"World's fattest tapeworm"? That's absolutely awesome and perfect. Tip of the hat.

frankly, I'd prefer trump to cruz, if I had a fully legal semi-automatic AR 15 clone put to my head and had to pick.

so, the stranger is rooting for Rubio to get the nomination, then? as the "reasonable" one?

There isn't a dimes worth of difference between the non-Trump candidates. Among that group, Cruz would be easier to beat in the general.

@2:

So long as it's not Trump, it really doesn't matter who gets the GOP nom, because if it's NOT Trump, chances are he'll take his toys, his money, his supporters, and his big, fat, racist mouth and spin-off into a third party bid, effectively carving out the craziest of the Republican voters (a relative term, to be sure), thus making it impossible for the vetted candidate to win the election.

Irrelevant. Rubio beats HRC in swing states and nationallly. It'll be Rubio and he'll make a great president.

Does Politico ask everyone if they would vote for Ted Cruz, Viagra and Pepsi, or just Bob Dole?

@4: see @5.

@5: please provide a selection of unbiased polls to support your election assertion. your 2nd assertion is absurd. he'd make as good of a president as I would.

actually, worse, as he's a republican. I will concede that he'd be better than cruz.

Link, link, link, link, - wow Matt, I think you set the record. Three go to the same NYT article and the link to the climate change one is mangled. Otherwise, great article.

@9: well, how about that. better nominate Sanders, then.

@11 I hope they do. I could happily live with Bernie if he won.

@11 - Good thing yearinadvance polls don't elect candidates, huh? Electors do however, and I fail to see how the solid Dem states are going to flip, regardless of his strength in (un)Read states which contribute to the poll numbers the troll @9 has linked to.

And beyond that, HRC is a very known commodity, pretty much everyone already has an opinion on her. Not a lot of minds will be changed one way or the other by the McFuckTon of ads that will be put out by all the RW suuuuper-PACs. Rubio on the other hand, has maaaaany skeletons in his closet (cough, cough: boat, absenteeism, yadda x 3), and once Joe Average Uninformedvoter gets a better look at him... Let's just say a lot of RW'ers will follow Dole's advice and not get out of bed that day.

Agree. I would take Trump over Cruz since I would surely punch a TV screen before this is all over if I have to look at at his fat smirk every day.

What I find pretty sick is the concept of "palatable." All Trump is doing is saying out loud what Republicans have been dog-whistling for decades. There is no difference between any of them, except that Trump is up front about his sick racist bigotry. All the other Republicans like to keep it behind it closed doors.

That's why Trump is popular, because the bigots are tired of being dog-whistled. Or too stupid. Either way, they love a guy who will be open on what they're too chicken-shit to represent on their own.

Can someone explain the logic off this....

ISIS...the Islamic State...is our enemy according to Obama who called them thugs.

If we were at war with the Nazi State, would we encourage Nazis to immigrate?

So what is wrong with what Trump is saying?

Hasn't Obama already opened Pandora's Box and Trump is merely following things to their logical conclusion?

@10: Yeah, we should be pointing to McCain, not Obama, as the precedent here.

@18: JBITDMFOTP

@16:

Last time I checked, The Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war, not the Executive. Thus far, they haven't declared war on Daesh, presumably because they're not a diplomatically-recognized government of an existing country. President Obama calling them "thugs" =/= a request for a formal declaration of war in any case. And FWIW, the U.S. government actively brought thousands of Nazi's into the country - look up "Operation Paperclip" for some history on this.

#15

You are missing the real effect of Trump.

Trump spat in the wind.

He tugged on Superman's cape.

He messed around with Is-lam.

Trump opened his mouth and said, hey guys, lookee-here.

He made himself a target for the bullets of terrorists.

No other leader has been doing that.

No leader or global superstar or elite has been a target of terror.

It's always a guy going shopping, or flying to a birthday party.

Only Trump has the balls to put himself in the line of fire.

Everyone else cowers.

@23, in this case, yes, unfortunately. Cruz qualifies to run for president.

@15 you actually really buhleeve that crap you spout?

ack @25, not @15

@16 JBITDMFOTP

@27: I think you meant to refer to 24 or 16.

@23 The "one parent rule" isn't completely straightforward. If it's the mother, it's a slam-dunk. OTOH, if it's the father, it comes down to a bunch of shit designed to exclude the accidental children of American servicemen. I read up on it once and don't remember all the rules, but it was something like he had to be married to the mother, or at least acknowledge the child as his. (That's what's in my fuzzy memory bank, may be misremembered or obsolete, so don't take it to the bank.)

@23 The phrase in the Constitution is "natural-born citizen," which is taken to mean an American citizen at birth, rather than by naturalization, but it was left to Congress to define what makes someone a citizen at birth. So, there's a whole section of the US Code that does that, and Congress can theoretically change that at any time through ordinary legislation.

Oh, and on the John McCain issue, I believe both of his parents were American citizens, living on a U.S. Military base in a (at the time) U.S. Territory.

Funniest sentence I've read in a long time: "Personally, I'd go even further: I'd rather see a phone book elected president than Ted Cruz." Haha :)

#24

How BRAVE of Trump to applaud his brown shirt followers when they beat up bystanders!

How BRAVE of Trump to make targets of millions of minority American citizens!

How BRAVE of Trump to ... yeah, what the fuck, the man is obviously a lily livered coward and bigot.

Anyone who sees otherwise is willfully blind and/or also a lily livered coward and bigot.