You know what Ted Cruz’s wife is going to look like in 20 years?

Who knows? She hasn’t been born yet.

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Several instances of the chalking of “TRUMP 2016” at various locations on the Emory campus provoked student demonstrations and demands for administrative action.

The Emory Wheel:

Students protested yesterday at the Emory Administration Building following a series of overnight, apparent pro-Donald Trump for president chalkings throughout campus.

Roughly 40 students gathered shortly after 4:30 p.m. in the outdoors space between the Administration Building and Goodrich C. White Hall; many students carried signs featuring slogans such as “Stop Trump” or “Stop Hate” and an antiphonal chant addressed to University administration, led by College sophomore Jonathan Peraza, resounded “You are not listening! Come speak to us, we are in pain!” throughout the Quad. …

“I’m supposed to feel comfortable and safe [here],” one student said. “But this man is being supported by students on our campus and our administration shows that they, by their silence, support it as well … I don’t deserve to feel afraid at my school,” she added. …

“[Faculty] are supporting this rhetoric by not ending it,” said one student, who went on to say that “people of color are struggling academically because they are so focused on trying to have a safe community and focus on these issues [related to having safe spaces on campus].”

Read the whole thing.

The Emory Administration responded affirmatively with new regulations requiring campus reservation service permission before scribbling with chalk, restricting chalkable surfaces, and limiting the duration chalked messages will be permitted to survive. University President James W, Wagner additionally promised “immediate refinements to certain policy and procedural deficiencies, regular and structured opportunities for difficult dialogues, a formal process to institutionalize identification, review and [the] addressing of social justice opportunities and issues and a commitment to an annual retreat to renew our efforts.”

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Mona Charen explains that the problem with the Trump candidacy is Donald Trump’s character. His character is bad, and his behavior is off-the-charts not normal.

Donald Trump is not emotionally healthy. No normal man sits up late at night tweeting dozens of insults about Megyn Kelly, or skips a key debate because he’s nursing a grudge against her for asking perfectly ordinary questions, or continues to obsess about her weeks and months after the fact.

A normal, well-adjusted man does not go to great lengths to prove to a random journalist that he has normal sized fingers. Some may think it was Rubio who introduced the “small hands” business, but it actually dates back to an encounter Trump had 25 years ago with journalist Graydon Carter. Carter had referred to Trump as a “stubby fingered vulgarian” in Spy magazine. Trump could not let it go. Carter told Vanity Fair in 2015:

To this day, I receive the occasional envelope from Trump. There is always a photo of him — generally a tear sheet from a magazine. On all of them he has circled his hand in gold Sharpie in a valiant effort to highlight the length of his fingers . . . The most recent offering arrived earlier this year, before his decision to go after the Republican presidential nomination. Like the other packages, this one included a circled hand and the words, also written in gold Sharpie: “See, not so short!”

Notice he didn’t contest the “vulgarian” part of the insult. And remember that at a presidential debate, for God’s sake, Trump brought it up himself and assured the world that “there is no problem, believe me.” I don’t believe him, and I’m not talking about his genitals.

There is an enormous problem. Trump seems to suffer from narcissistic personality disorder, an insecurity so consuming and crippling that he has devoted his life to self-aggrandizement. This is far beyond the puffery that most salesmen indulge to some degree. It strays well into the bizarre. Asked whom he consults on foreign policy Trump said “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.” What grown man says things like that and continues to be taken seriously? How can he be leading the race for the Republican nomination?

Read the whole thing.

Heather Wilhelm has the same problem I do: understanding how people can tolerate Donald Trump’s shameless mendacity and still support him.

[In a recent New York Times Trump profile], “a kind of unofficial historian at Mar-a-Lago,” recalls how Trump, among other various fibs and exaggerations, “liked to tell guests that the nursery rhyme-themed tiles” in the children’s suite “were made by a young Walt Disney.” Senecal, a seemingly normal person, would often correctly protest that this was not true. Trump, in return, would simply laugh and offer a simple reply: “Who cares?”

Who cares, indeed? A significant swath of voters apparently doesn’t. As the 2016 presidential race has unfolded, we’ve seen lies flying around like stray car parts at a low-budget demolition derby — with Donald Trump as the fast-and-loose king of blatant untruths, and people so inured to it all that they don’t even bother to flinch or duck.

In just the past few weeks, Trump has told so many lies it’s hard to know which ones to cite. He famously lied about serving Trump steaks at a press conference on national television — they were “Bush Brothers” steaks, hilariously, from a butcher in West Palm Beach. On March 7 and 11, Trump claimed he was “not taking money” for his “self-funded” campaign, which might come as a surprise to the individuals from across the country who have donated a reported $7.5 million to his campaign. …

Trump supporters tend to get irritated when confronted with things like the blatantly fake Trump steaks served up in front of a national audience: “Who cares?” — unsurprisingly — is a common reply. This is somewhat puzzling, given that many Trump fans claim to like him because he “tells it like it is.” It’s also puzzling because if you know anything about life, you likely know this: When someone consistently lies about little, inconsequential things, they tend to lie about big, consequential things too. [Emphasis added]

And so it is that we have Donald Trump telling his Iowa supporters, “I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees” if someone decides to “knock the crap” out of a protester. More recently, on Meet the Press, Trump told Chuck Todd he had “instructed my people to look into” paying legal fees for a man who, apparently taking Trump’s advice, sucker-punched a protester at a rally in North Carolina, then told the press he’d be happy to kill someone for Donald Trump. But wait! What’s that? Why, it’s Donald Trump on Good Morning America, claiming he “never said” he was going to pay legal fees, even though the video of Donald Trump saying just that is captured all over the Internet and easily accessible with a few effortless clicks.

Then there’s the Donald Trump who, after months and months of claiming that Mexico would pay for his wall, recently told Sean Hannity, “Politically, that’s not feasible.” Oh, and there’s the Donald Trump who linked to a hoax video that claimed one of his protesters had ties to ISIS: “All I know,” he said when asked about the inaccuracy, “is what’s on the Internet.” Unfortunately, the various dancing cats and escaped Area 51 aliens and Nigerian princes who reside on the Internet were unavailable to comment for this story.

Politicians have lied for centuries, of course; it’s practically part of the job description. In this, Trump is certainly not alone. … [But, t]raditionally, politicians have at least tried to hide their dishonesty, due to the assumption that voters would care.

They tell me that they want a Revolution, but my reply is: If you want to end the Republic and turn power over to an Emperor, at least take the trouble to make sure he’s an Octavian, and not a Caligula.

Aristotle, Politics, 1280b-1281a:

It is clear then that a state (πόλις) is not a mere society, having a common place (κοινωνία τόπου), established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange. These are conditions without which a state cannot exist; but all of them together do not constitute a state, which is a community of families and aggregations of families in well-being, for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life. Such a community can only be established among those who live in the same place and intermarry. Hence arise in cities family connections, brotherhoods, common sacrifices, amusements which draw men together. But these are created by friendship (φιλίας), for the will to live together is friendship. The end of the state is the good life, and these are the means towards it. And the state is the union of families and villages in a perfect and self-sufficing life, by which we mean a happy and honorable life.

Our conclusion, then, is that political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship. Hence they who contribute most to such a society have a greater share in it than those who have the same or a greater freedom or nobility of birth but are inferior to them in political virtue; or than those who exceed them in wealth but are surpassed by them in virtue.”

Thomas E. Dewey

S.A. Miller, at the Washington Times, explains that close has very commonly historically proven to be not good enough in nominating convention delegate votes. Donald Trump would by no means be the first candidate to arrive at a GOP convention with more votes than his rival candidates, but short of the necessary majority. It has frequently happened that the front runner then proved unable to attract the necessary extra votes and another man became the nominee. Just ask Thomas E. Dewey.

If Donald Trump finds himself in a contested convention this summer, a looming question for the Republican presidential front-runner will be whether he is a Lincoln or a Dewey.

Mr. Trump obviously would prefer to follow in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, who emerged the nominee from a brokered Republican convention in 1860 and went on to win the White House and become one of America’s most revered presidents.

Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, the experience of Thomas E. Dewey at contested Republican conventions is more common and far less inspirational. The front-runner heading into a contested Republican convention has never won the White House and most of the time does not even secure the party’s nomination. …

“The notion that you go in with a plurality, therefore you deserve the nomination is just flat wrong,” said Merrill Matthews, resident scholar at the Dallas-based think tank Institute for Policy Innovation.

“It would not surprise me if we go to a contested convention and Trump ends up losing in that contested convention,” he said. “But I think it is too early to say. We have to see if the voters begin to gravitate toward him, as they typically do in presidential elections, and even if he doesn’t get 1,237, if the momentum is clearly behind him, I think it would be hard to deny him the nomination.”

Still, Mr. Matthews stressed that Mr. Trump will have to close the deal on the convention floor.

“He’s got to make the case to the delegates there,” he said. “He needs to persuade the other delegates that they should change their vote to him.”

Dewey ended up like most candidates who enter the Republican convention with the most delegates but short a majority — a position Mr. Trump could easily find himself in July in Cleveland — either passed over for the nomination or the loser in the general election.

Dewey experienced both outcomes. He was denied the nomination in 1940 and received it in 1948 only to lose that November to Democrat Harry S. Truman, despite the famously erroneous banner headline on the front page of The Chicago Daily Tribune.

In 1940 and eight years later, Dewey had a plurality of delegates when the convention opened.

In the history of the Republican Party, there have been 10 conventions where no candidate arrived with a majority of the delegates needed to clinch the nomination on the first ballot.

At seven of those brokered conventions, the candidate who arrived with the most delegates did not win the nomination. Half the time, the nomination went to the candidate who had the fewest delegates.

Lincoln was one of the candidates with the fewest delegates at the start of the convention. Another was Rep. James A. Garfield of Ohio, who entered the Chicago convention with no delegates but got the nomination after 36 ballots, the longest convention vote in Republican history.

In all three cases, when the candidates with the most delegates at the start of a contested convention emerged as the nominee, that candidate lost in the general election. Dewey shares that dubious distinction with Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes and U.S. Sen. James G. Blaine of Maine.

Read the whole thing.

1854 poster: “Uncle Sam’s youngest son, Citizen Know Nothing.”

Don Surber says:

Trump won. Get over yourself

Republican Governor Rick Scott of Florida stood up like a statesman today and said what had to be said.

Trump won.

Donald Trump is ahead by 250 delegates with about 1,000 delegates left to pick. If he gets half those delegates, he is at 1,200 — 37 shy of a majority. The party will not deny him the nomination if he is ahead by 100.

The neocons at National Review and the Weekly Standard should suck it up and admit defeat. In the marketplace of ideas, they lost. Their utopian ideal failed. Americans no longer want to invade countries. It is time for the Robert Taft wing of the party to steer the party — and the nation — back to the middle.

Sorry, Don. There seems to be some confusion here.

Trump won a plurality of delegates. That’s all. He has been getting the most votes of any individual candidate in a field of 17 GOP candidates that gradually reduced itself to 4. But he has nothing resembling a majority. He certainly has not won.

In order to secure the nomination, he needs 1237 votes. Trump actually has 678. Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich together have 718.

Donald Trump has done well at winning the most individual support in a big-field-of-candidates race, but now things are changing. It is becoming a Donald Trump or Not-Donald-Trump (meaning Ted Cruz) proposition. If all the Not-Donald-Trump Republicans come together (and they have to. It is either that or swallow the indigestible, unelectable Donald Trump), then Trump loses.

Moreover, the primary contests are moving West, out of the Rust-Bucket East and the Fever-Swamp South to the American West, natural Cruz country.

Don argues that all Trump has to do is get half the remaining delegates to be up to 1200. But Trump is a natural minority candidate. His support is coming from cross-over democrats, from low information voters (who previously voted for Obama), and from (alas!) our loudest-Paleocon-in-the-bar lunatic Nativist fringe. (I like Ann Coulter, but, really! Ann…) Trumplestiltskin has a ceiling. That ceiling has been reliably less than 50% so far, and I think it is going to stay that way.

Trump will arrive at the convention with some low 40% of the delegate count, blustering and making threats about Trumpshirts rioting if he isn’t automatically given a majority. And the Republican Party is not going to listen. The polls show Trump losing to Hillary (who could probably be beaten by your average box turtle), and the Republican Party wants to win. Republican political operatives often look like the Washington Generals playing the democrats as the Harlem Globetrotters, but even GOP operatives ought to be able to deal with the Convention maneuverings of a spoiled narcissistic millionaire whose preferred political counselor is a three-way dressing mirror.

Daniel Hannan is the British representative to the EU Parliament who is notorious for saying intelligent and true things. He is naturally appalled that so many Americans have lost their marbles recently.

Shall I tell you the most depressing thing? It’s not that the party of Lincoln and Reagan will be fronted by a self-absorbed, foul-mouthed, thin-skinned, bullying, mendacious, meretricious, mountainous berk. It’s not the reputational damage that our most important ally will suffer in consequence: if I were Mexico, I’d be glad to pay for a sodding wall to keep Trump out. It’s not the prospect of another sleekit Clinton using Supreme Court appointments to ensure a full generation of left-wing judicial activism.

No, sadder than any of these things is what the rise of the Donald says about democracy. …

Ah, America. You deserve better. And we expect better.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Roger Kimball.

New York Times:

Donald J. Trump warned of “riots” around the Republican National Convention should he fall slightly short of the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination and the party moves to select another candidate. …

“I think we’ll win before getting to the convention, but I can tell you, if we didn’t and if we’re 20 votes short or if we’re 100 short and we’re at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400, because we’re way ahead of everybody, I don’t think you can say that we don’t get it automatically,” Mr. Trump said. “I think it would be — I think you’d have riots. I think you’d have riots. I’m representing a tremendous, many, many millions of people.”

He added: “If you disenfranchise those people and you say, well I’m sorry but you’re 100 votes short, even though the next one is 500 votes short, I think you would have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen, I really do. I believe that. I wouldn’t lead it but I think bad things would happen.”

How much more of a clue to the character of the real Trump do people need?

He’s already telling us that the principle of a majority vote and the usual rules of political party nominating conventions should be set aside, just for him, or else. Not that he’s threatening anyone…

Obviously, it takes a majority vote, not a plurality, not a number of votes some hundreds short of a majority, to win the nomination. That’s how conventions work. And, the tradition has been that candidates who win a plurality, but who cannot get a majority, generally find their votes deserting them and going elsewhere on later ballots. That is precisely how the process has worked historically and the way it is supposed to work.

And, Donald and all the Trumpkins out there, this is a country of laws and we have plenty of police. Try rioting and America will throw your ass in the cooler. This isn’t Weimar Germany or some Latin American banana republic, and our political decisions are not influenced by threats of violence.

Jonathan V. Last, of the Weekly Standard, (via email) quotes Ace on why he found it impossible to support Trump.

The other day a friend asked me why I was posting negative stuff on Trump. I told him, basically, that everyone has their threshold of embarrassment. I can mock the Upper Middle Class Respectable set for having what I think is a way-too-high sensitivity to embarrassment — usually one strongly shaped by leftwing PC codes –but everyone has their own level.

It’s embarrassing, to me, that at this late date Trump can only sputter about “getting rid of the lines” at a debate when asked about his health care plan.

It’s embarrassing, to me personally, when I’m is repeatedly confronted with the fact that Trump still seems to not know the contents of the Sessions Immigration Plan on his own website — the whole reason I even began to be “Trump Curious,” as I term it.

If a plan could be nominated for president, I’d vote for the Sessions Immigration Plan.

It’s personally embarrassing to discover that Trump is nearly entirely unaware of the only reason I entertained supporting him.

I’ve said it a hundred times: People will not vote for, nor support, something they feel reduces their own sense of self-worth. Or which brings shame upon them.

This business can be ignored or spun as “no big deal, so what, a white girl got bruises,” but around the country, more and more people are probably going to find out that Trump keeps exceeding their own Personal Embarrassment Threshold.

There is no way to prove what I’m about to say. But for those mystified as to how someone could go from Trump Curious to Trump Opposed, here it is:

You can read Trump in two different ways. You can see his bluster and lack of any policy knowledge as refreshing. You can see his hyperpersonal style and enormous ego as somehow “authentic.”

On the other hand, you can see a guy who’s entire life is devoted to persuading people to get into business with him. A salesman, trying to make a sale. And you can start to see that the salesman really has no interest in his actual product, and no real intent to abide by the terms of the contract. A salesman who is just willing to say whatever he needs you to say to sign the dotted line — and who will decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not to abide by those contract terms, should they become inconvenient later.

Last adds:

A few weeks ago I started making the case that Trumpism corrupts and this is pretty much what I was talking about. You think you’re signing up for The Wall, but it turns out that you can’t stay onboard the Trump train unless you agree to put up with a whole lot else. And to cling to The Wall you wind up having to make compromises left, right, and center. You end up like Sarah Palin and Scott Brown, tacitly agreeing that George W. Bush knowingly lied about WMDs in Iraq. You end up like Chris Christie, not even pretending that there’s any way for Trump to enact his agenda. You wind up like Newt Gingrich, mangling history to suggest that it was Republican elites who cost Goldwater the ’64 election. Or worse, suggesting that Trump is just like Reagan in that he didn’t know much, either, and that the elites were against him, too.

This last bit (and Gingrich isn’t the only one to make the argument, see Jonah Goldberg’s column on Bill Bennett) is particularly awful because conservative intellectuals, including Gingrich and Bennett_have spent the best part of three decades pushing back against the common misconception that Reagan was an amiable dunce. The view of Reagan as a dim-bulb is entirely the creation of a hostile mainstream media. The truth is that Reagan was an intensely intellectual_not just intelligent, but intellectual man who was broadly-read and had spent a lifetime wrestling with philosophy, both political and moral. Read his letters. Read his diaries.

And now, some conservatives are willing to dynamite 30 years’ worth of work spent trying to help America understand the real Reagan in an ad hoc attempt to legitimize this guy? Really? Really?

Trumpism corrupts. And what do you get in return? …

Trump is already in the process of selling out early supporters on pretty much everything.

And it’s not like there weren’t warning signs. From “I’m changing, I’m changing” to the secret New York Times interview to his assurances to Ben Carson that he doesn’t actually mean everything he says.

But c’est la vie. And about those Super 2sday results? Well, we have our two-man race now. And the stakes are much higher than just the White House.

The man is right.