Trump announces a path for citizenship and arrives in Switzerland to glorify among the world's elite . . .

except that when he lands the only story is that he had eliminated his "I didn't know this was bad" defense because last June he tried to fire Mueller and was cock blocked by the WH Counsel. It makes look weak, stupid, careless and guilty.

Now the working presumption is that the Republican Party is both stupid and evil. What if they are evil but not stupid.

It is rather remarkable that every single time that Trump gets on a plane and goes somewhere, Saudi Arabia or China for example, there is a very serious leak and it undermines Trump's news cycle when he should be getting good press, if he didn't do stupid things like grab an orb in SA.

Next week the whole dynamics of the Republican Party will change with Romney's announcement that he will be a candidate in Utah's Senate race. Preliminary indications are that he will win in a super landslide, 70%. He will steal the winning aurora and present a scandal free (both personal, business and as Governor) alternative to Trump.

Perhaps there is an inner circle of Republicans who know enough about what is happening in the WH to know that Trump's fall is inevitable and that within 6 months Trump will be forced to resign. Pence appoints Romney to VP and Pence leaves to a huge payoff leaving Romney as the President and he brings back Ryan as his VP.

Ryan is awfully quiet and composed for a guy whose House is burning to the ground around him. This would give the Republicans a fresh face and significantly reduce losses in the House and provide what is needed for the Republicans to keep the Senate.

Romney does a deal on DACA and other broadly popular ideas. The move for the wall is replaced by improving technological advances to improve border security measures. The most powerful argument for the Democrats; "We aren't crazy and we aren't Trump" is eliminated and the Republicans will have a more even playing field for the off year elections.

There will also be a honeymoon period for Romney. He will be welcomed abroad. We will return to the climate treaty. All of our allies will rush their leaders here to praise the change.

I have no proof of any of this of course. This is what I would do if I was in the Republican inner circle.

Of course the first thing I would do is to keep Trump off balance. Every time he gets on a plane I would make sure that there was a crippling leak that would undermine his whole Presidency.

Just saying that is what I would do if I was in their shoes and wanted to pull their party over the greatest disaster they faced since Nixon. The leaks against Trump, both when he gets on a plane and the inevitable Friday night bombshell that will dominate the Sunday shows sure seems to fit a pattern.

Gallup has released their weekly Presidential Job Approval showing that after a brief uptick Trump's disapproval is heading north and his disapproval is heading south.

In Feb 2017 Trump's approval was 45 and his disapproval was 47. Today his approval is 36 and his disapproval is 59 so that the gap went from - 2 to - 23.

http://news.gallup.com/poll/203207/trump-job-approval-weekly.aspx?g_source=link_newsv9&g_campaign=item_185273&g_medium=copy

When it comes to his first year no President comes close to trump

We don't have to like Flake's legislative record to understand, and cheer, his latest speech.

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/17/politics/jeff-flake-speech/index.html

It is important, and beneficial for three reasons:

1) It is obvious that he is putting down a marker for leadership in a post Trump Republican Party and that is also not an inherently bad thing because it is based on the premise that Trump will have to crash and burn before they can rebuild it.

2) Impeachment can be done with a majority of the House but it takes 2/3 for removal. President's aren't removed because they committed a crime, Reagan clearly broke the law with Iran/Contra. Removal of office is a political act and it cannot be done by a single party. It doesn't have to be unanimous but a significant number of the President's party must agree.

Flake makes the strongest case for Republicans to abandon the President because he bases it on a clear attack on First Amendment issues and attacks on basic American values of supporting a free and independent press. We will need more like this but getting the first Republican to stand up and call Trump a neo-Stalinist is a good first step.

3) It puts Republicans in the crucible. He is giving Democrats valuable footage for ads in November that will make the case that opposition to the President is a bipartisan affair and it gives cover for those Republicans who are looking for an excuse to vote for the Democrat.

AZ is clearly one of those places where it will make a difference. Trump didn't even get a majority here. He won with less than 4% of the vote and less than 100,000 votes. His speech was carefully crafted to pull on the heartstrings of Mormons. There are 400,000 Mormons in AZ.

More importantly it will force Republican candidates to answer questions whether or not they agree with Flake's speech. In the Congressional campaign season I expect that you will get some favourable Republican responses. More importantly it will drive many Republican candidates further to the right in the primary and sabotage their GE campaigns chances of winning.

In AZ McSally is the likely Republican Senatorial candidate but she is currently only polling at 31%

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2018/01/16/poll-shows-mcsally-frontrunner-arizona-senate-race-but-can-she-snag-donald-trumps-endorsemen/1036669001/

In order to win the primary she will have to be anti Flake and pro Trump. That may get her on to the GE ballot but it will likely be the difference in her being able to win in the GE. If she were to run a campaign based on "I am an independent" she might win, she is a good campaigner. Jeff Flake just did everything he could to force her to a pro-Trump position in a way that will undermine her GE chances.

It is possible that his speech will force other Republican primary candidates to have to answer tough questions that will make them more Trump for the primary and less electable in the general. If McSally loses by a small percentage and a Democrat takes his seat then his speech are likely to be the difference.

One of the regular events that follow a wave election is a review why the polls underestimated just how big a wave it was.

This is an example of one of those reviews after 2014:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/14/polls-republican_n_6158158.html

Now we have Larry Sabato warning Dems that we shouldn't be "over confident" as posted in highplainsdem thread: https://demu.gr/100210098814

Sabato tries to sound reasonable but I remember when Romney was tanking and almost no donations were coming in Sabato started pimping all of the suspicious polling that showed Romney rebounding, Romney got a rebound in donations and I always suspected Sabato of being compensated for his strong opinions on what was obviously puff polling. His opinions at the time were all wrong.

What Sabato isn't saying is that this next election is "baked" and by that I mean that while, obviously, we shouldn't be over confident there are some key irreversible points in the election cycle that have already passed. The most important of these are incumbents retiring and candidate recruitment.

When you can't find candidates to run in high profile safe Senate seats it is an indicator of a tremendous blast that is coming because there are dozens of good candidates being recruited in Congressional and Gubernatorial and hundreds for down ticket races. That part of the election cycle is almost over and the Republicans are getting skunked. Nine plus months to go and the Republicans can't find a candidate for the Senate seat in North Dakota?



I recently had an extended trip to Eastern Washington where I grew up and stayed until 21 and I was struck that almost everyone, regardless of political affiliation said,

"I don't want to talk about it".

"I don't want to talk about it but Trump is an idiot" would be a typical Democratic response and "I don't want to talk about it but Trump is nuts" was a typical Republican response. A very close friend that I have had who has voted Republican for decades because of his position on abortion said "I don't want to talk about it but if the Democrats don't win in a landslide then the country is finished.

There are no more undecideds in the country. There are a lot of people who hate Trump including all Democrats, most Independents and many Republicans. There are a small number of Trump supporters but they are keeping their head down. The only unknown is how many Republicans who don't like Trump will simply stay home at the election.

The reason that the polls don't register an even larger number for each Congressional district is that most people are not just "baked" they are "burnt", they already have made up their mind and are trying to avoid any more nauseating news until the election, they don't want to talk to pollsters.

The most astonishing finding from my visit to Spokane, not a single person, Democrat or Republican, had a good thing to say about Morris-Rogers.

Everyone thought that the Democrat candidate Dr. Lisa Brown was going to win and here is what Sabato and the others are missing. Democrats aren't just recruiting candidates they are recruiting super stars to run.

Here is her wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Brown_(Washington_politician)

The most impressive new urban redevelopment in Spokane was the join medical facility that brought a large leading age medical facility under WSU to the city. Dr. Brown was Chancellor of WSU. This is the kind of development that the polls for generic candidates don't register.

We still need to finish the job, and it is going to be rewarding this time but we should also be confident that something very big is going to happen in November.