites would pay him to drop out is because it would make far more room for their new poster boy.
Doctor Ben Carson had a really difficult interview with Bill O’Reilly last night. It was actually very harsh. Bill told the doctor that he didn’t have a prayer of winning the presidency. Bill asked him why he felt the need to stay in the race at all when he must know that he is obviously not going to win. Ben answered, “Haven’t you ever heard the story of the tortoise and the hare?”
The truth is, after finishing dead last in South Carolina where there is a huge black vote, the doctor knows he is nearly through unless his Lord performs a miracle. Of course, he and I both know that God is great at doing miracles. Doctor Carson held a town hall meeting in Reno on Sunday that he followed up with two more the next two days in Virginia City and Las Vegas.
There are a lot of differences between the Republican caucus in Nevada and the Democratic caucus that took place there last Saturday. The Democrat caucus votes are counted by raised hands. The Republican caucus voting is done by a secret ballot. After tonight, the Nevada Republican Party will select 30 delegates to go to County conventions and while they are there they will contend for tickets to the Republican National Convention. The 30 final Nevada delegates who will go to Cleveland for that convention will be selected through a preference poll.
Speaking of delegates, at this point in the campaign – Donald Trump 67, Ted Cruz 11, Marco Rubio 10, John Kasich 5, and Doctor Ben Carson 3. That will change after tonight.
I will be back to give you a wrap up on the Republican Nevada Caucus as soon as the results are in. In 2012, even though there were only 33,000 votes, it took the vote counters two full days to come up with the results. They say that problem is fixed now and that the candidates should be able to know late tonight so that they can speak to their supporters before leaving the state.
