Understatement RT @mmurraypolitics: 3 estab favs in NYT piece don't have super fav/unfav
Jeb: 26-33 Nov
Christie: 29-29 Nov
Mitt: 32-39 Sep
— Steven Lombardo (@LombardoSteven) December 8, 2014
If they weren’t quite so malevolent, and didn’t have so much money to waste, I could almost feel sorry for these guys. In the NYTimes, “G.O.P. Donors Seek to Narrow Field of Presidential Candidates to One“:
Dozens of the Republican Party’s leading presidential donors and fund-raisers have begun privately discussing how to clear the field for a single establishment candidate to carry the party’s banner in 2016, fearing that a prolonged primary would bolster Hillary Rodham Clinton, the likely Democratic candidate.
The conversations, described in interviews with a variety of the Republican Party’s most sought-after donors, are centered on the three potential candidates who have the largest existing base of major contributors and overlapping ties to the top tier of those who are uncommitted: Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and Mitt Romney.
All three are believed to be capable of raising the roughly $80 million in candidate and “super PAC” money that many Republican strategists and donors now believe will be required to win their party’s nomination.
But the reality of all three candidates vying for support has dismayed the party’s top donors and “bundlers,” the volunteers who solicit checks from networks of friends and business associates. They fear being split into competing camps and raising hundreds of millions of dollars for a bloody primary that will injure the party’s eventual nominee — or pave the way for a second-tier candidate without enough mainstream appeal to win the general election…
Problem is, guys, nobody likes your “favorites” — not even you, if you’re gonna be honest. Maybe you should do something semi-honest for the first time in your miserable lives, and simply start bidding against each other for independent Repub voters’ ballots. Hey, it worked in the British Parliament back when England had an Empire…
Speaking of unloveable candidates, my cold heart is thrilled to hear that Willard Romney is still making life harder for “his” party…
Many donors said they believed that Mr. Romney was likely to wait until late summer to decide whether to enter the race, while Mr. Christie could make a decision much sooner. That could leave elite bundlers — already jockeying for status and rank within the campaigns’ likely finance operations — in an awkward position if Mr. Romney does not run.
“When you get that call” to commit to Mr. Bush or Mr. Christie, said one prominent Republican fund-raiser, “the answer to that question is yes.”…
They’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse!
Big if– nope, can't do it. RT @ZekeJMiller Neil Bush says Jeb should run http://t.co/YT8frnmB1c
— Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) December 8, 2014
Suffern ACE
Maybe when those Dutch motorcycle gangs get through saving the Kurds, we could import a few to decide which candidate the Republicans should have on the ballot.
Schlemazel
The thing is the GOP could run Chuck Manson & he would get 40-some percent of the popular vote from the start so they are close no matter what they run. There will be those who claim there is no difference between Charlie and Hillary, The media would chide Democrats for bringing up his past as ‘old news, long ago dealt with’ and poltifact would rule “Sorta True” but exaggerated, the claims he ran a drug fueled gang of cold-blooded killers, makeup artists would cover his forehead scare and he would appear on the Sunday chats where they would not be so rude as to press him on his claims that he was a friend of African-American’s and has always looked for ways to help them succeed.
TheMightyTrowel
OT: just had a major major major paper published – 12k words of text plus a 30k word catalogue. I’m hearing gossip i might be up for the journal’s annual prize too so that’s exciting. Drinking wine and being smug (and tired) down here in sunny Oz.
Schlemazel
BTW – if you have not been reading Ta-Nehisi Coates recently you are missing what may be the best writing on race in America in a very long time. It would be better if there were no cause for his pain & anger but damn that man writes with a burning soul than anyone certainly in the modern media.
Schlemazel
@TheMightyTrowel:
Is the article available on line so we can point out your painfully obvious failures?
COngratulations! Hope you get that shiny bobble!
TheMightyTrowel
@Schlemazel: it is, but that involves outing my real name. Also it means you guys get to see the embarrassment that is the house grammatical style of one of the major journals in my field. They insisted (multiple times) on changing “Grimes’ paper” to “Grimes’s paper”. I nearly broke my own nose head-desking when they told me that the latter is their preferred possessive.
Schlemazel
@TheMightyTrowel:
Understood – good luck & I hope yu get the recognition you deserve.
Gene108
The Fav/Unfav seems to show a lot of folks have not made up their minds. Thirty percent for and thirty percent against means forty percent have no opinion.
Gene108
@TheMightyTrowel:
Good job!!l!
raven
@TheMightyTrowel: Knock em dead. I had a paper accepted in the Encyclopedia of Distance Learning a few years ago and I was glad the thing sold for $1000 so not many people read it!
askew
The Democrats are pretty much doing the same thing by pushing the narrative that it is Hillary’s turn and how she doesn’t need a challenger.
Personally, I think we end up with Jeb vs. Hillary and the lowest general election turnout since in decades leading to a Jeb win. No one is going to be excited by a Bush vs. Clinton repeat. You aren’t getting new voters to engage with those old, tired political hacks.
raven
Nicole Wallace “doesn’t care what we do”.
JPL
@raven: Joe is a smug asshole. How does he know what happened in a national security meeting. They could have been as appalled then, as they are now. They could not open their mouths. Why the hell did I decide to stream this?
Schlemazel
@raven:
HA! I published a study I did while I was at Kennedy Space Center. I got a laurel and hardy handshake. Guess academia is more kind than government.
Alex S.
Yesterday, Politico reported that Sheldon Adelson is tired of picking losers and their super PACs and wants to found his own super PAC. I wonder why big money wants to back the winners. I mean, apparently, it’s not that they want to support ‘their’ candidate, no, they just don’t have one and they just want to support the one who eventually wins. That’s why those former Romney donors can’t yet decide. Apparently, they do not have a favorite in a Romney-Christie race, no, they just don’t yet know who is going to win. I guess it’s all about making an investment, about paying some money for a winning lottery ticket.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@TheMightyTrowel:
Congratulations!
But, sorry, gotta agree with the journal about the possessive.
Mustang Bobby
@TheMightyTrowel: Congratulations! As we say in theatre, if it’s done, it’s beautiful, and I hope you get the standing ovation that you deserve.
Mustang Bobby
@raven: As George Burns once noted, “It’s too bad that all the people who really know how to run the country are cutting hair and driving cabs.” He might as well add “having a gig on a cable show.”
mai naem mobile
@raven: Nic9le Wallace is tryong5 to pull the Dems are a bunch of peaceniks who’ll not defend the country. This coming from an idiot who did not serve in the Armed Forces and was in the Chickenhawk Administration. Fuck her and fuck Scarbo.
Jeezus, how many people are going to be in the Clown Car? Carson, Cruz, Bush, Romney, Paul, Perry? Gingrich, Rubio,Walker,Kasich,Christie, Jindal, King,King 2,Pence, Santorum, Sandoval, Haley, Huckabee,Martinez,Graham,Trump, Giulani, Pataki, FiorIna.
Xenos
@TheMightyTrowel: link please. Or at least tell us what it was about!
raven
@mai naem mobile: this
OzarkHillbilly
@mai naem mobile: That’s not a Klown Kar, that’s a Buffoon Bus.
BruceFromOhio
@Alex S.: Money, like water, seeks its own level. And shit still floats to the top.
@TheMightyTrowel: Good on yer! Careful getting inked, next thing it’s your name in lights.
Keith G
From the top
and then…
@Schlemazel:
The big problem is that there will be so much Koch activity (activity that has been refined and improved) attacking our choice, that this is going to end up a back alley slug-fest no matter what the final pairing is.
Our side can point, snark, and roll our eyes, but winter is coming – with a vengeance, and it is going to be brutal.
bemused
I’m re-reading Deer Hunting With Jesus and Molly Ivins stuff from 80’s and 90’s. Nothing much has changed with the rural, small town Republican voters barely hanging on, relying on some or a lot of gov’t help, fierce believers in personal responsibility and self-reliance. No matter how desperate their circumstances may have been, many are proud they have never used any social programs but don’t believe that gov’t has benefited them in any other way. They viscerally recoil when they hear words like taxes, unions, entitlements, liberal. They still hang on to the “trickle down” dream praying that big business will swoop in and revitalize their communities with jobs, jobs, jobs. Bageant and Ivins were describing conservative working class attitudes in the south but it’s much the same anywhere in rural/small town America. I read and hear these beliefs all the time here in the far north. I don’t know what, how or if anything can make a dent in beliefs that the right wing has planted and relentlessly cultivated for decades.
danielx
@mai naem mobile:
Exactly.
Clearly none of the “…the Republican Party’s leading presidential donors and fund-raisers…” have consulted the Faithful (read: those tricorne-hat-wearing yutzes) as to who their favorite(s) are/is at this point. Hint: it’s not Jeb!, the Marquis du Mittens or the Outlaw Jersey Whale. The party base regards anyone to the left of Genghis Kh- er, Ted Cruz – as a RINO squish, and they felt betrayed by Mittens’ winning the nomination in 2012. Can’t blame them, really; I mean, they weren’t and aren’t all that fond of Wall Streeters anyway (a sentiment I can get behind myself) and they felt like Rmoney was shoved down their throats by the Republican establishment. Then he got his ass handed to him by the Kenyan imposter, of all people. The mouthbreathers who show up at Republican primary debates* would rather lose with a candidate who they believe is ideologically pure and who they can wholeheartedly support than win with someone who would put a Muslim on the New Jersey state supreme court (Christie) or someone who commits heresy by saying that Ronald Reagan couldn’t get nominated as a Republican today (Jeb!), true though the latter may be.
*if there is one thing in this uncertain world of which I am tolerably certain, it’s that those “dozens of the Republican Party’s leading presidential donors and fund-raisers” would prefer to do away with primary debates altogether if they could, since those gatherings are where the ordinarily camouflaged Id of the Republican Party is publicly displayed in all its unlovely glory.
Mustang Bobby
@bemused: It’s the same thing that Thomas Franks saw in “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” It’s a lot easier to scare people with abstracts like gay marriage and abortion, but remind them of that nice couple of men that live across the street and they’re like “Well, they’re not like those Hollywood queers,” or “But my 12-year-old daughter got knocked up by her meth-making step-brother.” And they earned that Social Security, by golly.
No one ever lost an election by exploiting the greed, fear, and paranoia of the American electorate.
Southern Beale
Wait, I thought voters didn’t like “inevitable” candidates, they wanted candidates to “sweat a little,” at least, that’s what the media keeps telling me. You know, in their eleventybillionth “piss on Hillary’s parade” story?
So confused.
danielx
@bemused:
This.
Was an article in Salon earlier this year by one of those folks, a guy who finally saw why it was illogical to support the Republican Party – who saw the light, to use his phrase. Last paragraph of his piece:
Iowa Old Lady
@TheMightyTrowel: Congrats!
The Chicago Manual of Style endorses that formation of the possessive, but adds, “feelings on these matters sometimes run high.”
JPL
@bemused: I mentioned last night, that when Jimmy Carter first ran for Governor of GA, he ran on an urban/rural message. It’s how you win in the south. The rurals believe that the urbans are taking all of their money. Logic is missing and I’m beginning to think it has something to do with the DNA.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady:
I had thought the ‘s was the standard formulation also.
Baud
@JPL:
It does seem that rural/urban is a bigger divide than even race. I wonder if part of it is a free rider problem. It’s not as if Democrats have affirmatively pushed to screw over rural voters even though rural voters consistent vote for the GOP, so there is no downside for rural voters to stick with the GOP.
OzarkHillbilly
@Southern Beale: GOP voters versus Dem voters. Authoritarianism versus Democratism. People who want to tell others what to do, versus people who don’t.
Iowa Old Lady
@OzarkHillbilly: I’d say both sides want to tell people what to do. They just want to issue the order on different subjects. Air pollution vs. same sex marriage.
ETA: But right wingers do tend to feel more put upon. When told that someone else’s marriage is none of their business, they howl that they’re the ones being discriminated against because they can’t discriminate.
Mustang Bobby
@Iowa Old Lady: Or put another way, wingers are very good at running someone else’s life, but not their own.
JPL
@Baud: In some places it’s also a code for race.
Xenos
@JPL: rural people understand the rural economy. Land plus labor plus good luck = production. People in the cities eat the food but don’t pay enough for it, keeping rural areas poor. Banks in the cities practice a rigged game that drains wealth from farmers. The lax morals and such demonstrated by the urban elites is proof of bad intent on their part against the countriside.
Keith G
@JPL:
They seem to believe in a mythos based on a reality that has not existed for generations, ie the rural world exists and prospers independently of governmental action and regulation.
I grew up among them. Their self-delusion is amazingly strong.
Edited:
Some of this can be understandable as it is a part of our founding myth. It is a comforting set of beliefs.
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady:
Your absolutely right, I am more than willing to tell corporations they don’t get to tell me what I get to breath. :-)
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Fascist!
Tsukune
@Schlemazel:
Charles Manson: The Family Candidate.
Baud
Watching Obama on Colbert this morning. I’m going to miss Obama in 2017.
JPL
I have no idea whether or not the government will continue to function but I found this paragraph from the NYTimes interesting.
It’s apparent that they really don’t care about the health of Americans. Congress is also a codeword for whacko
Republicans.
beltane
@Baud: It goes beyond policy. For decades, perhaps since forever, the media and popular culture have protracted rural white Americans as Real Americans, Rugged Individuals, the model the rest of us should strive towards. These people have a vastly over-inflated opinion of themselves. I live among these people. Though they live in a cesspit of ignorance, squalor, and parasitism, they strut around with the attitude they they are God’s gift to humanity. As a group, they contribute very little to society and are very costly to maintain. Maybe someone should run on that.
gene108
@Xenos:
May have been true 100 years ago, but today most people in rural America are not involved in agriculture. They would be involved in the service economy, but as they are poor, no retail establishments want to open in their towns because of lack of purchasing power.
Back in the day, some of these towns may have had a thriving middle-class as there were factories and/or mills where people worked, but those closed down.
Thriving cities are propping these places up via Federal tax money going from urban areas to rural areas.
beltane
@gene108: The only retail in a lot of rural areas are dollar stores, selling the cheapest of cheap Chinese crap. And if someone wants to talk about lax morals, all I can say is that you haven’t experienced lax morals until you’ve lived among rural whites.
SRW1
The fav/unfav ratings won’t matter that much if the Repubs can drive the disgust of the public with politics to even more astronomical levels. After all, compared to the Democratic Party, the congressional GOP was way in the red bevor Nov 4, and yet the elephants beat the donkeys handily at the only poll that really matteres. In a low turnout election the GOP may still manage to prevail at the national level.
Baud
@beltane:
Urbanites care about too many other things, and the suburban vote is too divided, for anyone to run against rural areas. If there is a change in the dynamic, it would have to come from the ground up.
OzarkHillbilly
@gene108:
Been trying to tease that data out of the internet but my google-fu is weak. I have found this tho from the Pew Charitable Trusts. It is helpful anyway.
chopper
@mai naem mobile:
It’s more a clown TARDIS at this point.
balconesfault
I love the thought of the average Tea Partier getting the news that big money guys who care nothing about him except for his vote are going to pick the GOP candidate independent of his meaningful input.
beltane
I just saw on Twitter that the average age of Bill O’Reilly’s viewership is 72 years. This country is being sabotaged by a cultural revolution led by fanatical old people. Not sure there’s ever been anything like it before.
Baud
@beltane:
Most people in most places in most times stand up to the people who hate them.
ETA: 2014 America gets discouraged instead.
Iowa Old Lady
If the Rs run Jeb, maybe they can get Liz Cheney to be the VP candidate. Double win! They score a woman on the ticket and can just drag out the old Bush/Cheney bumper stickers.
Betty Cracker
@Baud:
Me too, but he’ll still be a relatively young ex-president, so I’m hoping he’ll stay involved in public life as a private citizen. I think it would be wonderful if he chose to get involved in a civil rights organization or even found his own — FSM knows there’s much work to do on that front.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I’m sure he will be involved in something, hopefully after a good long vacation.
VOR
@mai naem mobile: Bachmann is making noises about running again.
beltane
@VOR: What type of noises is she making? Fart sounds? Squeals? We need to know these things.
One day, after he leaves office, I would like Obama to write a book telling us what he really feels.
Betty Cracker
@VOR: Her post-Congressional business model appears to be patterned on Newt Gingrich’s formidable grift machine: Gain notoriety in office and leverage it to milk the rubes as a private citizen forever. It’s worked out pretty well for Gingrich.
Gene108
@balconesfault:
Conservatives in the USA are closet fascists. They would be more than happy to follow the orders of the oligarchs; it would make them feel an important link to the rich and powerful, as if they were also part of the billionaire set by supporting what the billionaires support.
Mustang Bobby
@Betty Cracker: Sarah Palin makes Newt look like a piker. She’s P.T. Barnum in drag.
balconesfault
@Betty Cracker:
Could he please replace Al Sharpton as the “go to black guy” when something racial explodes in America?
Gene108
@beltane:
Yeah, dollar stores and gas station marts serve as the local grocery store. There’s a myth that rural Americans are hard working small farmers, which is no longer the case.
They are just a poor version / shadow of suburban America.
Betty Cracker
@Mustang Bobby: I’d love to get a look at their balance sheets. My sense is that, although Palin is the louder huckster, Gingrich is more strategic. He’s been out of public life for ages, but his machine is still humming along. Palin will be reduced to new Hobby Lobby location ribbon cutting ceremonies within a year or two.
Keith G
@balconesfault: Yeah, that ain’t happening.
@beltane: Generalize much?
bemused
@danielx:
I don’t think diabolical is too strong a word to describe how the right wing has used the strong pride americans have in working hard for their families to survive and thrive as best they can against them. They hear life is tough, you just have to suck it up, get more gumption, gov’t help is a cop out, if you’re not superhuman, you’re a loser. The right wing has convinced them that affordable housing, food stamps, UI, universal preschool, etc. equals something for nothing, damn gov’t giveaways. Bageant quotes one guy, those are “Luxuries we don’t really need, we used to get along fine without them.They ain’t necessities. If people want them, they’ll get off their lazy asses and work for it.” It’s no wonder they are deeply ashamed when they fall short of being superhuman and deeply conflicted taking part in social programs. They hate taking it but they need and deserve it.
They don’t seem to have noticed that right wingers feeding them this propaganda don’t practice what they preach, eagerly taking any damn gov’t entitlement they can get their hands on, no shame at all.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
My hunch is that the big difference between them, beyond the fact that Gingrich has been at this longer, is that he has more connections to big money GOP insiders.
Betty Cracker
@Keith G:
Why not?
Villago Delenda Est
Neil Bush? The son of the vile bitch Bar who should be languishing in a cell for bank robbery? That Neil Bush?
Keith G
@Betty Cracker: I just do not see that as being his passion.
He may certainly end up with an “Obama Center” that focuses on such issues, but I do not see him in the role as a go-to “point man” every time an intense issue is addressed as would happen if he were to step into a modified Sharpton role.
Villago Delenda Est
@Keith G:
You mean like the part where the Archangel Gabriel delivered the text of the Constitution on stone tablets to all those guys in Philly?
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Cause Al ain’t giving up the position? Seriously, I hear some blacks complaining at least as loud as some whites do every time Al shows up, but he keeps on hijacking*** the spotlight.
***I use the word advisedly, as I find his defenders to be equal in #s to his detractors among blacks.
Keith G
@Villago Delenda Est: An absolute small number might believe that. For most others, it is a bit more nuanced and less centered on hocus pocus.
Villago Delenda Est
@Keith G: Oh, I don’t know. There are a not negligible number of people out there who insist that this is a “Christian Nation” despite all the documentary evidence to the contrary in the hands of the Founding Fathers themselves.
balconesfault
@Villago Delenda Est: lol – yep – Jefferson was certainly a “Christian” … once he cut out all those silly stories about Miracles and scripture claiming Jesus was God.
Keith G
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes there are those.
I guess what I am getting at (based on a small sample size – small community farmers of a four county region NW Ohio in the 60s and 70s) is that while there are ideologues there, the population also has a high number of pragmatists whose main concerns are focused intently on their immediate cash flow.
Ksmiami
I say the dems should cut programs for the rural inbreds. These morons need to feel the full brunt of GOP policy. I’m sick of them and aging whites actively retarding this nation. Eff that
Keith G
@Ksmiami: That can happen when the political parties tell Iowa and it’s caucuses to go fuck themselves.
Bobby Thomson
@Baud:
“Urban” = brown. The intended audience understands that.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Well, there’s a naked statement. The Money Party.
They need to anoint one now, they’re right about that. If they have another 2012-style primary, their candidate will pull low teens no matter how much money they dump into the race.
Of course the problem is that the base wants a 2012 primary, preferably with more town halls where they can cheer for executions and people dying on the streets. Rock, meet hard place.
shelley
Christ, just how eager is Mitt to become a three-time loser?
Mnemosyne
@bemused:
One of the most depressing things I read lately was a comment by a guy who proudly stated that he has colon cancer, but he’s not going to “take charity” and buy health insurance to have it treated. Instead, he’s going to pay cash for all of his treatments and then stop when he runs out of money, even though this plan seems like it’s going to leave his wife and son destitute. But at least he won’t have accepted help from anyone else.
I honestly don’t know how you sell a civil society to someone who thinks that accepting help from anyone in any form is morally wrong, even by joining an insurance policy pool.
Bobby Thomson
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Partially right. Rmoney could win a war of attrition against the crazies because they all split the crazy vote and he could play whack a mole with the leader. If the establishment vote gets split, and the crazy vote coalesces around Cruz or Paul, all bets are off – but I doubt the crazy vote will unite until it’s too late.
gene108
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Clearly Mitt’s money and concurrent infrastructure advantage in all the states cost him the GOP primary in 2012.
I do not think the current crop of GOP hopefuls are going to be as pitiful as Santorum, Gingrich, et. al. who had no infrastructure anywhere and survived on the largesse of sugar-daddy billionaires.
I think, if Paul, Cruz, Rubio, et. al. get into the race they will have some level of infrastructure and fund raising to be competent candidates, in the sense they will have the resources and people lined up to contest in the primaries versus Christie, Jeb, etc.
The risk the GOP has is that they get too many candidates in the field, such as Christie, Walker, Paul, Cruz, etc. who will divide the base up and have enough infrastructure to wage a protracted and nasty primary.
bemused
@Mnemosyne:
Wow. Better to have his wife and son be destitute or take charity after he is gone as long as he sticks to his principles.
It’s a sick, slick trick the right wing have played on these people. I think they are victims of a form of Stockholm Syndrome.
Roger Moore
@beltane:
Given past performances, I would assume she’s speaking in tongues. At least that seems like the most likely explanation for the stream of gibberish that passes for her speech.
jonas
Shorter NYT: rich conservatives plot to buy GOP primary before rightwing rubes in the base have a chance to spoil it for them. The base wants some combination of Rand Paul, Ben Carson, and Mike Huckabee. The rich guys (and the beltway Villagers) want Jeb Bush or Chris Christie. Heck, Mitt Romney essentially bought himself the nomination last time, so why can’t it be done again?
Popcorn futures are climbing…
JoyfulA
@TheMightyTrowel: That’s the preferred possessive in nearly all academic publishing.
catclub
@Bobby Thomson:
And I think Ted Cruz is already locking up the far, far right, unlike what happened in 2008 and 2012.
His wife is a banker, he will also find money.
tam1Mi
My guess is that the Big Money Boyz are going to unite on ol’ Jebbie. He doesn’t have a lot of super-high positives as far as Republicans go, true, but neither does he have a lot of negatives. So he’ll be the safe, if unexciting, choice.
Bobby Thomson
@catclub: Backpfeifengesicht.