Harry Enten has a good article about how the man is keeping the Tea Party down. Republican leadership positions in the House and Senate are overwhelmingly occupied by Republicans whose voting record is more centrist than the typical Congressional Republican. Enten makes a good argument that this cannot be accounted for by seniority.
Moreover, establishment fav Chris Christie (R – Morning Joe) would be by far the most moderate Republican presidential nnominee in the past 50 years:
To my mind, this argues against Christie being the nominee. I don’t see how the teahadists would accept it.
Baud
Damn, Goldwater. You scary.
Marc
On the other hand: the GOP establishment almost always gets the nominee it wants. Money talks, and Republican voters (until recently) know how to fall in line.
Don’t get me wrong, I hope Christie is the next Mike Castle. But the Republican leadership and donors know Ted Cruz isn’t going to be the next president.
Hawes
So if I read your post title correctly, you want them all dropped into the deep blue sea?
I can endorse that.
Hunter Gathers
If Christie really wants wants the nom, he’ll disavow any position that isn’t compatible with the ‘Baggers. And anybody who questions him will get called a moron by the Outlaw Jersey Whale himself, creaming the pants of the Villagers in the process.
Hawes
@Baud: I wonder if that’s a relative score to other contemporaneous Republicans. There were still a lot of Rockefeller Republicans in the northeast back then.
The Dangerman
The teahadists would crawl across a football field of broken glass, naked as they day they were born, to vote against Hillary. If Christie makes it through the convention, they would accept it just fine.
burnspbesq
If Sheldon Adelson, Foster Fleiss, and Americans for Prosperity decide that Christie is their guy, nothing else will matter. The Teahadi can either eat the shit sandwich or leave the party.
Baud
@Hawes:
Don’t know, but almost 20 points below the average current House Republicans is amazing.
Robert
Christie bloviates appropriately right wing talking points even if his record goes against it. He’s a loud mouth who will push back if they try to claim he’s too liberal. If he chooses to run, he’ll run on actually forcing conservative viewpoints in NJ through compromise. He’ll run on the congressional deadlock and bridging the divide between those evil socialists and God-fearing Republicans.
Eric U.
I obviously don’t understand the methodology in that list, but Goldwater sounded like a damn hippie by the time he died
NotMax
But according to the fundies, didn’t their God push a killer storm at Christie’s state?
Oh, that’s right. That ‘argument’ only applies when a non-Republican is in office.
Augie
Uh, I’m going to need some explanation of that scoring system before I accept that conclusion. Christie is pretty fucking conservative. And he has the voting record to prove it. Hugging Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen doesn’t prove otherwise.
MattF
I think Republicans are completely at sea on the subject of who to run in 2016– against Clinton, or against anyone. It really could be anyone, except maybe Ah-Puch, the Mayan Death God, who:
but only because he’s not a native-borm Amurrican. There’s no heir-apparent, and the party is split at least three different ways at last count.
J.D. Rhoades
@MattF:
Anytime you’re dealing with a Republican wacko who’s railing on Obama or Clinton, ask them who they think can win against Clinton in 2016. They’ll either change the subject or explode in rage. Their response used to be, “it doesn’t matter, people don’t like Obama, and anyone will win.” But they can’t use that anymore.
PsiFighter37
This analysis would be more useful if it had a relative measure to the times which they are being measured against. Of course people, including the GOP, was more sane in the past. I don’t need to do fucking fancy-ass analysis to come to that conclusion.
PF37 +6 (still drunk from last night)
jeffreyw
The brown bag will have grease stains. Fries with that?
Alexandra
Moderate and…
Swoon.
wonkie
I think the teahadists will do what they are told. They aren’t issue-oriented. Not really. Afterall they claim to be opposed to big government programs but support any big government program you can name. They even support Obamacare as long as ou don’t call it that. They are politically stupid, easily manipulated people. They are emotion-oriented. They want to feel hate, fear, and a sense of being the only true Merikins unlike all those other people who are to blame for everything. If Christie delivers that message to them, they will support him regardless of his position on issues.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@burnspbesq: To say nothing of the same hedge fund managers who got gay marriage through in New York, Bloomberg and Zuckerberg, who has already held a fundraiser for Christie.
I’m still not convinced Christie’s running in ’16. Why go up against Hillary and risk the taint of the loser when you’re (politically) very young and can run after a few years of building your personal fortune, building up political chits, and listening to Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough and David Brooks say “Christie could have won in ’16”. Cruz and Paul are probably gonna fizzle over time, too.
Anoniminous
@Hunter Gathers:
“Outlaw Jersey Whale”
I am so stealing that.
cleek
first: how many of them are there?
Tokyokie
Yesterday, I drove past a passle of white people protesting that Obama should be impeached for treason (which, apparently to teahadists, means means disagreeing with them), and I considered stopping and asking them if they were aware that treason is the only crime defined in the Constitution they profess to love. But then I thought if they were stupid enough to stand out on an unshaded sidewalk in 100-degree weather, then there was no point in talking to them.
Snarki, child of Loki
“If [Christie] chooses to run…”
Sorry, but the having “Christie” and “run” in the same sentence just seems comical.
Yes, he can bring the foul-mouthed meany to the party, AND he can get behind the less-sane of the GOP platform, but there are some things that will be hard for Christie to disavow:
He nominated a Muslim to the NJ Supreme Court, AND defended him against attacks. Such non-prejudice and humanity are clearly disqualifies Christie from the GOP nomination.
Baud
@Tokyokie:
You sure they were teahadists? ODS is a communicable disease, apparently.
Chris
@Baud:
Yeah, for real. Because Goldwater was pro-choice and pro-gay (to some extent), people forget what a fucking nutjob he was on virtually every other topic. (Kind of like Ron Paul).
I’m surprised to see Nixon doesn’t rank as less conservative, though.
AliceBlue
@Alexandra:
Starbursts all around!
Anoniminous
@wonkie:
But they are perception-convinced. Attack ads with shots of Christie hugging teh blah Prez will be hard for him to counter.
Tokyokie
@Baud: A couple of them had signs that read, “tea party.” Although they could have been plants because the scrawling was spelled correctly.
Chris
@Marc:
Truth.
I’d even gut the “until recently” part. McCain and Romney were the nominees in the last two elections, after all.
Steeplejack
@Anoniminous:
Yeah, well, mention that you stole it from TBogg, which is where it came from.
Baud
With regard to Christie, one of the odd things about the 2012 GOP primary is that the not-Romney’s really didn’t seem to attack Romney all that hard from not being conservative enough. I wonder if the 2016 GOP field will be so restrained if Christie runs.
JPL
@Augie: MSM said he was a moderate and that’s all that counts.
Baud
@Chris:
Goldwater ended up pro-choice and pro-gay (or not anti-gay). I don’t think those were issues people were even thinking about in 1964.
JScott
That chart, doesn’t work. Doesn’t matter.
I don’t think we can speculate on a Republican field until HRC declares one way or the other.
Amir Khalid
@MattF:
The Republican presidential contenders in 2008 and 2012 were all so bad, I wouldn’t be all that surprised if in 2016 the party were to back a candidate calling himself The Flatulent One.
JPL
The southern primaries are influential and they sent Giuliani home. I think Christie will be on the ticket as veep.
Chris
@The Dangerman:
I agree. I said in the run-up to the last election that it was foolish to expect teabaggers to stay home out of dislike for Romney, because to them the difference between Romney and Obama was like the difference between cough medecine and a cyanide pill. The same will be true in any future election. Even if the Democrat isn’t Clinton, even if it’s someone they’ve never heard of before in their life, by the time of the election their media will have whipped them up into such a frenzy of loathing for the candidate that they’ll wonder how they ever lived without it.
@wonkie:
And this captures exactly why. Well said.
Chris
@Snarki, child of Loki:
Harder than Romney disavowing his past as a pro-choice, pro-gay governor who signed the original Obamacare?
Mandalay
@Augie:
It was concocted by Nate Silver! It is absurd and meaningless drivel that Silver should be ashamed of….
Davis X. Machina
@JPL:
Does the GOP want to win the White House, or just make noises about it?
They need EV from outside the Confederate ghetto they’re busy creating for themselves. This is a national election…. our only one. If the horizons of your political world are bound by where they sell Goody’s Powder, you’re doomed.
Davis X. Machina
@Mandalay: Awaiting the explanation of why it’s meaningless drivel, and how it’s been demonstrated to be meaningless drivel…
Silver isn’t always right, but I’d like to be shown how he’s wrong here…
Dolly Llama
Can we get a college football open thread up in here?
Southern Beale
I just read this fascinating piece over at Salon:
A lot of it is stuff we already know. And I’m not sure if the author is saying this stuff he outlines was calculated by Republicans or just happened. But the idea that the GOP needed to get more strident and fringey because they needed to up the intensity factor, realizing they would lose liberals and moderates when they took over the South, is certainly interesting.
TD
If conservatives are too credulous when it comes to accepting arguments from anger and fear, liberals are too credulous when it comes to charts and infographics.
Chris Christie is one conservative motherfucker. He is way more conservative than Nixon ever was. I call shenanigans.
JPL
@Dolly Llama: Seconded! A sports open thread would be nice because the USOpen is televised on CBS starting at noon.
Chris
@Davis X. Machina:
I second this. I am curious to know what kind of methodology would lead someone to rank Chris Christie as so much less conservative than Richard Nixon, especially when you consider that the rightward drift of politics since the sixties means Nixon would be considered very firmly on the left side of today’s aisle.
MattF
@Chris: I have trouble picturing Christie reversing positions the way Romney did, a la Etch-a-Sketch.
Villago Delenda Est
Christie last week told the Christianist fuckstains of the Family Research Council to fuck off and die.
Naturally, the teatards take their cues from theocrat wannabes.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@TD: Chris Christie is one conservative motherfucker.
That too. He’s pretty much in line with Paul Ryan on the safety net, and if he’s not quite as creepily fanatical as Santorum on abortion and gay rights, he’s not too far off (ETA: Okay, maybe that overstates it, as I look at an issues website, but he’ll fall in to the Romney/McCain line). And as Sandy was building up power in the Atlantic, he was on a series of stages with Romney and Gingrich telling Sarah Palin’s howler monkeys that Barack Obama is so weak and stupid he couldn’t figure out how to flip on a light switch in a dark room.
Davis X. Machina
@Chris: I’m not convinced that Silver’s system mis-rates Christie. He’s cruising to re-election in a blue state, and while you can buck a trend, you can’t buck a brick wall.
MikeJ
@Davis X. Machina:
I’ve not looked at his methodology on this one, but it looks like standard Silver. Take several inputs, decide how to weight them, come up with one number. The secret sauce of course “decide how to weight them.”
He seems to have got it bang on for electoral polls I know DW-Nominate is a bog-standard score that everyone uses, so that’s at least one good input.
If I had any doubts about it, it would be in comparing politicians of different eras. I don’t think you can meaningfully compare Goldwater and Cruz because the culture is too different.
Davis X. Machina
@MikeJ:
An evergreen source of disputes at BaseballProspectus.com, which is where Nate came from, so to speak.
Villago Delenda Est
@Alexandra:
It’s all surface appearance with these morans. Fucking natural serfs. My contempt for them cannot be measured.
rdldot
@Chris: If you look at the chart, there isn’t any score for votes for Christie, just public statements and fundraising so this leaves out what he actually DOES, and only counts the other stuff. It’s not Silver’s fault, but the outfit that does the vote score doesn’t score Christie at all because he’s not in Congress, so no Congressional votes. Still don’t know if any of the scores are based on a policy absolute, or bases against other people in Congress.
MikeJ
@Davis X. Machina:
All sorts of talk about Baltimore’s Chris Davis possibly breaking the Maris home run record, ignoring the steroid era.
I don’t see him getting 14 in September, but ESPN loves to have a record chase.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@wonkie:
That is Christe’s problem – the people doing the manipulation of he teatardist is the right wing news media and they are about keeping rating up threw selling fear and loathing, not winning elections for Republicans.
burnspbesq
OT, but amusing:
Patriots release Tebow
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@burnspbesq: I am not proud of the fact that I am chuckling at that news.
Cleveland? Canada? Does Joel Osteen Ministries have a football team?
Just One More Canuck
@NotMax: or if the storm hits a non-republican state
NotMax
@burnspbesq
Well, he’s not old enough to be on the ticket in ’16, so we can cross that off.
Just One More Canuck
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: actually, his style might be well-suited for the CFL.
Botsplainer
@burnspbesq:
Just saw that, and am laughing at His persecution. Maybe tbogg can come out of retirement for a comment or two.
HinTN
@Hawes: Men with insight, men in granite
Yes, indeed, drop them in the middle of the deep blue sea
burnspbesq
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The part that has to kill the Tebowmaniacs: there are two QBs from Duke in the NFL,* but there’s no room for Tebow.
* Renfree is on IR. Buffalo kept Thad Lewis and cut Leinert. Fight on, Matt.
Amir Khalid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The name Joel Osteen is not familiar to me. Is he the kid from The Sixth Sense?
? Martin
@burnspbesq: Excellent. My mom was just telling me a few days ago how awesome it was that the Pats picked him up. I shall call her now…
burnspbesq
@Botsplainer:
If the DeMaio-yanking-it-in-the-restroom stories weren’t enough to bring TBogg back, I think we have to accept that he’s done.
Tripod
The more important GOP ranking is who gets the most “Obama is worse than ____” references. I have to think Nixon has moved ahead of the pack. NIXON’S BACK! AROOOOO!
Mandalay
You give the teahadists an importance that simply doesn’t exist. The teahadists accepted McCain and Romney. They had no choice.
And the author of the article you cite is regurgitating data about Christie that was created by Nate Silver back in February. So you need to make the case that nothing has changed since then if you find that chart meaningful. Also, Silver’s chart is significantly impacted by the politician’s congressional voting record, and Christie doesn’t have one so he gets a zero in that category. So of course he will get a low (“moderate”) score relative to those in Congress.
The chart is out of date and meaningless, and tells you nothing unless you have already made up your mind.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@cleek: Enough to put O’Donnell, Akin, Cruz, and Mourdock on the ballot, and give Romney an actual fight through the GOP primaries?
Christie’s conservative, but he’s outwardly friendly with The Other Tribe and has zero inner voice when dealing with opposition inside and outside of his party. Romney said just enough of the right things to get him past Frothy, I’m not sure if Christie can rein himself and disavow any knowledge of Cory Booker or Barack Obama to do the same.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh, the wormholes of the innertoobz. I went looking for Tbogg’s reaction on twitter. Here it is
there was also this
Yes, that is Dennis Miller, late of Saturday Night Live and HBO, now the guy Bill O’Reilly’s producers call to fill a segment when Sarah Palin’s satellite connection is out and Dick Morris is drunk or with a hooker. Miller has also tweeted this
I don’t know if he thinks that’s funny, insightful, or both.
J.D. Rhoades
@Davis X. Machina:
Well, the second one is more profitable.
Mandalay
@rdldot:
It certainly is Silver’s fault.
He chose to include congressional voting as a significant factor when comparing candidates, some of whom had never been in Congress. The chart is meaningless.
Davis X. Machina
@Just One More Canuck: Longer field. Three downs = More passing. Can’t throw. I don’t see it.
dmsilev
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Help me out here. There are cigar-smoking wisecracking Muslims wearing greasepaint mustaches? I mean, given how many Muslims there are on this planet, I suppose it’s not unreasonable that there are at least a few, but I’m having trouble imagining them as any sort of substantial demographic.
Chuck Butcher
If you wonder how the Teahaddists will accept the leadership you’re missing a connection. You cannot show that the Democratic Left is represented by the elected from that Party and while it may be accurate that the DL is more reasonable and intellectually capable than the Teabaggers there is that common element of the other being entirely unacceptable and eating the shit sandwich just to get the bread. It also matters who shows up to vote for their Primary Parade of Stupidity. Their is some limit in idiocy which their elite will participate – especially if it promises to break their record breaking streak of greed satisfaction.
If you refer in leadership to Congress, I might be inclined to agree that this type isn’t going to survive the Insurrection long – The Confederate Party of Republicanism ain’t going away quietly where they don’t have to.
Despite my distaste for a Hillary nomination, I don’t see how the NJ Gov can beat her and I doubt he thinks he can and he’s shown no suicidal tendencies.
Lol
I like the methodology Progressive Punch uses for rating congress members. They select a few democrats to be the progressive bar and then evaluate based on their majority decision. Furthermore, you can filter it down to critical/close votes to pick out who throws votes the other way when it doesn’t matter but stays with us when the chips are down and who is truly ratfucking us.
This doesn’t help with rating Christie though but I wonder if it would change Goldwater’s evaluation.
MattF
@dmsilev: It’s the sort of expertise about Moooslims that we can expect from Miller.
Davis X. Machina
@Chuck Butcher: What happens if Hillary doesn’t run?
Chuck Butcher
@Davis X. Machina:
At this early date I haven’t given any thought to it, or whom. 2014 elections, especially House are gonna have a lot to do with a lot of things.
Smiling Mortician
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Which is why if he runs, the first ad out of the gate against him will feature that clip followed by the clip of him getting teary-eyed as he explains how Obama saved New Jersey. Such an ad would work in either the primaries or the general.
Chuck Butcher
Look, I’m not trying to just duck the question, it matters a lot how the Obama Presidency proceeds and that lands on Congress. It also matters what environment people have to operate in as to whether they become actually viable. If nothing happens to Hillary’s health or circumstances I don’t she how she gives it a miss – especially if there is no sign of a strong challenger, as little as I like the idea. I really doubt Hillary would make the same campaign mistakes, twice.
I know there is a GOP element that froths at the idea of running against her and they’d get their heads stomped, nationally.
Chuck Butcher
If it seems I keep editing and getting disjointed I will use the excuse that I’m sitting here with a broken leg that is a bit “distracting.”
Svensker
@Augie:
My teahadi relatives HATE Christie. HATE him. Course, they used to HATE McCain and Romney, too, but fell into line as soon as those stiffs were nominated. So who knows.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
He’s the kid from The Omen
Anoniminous
@Chuck Butcher:
There’s a definite feel the 2014 House elections are shaping bad for the GOP.
Mostly due to the GOP losing their lock on seniors.
If 2014 is an ‘outlier’ wrt statistical norms all bets are off. GOP House districts are heavily gerrymandered and 2% swing would lose them a lot of seats and a 4% swing would be a disaster. These postulated swings can come from vote switching, different voter demographics, or a combination.
Way too early to tell but things are shaping nicely.
Marc
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Apparently Miller is under the impression that Margaret Dumont was the hero of the Marx brothers movies.
Just One More Canuck
@Davis X. Machina: Mobility is a big asset in the game up here – that might help offset the arm
Chris
@Svensker:
There you go.
The only thing Christie needs to do is to stay afloat throughout the entire primary process and outlast the wild-eyed teabaggers who’ll try to challenge him from the right – IOW, what Romney did in the 2012 cycle. As long as the big money gravitates to him, that shouldn’t be a problem.
Citizen_X
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I would have assumed that “Dennis DMZ” was Rodman’s tag.
And if there were Groucho Muslims, I’d convert tomorrow.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Mumphrey, et al.)
I don’t understand the numbers in the chart. I went to the link and then went to the link to whoever came up with the numbers, but I can’t make any sense of them. Maybe somebody who understands better than I do can put it into words I can fathom.
I have to say, though, I don’t see how anybody can say that any Republicans are really moderate. It’s hard to see how they’re even moderate when held up against other Republicans, since they all vote so alike. There’s a site that ranks senators and congressmen from liberal to conservative by counting the votes cast when more than half of one party votes one way and more than half of the other goes the other way. That way they can throw out all the bills naming post offices and declaring May17 to be National God Is Awesome! Day or something like that. It isn’t perfect, but it seems to me to be as good a way as any other to gauge (guage?–those both look wrong somehow) how extreme and uncompromising the Republicans truly are.
If you look at the list of the senators, the Democrats range all the way from 99 or 100 (meaning that those senators vote with the Democrats 99 or 100 times out of 100 when there’s a vote that the arties split on) to about 50 (meaning these senators will vote with the Republicans about half the time when there’s a vote the parties split on).
The Republicans? The most “moderate” Republican only votes with the Democrats on a real vote about 27% of the time. 73% of the time, she votes with her party. She’s the only one under 80%. There are three between 80 and 90%. 41 out of 46 Republicans vote with their own party 92% of the time or more. 35 out of 46 do so more than 95% of the time. The senator right in the middle of the Republican scale votes Republican 96.95% of the time.
There are no moderates in the Republican Party. There just aren’t. McConnell might seem “moderate” or “reasonable” because he says he doesn’t want to shut the government down or default on our debt. But he votes within 1.84% of the way Cruz and Paul and Lee do. He’s only “moderate” because he doesn’t talk about how women should be glad they get pregnant when they get raped or some such bullshit.
I think this is what people need to understand: Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock were not some kind of aberrations. They’re just like every other Republican officeholder in the U.S. and far as their votes and beliefs go; it’s just that most Republicans who make it up far enough to get nominated for a statewide office know better than to get caught on camera saying what they believe. They all believe this shit, but McConnell and Cornyn, et al., know better than to let it slip.
The way I look at this is like with professional baseball. Congress and governorships are like the big leagues. Senate seats and governorships are the good teams, and House seats are the fair to bad teams. State legislatures and lame-O statewide offices are the high minors, and county council seats, mayors’ seats, state party offices and shit like that are low minors, and county party offices and town and city council seats are little league. You might stack this all some other way, but it seems to me to be as good a ranking as any other.
So you get a guy like Mourdock, who has risen up to the high minors, but he really isn’t good enough to play major league ball, and he flamed out. Akin was barely good enough to ahng on to a job on a bad team, a utility kind of guy, but when a good team traded for him and put him out on the field, he bombed.
But the only thing that divides the big league guys from the hapless minor league losers, the only skill they have to have to rise, really, is how well they can keep from letting slip what they really think. McConnell, Conrnyn, Cantor, these guys are pros. They’re all stars. They almost never slip up. Guys like Sessions or Grassley, they’re good enough to play, but maybe you want to keep them on the bench when it’s a big game. Bachmann, Steve King, Paul Broun–these are the marginal big league players stuck on bad teams. They make a lot of mistakes, and nobody wants them playing when it’s a big game, but they play on such bad teams (read: safe districts) that they can hold their spots, because as bad as they are, they’re just barely better enough than whoever would replace them that it isn’t worth making a switch.
I’ve beaten the analogy into the ground, but I think the point holds. The only thing that sets McConnell and Boehner and others like them apart from the nuts isn’t their beliefs or how they vote; it’s their professional skill–how good they are at not saying something crazy or dumb–that is, what they truly believe– when the cameras are rolling.
FlipYrWhig
@Marc: the only way I can get any sense out of the Miller comment is if I read it with an implicit preface like “Stupid liberals must think that…” Because then it would be about how it’s foolish to think that the staid Muslims can ever overcome the anarchic, dangerous ones, much the same way that the dowager never defeats Groucho Marx.
Jennifer
Damn. And here I was all set to write the script for Mr. Creosote Goes to Washington.
Dan
Margaret Dumont. There’s some hip Dennis Miller comedy For the kids.
Ruckus
@Tokyokie:
Ahh the smell of fried brain. Smells like stupid.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: and beyond the strained attempt at funny, the same sophisticated understanding of world affairs McCain displayed with his “Tell them to cut the bullshit!” comment.
Ruckus
@Chris:
Nixon did what was necessary to win. Yes he was conservative(and in his time that didn’t mean batshit crazy, only crazy) but that didn’t stop him from recognizing what it took to win. A pragmatic conservative asshole. That pragmatism is missing in today’s conservatives. It has been replaced with insane righteousness.
Christie still has some of that pragmatism left. Doesn’t make him good, just better at fooling some people.
Haydnseek
@JPL: This is snark, right?
Glocksman
@Augie:
For New Jersey perhaps.
For The Heartland™, he’s practically a Communist.
This is from Hot Air*, so take it for what it’s worth.
*Hot Air, Balloon Juice. Same thing. :)
KCIvey
How did Romney look on that chart before his “public issue statements” started reversing his previously held positions as he sought the nomination? Give Christie a few months to disavow every moderate thought he’s ever had, then recalculate.