[TheRealThing]

Ted Cruz is not a libertarian. He is a constitutional conservative. I only commented that the Libertarian Party will set a record for votes if Trump is the nominee because a large number of conservatives will absolutely not vote for Trump in the general election. Whether the Libertarian Party, Constitution Party, or some combination of parties is the beneficiary of a Trump nomination, the result will be the same. The people who are pushing to give Trump the nomination, regardless of whether he can win a majority of the delegates are working to hand the election to Hillary Clinton.

If Trump can win the nomination under the current rules, then that will be bad enough. If the rules are changed because of Trump's whining and threats, to make it easier for Trump to win, then there will be an even bigger backlash against the party. The most fair thing to do, IMO, would be to leave the rules as they were when the current campaign began. Between Trump and Cruz, most delegates at the convention and on the rules committee, so they should be able to block any rules changes that would allow the GOP to drop in a candidate like Paul Ryan and ignore primary results.

Trump should do well in his home state of New York, but I doubt that he breaks 50 percent. Trump is barely above 50 percent in the polls now and neither Cruz nor Kasich has spent much time campaigning there. Cruz should pick up delegates in upstate New York, as Trump will dominate the more liberal NYC region. As for California, Trump led Cruz by 1 point in the most recent poll. Cruz may not win California, but he should make a strong showing there.

If Trump does not win on the first ballot, it is unlikely that he will win the nomination at all. There will be more delegates opposed to Trump than who are willing to support him. As candidates have dropped out of the race, more voters have moved to Cruz than to Trump and Trump still has not won 50 percent of the vote anywhere. Trump needs to focus on winning 1,237 delegates and stop whining about getting cheated.

Nowhere is your pro-Trump bias more evident than in the case of Michelle Fields. Lewandowski claimed that he never touched Fields. Now, as somebody who has watched the tape repeatedly, are you prepared to say that Lewandowski did not touch Fields' arm? As for a smooth cadence, it looks to me like she was walking next to Trump in one frame, Lewandowski reached her, and then Trump was several steps ahead of her. What stopped her forward motion? The frame rate of the CCTV is so low, that I don't think anybody can tell how hard Lewandowski grabbed Fields. She was moving forward and then suddenly she wasn't. Her audio comments and her bruise support her version of the story and there was no way she could have anticipated that she was going to be grabbed.

If you cannot even admit that Lewandowski lied about not touching Fields in the face of clear video evidence, then there is something wrong. The law does not require Lewandowski to have thrown Fields to the ground or caused her to scream in pain, as Trump suggested. A conviction of batter only requires that Lewandowski touched her against her will. Do you think Fields wanted Lewandowski to grab her arm? Is it possible, in light of the low frame rate of the video that Fields was thrown off balance or stumbled? I think it is possible, but it is not necessary for the touching to constitute battery.

If Lewanowski had not called Fields delusional and denied touching her, and instead simply apologized, I doubt that any battery charge would have been filed. Fields not only lost her job, Fox News' Eric Bolling removed her from his Cashin In panel. Trump and Lewandowski made the incident national news and Trump is still talking about it. This is not the only incident in which Lewandowski has embarrassed the Trump campaign. If you are interested, you can lookup "Cheryl Jacobus," who accused Lewandowski and Trump lying about her job interview for the campaign. Of course, there is also the incident where Trump denied that Lewandowski touched a protester until a video surfaced showing him grabbing a guy by the collar.

Instead of letting Trump's lies throw you off the scent, focus on whether he has handled controversies involving his staff honestly. The charge against Lewandowski may not stick, but if the charge is dropped it will not absolve Lewandowski and Trump from lying about the incident. Fields may have lied or exaggerated, but she is not managing a campaign or running for president.

One last thing about Michelle Fields. Fields was employed by Breitbart News, which has been very pro-Trump and she was also a panelist on Cashin In, which is hosted by Eric Boling, who may be the most pro-Trump member of Fox News' staff. The people who suggested that Fields made everything up to get attention have not explained why somebody whose employers are so supportive of Trump would have made a phony allegation against the Trump campaign. She had nothing to gain by lying and everything to lose by saying anything at all.

BTW, Lewandowski's title has not changed, but his roles and visibility within the campaign has been reduced. My guess is that he is one strike away from being sidelined permanently.

So, if I understand this correctly given that Trump were the nominee, all the Libertarians and perhaps the Rich Lowry types, are going to line up and vote for a guaranteed 3rd party loser. None the less, it is only the votes for Trump that will constitute votes for Hillary? On a different issue, I refuse to believe that all women will vote for Hillary, many cannot stand her.

But I agree with most of your post. I wasn't saying Lewandowski could not have handled things much much better. I would say he should be fired if proof emerges which shows his hand on her arm. Not because that is such an earthshaking trespass, but because that means he has lied publicly about the incident. Embellishing the situation on the part of Fields is just as dishonest. I saw the tape, Hannity for example claims to have watched it a hundred times and could not detect the incident. When somebody gets jerked so hard they barely manage to avoid hitting the deck, that would be somewhat discernible in his mind. So again, where is it that you've gotten this clear evidence from again? My leaning, is that he may have indeed touched her arm, but if there is clear evidence I have not heard of it.

The whole thing seemed out of character. I would have thought that Fields was asking campaign friendly questions and I didn't get why things went down as they did. Maybe she had an ax to grind and went off the reservation a little, who knows? And maybe Trump really likes Lewandowski, and when Trump asked him what happened Lewandowski lied to him too. Trump was in the lead and could not see what was going on behind him, all of which has served at bare minimum to put him in a very bad spot. I think at first it was just of case of Trump resisting when outsiders try to tell him how to run his own organization. So, when and if he sees that Lewandowski is guilty, I could see how Trump's admiration for him would do a nose dive.