Delicious schadenfreude, from Dave Weigel at the Washington Post:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) jumped out of a gray SUV and got back to work. Joined by a small staff and a few fellow Republicans, he’d taken an aerial tour to see Hurricane Joaquin’s flood damage to South Carolina. Now, he was hitting the ground to meet its victims, walking down the sloping streets of a neighborhood where each house was being emptied before the mold could conquer it.
“Everybody gripes about the government until they need it – sort of like a lawyer,” said Graham, the state’s senior senator and a struggling candidate for president who is among the diminishing number of Republicans still talking about the great things government can do.
In a week that began with Hurricane Joaquin’s floods and ended with the House Republican caucus rejecting the heir apparent to House Speaker John Boehner, flood relief stood out as an ironic topic in this key early nominating state. Skepticism of Washington and fear of federal power, always strong here, have rarely been stronger. Several of South Carolina’s Republican members of Congress are among the leaders of the rebellion underway inside the GOP.
All of it cements the uncertainty pervading the Republican presidential nominating contest — here and across the country. Much like in Washington, where the abrupt withdrawal from the speaker’s race of Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) signaled total party chaos, the view is fading that, eventually, this presidential race will get back to normal.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who recently called South Carolina a “lock,” is at 5.7 percent here, according to the RealClearPolitics average. That’s good enough for only fifth place, 28 points behind frontrunner Donald Trump and 12 behind former neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Four years ago, on his way to losing the state primary, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney never polled lower than 13 percent. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), another establishment favorite who is ahead of Bush nationally and rising in recent polls, is currently even further behind in South Carolina, with a RealClearPolitics average of just 5 percent.“The pattern of crowning the nominee has been broken,” said Barry Wynn, a former South Carolina GOP chairman whose office is festooned with Bush memorabilia, down to a “I Miss W” coffee mug…
“I tell ya, in retrospect, I don’t think we got a lot from George W. Bush,” said state senator Lee Bright, a 2014 primary opponent of Graham who now co-chairs the South Carolina presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). “You’d hope with the justices he appointed we’d see some improvement. We didn’t. Bush definitely didn’t move the ball for conservatives. If he’d have done half as much for conservatives as Obama did for liberals, anybody named Bush would have been our next president.”…
Emphases mine, of course.
Ayn Randy
Tell South Carolina it doesn’t get any federal money without strings being attached. And make their disgusting, human garbage of elected officials go on national TV and say, “We were wrong. We need the government.”
SFAW
Waiting for Reich to Rise to chime in and tell us how this is good news for
John McCainJeb!, and with his national numbers about to push below 7 percent again, the nom is a lock.SFAW
And if there was ever an inaptly named legislator as Lee Bright, I can’t think of one at the moment.
beltane
@SFAW: Jeb! is in the catbird seat. It’s all about the Benjamins.
dmsilev
@SFAW: Hey now, I’ll have you know that the Brinks trucks are backing up. As. We. Speak.
Schlemazel
If only that were a typo and they would finally agree, NO MORE CLOWNS FOR THE GOP!
But who am I kidding? They have nothing left but clowns
KG
Bush didn’t move the ball for conservatives… and yet they backed him on pretty much every single thing he did, at least until he nominated Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. No true
ScotsmanConservative, I suppose.rod smiff
With the Justices that C+ Augustus appointed, none of us will be seeing any improvement for a long time.
MattF
Ah, the deep bench. One thing that the Republican Establishment apparently didn’t quite get about the deep bench is that almost all of their oh-so highly qualified candidates were going to lose– just because almost everyone loses in a game of Political Musical Chairs. And many of the candidates weren’t used to losing, so there was always a good chance that it was going to be ugly. And then, of course, with the rise of asshole, lunatic, and liar, it just got ugly by definition.
Uncle Cosmo
Um…”Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” — Joseph Stalin
And who makes the machines?
“McCarthy Group” is essentially Michael R. McCarthy of Omaha.
I wonder what Jeb (thinks he) knows that he (thinks) we don’t?
the Conster
Bill Maher asked a great question of Secretary Moniz on his show the other night – how do smart people tell all the dumbasses to get out of the way so we can do things and fix things? I get the sense that Lindsay isn’t that dumb, but he’s chosen to play along with the willfully blind and the truly stupid and now it’s too late for him to matter, so he and his shithole of a state can go tits up for all I care.
Origuy
All you need to be the President is to be a True Conservative. Romney lost, therefore he wasn’t one. Jeb’s brother wasn’t one, so sorry, Jeb.
Robert Sneddon
@beltane: It’s more like Last Man Standing, and the Bush family can prop Jeb! up for the next six months easily. Money concerns are for little people like Rand, Carson and the like, the Bushes have the influence money can buy already in their pocket and that leverage can provide more money when it’s needed. Sure he raises money (or rather his family’s “people” do that for him), it’s what campaigns do, same as eating food-onna-stick at State fairs and having a bus with vinyl Stars and Stripes down the side, but his campaign won’t be put on hold because it’s short of funds, ever.
See also, Trump although I think his ego is not greater than his wallet. No Third Way run for him unless he can do it with Other People’s Money in which case, watch out, ego comin’ through!
Schlemazel
@Ayn Randy:
No, they need to come to DC and meet with Obama to personally ask for the money. Then every Congressman must sign a pledge that they will vote for emergency funds or their state will be forever barred from receiving emergency help from the Federal government.
I am sick of these fools and they need to learn some humility and the assclowns that vote them in need to understand there is no free lunch.
Patricia Kayden
So sad that after Republicans stole the 2000 election, their not-too-bright President couldn’t give them all the shiny ponies they deserved. Better luck with the next stolen election.
kdaug
No fan of the troglodytes, but these people will go somewhere…
? Martin
I love this magical thinking. Cursing that Bush couldn’t turn the sky green and vowing to only support candidates with no track record of failing to turn the sky green. Democrats are hardly immune from it, but I don’t recall ever seeing a party fall so far down that particular well before.
Elie
The right wingers keep being outraged that their agenda is not universally adopted. That just highlights their insanity and inability to comprehend basic cause and effect. Their policies: constant war, persecution of poor people and the “browns”, perpetuation of income inequality, allowing the environment to be destroyed, preventing access to heath care for all but the rich, are ANTI DEMOCRACY. They want an authoritarian dictatorship — preferably rich white people and want to dominate the world with their thinly veiled, white supremacy agenda. They have instead made it clear that they are an idiocracy. Yes, dangerous, because they unfortunately have some formal power in the system, but nevertheless completely incompetent and unable to govern in even small rational ways. Except for the followers, who also do not believe in democracy, these people are alternately scary and funny. The media is hugely responsible for these people being where they are and has empowered them, through their false equivalency shtick as well as by not shinning a full light on the content of these beliefs they have.
Punchy
I had NO idea they were so unhappy with CitzUni, the VRA case, Heller, Voter ID, Hobs Lobs….
JustRuss
@KG:
I don’t get it. What did they not get? Abortion outlawed? Concentration camps for gays? Mandatory gun ownership? More wars, because two just isn’t enough? More torture? What do they want?
NonyNony
What – you got two wars on a credit card and a whole lot of tax cuts. Isn’t that what you wanted?
Again – you got your tax cuts. You got your wars. What more did you want? Name it. What can the next president provide that Bush didn’t?
trollhattan
@MattF:
I think of it as the derp bench. I feel like they’re choosing among Jim Carrey, Moe Howard and somebody from the WWF. Do we really want to entrust any of them with the nuclear football?
goblue72
@Ayn Randy: There are strings attached to the Federal aid, which is part of why South Carolina pols are throwing a fit. New bridges built with Federal aid will be built to higher (more expensive) safety standards. Roadway money comes with more strings as well. And the Feds money has to be matched with local/state funds. The GOP knuckle draggers in SC are facing down a $400 million bill and refuse to raise any taxes to pay for it. They’ve already shred most of their social safety net, so who knows what they will cut to find it. I’m assuming Medicaid, K-12, and state colleges – the usual GOP playbook.
Patricia Kayden
@Punchy: Until gays and other minorities are banished and women can’t access birth control, Repubs are sobbingly depressed. It’s about keeping other people down for them. I fear how far they’ll push the next Republican President to the right.
goblue72
@JustRuss: I think they want all that stuff and more. Nazis are never satisfied.
Jeffro
How did Graham say this and not die instantly from irony poisoning??
Even my right-wing dad was making fun of LG’s most recent interview on CNN, where he got called out to his face about voting against aid for Hurricane Sandy’s victims, but of course wanting some sweet federal dollars for SC now.
Alex
So, looking at the crazy from the last three cycles—
2000 — George W. Bush (establishment) wins Iowa with 41% of the vote. Steve Forbes gets 30%, Alan Keyes gets 14%. McCain also gets 4% and Gary Bauer getting 4%. Then McCain wins New Hampshire, it dwindles to a two-person race between the two establishment candidates which George W. Bush rapidly wins. The crazy candidates there are Keyes and Forbes, I’d guess.
2008 — Weirdly, no crazy candidates posted good results. The craziest that stuck around would be Ron Paul and Giuliani. Ron Paul never did well outside of Nevada. Huckabee was also there that election, but he was still an establishment figure at that time. Giuliani is arguable — he polled well going into it, but his support fell apart due to everyone decided he was terrible and not craziness.
2012 — This is the model that people are predicting from, I’d guess. Which featured a single establishment candidate (Romney) making it through to the primary phase. And then took a few months of elections before Republican voters gave up and decided to vote for him.
————-
The early polling period is different than the election results. But from the past three primaries (which reflect the modern Republican primary and nomination system), I don’t see how people can predict what will happen.
If a crazy candidate makes it to the actual voting, and they win early primaries, no one knows what will happen. Romney won, but that was against multiple candidates early on and with a ton of money and with no other establishment candidate to compete with. Otherwise, the establishment candidates won Iowa and New Hampshire, which was enough to give them the win.
trollhattan
@Punchy:
I guess they’re still miffed about Harriet Miers. She would have really classed the joint up.
Germy Shoemangler
@JustRuss: What do they want?
[1890 Fable by Ambrose Bierce]
Elie
@Patricia Kayden:
Criminy, hard to think how much further right they could get than they have been already!
The biggest issue for me is that they have purged all their even slightly moderate potential candidates! They are light years to the right of what used to be considered “right winged” and the “red shift” (to use an astronomical term) is increasing…
Jeffro
@Alex: Both the Establishment and the Crazy better brace themselves this go-around, it’s going to be a wild one.
Hey on a funny note, just got done visiting with my right-leaning dad and left-leaning stepmom. Since the only news they regularly have on in the house is FOX News, stepmom had no idea, none whatsover, that Rep/Not-Speaker McCarthy had publicly admitted that the Benghazi committee exists to help drag down Hillary. I thought FOX reported, viewers decided?? You mean they don’t tell their viewers stuff that’s damaging to Republicans??
(Stepmom looked quite shocked that she’s not getting the whole scoop, so I let her know about Ellmers, too. Hey at least she hates Cruz so that must just be instinctive no matter how much FOXpaganda one consumes)
Mike in NC
Cruz will do very well with the elderly white Tea Party crowd in SC. Newt won the state four years ago against that RINO Willard Rmoney. JEB! might come in third or fourth place.
boatboy_srq
@KG: This is the problem with the modern Reichwing. When you’re running fast as you can to the Right, everything looks like it’s moving Leftward.
Germy Shoemangler
@Mike in NC: Cruz reminds the elderly tea party crowd of their grandson who they love dearly even though he ain’t quite right.
Schlemazel
@JustRuss:
They wanted magical unicorns. The truth is that the GOP can never deliver what these morans want. They want free money when they ask with no taxes. They want them coloreds back in the street bowing to them instead of up on the sidewalk acting like normal people. They want a world so frightened of the US that peace breaks out and everyone just gives American anything it asks for. The want a system whereby they each own their own business that is wildly successful because no taxes and no regulation. They want incomes so large that they never need a nickle for anything like illness or retirement. These are what the GOP has been promising for 2 generations now. Nobody can deliver that and if they did deliver the parts of those promises that could actually accomplish (zero tax zero regulation an even larger military) these fools would blame the Democrats for . . . well, something that they must have done to prevent the magical unicorns from floating down & shitting perfection on America.
Germy Shoemangler
@boatboy_srq: simple physics.
Phylllis
@SFAW: There’s also an upstate legislator named Mike Fair. A favorite line around these parts is that Senators Bright and Fair are neither of those things.
Doug R
@Robert Sneddon: That’s what people keep forgetting. Trump is always about other people’s money, he only spends his own when it pays off in self promotion.
Matt McIrvin
@? Martin:
You definitely see some of it in the Nader/Jill Stein wing of the American left. Some of those people are Sanders supporters this time around. But their total numbers are tiny and usually they don’t actually call themselves Democrats.
Doug R
@JustRuss: When your agenda is Cleek, you’re almost always going to be frustrated.
Elie
My concern is that we are great at describing what has happened, but what can we DO about it? Is our model like the family with a drug addicted member that needs to “hit bottom” before they can get help? What do you do when they steal your money out of your purse, or beat you silly? There are no “cops” to call — indeed, the media, which could at least talk honestly about the situation, instead enables the impaired persons to continue doing damage.
boatboy_srq
@Germy Shoemangler: Ah, yes. Science. That thing that the Reichwing insists doesn’t exist.
OzarkHillbilly
Jim Wright has another truly righteous rant up over at Stonekettle Station: More Bang Bang Crazy – Big Damned Heroes
Roger Moore
The problem for Republicans wasn’t the justices he appointed; it was with the justices they were replacing. He got to appoint replacements for Rehnquist and O’Connor, both of whom were on the conservative wing of the Court. You can’t move the Court very far by replacing a conservative justice with a very conservative one, or a conservative Chief Justice with an even more conservative one. You can only shift the balance of power by replacing a justice on one wing with a justice on the other, and he simply didn’t get the chance to do so.
trollhattan
@Mike in NC:
They sure don’t make locks like they used to.
Betty Cracker
Sweet babby Jeebus. The fucking Gators. Fucking fuck.
? Martin
@Matt McIrvin: Well, we got a nice strain of it in the single payer/kill the bill shitshow. That’s really what the GOP is saying here: we can’t get the votes for what we want, so the obvious solution is to ask for more!
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore: The additional problem was that the justices tapped to replace Rehnquist and O’Connor did what the Shrubbery intended – and it wasn’t enough. See my comment here.
? Martin
@boatboy_srq: This.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Betty Cracker:
So does Mizzou get a do-over? Asking for a friend.
Tim C.
@JustRuss: Yes. A total ban on abortion in all circumstances and methods. Anything less is RINO territory now. Even Scalia and Alito understand how bad that would hurt Republicans, so the usual gang of five haven’t ever taken the case that might do that, but that’s been the pony the hard right has been promised for a generation. The Plutocracy has gotten it’s scratch, now the fundies want a go.
nastybrutishntall
Pussy Ballot.
Box, Plentyholes elected to UMU tribal council
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Hee hee!! Your QB scared all our defensive guys with his yellow eyes & hulk-like body.
Edit: Will it be Nandrolone or Stanozolol? I’m going with the Nandro.
trollhattan
If you’ve never had an “eat the rich” moment, this article might be the gateway you’ve been looking for. I’ll being soy sauce.
While ostensibly about ghoulish water wasting during drought year four, it’s all the added detail about the lifestyles of our plutocrat class that sinks its claws into the psyche.
Not even Willard gets a jellyfish aquarium. BTW, the linked article (humorously titled “Wet Prince of Bel Air”) cites the greatest water user guzzles an astonishing 11.8 million gallons/year. That’s 36 acre-feet, or as much water as 72 typical American houses use.
Oopsie, I copied an FYWP word.
boatboy_srq
@? Martin: It really doesn’t help the Reichwing that the True Believers tend to have the competency level of Gonzalez and Yoo.
trollhattan
[Repost to avoid a word describing a place where Native Americans harvest money from rubes.]
If you’ve never had an “eat the rich” moment, this article might be the gateway you’ve been looking for. I’ll being soy sauce.
While ostensibly about ghoulish water wasting during drought year four, it’s all the added detail about the lifestyles of our plutocrat class that sinks its claws into the psyche.
Not even Willard gets a jellyfish aquarium. BTW, the linked article (humorously titled “Wet Prince of Bel Air”) cites the greatest water user as guzzling an astonishing 11.8 million gallons/year. That’s 36 acre-feet, or the amount used by 72 typical American houses.
Tim C.
@boatboy_srq: The level of self-delusion required to believe in things that are demonstrably false has very few real-world advantages.
Roger Moore
@Tim C.:
They ain’t gonna get it if it hurts the Plutocrats’ chances of holding onto power. You’d think they would have figured that out by now.
sm*t cl*de
@Elie:
The Long Con-job and the Tea-Party anger feed each other. “We give and give and give to all these causes that need all our money according to Glenn Beck, but it makes no difference! It must be the fault of those perfidious Liberals who are even stronger than we realised!”
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
The best bet is that the champion water user is one that has a thirsty garden, not one that’s guilty of architectural excess. Outdoor uses tend to dominate water use, and swimming pools actually use less water over the long haul than lawns do. Swimming pools with good covers that get used regularly use less water over the long haul than drought-tolerant vegetation. Unless the idiots with all the pools are draining and refilling them far more often than they need to, they aren’t likely to be the big problem.
Tim C.
@Roger Moore: I think in fact that the fundamentalist/racist base has in fact actually figured it out. That’s why the “establishment” candidates are losing so badly at the moment. Now I actually do think the usual rules of politics will return and Rubio will stagger into a marginal win. But he might not. These are the kinds of forces that have destroyed political parties in the past….
benw
@boatboy_srq: Nice.
gex
@Jeffro: I’m fascinated by that situation. I wouldn’t think it possible to continue to stay left-leaning if you only received info from Fox News.
ETA: Or how one remains only right leaning when they watch Fox News and already start out sympathetic.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
FWIW I never see new pools without a gajillion water features spewing and spraying the stuff everywhere, doubtless multiplying the evaporation rates like gangbusters. And where I live, folks don’t cover pools in summer because they heat up to bathtub temps and stay there if you do.
Certainly agree you can’t evaporate 1,300 gallons/hour, nor percolate it into the soil. Most has to be running straight into the sewer or storm drain.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Roger Moore:
Private golf course, probably.
gex
@Roger Moore: That was my experience with my pool. We had a built in auto-cover and I barely ever had to add water. (And as it was the vinyl sided pool, I didn’t have to empty it for winter). It really didn’t have that great an overall effect on our water usage. And as you point out, the lawn that I would have had there would have required much more water than the pool did.
Jeffro
@gex:
He actually watches it; she only hears it in the background and watches in passing.
rikyrah
@Elie:
All you say is the truth
PaulW
This is the horrifying thing. George W. did move the ball for conservatives, he gave them two massive tax cuts, he presided over a serious amount of deregulation, he put a lot of anti-abortion and anti-regulation judges on the bench, he really gave them conservative Justices on SCOTUS regardless of the current hatred for Roberts, he gave them patriotic flag-waving and war-mongering without the diplomatic niceties. And the Far Right base still feels betrayed… because 1) none of those moves resulted in the Randian utopia they were promised, 2) a majority of Americans went and voted for Obama and his commie mooslim agenda. Twice.
They will not be sated until they get absolutely everything they desire and they are standing over the ashes of the United States in triumph.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@NonyNony: You already know this but this is what they want:
Repeal of all Amendments after the tenth. No voting rights for women and blacks.
Deportation of every person of Hispanic ancestry.
Repeal of all equal opportunity laws.
Repeal of the income tax.
Dissolution of the entire judiciary, to be replaced by religious judges.
School resegregation.
Mandatory Christian school prayer.
Deportation of all non-Christians.
Reinstitution of slavery.
Banning of all forms of birth control.
And more. But you see, their claims are valid. Bush didn’t give them what they wanted, barely anything at all. And they have been promised every single one of these things for years by the GOP. This is why they’re so damned angry.
What needs to happen nationally is that these people need to be told they will never get any of these things, forcefully. They need to be led to an understanding that America isn’t going to put up with their attempts to drag us back to the 17th century, and they can either get with the program or “self-deport”.