Daily Roundup - Feb 4, 2016

NewYorker: Ted Cruz and the art of the dirty trick - Amy Davidson

Ms. Davidson gives a good account of the time table and what happened in IOWA.

Ted Cruz used the dirty trick of actively convincing Iowans at the caucuses that Dr. Carson had withdrawn from the campaign. They should not waste their vote on him, but vote for Cruz who was closest to their religious and conservative ethos.

The New Yorker does not comment on the impact to Trump's campaign, but notes that in an age of cell communication, the tweets and messages around this subject "left behind a digital trail of tweets and e-mail alerts. One of the tweets, from Representative Steve King, the campaign’s national co-chair, said, “Carson looks like he is out. Iowans need to know before they vote. Most will go to Cruz, I hope”—and it was sent after the Carson campaign had issued clarifications."

Karl Rowe on O'reilly pointed  out that if only 4 people per caucus were convinced by the Cruz captains who were contacted, that represented the difference between Trump wining or losing in Iowa. He also provides a minute by minute recount of what happened.

So CNN screws up, Cruz's team uses this to win IOWA, but where is the Republican Party? Where is Rince prevys? I wen't to GOP.com and there is nothing there I could find that was about the Republican Campaign and the IOWA results.  Even their "find" didn't find anything. I looked at the Tweet Site @GOP, nothing for the entire last 24 hours. Only one Tweet on IOWA, at the time of the election with the results. O went to @Reince for information, nothing. Lots about Hilary, about technology in GOP usage, nothing on any Republican Candidates.

So: No interest in the GOP establishment for preventing fraud during voting in the primaries.  An interesting bit of information for people who in 2000 bitterly denounced a premature announcement that Bush Lost Florida while voting was still continuing in the western part of Florida. I guess if it was Jeb that was robbed, they would have acted?

Daily Roundup -- Feb 3. 2016

 Talking Points Memo: CNN->Cruz dirty tricks

The hyperlink above takes you to a walk through of what happened. At 6:43 PM CT (15 minutes before the opening of the Caucuses), Dana Bash discuses with Chris Moody that Carson would return home to Florida after the contest, and she concluded: “If you want to be President of the United States, you don't go home to Florida,” 

8:PM Cruz camp notifies their supporters that Carson was dropping out. 

This is shortly after a spokesman for Carson tweeted that he was going to Florida for a change of clothes.

Cruz's surrogates at the Caucuses urged the caucus goers not to wast their votes and vote for Cruz. 

That's it ------------------------  

1. Carson now demands that someone be fired for not checking on the accuracy of their information in Cruz's campaign. -- Seems reasonable

2. Trump argues that he was robbed of 1st place since Cruz got additional votes from Carson. He demands a new election and will sue Cruz.  -- There is some truth here as well.  How much can be argued.

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WAPO: Cut Clinton some slack -Dana Milbank

"When is a win not a win?  When the winner is Hillary Clinton." 

Dana goes on to tout the first woman who ever won Iowa, and the fact that in this democratic state, she got more votes than any Republican.

He doesn't mention she won by 6 coin tosses, any 2 of which failing would have meant her defeat.  This means she had a 1 in 64 chance losing, but she ran the deck with her special coin. Dana does know that Rick Santorum beat Romney "by all of 34 votes in 2012" but he missed that Mrs Clinton won by at most 4 votes. Hillarious?

Mrs. Clinto deserves to be congratulated for having escaped prison so far, but not for winning IOWA. She has gotten too much slack from the State Department, and even more from the Justice department. She doesn't deserve any in IOWA.