Article

2016-04-28 Home Front: Politix

Ted Cruz is crumbling before our very eyes

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Fred 2016-04-28 00:00|| || Front Page|| [3 views ] Top

#1 Cruz isn't 'crumbling' - it's more like he's getting run over by Trump. Keep working the delegates, win a few out west, and 'we're on to Cleveland'.

Posted by Raj 2016-04-28 00:23|| 2016-04-28 00:23|| Front Page Top

#2 Trump supporter human wave assault in the comments in 5...4...3...

Posted by Nguard 2016-04-28 00:47|| 2016-04-28 00:47|| Front Page Top

#3 Nothing is over yet.

Posted by newc 2016-04-28 01:00|| 2016-04-28 01:00|| Front Page Top

#4 I thought asking the wall flower to dance after everyone else is on the floor was rather poor form. Someone should have given Fiorina the nod the day after she dropped out of the race. She appears to be the only one with solid plans for the economy and foreign affairs.

Posted by Besoeker 2016-04-28 04:05|| 2016-04-28 04:05|| Front Page Top

#5 Besoeker: If she ends up on the ticket against Hillary expect 10,000s of ex-HP workers to help Hillary destroy her.
She killed a lot of gooses laying golden eggs through poor business decision making.

Posted by 3dc 2016-04-28 07:07|| 2016-04-28 07:07|| Front Page Top

#6 The amount of overt bias from parts of the supposedly "conservative" side of the media world has been astounding, with Breitbart and Drudge going over the cliff, and a lot of others doing a great job of mimicking the leftist media. Coulter and Ingraham fawning. Completely abandoning small government, pro-life, pro-family, policy and facts, and so on, all for a mob scene and the equivalent of Hope N Change.

At least next cycle we know who not to trust.

Posted by Injun Guelph7162 2016-04-28 07:17|| 2016-04-28 07:17|| Front Page Top

#7 I actually thought Trump would pick Fiorina.

She did a decent enough job at HP. Trends in the business were heavily against HP's business model, but the company survived and even prospered to an extent.

Posted by phil_b 2016-04-28 07:34|| 2016-04-28 07:34|| Front Page Top

#8 I thought she would be Trump's running mate too. I guess Cruz is playing Go, not chess. Trump is playing Connect4, and Kasich is playing with himself.

Posted by Injun Protector of the Sith6311 2016-04-28 07:38|| 2016-04-28 07:38|| Front Page Top

#9 I voted for Cruz in the Texas primary, but picking a VP before the convention smacks of desperation no matter who the pick is.

Posted by brujotejano 2016-04-28 08:38|| 2016-04-28 08:38|| Front Page Top

#10 She killed a lot of gooses laying golden eggs through poor business decision making.
Posted by 3dc

Business trends, politics, and boards of directors are also contributing factors. As the old saying goes, 'Success has many fathers, failure only one.'

Posted by Besoeker 2016-04-28 08:50|| 2016-04-28 08:50|| Front Page Top

#11 If trump talks condaliza rice to be running mate that would pull in more women and African American voters to his side.

Posted by Airandee 2016-04-28 10:55|| 2016-04-28 10:55|| Front Page Top

#12 I see this as a desperation move. Cruz wants to see if the polls in a Cruz/Fiorina vs HIllary match up go up or down. If they go up he'll stay in and fight for that second round of a contested victor. If they plummet he'll probably drop out before the convention and give it all to Trump to avoid a contested convention (with a different candidate) that might tear the party apart.

I suspect the later. Carly is impressive but the ex-HP folks I know would actively go against here. There is hostility and it is deep.

Posted by rjschwarz 2016-04-28 11:45|| 2016-04-28 11:45|| Front Page Top

#13 She did a decent enough job at HP. Trends in the business were heavily against HP's business model, but the company survived and even prospered to an extent.

I've heard that argument. I don't buy it. Fiorina flopped at HP just like she flopped at Bell Labs. Instead of working to make HP's PC division competitive, she bought Compaq. Anti-competitive. Then the entire PC business went to China. These days HP is merely a wholesale importer of Chinese built computers and printers. Sooner or later the Chinese will put HP out it's misery. I want a national conversation about why we can't make computers in the USA anymore and Trump is the only one who will talk about it. Fiorina is part of the problem and if Cruz can't see that then so is he.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2016-04-28 12:10|| 2016-04-28 12:10|| Front Page Top

#14 Besoeker: If she ends up on the ticket against Hillary expect 10,000s of ex-HP workers to help Hillary destroy her.
She killed a lot of gooses laying golden eggs through poor business decision making.

She was competing against the best in the very fast-moving and competitive technology sector. How many GOP pols could have revived HP? Nokia and Blackberry went from heroes to zeroes in the blink of an eye, not because their executives were incompetent, but because the competition was just better.

HP was a leader only in the crumbling printer and PC businesses. Printers were slowing down because of e-mail, and in PC's, even best-of-breed Dell ended up stumbling and going private, where it is starting to generate losses.

Note that any lingering resentment from HP workers was insufficient to derail her quest for the GOP senatorial nomination. Whether her residual CA political support is enough to help Cruz clinch the GOP nomination is something we'll find out real soon.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2016-04-28 12:14|| 2016-04-28 12:14|| Front Page Top

#15 I see I see this as a desperation move. this as a desperation move.

This isn't a desperation move. It's a CA move. Fiorina won the GOP senatorial nomination. If HP workers hate her guts, they don't vote in GOP primaries.

Cruz hopes she has residual support from that campaign. If Cruz denies Trump a victory in CA, Trump fails to hit 1237. Cruz has a good shot at the nomination if it goes to a second ballot, given that GOP delegates are much more informed about the candidates and would probably prefer an actual conservative over Trump.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2016-04-28 12:21|| 2016-04-28 12:21|| Front Page Top

#16 I want a national conversation about why we can't make computers in the USA anymore

Apple was the last major US computer manufacturer to assemble its computers stateside. It had the best gross margins in the business. Even it started losing money. If Apple can't bolt its computers together stateside, nobody can. If it hadn't moved production abroad, it wouldn't have survived the 90's.

Protectionism isn't some kind of magic economic salve. Most economies around the world are protectionistic. Brazil and Indonesia are way more protectionistic than Japan and Korea. Why aren't the latter world-beaters despite their closed markets?

Posted by Zhang Fei 2016-04-28 12:31|| 2016-04-28 12:31|| Front Page Top

#17 It's over Ted. You are a good man, go back to the Senate and fight the good fight.

Posted by regular joe 2016-04-28 12:32|| 2016-04-28 12:32|| Front Page Top

#18 HP used to make way more than computers or printers. My co-workers and I, when developing the early digital cellular, used to buy their very expensive test equipment like a cocaine addict with coke. They didn't respond at all when others came out with cheaper and better products. Even the criminals came out with crack in response to cocaine's high price. I compare it to cocaine as any piece of test equipment from HP was usually priced from $50,000 to $90,000 and one was never enough for a testbed. One of our testlab's alone had over 1.5 billion dollars of equipment in it. At least a third of that was HP equipment at the beginning. By the end? Damn near nothing was HP.
The test equipment business is now a German company.

Posted by 3dc 2016-04-28 13:00|| 2016-04-28 13:00|| Front Page Top

#19 I guess the HP point I am trying to make is that their whole suite of executive decision makers that Fiona put together didn't make decisions that favored the survival of a profitable company.

Posted by 3dc 2016-04-28 13:05|| 2016-04-28 13:05|| Front Page Top

#20 She was bad at Lucent too.

Posted by 3dc 2016-04-28 13:06|| 2016-04-28 13:06|| Front Page Top

#21 HP used to make way more than computers or printers. My co-workers and I, when developing the early digital cellular, used to buy their very expensive test equipment like a cocaine addict with coke. They didn't respond at all when others came out with cheaper and better products.

And that's the result of superior competition, not necessarily inferior management. Gerstner at IBM was lionized as some kind of management genius, but when he left, IBM was no better off in competitive terms than it was before he started. His specialty was cost-cutting, not product development. The reason IBM survived was its pre-existing dominance in obscenely-profitable big iron (that had margins similar to or exceeding Apple's iPhone), which Gerstner really had little effect on, pro or con. Management can only do so much.

Steve Jobs was a product development genius, but he was very much an exception. And for every Jobs, there are numerous tech background CEO's who lost to him. Not because they were incompetent, but because others were better. Competition at that level is like the Olympics. It's hard to blame Fiorina for losing out to the top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1%.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2016-04-28 13:27|| 2016-04-28 13:27|| Front Page Top

#22 I don't see protectionism as being a dirty word if we're protecting ourselves from an aggressive, hostile, totalitarian dictatorship like China. Competition is a good thing but you can't expect American workers to compete against slaves in a communist country like that. When they start recognizing basic human rights and instituting policies to protect the environment like we do maybe we'll talk.

Cruz Picks Nation’s Most Aggressive Champion of Offshoring as Vice President

I would add that maybe Carly should offshore herself. I mean, if she wants to move all of her company's manufacturing and support operations overseas then why didn't she just move the whole damn company including headquarters and executive officers overseas?

But the bottom line is that we need to understand why we're not competitive anymore and try to do something about it instead of just admitting defeat and becoming a Third World country ourselves.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2016-04-28 13:31|| 2016-04-28 13:31|| Front Page Top

#23 BTW, when Fiorina ran for the Senate against Barbara Boxer I voted for a third party candidate. If by some miracle she had won the Republican nomination for president and ran against Hillary I would have done the same again. There is indeed a great deal of resentment in this state among people who are familiar with HP. I was never an HP worker but my company was an HP customer for many years and I watched with sadness as they declined. The good HP workers either left or were laid off and if they were replaced at all it was with the mediocre and the foreigners.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2016-04-28 13:40|| 2016-04-28 13:40|| Front Page Top

#24 She flopped at Bell Labs and Lucent (related) and HP? What did she have going for her?

Was she part Native American?

Posted by Bobby 2016-04-28 14:26|| 2016-04-28 14:26|| Front Page Top

#25 Cruz today on Boehner's calling him Lucifer:

"I think John Boehner has made it crystal clear. John Boehner and his remarks describe Donald Trump as his “texting and golfing buddy.” So if you want someone that’s a texting and golfing buddy, if you’re happy with John Boehner as speaker of the house, and you want a president like John Boehner, Donald Trump’s your man."

Posted by Iblis 2016-04-28 14:31|| 2016-04-28 14:31|| Front Page Top

#26 It will never happen, but wouldn't it be preferable if Presidential candidates campaigned with their intended Cabinet and other key appointees. Or at the very least, naming people they would like to appoint? It would be a lot more meaningful than the continual bombast we get - which is why it won't happen.

Posted by Glenmore 2016-04-28 14:55|| 2016-04-28 14:55|| Front Page Top

#27 "I don't see protectionism as being a dirty word..." I don't either. Not necessarily.

We traded cheaper stuff for an increase in crime and racial tensions when we cut out the low end of our economy without any plans.

Posted by rjschwarz 2016-04-28 15:17|| 2016-04-28 15:17|| Front Page Top

#28 Time to cut a real deal. Cruz bows out in return for open SCOTUS seat. If he's a real conservative, it'll give him more power to truly shape the next twenty years rather than 4 or 8.

Posted by P2Kontheroad 2016-04-28 16:15|| 2016-04-28 16:15|| Front Page Top

#29 Cruz for Supreme Court? Arguably a better place for a Constitutionalist. And he is only in his 40s, so there would be a hard core conservative voice on the court for decades.

The problem is that Trump has to win. That's not going to happen. Media love fest ends at the GOP convention, and the knives come out. Plus the Clinton and Soros attack machine starts up. And the Trump University fraud trial happens to kick off too.

Trump is setting up for the biggest election flop of all time. His fans are too self blinded to see the huge flaws for what they are.

Posted by Fester McGurque4390 2016-04-28 19:07|| 2016-04-28 19:07|| Front Page Top

#30 This is not over yet. At least not until after Indiana and California.

The thing is if Cruz stops Trump, neither of them will be the nominee. He is fooling himself if the thinks establishment tools like Boehner and Ryan and company would give him any chance.

Posted by Gleresing Fleagum3201 2016-04-28 19:08|| 2016-04-28 19:08|| Front Page Top

#31 Abu Uluque

You are on the mark. In the U.S. due to an armada of government (local, state, federal) regulations, laws, wage controls, etc. etc. etc. etc. that are all anti-business, you cannot compete against third world slave labor.

The hypocrisy of it all is the Chamber has convinced the very people who built the anti-American business tar pit to import the third world workforce where ever possible. Cheap labor while still allowing for excessive/expensive regulations.

Posted by Snakes Unailet8574 2016-04-28 20:46|| 2016-04-28 20:46|| Front Page Top

#32 And Trump as a business man and not a politician, is well aware of what businesses are up against. And has had much greater success regardless.

Posted by Snakes Unailet8574 2016-04-28 20:56|| 2016-04-28 20:56|| Front Page Top

22:40 Zenobia Floger6220
22:29 Whiskey Mike
21:25 Glenmore
21:16 trailing wife
20:56 Snakes Unailet8574
20:46 Snakes Unailet8574
20:21 Capsu78
19:14 Pearl Big Foot3043
19:14 Besoeker
19:10 Wholuck Threque4669
19:08 Gleresing Fleagum3201
19:07 Fester McGurque4390
19:06 Grampaw Schwarzeneggar1356
18:56 Glusock Omomock3107
18:41 Canuckistan sniper
18:33 Canuckistan sniper
18:10 Bigfoot Stalin7808
18:07 SteveS
17:53 Pappy
17:52 gorb
17:29 Pappy
16:56 Thomotch Hupaiper8266
16:47 Abu Uluque
16:39 Abu Uluque