Political Framing

Horse Race

“This I not just a contest between different candidates, this is a contest between fundamentally different views of our country, our values and our future,” Hillary Clinton said after her victory in Arizona where she claimed 15 more delegates than Bernie Sanders on Western Tuesday. CNN describes the victories for Donald Trump and Clinton in Arizona as more than enough to compensate for their losses in other states participating in Western Tuesday.

Photo by Cheryl Phillips.

Ted Cruz captured all of Utah’s 40 delegates which helped to lessen the gap between him and Trump. CNN reports that veteran party super PACs “line up support behind Cruz in a late-in-the game effort to halt the billionaire.” The Western Tuesday primaries concluded with Clinton’s delegate count rising to 1,711 and Sanders’ with 939 delegates. On the republican side, Trump walked away with 741 delegates, Cruz with 461 delegates and John Kasich with 145.

Clinton is 702 delegates shy from securing her spot as the Democratic presidential nominee while Trump only lacks 496 delegates. So news outlets are already reporting that Trump will be the Republican presidential nominee.

Conflict

As the race to capture delegates continues forward, the Republican candidates are taking things to the extreme. After this past Tuesday, when the Utah primary was held, Donald Trump took to Twitter to blow off some steam by threatening Ted Cruz’s wife; "Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!," Trump received only 23,984 votes and came in last place in the state. Senator Cruz told CNN that this verbal attack was inspired by Trump’s loss in Utah; however, Trump posted this message to Twitter before the polls in Utah had closed.

CNN said that Trump was making reference to an advertisement from Make America Awesome, an anti-Trump super PAC. This organization has connections to Cruz’s campaign and the ad in question shows an image of Trump’s wife posing nude. Cruz denies the allegations that he sponsored the ad and called Trump a “coward” if he were to attack his wife. Being that Cruz claims to have nothing to do with the advertisement, it seems rather odd that her would call Trump a coward for something that he hasn’t even done; yet. This gives voters a mixed message. Was Cruz really involved in the ad?What secrets does Trump have about Heidi Cruz?

Issues

One of Donald Trump’s main highlights of his campaign is his desire to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. Early in his campaign, he projected the wall to cost approximately $4 billion. As his campaign has evolved, Trump has raised his estimation to over $10 billion. On his show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, John Oliver reported that a man attended a Trump rally wearing a spandex suit that represented the proposed wall with “MEXICO WILL PAY” written on it. 

Donald Trump supporter Steve Travers poses for photos outside of a Trump Rally on March 5. Travers crafted his wall suit in support of Trump’s policy on border control. Photo by AP.

According to one estimator and construction economist, Oliver reported that the total cost for building Trump’s wall would exceed  $25 billion.

Trump has also suggested that the U.S. temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the country. It’s interesting to see how a country that was founded on the idea of religious freedom has a man running for president who wants to ban people of a specific religion from entering. “Radical Islamic terrorism is a major problem,” Trump said, “we have no choice but to ban them.”

Candidate Attributes

 Many news outlets have ridiculed Donald Trump for his outlandish and at times childish campaign rhetoric. Many political analysts fear that if Trump gets the Republican nomination, that he will ruin relations with foreign leaders. When asked by MSNBC who Trump is consulting with regarding foreign policy, Trump responded by saying, “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”

You can’t think about Trump without thinking about FOX news anchor Megyn Kelly. Early in his campaign, Trump made sexiest remarks to Kelly and continues to say that he did nothing wrong to this day. That sure sounds like presidential material to me…

There is a growing concern from many republicans that Donald Trump might actually win the Republican nomination. In fear of this, many prominent politicians have begun to rally against Trump with the idea of creating a third party candidate to take delegates away from Trump. Trump continues to be criticized by many, even president Obama, as being heavily unqualified to be President of the United States. Many claim that he’s just an entertainer/business man. Factually speaking, Trump has zero political experience. In case you missed that, here it is again; Trump has zero political experience.