Month: January 2016

Not a dime’s worth of difference?
by Tom Sullivan

A couple of articles bring to mind the “lesser of two evils” argument one often hears on the left. That is, from someone who refuses to vote strategically for a candidate they perceive as the lesser of two evils rather than for someone who better represents their (the voters’) true views and aspirations. Or to stay home in protest. Long term, they’d argue, that is voting strategically — if there is ever to be hope of moving the country’s needle left. (Although Peter Beinart argues that’s already happening.)

It seems many Republicans and Democrats face a similar “lesser of two evils” dilemma this year.

Both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump “send shivers down GOP spines,” blares a Politico headline:

One growing worry about Trump or Cruz, top party officials, donors, and operatives across the country say, is that nominating either man would imperil lawmakers in down-ballot races, especially those residing in moderate states and districts.

“At some point, we have to deal with the fact that there are at least two candidates who could utterly destroy the Republican bench for a generation if they became the nominee,” said Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “We’d be hard-pressed to elect a Republican dogcatcher north of the Mason-Dixon or west of the Mississippi.”

He says that like it would be a bad thing.

The GOP’s gubernatorial candidates could also be harmed by having either Cruz or Trump atop the ticket in November, as well as Republican candidates for Senate and House.

At Political Animal, Martin Longman believes that with Cruz or Trump the GOP has locked itself into a questionable base mobilization strategy that hasn’t worked in the last two elections, and barely worked in 2004:

But, if you’re stuck with base mobilization as your strategy, you have to at least mobilize your base. Who’s going to do that besides Cruz or Trump?

As I see it, their goose is cooked and their only hope is some kind of Black Swan situation where everything goes to shit at just the wrong time for the Democrats.

But you can’t bank on that, and if it happens, it probably doesn’t matter who the Republicans have nominated.

Meanwhile, Democrats face a slightly different problem. Charlie Pierce caustically explains:

As all good, authentic progressives know, there only is one thing to do in the election year just dawning upon us. You vote for Bernie Sanders in your state’s primary election and then, if (somehow) he is not nominated, you pack up your outrage and sit out the general election, so that someone like Ted Cruz gets elected and proceeds to Heighten The Contradictions. The reason for this is that There Would Be No Real Difference between President Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Tailgunner Ted Cruz and that, after four (or eight) years of the latter, the country will be ready to elect progressive heroes all over the country, and to put Unicorn J. Sparklepony into the White House.

Actually, that’s not what I’m hearing from Bernie activists in my neighborhood, although I’m sure Pierce has heard that in his travels. They are also worried about the Supreme Court. Consider Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Pierce writes, quoting from the pretzel logic behind some of Scalia’s thinking on the Constitution, the First Amendment, and religion. (The Constitution requires Americans to honor God, apparently.) Pierce suggests,

But, like I said, there’s not a dime’s bit of difference between a president who would not nominate another Scalia, and a president who would nominate three of them. So feel free to exercise your purity of conscience, while you still have a right to do so.

What’s stunning about the Bernie phenomenon is how lefties disillusioned with Obama’s stymied presidency are ready to fall in love all over again with electing someone to the White House who they’re sure will deliver sweeping change from Washington this time. I’m over that. I’m looking to the down-ticket races and worried more about which of the Democrats will be better at energizing Democratic voters to help me where I live. But I’m right there with Pierce on the Supreme Court.

Dreaming of a California Cruz/Trump cage match

by digby

California rarely matters in presidential primaries because it happens so late in the cycle but this year it might be different for Republicans. They could easily still be in the thick of it in June. And look at this from the latest Field poll (the California gold standard.)

Ted Cruz has surged to a statistical tie with Donald Trump among Republicans in California, while Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina have tumbled in this late-voting state, according to a new poll.

The Field Poll, released Tuesday, reflects Cruz’s momentum nationally in the crowded Republican presidential field. While the Texas senator lags behind Trump in New Hampshire and national polls, he has pushed ahead in Iowa, which holds its first-in-the-nation caucuses on Feb. 1.

Cruz, a favorite of evangelicals and tea party conservatives, is the first choice of 25 percent of likely Republican voters in California, according to the poll. Trump stands at 23 percent, while Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is running third at 13 percent. The difference between Cruz’s and Trump’s numbers is within the poll’s margin of error.

They also mention poor homegirl Carly Fiorina who down to 3 percent. In her own state.

While Bush, Carson and Fiorina faltered, Cruz gained nearly 20 percentage points from October. Not only did he catch Trump in first-choice rankings, but he is now twice as likely as the real estate developer and TV personality to be listed as a California Republicans’ second preference.

That measurement could factor heavily as more candidates drop out and the field narrows.

“What you see is that beyond just the horse race, where (Cruz) is in a statistical tie with Trump, he seems to be much better positioned to be the beneficiary of the declining fortunes of other candidates,” Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo said. “He seems to be the candidate who is best positioned to capture even more support from other candidates as the field winnows.”

California wingnuts are among the wingnuttiest of all wingnuts. Luckily for those of us who live here they are in a minority and likely to stay that way as long as they remain so wingnutty. If Trump and Cruz are still sparring over who hates immigrants the most by the time they get here it should be a very good year for Democrats.

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Dispatch from wingnuttia

by digby

A poll of online far right activists returned this result:

The possibility that GOP power brokers will find a way to use the rules to hijack the convention and ignore the RNCwill of the voters was a great concern for 82% and a concern for another 13%.

The nomination of either Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio would cause 53% of conservatives to consider voting for a third-party candidate. If Republican power brokers were to take advantage of a deadlocked convention to nominate Mitt Romney, 75% would oppose that move.

Conservatives are so concerned about the secret December 7 meeting called by Reince Priebus to plan for a brokered convention that 72% want Priebus to resign as Chairman of the Republican National Committee. 87% labeled themselves as “very concerned” that “GOP leaders in Washington have too much influence on the selection of the Republican nominee.”

An overwhelming 92% declared the importance of honoring “the primary and caucus elections of their state.” In that vein, 80% hope for the repeal of the rule, adopted at the 2012 convention to protect Mitt Romney, prohibiting anyone to be placed in nomination unless he has a majority of the delegates in at least eight states.

90% said they planned to vote in the primary or caucus of their state.

For all I know this poll represents 16 people in Alexandria Virginia. But it’s being sent around a a lot of conservative activists around the country so a lot of people may think this is a real issue and one on which they need to form an opinion.

This convention could be a whole lot of fun to watch…

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QOTD: Jebbers


by digby

I’m starting to feel sorry for him. When asked if his brother might be better able to tell his story on the campaign trail, Jeb replied:

“It is something to consider because he is very popular.”

He did say he needed to “earn it” though. So there’s that.

GWB is certainly more popular than he was when he left office, I’ll say that for him.

Oh boo hoo hoo #Oregonstandoff

by digby

It always amuses me to see what babies these gun-toting tough guys are. Yesterday they were begging people to send “snacks”. Today there’s this:

Members of the armed anti-government group occupying a remote federal building near Burns, Oregon, have some shaky ideas about how they compare to the Black Lives Matter movement, saying that they are suffering far worse treatment.

In the parking lot of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge — which the militants stormed and took over on Saturday in the name of grazing privileges — a man who claimed to be a body guard for the group’s leaders said they are facing worse resistance than Black Lives Matter, a nationwide campaign to end police brutality against people of color.

“The Black Lives Matter movement, they can go and protest, close freeways down and all that stuff, and they don’t get any backlash, not on the level that we’re getting,” said the man, who identified himself as “Fluffy Unicorn.”

While acknowledging that police have used force against Black Lives Matter protesters, he also said “their level of protesting is different; we’re not obstructing schools.” (In fact, an Oregon school district has canceled classes this week because of the federal building’s occupation.)
So far, backlash to the occupation has included hashtags like #YallQaeda and #YeeHawd on social media to describe the group’s attempts to defy the federal government.

I guess they don’t realize that Black Lives Matter protester don’t carry a guns to their protests. That’s because they know if they did they’d be mowed down with extreme prejudice:

Their leader Aamon Bundy said today they are not about “fear, force or intimidation”. See, they have promised to only use force if law enforcement intervened.And they have not. According to MSNBC the authorities are nowhere to be seen near the occupation. So, you can see how unfair it is that people are using mean hashtags.

Maybe we should send them some pacifiers and baby bottles.

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Gangster nation

by digby

This is just another example of the thuggish nature of the modern right wing.

Look at Trump:

This is what it’s come to.

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The right isn’t budging on gun safety


by digby

I wrote about President Obama’s gun proposal and how the right wing is taking it for Salon this morning. It was written before he announced the proposals but there weren’t any surprises.

The real objective here is the further erosion of liberty and freedom. But even more, it’s the more Obama and the left can render the Constitution irrelevant. You talk about an objective? You talk about something that would just make them orgasmic? If they could get the American people to the point where the Constitution is just some piece of paper over there that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, that’s what they would love. And to the effect that they can violate it, that they can avoid it, that they can pretend it doesn’t exist — that they can wantonly, in public, spit on it and get away with it — that’s the objective.

While we don’t yet know the details of the plan, the president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will. His proposals to restrict gun rights were debated by the United States Senate, and they were rejected. No president should be able to reverse legislative failure by executive fiat, not even incrementally. The American people deserve a president who will respect their constitutional rights – all of them. This is a dangerous level of executive overreach, and the country will not stand for it.”

The right was not one bit happy about that:

There’s much more at the link. This is a battle royale within the GOP and obviously, between the two parties. I don’t care about what happens to the Republicans. They reap what they sow. But this issue must be dealt with. US “exceptional tolerance for gun violence simply has to stop.

Update: In case you were wondering, here’s the NRA quietly flexing its muscle:

Rush’s talking points

by digby

He calls them his pearls of wisdom.These are the points he made on his show that have been distills into quotes for the web page. I suspect that Trump has them printed out for him:

“Isn’t it great to have me back, folks? Face it. I know it’s great to be back and I know you think it’s great that I’m back, so it’s good to all be here.”

“My two cents on this is that whatever they want to claim the reason for this market plunge is, there’s always what they don’t say. What’s going on in China with their stock market, but there’s another factor here, and that’s our own economy that I think is a factor as well.”

“The world already knows what we are. That’s why they all want to live here. We don’t have anything to prove to anybody. We don’t have to prove freedom or liberty. We are it.”

“Washington’s where all the money ends up before it then gets redistributed. Everybody there has got their hands in that pile one way or the other. And growing that pile, which is created by spending, not by collections, which goes to show you how rigged and artificial it is.”

“What really has the Middle East on fire is Obama and his decision to sidle up with the Iranians and picking that version of Islam, Shi’ite versus Sunni. That has spooked the Saudis like you can’t believe.”

“If gun control really worked, why are we allowing the Iranians to nuke up? I mean, you want to talk about a gun? A nuclear weapon is a gun extraordinaire, and Obama’s going out of his way to make sure that the Iranians have a stockpile of them.”

“When a downward spiral happens, there’s nothing to put the brakes on it. There’s nothing to stop it. Everything just keeps descending with very little end in sight. And nobody in the political culture is talking about it. They’re just running along like it’s an average, ordinary day each and every day.”

“We’re spending money that we don’t have at a faster clip than ever, and we’re spending it on things that only accomplish one thing, and that’s the further entrenchment of the political class in power.”

“We’re spending money on things that are actually causing harm to people’s lives, such as whatever entitlement spending we are engaging in to pay for all of these undocumented people that are showing up, continuing to show up in droves.”

“This last budget deal shows that when it comes to budgeting in this country, there is no thought given to how much money is collected and whether or not that ought to be a factor in how much money is spent. The only thing that determines how much money is spent is how much people think they can get away with.”

“Tax collection seems to exist only as a way to keep people in line, but it certainly has nothing to do with the budgeting process in this country. If it did, we wouldn’t have annual deficits like we do.”

“The spending of money is how power is purchased, the spending of money is how power is maintained, the spending of money is how power is entrenched.”

“Obama is going to announce executive actions and orders to impact negatively the free flow of guns and ammunition in our culture, basically. This has been long a quest of the American left, and he doesn’t care about Congress. He doesn’t care about doing it constitutionally.”

“If Obama and the left could get the American people to the point where the Constitution is just some piece of paper over there that doesn’t matter to a hill of beans, that’s what they would love. And to the effect that they can violate it, that they can avoid it, that they can pretend it doesn’t exist — that they can wantonly, in public, spit on it and get away with it — that’s the objective.”

“This group that’s making the Trump video because of Hillary’s suggestion, Al-Shabaab, is Somali based group. They’ve been using video of Obama for years recruiting members to the jihad. They even used Bill Clinton who stars as the fornicator-in-chief in videos.”

“You cannot have a religion of peace that is so easily inspired to become murdering jihadists.”

“Whatever religion you are, you’re Buddhist, you are a Christian, you’re Jewish, how many of you decide to become warriors for God and join some kind of terrorist activity every time something in your religion’s insulted? The answer is a big, fat zero. And yet, when it happens in Islam, we’re supposed to accept that. We’re supposed to understand that, and we’re supposed to believe it.”

“Since Ruhollah Khomeini back in 1979, we have never aligned with Iran until Obama came along. And that’s one of the reasons the Middle East is continuing to explode and be a flame.”

“It seems like we’re in a free-for-all when it comes to any kind of values you want to talk about: Cultural, political, pop culture, you name it. And all of it, when you examine it, explains why the Trump phenomenon is happening. He’s the one guy speaking out against all of this in a consistent way, this decline.”

“Women in Hillary Clinton’s office do indeed make 30¢ an hour less than men. Then you run around and talk about the pay gap? In Hillary’s office it was damn well true!”

“All of the guns used in recent mass shootings were purchased legally, and after background checks, and none of what Obama is going to do would have stopped any of that. By definition, gun control will not stop crime.”

“They’re working on a Bill Cosby endorsement of Trump to take the heat off Bill Clinton? Don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility.”

“Hillary Clinton was aware of who Bill Clinton was when she married him. She stuck with him through all of these women. I mean, countless women. He humiliated her, but she didn’t care.”

“We do not have to commit national suicide in order to show the world our values. We’re not in a contest with Iran or Saudi Arabia when it comes to liberty and freedom. That’s already been decided.”

“How in the hell can the United States be permitting itself to be attacked and dismembered this way. That’s what many responsible people around the world are asking.”

“The West led by Obama has sidled up with bad actors in the Middle East we have never sidled up with before. We have sidled up with militant Islam. We’ve sidled up with the Muslim Brotherhood, and now our best buddies in the Middle East is not Saudi Arabia and not Jordan, it’s Iran. You don’t think that’s messing things up? You don’t think that’s causing people panic?”

Give me that old-time constitution
by Tom Sullivan

Ammon Bundy

Say what you will about the excesses of Rome and the papacy (and not to ignore Constantinople), prior to the Reformation there was some central authority to define Christianity for much of the West, to set standards and protocols, if you will. The Reformation may have decentralized the faith and brought it closer to the people, but it also meant by the late 20th century that any American huckster with a flashy suit, an expensive coif, a sonorous voice, and a black, Morocco-bound, gilt-edged, King James red-letter edition could define Christianity pretty much any damned way he pleased. And did. Who was to say he was wrong?

That do-it-yourself spirit extends as well to Americans’ understanding of their founding documents. Every born-again, T-party convert carries a pocket Constitution and becomes an instant expert and his own defining authority on what is and isn’t the true American faith. It’s the American Dream: every man his own Supreme Court; no priestly judicial caste interposed between a man and his God.

Dana Milbank looks at how, like the stand-oafish Bundy militia in Oregon, they love them some law of the land until they have to live under it. Then it’s “unconstitutional.” Conservative thought leaders (oxymoron?) regularly wink at lawbreaking when it furthers their purposes. Because their leaders condone it, the Bundy bunch believes the atmosphere is right for challenging “unconstitutional land transactions” 108 years after a Republican president set aside public lands for conservation:

A few months ago, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and others rushed to defend Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk jailed for refusing to obey federal law. A federal judge had held her in contempt of court for refusing to recognize same-sex marriages, and the Supreme Court specifically declined to give Davis relief. But Cruz identified her jailing as “judicial tyranny” and said Davis was operating “under God’s authority.”

Donald Trump has put at the center of his campaign an extra-constitutional ban on admitting Muslims into the country. Marco Rubio said that if the law conflicts with the Gospel, “God’s rules always win,” and that “we are called to ignore” the government’s authority. Huckabee and Rick Santorum signed a pledge not to “respect an unjust law that directly conflicts with higher law.” Huckabee floated the notion of using federal troops to block people from getting abortions and questioned the Supreme Court’s authority.

And, of course, there was the 2014 standoff in which Cliven Bundy, who refused to pay grazing fees for his use of federal land, got support or sympathy from Cruz, Trump, Huckabee, Rand Paul and Ben Carson. Cruz denounced the federal government for “using the jackboot of authoritarianism.”

It takes an authoritarian to know one, I suppose.

Insurrectionist leader Ammon Bundy held a press conference. TPM reports:

“We have allowed our federal government to step outside the bounds of the Constitution. They have come down upon on the people,” Ammon Bundy said in a press conference Monday. “They are coming down into the state and taking over the land and the resources, putting the people into duress.”

They’ve named themselves Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, naturally.

Where are the Big Money Boyz?

by digby

(New Yorker image)

Byron York delves into the interesting question of why the big money donors aren’t going after Trump. They clearly think he’s a dangerous clown but nobody’s actually stepped up:

Serious talk about organizing a major anti-Trump offensive began last October, when it became clear the “Summer of Trump” was going to last into the fall. Some preliminary work, like research into Trump’s business dealings in Atlantic City, was done. But nobody followed through on the talk. And Trump’s popularity increased.

While Trump rose, the opposition splintered. “All the megadonors have somebody who they look to as their political guru,” said one GOP insider in an interview Sunday. “Some of them listen to Ken Mehlman, maybe Karl Rove, maybe Wayne Berman, Steve Schmidt. And that group is divided on who they want.” The size of the GOP field has led multiple establishment candidates to fight among themselves, and mostly not take aim at Trump. “All the establishment candidates and their establishment donors are focused on each other and who’s going to be the premier establishment candidate,” added another GOP insider.Serious talk about organizing a major anti-Trump offensive began last October, when it became clear the “Summer of Trump” was going to last into the fall. Some preliminary work, like research into Trump’s business dealings in Atlantic City, was done. But nobody followed through on the talk. And Trump’s popularity increased.
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[P]erhaps the most fundamental reason the anti-Trump talk of October has not resulted in an anti-Trump campaign in January is that, despite Trump’s present strength, most establishment insiders simply don’t believe he can make it through the party nominating process. “Donors don’t think he’s going to be the nominee,” said one of the anonymous insiders quoted above. “I don’t.”

And apparently they also don’t care how much damage Trump is doing to their party and fail to understand how their unwillingness to confront it makes people understandably less than impressed with their whole conservative project.These men and one woman are out there every day making bellicose bloodthirsty threats against half the world and yet they either bow and scrape to Donald Trump or ineffectually bat at him like 4 year olds. It’s pathetic.

But this is the donor class in all its glory isn’t it? Relying on the stale and moldy likes of Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman to tell them what to do. Or believing they know better and don’t have a clue. All these rich guys look in the mirror every day and see a cross between Jesus Christ and Albert Einstein staring back at them and it’s really just some guy who got lucky.

I think I agree with Trump on this. They’re all a bunch of losers.

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