Mr. Trump, who by the end of March had spent around $40 million of his fortune on the primaries, has said that he may need as much as $1.5 billion for the fall campaign, but that he will seek to raise it from donors rather than continue to self-finance.
.. even if individuals can contribute up to the current limit of $334,000 at a time to the party
.. Republican Party officials have pressed Mr. Trump to sign a joint fund-raising agreement, which would allow him to raise money for the national committee and for his own campaign simultaneously. That, in turn, would also give Mr. Trump a defensible answer for why, after months of railing against Wall Street executives and special interests, he recently turned to a former Goldman Sachs executive, Steven Mnuchin, to corral large checks for his campaign.
.. While the limits were lower in 2012, Mitt Romney raised less than $500 million under such an agreement that year, using a donor network that had taken years to develop.
.. The Trump campaign plans to try to take firm control over the party’s convention, with two senior advisers to Mr. Trump, Paul Manafort and Barry Bennett, expected to head to Cleveland on Thursday, according to two people close to the Trump campaign.
Explaining Trump’s Hostile Takeover
A neglected minority faction in the party—basically Reagan Democrats—has emerged triumphant, and its legitimate concerns, sadly, are now misrepresented by a buffoon.
.. the safety nets on which Americans have come to rely all seem to be withering away—unions, pensions, tenure, employee and employer loyalty, and even government entitlements.
.. The revival of Reaganism (or Jack Kempism) won’t work today, in part, because circumstances have just changed, and reforms that once seemed populist now seem much more oligarchic.
.. the junior senator from Texas consistently overplayed the religion and morality card in the mode of evangelical identity politics.
.. My point is that it took him little effort to be credited with occupying moderate ground. It was amazing how easily he was allowed to get away with that.
.. His might be the toughest and most impervious Teflon of all time.
Giving Trump His Due
You could have locked a 100 political consultants in a room and told them not to leave until they had a perfect response to the San Bernardino terror attack, and they never would have emerged proposing to ban all Muslim travel to the U.S. When Trump said it, the world collapsed around his head. Everyone denounced him.
No one agreed with Trump — except Republican voters. According to exit polls, it was his strongest issue. In New Hampshire, 65 percent supported the ban, in South Carolina, 74 percent supported it, in New York, 68 percent. Trump won a solid plurality of those voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina, and an astonishing 72 percent of them in New York.
.. The idea of a ban on Muslims is completely unreasonable and, if you were to going to try to implement it, impractical (ticket agents in Europe would have to try to discern the religion of passengers flying to the U.S.). Trump’s insight was that it didn’t matter. The emotional punch of the ban, and the way it differentiated him from the other candidates, was the important thing. In this case, as in so many others, having a serious, responsible policy staff or practiced political consultants would only have hampered his cause.
.. Trump’s achievement is difficult to fathom. With no pollsters, no speechwriters, no fundraising staff, little campaign organization, few TV advertisements, no debate prep and a paper-thin knowledge of public affairs, he has won a major-party presidential nomination. This is a 100-year event.
Trump did it by pounding a simple, emotive message over and over again in big rallies and media appearances.
.. If Trump proved an exceptionally skilled politician in his inimitable way, he was also fortunate. For the longest time, there wasn’t any organized effort against him. He won three out of the first four contests while his rivals squabbled among themselves. The establishment initially bet on Jeb Bush, and then, tapped out financially and psychologically, did nothing to rally around Cruz, whom many insiders fear and hate more than Trump.
.. It’s a cliché to say that Trump has changed all the rules. That isn’t strictly true because what he has done isn’t easily replicable. It’s impossible to imagine anyone else dominating the media like Trump (even Vladimir Putin, who directly controls the Russian media, must be envious) or being so adept at waving off his own contradictory statements or bull-dozing through his own ignorance.
How Ryan decided to ditch Trump
The speaker did not expect Trump to clinch the nomination so soon and huddled quickly with advisers to plot his break.
.. The decision will shape Ryan’s political future in the short and long term, and could have a real effect on the outcome of the 2016 election. Immediately, the move could give the 200-plus Republicans up for reelection — particularly those in the swing districts that will decide the size of the GOP’s majority, or even whether it keeps the House — a measure of cover from Trump’s unpopularity.