[Hoot Gibson]

Perhaps one day before I die, I will be able to speak as eloquently as you, Hoot and WideRight. I can think of things, but cannot relate it in the written word.

We have no one but ourselves to blame for Trump and his political position of today. The last 8 years have been unbelievable, and Americans have sat back on their laurels and done nothing to prevent the chaos that is present day politics. The middle class has had its' back broken working to support the agendas of the upper class and/or politicians and the agendas of most of the lower class who refuse to work. And why SHOULD they work? They are rewarded with everything from free healthcare to real time support and all for doing nothing. It's beyond shameful!!!

You want to know why the candidate Donald Trump is so popular with all of his faults and issues??? Hmmmm....where can I begin? How about a $2M beer summit? That may or may not be an accurate sum, but I will accept it. After all, when the budge deficit is a few thousand trillion, what's another couple of million? Chicken feed. We can go on to allowing Obama and his administration to decimate our military, and end with Hillary watching as the Benghazi tragedy unfolds before her lying eyes. Oh, and she doesn't worry at all about being caught up in her lies...she blames a preacher making a video in Florida!!!! Yes..most of us have forgotten about THAT excuse, but I never will. And she gets away with it! SHE GETS AWAY WITH IT!!! Just exactly like she will get away with the email server controversy. She lies, she waits, she distracts, she gets away with it.

So you have a buffoon like Trump enter this race. He is plain spoken and isn't monetarily indebted to anyone. He may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but compare him to other "accepted" candidates, he's a genius. Rubio and Cruz jumped on his bandwagon, BUT Trump was the only candidate with the balls to say the things first that we were all thinking. He slashed the "sanctuary cities", then Cruz slashed them; he ridiculed the border crossings, then Rubio ridiculed them. And wonder of wonders, he is still fighting.

The media can do nothing but try and undermine him from his character to anything else they can find. This may be the first time in recent history that the Democratic National Party and the Republican National Party agree on ANYTHING. They must stop him...but how?? Nobody is funding him!! So the bottom line is, the RNP will do anything it can to keep him from getting the nomination. To hell with what the public wants or votes for...Evidently the voters don't have enough sense to vote anymore.

So, bottom line...why bother? The good ole boys' club is going to manipulate, strangulate and get elected just whomever they want.

It's not that I'm a big Trump supporter, but he sure has got a lot of people thinking.

Personally, if I was younger, I would be thinking about moving to Texas or Idaho or any other state that was considering succeeding from the USA. For the first time in my lifetime, I am ashamed of where this country is going.

Trump is not self funded and he never has been. Trump solicits donations on his web site and he is loaning himself millions of dollars, which will be repaid by donors if he wins the nomination. He has also refused to rule out accepting donations in the general campaign if he is the GOP nominee. Every time that he claims that he is self funding, he is lying to you.

As for political positions, you and others who think that Trump's positions are original have been snookered by Trump's lies and the estimated $2 billion in "earned media coverage" that allows Trump to repeat so many dishonest claims that many accept them as facts. For example, Cruz has consistently opposed sanctuary cities and proposed finishing the wall on our southern border in 2012. Cruz lacked the name recognition that Trump enjoyed when he began his campaign, and all most voters knew about Cruz was that he was very unpopular among his Senate colleagues. What most still do not understand is why Cruz is so unpopular with political hacks like Mitch McConnell.

The video in the link below is long, but even if you watch just the first few minutes of the video, I think you will appreciate the eloquence with which Cruz communicates the biggest existential threat to this country and to future generations, and that threat is the exploding national debt. In contrast, Trump has spoken in very vague terms about eliminating "waste, fraud, and abuse" to eliminate the budget deficit.

Cruz chastises U.S. Senate for caving on Obama budget

If you imagine that you are a Republican who voted for the budget deal with Obama watching Cruz's presentation, then you will understand why we should be celebrating the fact that Cruz is unpopular in the Senate. Most ethical members of Congress are young and serve in the House. By the time that they can afford a Senate run, most freshman Senators are already fully corrupted by Washington politics. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee are exceptions because they did not serve in the House and were elected to the Senate while still relatively young.

One last thing. Trump's businesses owes hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to the nation's biggest financial institutions. George Soros has loaned Trump $160 million. To think that Cruz owes more favors to Wall Street bankers and lobbyists than Trump is incorrect. Trump has stiffed creditors for hundreds of millions of dollars through his bankruptcy because he was able to use junk bonds as collateral. Trump may fail to honor his financial obligations, but he is not without those obligations.