(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)
.
Heck, they don’t even like each other, per NYMag:
Senator Marco Rubio is coming to New York on a Wall Street fund-raising trip after voting against the Hurricane Sandy aid bill, and U.S. Rep. Peter King is so offended by his “balls” that he’s now on a crusade to get potential donors to stop giving money to the fellow Republican. In the first of a series of interviews with various media Wednesday, King told The Observer‘s Politicker: “It’s bad enough that these guys voted against it, that’s inexcusable enough. But to have the balls to come in and say, ‘We screwed you now make us president?'” He got more heated from there.
The Long Island representative, who had harsh words for his own party after a vote on the aid bill lagged in the House, also sent out an e-mail to his supporters, sharing a line with his Politicker interview: “Being from New York we’re not supposed to be suckers.” In an interview with the Daily News, he repeated his call to cut off funding to Republicans who voted against the aid bill, including Rubio: “They cast their vote against us, so I think we should vote no on them,” King told the paper. “Don’t give them a nickel!”…
Note for casual readers: this is NY’s Pete “IRA Mucker” King, not IA’s Steve “Very Mean, Yet Exceptionally Dumb” King. Young Marco probably thinks Miami anti-Castroites know how to cherish a grudge like it was their firstborn child, but Peter King’s people have a four-hundred-years-and-counting head start in that sport.
The bad news is, like all professional muckers, King has a finely tuned ear for the delicate gradations in the rise and fall of his fellow pols, so if he’s willing to diss Rubio so publicly, then the whispered campaign of the Bush Crime Family to shiv the young striver for cutting in front of JEB! seems to be working, and that — ugh — means four more years of Bush…
Hill Dweller
Rubio’s ridiculous rebuttal to the State of the Union certainly didn’t help.
? Martin
@Hill Dweller: Proper hydration is no joke.
Hill Dweller
@? Martin: Rubio’s repeated attempts to shoehorn a water bottle joke into every subsequent public appearance was/is even more pathetic.
cmorenc
Jeb Bush is (fortunately) stuck with the unbearable albatross of his brother George for at least another two or three presidential election cycles, and maybe for the rest of his life. Given a choice between having another Clinton in the white house vs having another Bush, I’ll bet they’ll choice Clinton by a quite comfortable margin in 2016, both in popular and electoral votes. No matter how superficially attractive and almost moderate-seeming an image Jeb tries to project, far too many people rembember being sucker-punched by false impressions into electing Bushes before.
dance around in your bones
@? Martin:
I know that was a joke about Rubio’s gulp, but it’s really true.
My husband collapsed on a hike in Tucson after not hydrating enough (he noticed our 2 gallons of water was getting low, and he quit drinking water so I could have enough.) Big drama (I had to run to the car – we were only about a half mile away from the end of the hike – and zoom around multiple boulders and practically run over several walkers to get back to him with some Gatorade).
We learned after that to take multiple gallons of water and stash them in strategic locations along the route for the return hike.
WereBear
Why do NONE of them have a true sense of humor? Perhaps compassion and empathy have far more to do with humor than I suspected.
Yutsano
@cmorenc: I still don’t see how JEB! gets past his very brown wife and half-brown kids in the wingnut primaries. Hell their grandmother can barely tolerate them, not to mention his daughter is a Billy Cateresque train wreck. JEB! must fucking hate his fuck-up younger brother the most though. But Pappy wanted Georgie over JEB!
WereBear
@Yutsano: My explanation for the constant JEB! talk is twofold:
They tell the lessers what to think
and
What else do they got?
dance around in your bones
NO MORE BUSHES! No mas arbustos!
Plz and fuck you very much.
David Koch
Jeb isn’t gonna run, he knows he can’t win the nomination, considering how hated his brother and father are among the rank and file.
But also too, Rubio has been surpassed by Ted Cruz in the “if we have to vote for a brown person, let’s for vote for this one” category.
Cruz is gonna run. He’s not shoveling red meat out his window for nothing. It’ll come down to him and Ryan for who gets to lose to Hillary.
Amir Khalid
So whom have the Republican party got for a decent presidential contender in 2016? If the Tea Party tendency costs the Republican party the 2014 midterm elections, might the “not conservative enough” types who sat out 2012 fancy their chances again?
lucslawyer
Interesting little back and forth in the Observer article’s comments between a conservative ranting about all the pork in the Sandy relief bill (obviously implying it was Dem pork) and a Ms. Hawkes, who links to an article from Forbes showing the pork was actually the handiwork of the repubs for the benefit of Gulf Coast red states. When that fact was pointed out to the conservative, he immediately fell back on the well-worn “well, everybody does it” line…
Keith G
@David Koch:
Bush the Elder will be dead or actively dying by 2016 (my money is on dead) and there will be a significant wave of nostalgia and record white washing and re-imagining. If Jeb really wants to run, that may be his shot.
BTW back in 1998, my boy friend I had the random chance to meet George and Bar. I disliked many (not all) of the man’s political choices, yet in person I found him very gracious and humble.
Monkey Business
I think Jeb Bush’s Presidential Prospect train left the station shortly after Georgie Boy started two wars and blew up the economy.
In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that the national political aspirations of anyone with the last name of “Bush” are pretty much toast at this point. Give it a generation and we’ll see what happens.
Joey Maloney
@Yutsano: But Pappy wanted Georgie over JEB!
If only Dumbya had died heroically like Joe Kennedy Jr. then JEB! could’ve become the JFK of his generation. Of course, W would have had to actually serve. And Jeb would have had to not be a crooked scumbag.
Baud
@WereBear:
They have the same sense of humor they have always had. Their schtick just got old.
Death Panel Truck
@Keith G:
What did you think he was going to do, tell you to fuck off? Of course the asshole was gracious and humble. Doesn’t make him any less of an asshole. People are gracious in public, even to the help. In private, however…
Roger Moore
@dance around in your bones:
An acquaintance of mine died of heat stroke in Big Bend NP, and I’ve gotten various levels of heat exhaustion often enough to know that it’s very serious. But in some way that makes Rubio needing to take a drink in the middle of a speech even more of a dumb joke.
Keith G
@Death Panel Truck: Not quite so.
My earlier years of political activism, as well as being a bartender in the only go to VIP hangout in a medium sized city, has allowed me to bump into a variety of politicians and other luminaries before, during and after their peak. Some interact because they must, others are quite clearly determined to move on as quickly as possible, others hang back, ask follow up questions and actually seem to be in the moment.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
The Tea Party is very unlikely to cost the Republicans the 2014 elections, at least not enough to convince the teabaggers that they’ve done anything wrong. They’re not going to accept any loss short of losing control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats as evidence they’re making a mistake, and the election is so heavily slanted in their favor that a loss on that scale is extremely unlikely.
ThresherK
Peter King’s people have a four-hundred-years-and-counting head start in that sport.
Irish Alzheimer’s: You forget everything but the grudges.
Linda Featheringill
Honestly, I don’t see why New Yorkers should give money to Rubio or to any of those guys who were against Sandy relief.
Keith G
I do find it interesting that progressive politicians and others did not correctly figure out what the far right would do in the sequester
The reporting I’ve read indicates the Obama administration proposed it in 2011. Obama thought that Republicans were going to be as protective of military spending as Democrats are of federal spending on the rest of government.
Wrong.
So, now that we are where we are, which side is willing to endure more pain? Can we know that with any more certainty than we knew who the GOP would move to protect the military?
What I do know is that the Obama administration has accidently created Ron Paul’s wettest of wet dreams and Speaker John Boehner is now more popular with his base than anytime since January 2011.
Interesting times.
amk
@Linda Featheringill: goldmansachs, NY is doing a fundriser for the waterboy.
Joey Maloney
@Death Panel Truck: What did you think he was going to do, tell you to fuck off?
Or “Who cares what you think?”
xian
@Keith G: that is old school prep school old boy manners = noblesse oblige
Emma
@Keith G: being popular with the base is like being the best soprano in Podunk. And Paul will scramble fast enough in the other direction when the “right” people in his state start screaming.
Jeff(the other one)
@David Koch: If he was born in Calgary, then he’s not eligible to be President, or didn’t we just spend the last 5 years debating that with our Kenyan Usurper Overlord…
aimai
All politics is local so the national issues and the national recession won’t affect tea party style turnout in the congressional districts unless there is a backlash or an emotional depression that keeps those people from voting. Combined, that is, with a plausible third party candidate who peels of the right fringe or a plausible centrist candidate who attracts those who are going to be falling by the wayside from sheer stree and exhaustion (see emotional depression, above.)
I’m reading Ira Wood’s essays about his life being married to Marge Piercy. They are screamingly funny but the funniest part of it all, since we go to Wellfleet frequently, is the description of the political regular actors on the Town Selectmen’s Board. I highly recommend it to everyone interested in local politics.
Felinious Wench
My BIL was the partner of a consultant to George Sr. after he retired. He accidentally misdialed and got my BILs voice mail. He left the longest, funniest message. My BIL is a liberal among liberals, and he still has it. George Sr. attends lots of sporting events around Houston; I’ve sat near him many times. He is unfailingly gracious and funny. He and Bill Clinton became dear friends for a reason.
I didn’t agree with much he did, but he’s a nice guy.
Forum Transmitted Disease
I hate defending anyone with the last name of Bush, but will point out that George Sr. did the following:
1. Actually showed up for his military assignment, did his job, didn’t fuck around, and got shot down for his pains in an era where there were no ejection seats or decent life rafts. Not hero caliber stuff, but more than his worthless shit of a son or the execrable John McCain could manage.
2. Signed off on raising taxes even though he knew he’d take a huge popularity hit within his own party, because it was the right thing to do for the good of the Republic.
3. Put together possibly the most effective and certainly the largest international coalition of troops ever to fight the First Gulf War. Now, we baited Saddam into that conflict and there’s not a lot to be proud of either in the lead-up or the aftermath of that conflict, but the conflict itself was handled quite well and we had an actual goal.
4. Post-retirement, he seems aware that it’s his duty to not be a dick to people.
Not my favorite president. Really, really not. But he’s the best Repulbican president of my lifetime. Let’s see who his competition was…
Nixon
Ford
Reagan
His worthless shit kid
Well, I guess that’s not saying much. Best of a bad bunch, anyway.
MFA
@Keith G:
If he’d thougt for a sec you were anti-W or anti-Jeb he would have deployed the ‘cut direct’. And in the second or so while you puzzled over his slight, Bar would have bit you on your naughty parts.
Rafer Janders
400? Try 900. That’s how long the English have been coming over to Ireland for no good reason to murder and rob.
OzoneR
@Keith G:
IIRC, liberals thought the same thing. If he held cuts to Republican sacred cows and red states/districts as leverage, the Republicans would come to the table.
Some said they’d take that bet.
Hoocoodanode?
The Other Chuck
Luckovich needs better coloring. Took me forever to figure out that labeled thing was a gun.
Rafer Janders
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Oh, he did more than show up. He volunteered to be a naval aviator right after graduation from prep school, was at one point the youngest pilot in the US Navy at age 19, and he flew over 50 combat missions.
Jay C
Regarding ex-Pres GHWB: I’ve heard a lot of comments like this: I once met the sculptor who had done the official bust of Poppy when he was VP, and he said that, politics aside, Bush was a very nice (and, as been noted) funny guy when out of the limelight. Doesn’t mean a vast lot, I know, but as Forum Transmitted Disease notes: “not being a dick in public” seems to be one of those old-school virtues GHWB has, and, IMO, we could use more of in public life. Or at least the Bush family…
And speaking of JEB!: I’m not so sure he’s that much out of the running for 2016 – if he wants it, that is – eight years on, at least a little of the Dubya stench may have dissipated from the public nostrils; and realistically, Jeb’s one of last remaining “mainstream” candidates the GOP has. Of course, I still think he’d lose to, say, Hillary Clinton: but compared to (who? Rubio? Santorum? Rand Paul?) it might be less of a debacle/blowout/disaster.
Mandalay
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
I second all that. GHWB was not a bad president, and AFAIK is a decent human being. Rachel Maddow makes herself look really small when she sneeringly refers to him as “Poppy Bush”.
I would also add that his son – for all his awful failings – has also managed “not be a dick to people” after leaving office.
joel hanes
Best Republican Presidents of my lifetime ?
In order :
Eisenhower
Obama
Clinton
Bush senior
Chris
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Did we in fact bait Saddam? I know we let him think we had no opinions on his border conflict with Kuwait, but I always thought that was just us trying to stay out of a pissing war that we never thought would come to war. (It wasn’t exactly the first time Iraq and Kuwait had a border disagreement).
Opie_jeanne
Driving south with a cat in the car. So far we’ve gone 100 miles and she’s asleep across my husband’s shoulders while he drives.
1000 miles to go, but so far so good. Chehalis off-ramp in sight.
This was supposed to post in Betty Cracker’s open thread. Sorry.
Elie
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
I would also add that he signed the Americans with Disabilities Act — a true model for the world and a real accomplishment/
gocart mozart
Nonsense.
Jeb is a RINO!
Ted Cruz/Rand Paul-2016 Bitches!
gocart mozart
@Chris:
Well, “We have no opinion about your border dispute with Kuwait.” and then “The Kuwaiti border is sacred and violating it is the worst thing since Hitler.”
Draw your own conclusion.
gocart mozart
@gocart mozart:
Jeb is married to an evil Mexican who he doesn’t hate*
Christie thinks evil Muslims should have human rights
*Rubio also doesn’t hate hispanics enough
Rafer Janders
@gocart mozart:
Well, “We have no opinion about your border dispute with Kuwait.” and then “The Kuwaiti
There’s a hell of a long way from “we have no opinion about your border dispute” — i.e. exactly where you’re going to draw a line in the desert sand — and “we’re totally OK with you invading and occupying that country.”
NonyNony
@Rafer Janders:
Unless you know about 10 minutes worth of the history of Kuwait and know that the “border dispute” between Iraq and Kuwait involved Iraq owing Kuwait millions of dollars, allegations that Kuwaiti oil rigs were stealing oil across the Iraqi border due to horizontal drilling, and that Hussein had threatened to invade the country to put a stop to it.
If you assumed that the US knew that background, the “we have no opinion on your border dispute” can easily become “we’re going to look the other way while you take that tiny country and throw it up against the wall because you’re more important to us than they are.”
Though I’m not of the opinion that Bush the Elder’s State Department was manipulating Hussein into a war on purpose. Honestly, Iran was still a threat and Hussein had good reason to believe that the US considered him more useful to keeping Iran at bay than any connection the US would have to Kuwait. So anything less than a “Hell No – we will invade your ass if you cross that border” would have been taken by Hussein as tacit approval by the USA to invade. But that’s because he was operating under the “old rules” where the US had to worry about the Soviet Union and what it would do if conflict broke out with Iran. HW Bush had less use for Hussein than Reagan did.
(I’m also sympathetic to ideas that I’ve heard that most of the State Department could not have cared less about a dispute between Kuwait and Iraq, but that Brent Scrowcroft had business and personal ties to the Kuwaiti ruling elite and the ear of HW Bush. And that it wasn’t too hard to convince HW Bush to go for it given his own personal ties to elite families in the Gulf. Hussein just didn’t take into account the fact that as a first generation power-grabbing thug he didn’t have access to the clubhouse. Had his grandfather been the one who was the power-grabbing thug and he’d properly inherited his position, he would have run in the right circles and the whole thing would have turned out differently for him…)
David Koch
@Jeff(the other one):
First of all, IOKIYAR. Seriously. McCain was born in Panama. George Romney was born in Mexico. Goldwater was born in Arizona before it entered the US. And nobody ever complained about their eligibility.
Second, Cruz’s mother is American, which makes her son a naturalized citizen, in the same way George Romney was a naturalized citizen even though he was born south of the borer, down Mexico way.
Rafer Janders
@David Koch:
Arizona was part of the United States. It just wasn’t a state on its own.
Not a naturalized citizen, but a natural citizen. Naturalized means you weren’t born a citizen but became one later. Natural means you were a citizen from birth.
gvg
Actually the view I got of gulf war I was that it was arguable we had messed up/given mixed signals or Hussein just misread us badly. A total invasion was more than we had predicted and threatened the stability of the whole (oil) region plus such a bad international precident that it could cause every would be greedy tyrant to invade someone ala pre WWII conditions.
My understanding was the coalition was put together after the invasion began. Also Bush I had been the US ambassador to the UN pretty much not his prefered choice but done because party leaders had asked him to and thus he had become buddies with many many foreign leaders which enabled him to put together the coalition. Never seen anything like it and was really impressed with that living through it. Knew his son was leading us into quagmire when he couldn’t get simular support in spite of post 911 pro America sentiment (remember that, it existed) Which gets me mad at Bush II again.
Also by the way reports I always heard were that Sr Bush didn’t really agree with George II’s running for prez or policy choices pretty often but just wasn’t going to cut his son down in front of the whole world. Supposedly they had a pretty poor relationship and a lot of George II’s actions seemed to be showing up dad. See I can too be sucessful….
Rubio seems dumb enough not to need Bush emnity to explain his crash and burn’s. Speaking as a Floridian, only a desperate party with no bench would be thinking he’s got what it takes. I’d say the same of the rest of the GOP hopes though and I think it started to show even with the Palin pick. If they had a better bench, McCain ouldn’t have picked her.
negative 1
@cmorenc: Forever. He’s screwed forever. The name Bush is not only universally bad it’s universally known. It’s why Fred Hitler will never run for city council.
Patricia Kayden
“four more years of Bush…”
Four more years of Bush doing what? Not being President. Jeb won’t get close to the White House, ever.
Kathy in St. Louis
I have always said that vendetta may be an Italian word, but no one holds a grudge like the Irish. I am allowed to say that since I am a Ryan by birth.
We may move on in life when we’re treated badly, but we never forget and await our opportunity to get even.