America

Submitted by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

Narrow victories in the Kentucky caucuses and the Louisiana primary, the largest states decided on Saturday, have moved Donald Trump one step nearer to the nomination.

Primaries in Michigan, Mississippi and Idaho on March 8, and in Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina on March 15, may prove decisive. If Marco Rubio does not win his home state of Florida, he is cooked, as is Gov. John Kasich if he does not win Ohio.

Frontrunners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will both face fresh tests on Tuesday, in their respective quests for their party’s presidential nomination.

Trump put on a respectable, if less spectacular performance on Saturday, prevailing in Louisiana and Kentucky but falling to Ted Cruz in Kansas and Maine. As Bloomberg writes, “Trump’s victories also were narrower than polling had indicated, suggesting that attacks on his crude language and ill-defined policies from 2012 nominee Mitt Romney and others could be having an impact.”

Maybe.

In a comment on the Trump the Trickster post, Sam M went all Occam’s Razor on us:

Strangers to the primitive. Jungian analysis. Psychogenic storms.

Gadzooks. Maybe that’s our Loki right there. I mean, look. We can talk all day about what kind of mass psychosis is leading to Donald Trump. Maybe sometimes the hardest thing is seeing what’s right in front of your face.

Last Thursday, in a speech delivered at the University of Utah, Mitt Romney blindsided Donald Trump in what amounted to a scathing indictment of the billionaire’s ability to lead the country.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/video/players/offsite/index.html

Michael Lind argues that the Trump phenomenon is the result of neoconservatives’ abdication of responsibility. According to Lind, figures like Irving Kristol once defended (white) working class interests. But: