Month: February 2016

OMG! That Marco Rubio is sooooo dreamy!

by digby

Good lord. I’ve seen beat sweeteners in my day but this is a flat out swooning man crush. Politico writer Eli Stokols:

Marco Rubio carried a message to South Carolina: He is “at peace” with his failure in New Hampshire.

He doesn’t mean it casually, as though he has simply come to terms with what happened Feb. 6, when Chris Christie commanded the debate stage and turned Rubio’s own rhetorical brilliance into a withering caricature of a robotic, scripted young senator that sent him spiraling to a fifth-place finish.

He means it, Rubio told a supporter shaken by the knock-down of his preferred candidate, as a Christian.

“The concept of peace in Christianity is not simply peace, like, no-war peace. It is the peace of being at peace with whatever God decides,” Rubio told Don Pendleton, a retiree who’d taken the microphone and told Rubio that he was disappointed after the 2016 contender’s dismal showing in New Hampshire until seeing the swell of support in the room. It was a heartfelt statement that gave the senator an opening to dig deep. “Here is what I am at peace with: Whatever happens next, God will either give me the ability to get around it or the strength to go through it. I think that is also true for our country.”

When he finished, Rubio basked in thunderous applause from a 2,000-person, standing-room-only crowd, roughly 10 percent of the town’s population.

His bruises from New Hampshire have healed — and not simply because of his faith. The 44-year-old senator was indeed humbled by the humiliation he suffered before heading to South Carolina, but his chances of capturing the Republican nomination haven’t completely gone south. Donald Trump sits high atop the polls here, but Rubio is positioned to finish either second or third. A poll Monday night taken entirely after Saturday’s debate shows Rubio tied for second with Ted Cruz at 18 percent.

If Rubio simply finishes ahead of Jeb Bush, who is polling a distant fourth or fifth in some surveys, and emerges from this state, always critical to his chances, as the establishment’s comeback kid, it will be because of his campaign’s quick adjustment in the face of adversity — and its unwavering faith in the candidate himself.

You may have just seen a taste of the general election coverage if Rubio wins the nomination. He’s such a total dreamboat!!!

Why will the press like him so much? Well, he’s young. He’s good lookin’. He’s Hispanic so they can celebrate diversity without having to write a bunch of dull articles about policies that benefit them. (He doesn’t have any.)  And they think he’s got the best chance of beating either of those horrible, boring old Democrats.

If Rubio really gets with the program and starts hanging with the dudes and dudettes of his press pack, passing out some good swag, playing some good tunes, giving them plenty of juicy access he’ll have them eating out of the palm of his hand. Never forget, elections are all about reporters feeling awesome about themselves.

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Trump’s instincts

by digby

I wrote about The GOP in South Carolina for Salon today:

Trump is The Greatest. Ask him.
by Tom Sullivan

At a campaign rally in Nevada on Sunday, Bernie Sanders mocked Donald Trump for proclaiming himself “the greatest” at pretty much everything. The best this, the best that, the best whatever. At Raw Story, Sarah Burris posted a clip from the rally, writing:

Just the mention of Trump’s name brought boos from the crowd of Sanders supporters, despite the senator’s attempts to quell them. “We know that Donald Trump is the greatest everything in the world,” he said to laughter from the crowd. “There is nothing that this man is not ‘the greatest’ at.”

There is no word on whether Trump ever consulted Muhammad Ali about that.

Sanders reminded the crowd that Trump’s presumed “greatness” extends to his knowledge of science, which includes climate change. “And one of his major scientific contributions in recent years has been to proclaim that climate change is a hoax. Now, for Republican candidates, this is not an unusual idea, but [Trump] added something to it, being the brilliant scientist that he is: That this hoax was created by the Chinese!”

This turn is a good move on Sanders’ part. The shouting gets tiresome. Voters like to see candidates have a healthy sense of humor. It humanizes them, the way the clip of Sanders shooting baskets did last week. Plus, it signals that they don’t take themselves too seriously. On the left or right, loss of the ability to laugh at yourself is the first warning sign of fundamentalism. Maybe that’s why Republicans so suck at humor.

Contrasted in 1960 with the dour Richard Nixon, Jack Kennedy’s coolness and humor won over American audiences. Sanders’ smile lights up the room when he deploys it. He ought to more often. When Donald Trump smiles, he looks supremely self-satisfied (his natural state). When Ted Cruz smiles, he out-smirks George W. Bush.

A little humor goes a long way. Perhaps while on Saturday Night Live, Sanders received some coaching from Larry David. He is going to need it. Because musing the other day about how Sanders would handle Trump in a debate, I had this concern.

In a “debate” – after the Republicans’ performance on Saturday, we use that term loosely – between a democratic socialist and a demagogue, winning might simply come down to who gets whose goat. Bernie Sanders is an old-school liberal who takes the issues he cares about very, very seriously. They mean something to him. Trump, on the other hand, just wants to demonstrate to an audience that he is the alpha dog on the stage. I worried that should Sanders face Trump one-on-one, mockery and flippant remarks from Trump might so infuriate Bernie the serious candidate that he loses it, and thus loses the debate, if not more. If I were Trump, getting Bernie Sanders to lose his cool would be a key objective.

At Netroots Nation in Phoenix last summer,
I was there when Sanders lost his cool and left the stage after being interrupted by a group of Black Lives Matter protesters. He quickly adjusted and has improved in the intervening months. It’s good to see he has loosened up on the campaign trail. Facing down Trump, a smile and a pithy one-liner from Sanders might be his best counter-punch.

Looks like it didn’t hurt him

by digby

Say it ain’t so:

Donald Trump still is leading the S.C. Republican presidential race after the weekend’s explosive GOP debate in Greenville.

But the race for second place in Saturday’s primary appears to be narrowing.

Behind Trump, who has 35 percent support in the poll, U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas are tied for second place — at 18 percent each, according to a Public Policy Polling survey released exclusively Monday to The State.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich is in forth at 10 percent support, followed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, tied with 7 percent support each.

Public Policy interviewed 897 likely GOP primary voters Sunday and Monday – the first look at how after Saturday night’s Republican presidential debate affected the race. The poll has a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points.

The GOP poll suggests Trump’s debate performance – in which he criticized former President George W. Bush for the 9/11 attacks – may not be hurting the frontrunner in a state that has deep ties to the Bush family.

The poll also suggests Rubio could be closing the gap on Cruz, who has finished second to Trump in seven out of the eight S.C. polls taken in 2016.

I’d still put my money on Cruz in 2nd place. But Trump’s birther crap is probably taking its toll.

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It’s not hard to see why Trump goes after GWB

by digby

Check this out:

CNN posed the question to several White House contenders gathered here recently at the Freedom Summit, a daylong conference with conservative activists ahead of next year’s primary in this crucial early-primary state.

“Obviously the greatest president of my lifetime is Ronald Reagan,” said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

“I’ll leave that to the people to decide,” said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, which is his guaranteed go-to line for questions he doesn’t want to answer. “Certainly the greatest president of recent generations was Ronald Reagan.”

“I was a big fan, a very big fan of Ronald Reagan,” real estate mogul Donald Trump said.

Ronald Reagan, as you might recall, has been dead for 11 years.

There are reasons why these White House hopefuls are suddenly shy when pressed on their thoughts about the five surviving presidents.

They can’t say Jimmy Carter, whose presidency is synonymous in GOP circles as weakness, or President Barack Obama, a man whose legacy they all have spent years trying to vanquish. Bill Clinton is a Democrat and the husband of Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton — so he’s out.

That leaves the two Republicans: George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, father and brother, respectively, of Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida who is preparing his own bid for the Republican nomination. And an endorsement for a Bush could be construed as affirmation for Jeb Bush by proxy.

They also know that if you say George W. Bush is the greatest living president, well, then you’re on camera saying you think George W. Bush is the greatest living president, and Democrats will have a field day. In 2008, GOP nominee John McCain didn’t want to tie his campaign lasso to Bush, and neither do these contenders eight years later.

That might explain why former Texas Gov. Rick Perry ignored the question completely, walked away and hooted, “Bye y’aaaaall” on his way out.

Or why Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, paused for several seconds before he just gave up. “I don’t know,” he said.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum gets partial credit for threading the needle: “Probably a Bush,” he said, and then escaped up a wheelchair ramp.

Well, at least almost everyone on the Republican campaign trail can agree: The late Ronald Reagan is America’s greatest (previously) living president.

I continue to question the idea that Trump really stepped in it when went after W in the debate. Maybe he’s just willing to say out loud what these people just hint at in their glaring omission.

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The RNC’s Latino outreach strikes again

by digby

So, an RNC committeewoman is saying that neither Rubio nor Cruz are eligible to run for president. Wouldn’t you know it? The only two Hispanic candidates in the race are not American enough to run for president. Talk about bad luck, huh? (Because you know that Republicans don’t have an racist bone in their bodies. They all love Taco Bell, amirite?)

Rubio and Cruz are ineligible. Devvy Kidd — Trump Should Move On This: Cruz, Rubio and Secretaries of States https://t.co/ycw8qmuEWN

— Diana Orrock (@DianaOrrock) February 15, 2016

According to TPM, this comes from a right wing news site:

Kidd’s column, posted on the conservative online outlet News With Views, contends both men are ineligible to run for President. Kidd argues Rubio is ineligible because she says his parents weren’t naturalized as American citizens until Rubio was four years old. She further argued that Cruz is ineligible because his father wasn’t a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth in Calgary, Alberta, although his mother was American.

It has been generally accepted that both men are eligible to run for President, despite doubt from some people who consider themselves “strict constitutionalists.” The Congressional Research Service said in 2011 that a “natural born“ citizen is someone who was born in the U.S. or someone who was born abroad to at least one American parent. Recently, though, even some legal scholars have questioned whether Cruz really qualifies as a “natural born” citizen.

Orrock and a spokesman for the RNC did not immediately respond Monday afternoon to TPM’s requests for comment.

Orrock, whose Twitter account portrays her as an ardent Donald Trump supporter, talked with The Daily Beast in January about her views.

“I like a lot of what Mr. Trump is saying,” Orrock told the Beast. “I’m throwing my support behind him because he appreciates my endorsement.”

Bring the smellin’ salts! Trump is giving the conservative movement the vapors.

by digby

Aunt Pittypat

It’s time to catch up with our friends in the conservative movement as see how they’re faring as Trump maintains his lead and their boy Cruz continues to lag in second place. Let’s just say they are shocked, I tell you, shocked that Trump would be so petty and rude. Where do you suppose he would get he idea that such behavior is acceptable among the genteel Republican party members?

This is from Richard Viguerie’s outfit:

In Saturday night’s debate when The Donald was asked about whether he still believes former president George W. Bush should have been impeached over the Iraq War. Aside from the fact that it’s a stupid Donald Trumpand completely irrelevant question concerning a president who’s been out of office for over seven years, Trump didn’t take the high road. Instead, he answered:

“First of all, I have to say, as a businessman I get along with everybody. I have business all over the world…

“George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East…

“You call it whatever you want. I want to tell you. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.”

The establishment dominated audience didn’t take it well, which only served to make The Donald double-down on his position.

Seeing Trump debate kind of reminds me of an old axiom I learned in law school that goes something like this:

“If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.”

Trump has specially saved the “pound the table” tactic for Jeb Bush – an easy target – and especially for Ted Cruz.

In trying to assail Ted Cruz’s candidacy, Trump has neither the law (the Constitution) on his side nor the facts, so he’s resorted to pounding the media (“table”) with absurd accusations regarding Cruz’s eligibility for the office of presidency, as an example.

And he’s counting on an uniformed public to swallow his blather, largely because it distracts from any real discussions of his proposals or qualifications.

Bradford Richardson of The Hill reports, “Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to bring a lawsuit challenging rival Ted Cruz’s eligibility to serve as president — unless the Texas senator ‘clean[s] up his act.’

“’If [Ted Cruz] doesn’t clean up his act, stop cheating, & doing negative ads, I have standing to sue him for not being a natural born citizen,’ Trump said in a tweet.”

Can you imagine someone doing this to John McCain in 2008 or Mitt Romney in 2012? Politics certainly needed a change, but do we have to resort to such childish tactics to achieve it?

The whole notion of Donald Trump demanding for Cruz – or any of the other candidates – to stop with negative ads is absurd, because to him, negative campaigning includes any kind of examination of his background or his proposals.

He would much rather the nomination was handed to him rather than win it. So much for the beauty of spirited competition.

Do you think the Democrats are going to go along with Trump’s complaining about negative ads if he goes up against Hillary Clinton in the fall? Of course not. He’s whining about Republicans because he knows he can get away with it, seeing as a good portion of conservatives aren’t wild about the party brand right now.

The GOP richly deserves a healthy dose of criticism – especially from its own members – but Trump’s constant “table pounding” goes beyond legitimate commentary. For him to call Cruz a “nasty guy,” as he did repeatedly in Saturday night’s debate, is just about the ultimate illustration of the pot calling the kettle black.

Beyond the pettiness, Trump’s bloviating is just another ploy to keep the media and his opponents off balance while engendering more “free” news coverage. Why do you think a debate moderator would ask him about impeaching a former president if they didn’t want a heated and likely insulting response?

In business negotiating sessions Trump’s table pounding creates more room to move towards his position. In politics it buys time for him and delays actually having to offer something substantive.

The Trump “act” has been going on for over half a year now. If he doesn’t like the way politics works, he should go back to building skyscrapers.

Oh, mah stars! He’s just such a ruffian!

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Pro-choice economics

by digby

There’s a lively discussion going on on the left about sexism and the relationship of such problems to economics. But the right has plenty to say on this issue as well:

The human cost of abortion is undeniable. Pro-Life advocates often note the number of preborn babies killed since the 1973 legalization of abortion. The sum is a staggering 58 million, and the number continues to grow. In Texas alone, 164 preborn babies are killed by abortion every day. For every child killed by abortion, there are at least two people, the mother and father, wounded by the loss of a child.

This alarmingly high number is one way of viewing the devastation, but there are other perspectives that speak to the tragedy of abortion in our society. As Michael Voris of Church Militant’s “The Vortex” explains, in addition to calculating the number of abortions, 58 million and counting, we can calculate the number of people who would be here if not for abortion. Consider the fact that abortion has been legal in the United States for 43 years, which is so long that some of the girls who were aborted would have children of their own by now if they had been born. These second generation children are called ghost numbers or “ghost abortions.”

In order to calculate the number of ghost abortions, Voris and his team looked at the number of female babies aborted who would have had their first child by now. Statistically, women in the United States have their first child by age 25. That means that female babies aborted between 1973 and 1990, on average, would have at least one child by 2015, had they lived.

How many female babies were aborted between 1973 and 1990? A shocking 12,700,000. The children of these nearly 13 million women were never conceived, but if not for abortion they would be part of the total population of the United States, and thus can be counted as missing. As Voris describes the scenario: “These are…people who can never be considered because their mothers were not allowed to be born.” Nonetheless, Voris argues, in looking at the total effects of abortion, these missing members of the population must be considered.

Consequently, the total number of Americans who are missing due to abortion is not 58 million, but rather 70 million. Voris argues that the undeniable personal and spiritual cost of abortion in our country also comes with a real and measurable financial cost. He and his team demonstrate this economic effect by factoring in Gross Domestic Product per capita, a measurement of the total value of a country divided by the number of people. This provides a dollar value equivalent per person. The dollar value averages all the economic activity of the average person, factoring everything from wages, to home purchases, taxes, and food consumption.

Currently, the United States government calculates GDP per capita as $54,000. In other words, through work, production, and consumption each American contributes an average of $54,000 to the United States economy. When this economic measurement is paired with the total number of people missing due to abortion, the result is, as Voris describes, “near beyond comprehension.” If each of the 70 million people who have been aborted or whose mothers were aborted were in the United States population, their economic contribution would be nearly four trillion dollars.

While the economic effect of abortion is by no means the most important consideration, Voris suggests that this little known measurement is important in considering the total effect of abortion. Paradoxically, each and every year, our federal government contributes hundreds of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood, an organization that has a business model centered on marketing elective abortion to women.

Given the devastating financial impact of abortion on the United States economy, why does the government financially support the largest abortion business in America? Of course, abortion activists argue that the money from the government cannot be used to directly pay the costs of abortions, but, as Texas Right to Life has noted many times, the fungible nature of the funding renders their talking point irrelevant. Our tax dollars do pay for the staff of abortion mills, the electricity that keeps the lights on and powers the vacuum aspirator machines that violently kill preborn children, and countless other overhead costs.

Ghost abortions are yet another demonstration of the devastating poverty incurred by abortion. The spiritual and emotional costs are certainly of primary consideration in our education and outreach to abortion-minded women, but the economic facts of abortion are also a powerful way to show people that abortion is not a quick fix or a solution. Abortion robs us of our future.

You can’t say they haven’t crunched the numbers.

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Where were Trump’s yahoos?

by digby

This strikes me as an obvious observation, but one which the networks should disclose to the television audience ahead of time.

The audience at Saturday’s CBS News Republican presidential debate was more boisterous than usual — booing, clapping and generally making its feelings known during several exchanges between candidates on stage in Greenville, South Carolina.

At various points, attendees seemed to favor former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and to be very much against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and real estate mogul Donald Trump — the two candidates currently leading the race.

The way the Republican National Committee distributed the tickets may have been behind the heightened reactions.

According to RNC spokesman Sean Spicer, 600 tickets — of the available 1,600 seats in the Peace Center — were reserved for the candidates’ supporters and friends. That number is more generous than in previous debates. The RNC got 367 tickets, and 550 seats went to state GOP and local officials.

Moreover, local party officials apparently decided to forgo a lottery system in favor of giving loyal supporters tickets due to the venue size, according to Chad Groover, chairman of the Greenville County Republican party.

“You’ll have a good mix of people who are donors, people who are donors and workers, and people who are just workers,” Groover told local news station WYFF.

Depending on its reaction, a debate audience can have a powerful effect on how both at-home viewers and the media perceive candidate performance. Jeers against candidates are especially likely to draw headlines — such as the boos Trump and Cruz received Saturday night.

Campaigns are cognizant of the role an audience can play, and therefore engage in their own stagecraft by making sure supporters applaud their candidate — or boo a rival — when appropriate.

Trump has done something different and used the booing to his own advantage by saying that the audience is filled with donors (the RNC claims otherwise) and emphasizing that he alone is refusing to take any money. But it’s true that he does not have the establishment on his side — the establishment that doles out all those tickets to party functionaries — so when he points out that the boos are coming from partisans he’s not all wrong. And the “news” networks are participating in a bit of theatre by not sharing the reality of the audience participation strategy with the TV audience. It does color the impression of the event.

I’m surprised Trump hasn’t demanded an equal number of seats to give to his yahoos. Seems like something he would do.

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A scary little primer

by digby

This is from Princeton pollster Sam Wang on the GOP nominating process:

What would it take for Trump to fail to get the nomination?

With the Republican field so divided after New Hampshire, the path for anyone other than Trump requires nearly all candidates to drop out. Multiple candidates want that to happen. For example, Ted Cruz thinks it is time to unite around one candidate: Ted Cruz. And so on. However, after getting 3 or 4 convention delegates each on Tuesday, Cruz, John Kasich, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio all have reasons to stay in. Under these conditions, Trump wins.

Many political journalists have a wrong understanding of the early-state delegate process. It is not proportional at all, but what I call pseudo-proportional. As suggested by my computational simulation of the delegate process [the code is here], in a field of four candidates, an average-across-states vote share of 30% is enough to get 50% of delegates through Super Tuesday. That’s an average: the winner could get 20% of the vote in Texas and 40% in Georgia, and so on. Donald Trump is well on track for this scenario: he won 24% of the vote in Iowa and 35% in New Hampshire. As of today, he is at 36% in national surveys.

The not-Trump scenario occurs if Republicans cull their field, fast. As far as I can tell, if Republicans want a candidate who is acceptable to most of their party to get a majority of convention delegates, their deadlines are:

Deadline 1 (February 29th): Get down to two alternatives to Donald Trump as a consequence of South Carolina and Nevada – and before voting starts on Super Tuesday, March 1st. 

Deadline 2 (March 14th): Settle on one alternative to Trump as a consequence of Super Tuesday and the March 5th-12th primaries.

For example, the first of these deadlines can be met if the South Carolina and Nevada primaries knock out three of the following four: Bush, Kasich, Rubio, and Carson. (I’m assuming that at a minimum, Cruz is in through Super Tuesday.)

If these drop-dead dates aren’t met, Trump could still be stopped, but it would be difficult. First, it would require somebody other than Trump to take the popular lead in April. In a three-way race, that is hard to imagine. Even in a two-way race, it is not at all clear that Trump will lose, since for now, he picks up enough “Establishment” support in head-to-head matchups to get a majority. Consistent with this, exit polls in New Hampshire show that some Republicans of all stripes like Trump.

To understand the details, let’s get into the weeds of the delegate process. [Read on →]

Obviously Saturday’s South Carolina primary will make all this much clearer. But the polling so far (pre-debate) shows him with a substantial lead there. But the polling has been sparse, so who really knows?

Time is getting very short to stop this. Are we ready for President Trump?

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