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Cruz-ifiction

Local Races Open Thread: Beto vs. Cruz, #TrueToForm

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Reports from last night’s debate:


 
And then…

Goal Thermometer

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Texas Brawlin’ Open Thread: Betting on Beto

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You know the Repubs are worried when they start the blatant ratfvcking this early. Per the Dallas News:

A person masquerading as a volunteer for Beto O’Rourke apparently sent text messages to voters Wednesday to give the impression the Democrat’s Senate campaign was seeking help to take “undocumented immigrants” to the polls.

A spokesman for O’Rourke’s campaign attributed the texts to “an impostor,” the Austin American-Statesman reported, and said campaign officials were looking into what happened.

“Hi, it’s Patsy here w/Beto for Texas,” the text said. “Our records indicate that you’re a supporter. We are in search of volunteers to help transport undocumented immigrants to polling booths so that they will be able [sic] vote. Would you be able to support this grassroots effort?”

Word of the messages quickly circulated on social media, prompting the campaign to follow up with another text message explaining that the impostor had signed on as a volunteer and then sent the unauthorized messages…

Even Chris ‘the Mad Bitcher’ Cillizza is excited — “Yes, the Texas Senate race is for real”:

Cillizza: It’s post-Labor Day. Is this race as close as most polling suggests?

[Texas Tribune CEO Evan] Smith: Well, it’s close, and more importantly it’s closer than nearly every general election race in Texas has been for several decades. There is general agreement among pollsters and political observers that O’Rourke is trailing by mid-high single digits. By contrast, the Democrat running for governor is behind by twice that amount or more. O’Rourke has raised more money than Cruz and has more cash on hand, meaning can he get his name ID up and his message out in a very expensive state. He is already getting tons of free media. But Texas is a red state, and that’s the mountain he has to scale. The odds are still against him, though they’ve improved…

Cillizza: Cruz seems to be worried. They have started attacking Beto over being in a band, wearing a dress and a past (known) DUI. Is this a sudden panic?
Smith: They’re definitely sounding the alarm. Not sure it’s panic quite yet. O’Rourke is still relatively unknown, so they’re trying to define him in character terms before he can define himself. Oldest trick in the book. They’re betting that his younger, wilder days will be a turn-off. Hmm, where have I heard that phrase before? Oh, right, George W. Bush. Who won the presidency. For this strategy to be successful, you’d have to believe there are voters who are toying with voting for O’Rourke but won’t because HE WAS IN A PUNK ROCK BAND. I’m not sure this is a “Footloose” election cycle…

Goal Thermometer

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CPAC Open Thread: Social Notes from the Clown Parade

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Why I love Twitter, for days like this…


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Russiagate Open Thread: Trump Is Really Angry At “His” Government

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Yeah, he’d be just about as terrible to everyone-not-a-rich-Republican as the Malevolent Leprechaun, but I’m not sure Cruz could even get confirmed, given how much his colleagues do not love him.

And it could be argued that, while his intentions are equally horrible, Cruz doesn’t have Jefferson Beauregard Session III’s lifelong bone-deep Confederate indoctrination to help him disguise his deep-seated racism.

Props to the CBC, though:

I wanna do a Jared ‘Simple Tootsie from the Country’ Kushner post, but there’s TOO MUCH BREAKING NEWS. How do the paid professionals keep up? (answer: they’re paid to do so!)

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Open Thread: Good News on the Preserving-Obamacare Front?

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Doubt I’m the only one getting a “Throw it to Ted, everybody hates him already” vibe on this one. But if Ted ‘The Anointed One’ Cruz is vain enough to jump at being elected fall guy, who are we Democrats to argue?

… — The original bill is ‘dead.’ That’s what Cassidy said on “Fox News Sunday,” and McCain suggested similarly on “Face the Nation,” with the caveat that “it’s probably going to be dead.”…

— Ted Cruz is top salesman for new plan. The Texas senator will be touting his amendment across the week, suggesting that his and Sen. Mike Lee’s support is contingent on including the provision. The Washington Post reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may ask Cruz to speak to senators as soon as Tuesday…

… Cruz is mounting a defiant defense of his amendment and the need to get an ACA repeal done. “Failure is not an option,” the Texas senator said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

But he’s taking a more confrontational approach to winning support, saying on ABC’s “This Week” that Grassley was borrowing his talking points from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a serious charge in GOP circles.

“The Consumer Freedom option is the key to bringing Republicans together and getting this passed,” Cruz said. “What’s being repeated [by Grassley] is what Chuck Schumer said this week.”…

Kudos to Cole and his fellow West Virginians for spooking Capito-Moore Moore Capito (thank you, JR in WV) into voicing a no, too.

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Comic Relief Open Thread: Ted Cruz, Reaping What He Sowed

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Remember the old line about “We’ve already established you’re a whore; now we’re just haggling over your fee”? Well, Ted Cruz sold himself early, while the market was hot. What with all the breaking Trump news, I never got the chance to post Politico‘s story — “Cruz profited off Trump well before endorsing him“:

It took Ted Cruz four months and three weeks of “careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience” to declare publicly that he would vote for Donald Trump.

He made the decision to profit by selling his supporter list to Trump far faster than that.

Just six weeks after he dropped out – and more than a month before Cruz would dramatically snub the nominee at the Republican National Convention – the senator quietly began renting his vast donor email file to his former rival, pocketing at least tens of thousands of dollars, and more likely hundreds of thousands, that can be used to bankroll the Texan’s own political future…

The exact details of Trump’s financial arrangement with Cruz are unclear, and loose federal record-keeping makes it impossible to verify. But an email rate sheet obtained by POLITICO shows that Cruz asks campaigns to pay more than $22,000 for the right to send a single email his list of 280,000 digital donors. He charges more than $51,000 to ping his full email file of 1.28 million supporters. Because Trump has rented Cruz’s list so often, he is almost surely receiving a negotiated discount from the list price, industry veterans say.

“You are just a send away from reaching the most engaged and generous supporters in Republican presidential primary history,” the Cruz rate sheet says. More than $20 million was raised from Cruz’s email list, it says.

Since he exited the presidential race in May, Cruz’s campaign committee has reported a total of roughly $290,000 in list rental income, Federal Election Commission records show. Trump’s campaign directly rented Cruz’s list five times in June and since early July his joint fundraising committee with the Republican National Committee — which gives 80 percent of its proceeds to Trump — has rented the Cruz’s list more than 25 times…

In addition to paying to rent Cruz’s list, his campaign has offered some candidates the ability to strike so-called “revenue-sharing” agreements where, unbeknownst to the donor, Cruz and the renter split the donation. The rate sheet suggests Cruz would receive 60 percent of those funds, while the renter would receive 40 percent…

Nowhere in the fine print of the Trump emails does it disclose to recipients that they ended up on the GOP nominee’s email list by previously signing up for Cruz’s list.

After campaigns end, many candidates hire third-party vendors to manage their valuable email lists, paying them a portion of the profits for their services. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who ended his brief presidential campaign deep in debt, has made back $441,000 in list rentals in the last year, FEC records show…

Much more detail at the link — it’s always interesting to see how many behind-the-scene grifters experts get a swig of ‘the mother’s milk of politics‘.

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Early Morning Open Thread: Ted Cruz Slinks ‘Home’ to Trump

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Principles! Character!… (craven careerism)…

Remember when? The good old days, four months ago?…


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Late Night “Yup, Still the Wrong Choice” Open Thread

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From the NYTimes article:

… After declaring that he had unified the party in one of the most “love-filled” conventions in political history, Mr. Trump launched an extended diatribe against Mr. Cruz, who pointedly declined to endorse him during his own convention speech on Wednesday and instead urged people to vote their conscience. The speech embarrassed Mr. Trump and cast a shadow of discord over the convention, which had already been marred by plagiarism in a speech by Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, on Monday.

“I don’t want his endorsement,” Mr. Trump said angrily, in a rambling stream-of-consciousness performance that seemed half stand-up routine, half vengeful rant. “If he gives it, I won’t accept it.”

The remarks were a noteworthy display of lingering tension within the party and Mr. Trump’s inability to let go of grudges.

They also represented a seemingly inevitable reappearance of Mr. Trump’s irrepressible id. Having spoken from a teleprompter for more than an hour on Thursday, the final day of his convention, he seemed almost incapable of restraining himself any longer as the campaign moved into its next phase…

Mr. Trump briefly turned his focus from Mr. Cruz to Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, who will be formally nominated next week at her party’s convention in Philadelphia. Attention is expected to shift to the Democrats in the coming days, but Mr. Trump said that he did not expect to watch Mrs. Clinton’s speech because she is “boring.”…
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The RNC in Cleveland: Threat Level Plaid

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Open Thread: Your 2020 Republican God-King Presidential Candidate, America!

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Anybody with more than ten minutes’ exposure to Ted Cruz expected something terrible during his speech tonight, but HOLEE FARKING 1968, BATMAN!


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Open Thread: Return of the Cruz-ifiction Candidate

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With the Democrats openly rebelling against the NRA (and the GOP candidate flailing on all fronts), a call went out in search of a New Hope. And guess who happened to be waiting by the phone…

From the Hill, yesterday:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) attended a confidential dinner with more than 20 top conservatives on Tuesday night to plan his comeback as a movement leader in the mold of Ronald Reagan.

The dinner was at the Virginia home of conservative activist Brent Bozell, and the agenda was to plot Cruz’s future and the future of the conservative movement.

The undertone of the dinner was about how to position Cruz for a future tilt at the presidency and to spearhead the conservative movement from his seat in the Senate, those in attendance said.

Dining with Cruz and his chief of staff, Paul Teller, were some of the most powerful figures in the conservative movement.

The spectrum of economic, national security and social conservatives seated at the table included Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint, Club for Growth President David McIntosh, direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie, National Rifle Association board member and former Cincinnati Mayor Ken Blackwell, and Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser, sources confirmed…

Many of the leaders at the dinner want Cruz to run for president again, and they are viewing Cruz’s unsuccessful 2016 run as similar to Reagan’s failed attempt in 1976 to unseat the incumbent Republican president, Gerald Ford…

Reagan gave the grifting bigots of the “Moral Majority” a comfy seat at the top table, back in the day when AIDS was still a mysterious new “gay plague”. And as far as these good Christianists are concerned, it’s not as though the Orlando massacre involved, you know, actual American people — just “pawns of the devil“…
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Never Forget Open Thread: Don’t Take Your Eye Off That Cruz Guy

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If #Failgunner Ted is currently refudiating the Short-Fingered Vulgarian, it means he thinks it’s better to wait for Deadbeat Donald to crash’n’burn in November, by which time the “Cruz 2020: He TOLD You So” campaign will be ramping up. Because it’s not like it’s so hard to win favor with his fellow Repubs…

… unless you’re Ted Cruz, because nobody likes Ted Cruz. For good reason.

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This Is One For Every Patriots-Hater Out There

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The invaluable Charles Pierce on Donald Trump’s distinct political superpower:

It was Jeb (!) Bush who learned the second-worst thing for a candidate to be if he’s running against He, Trump—which is a humorless, privileged fop. The worst thing to be is what the Tailgunner was—a self-important dweeb with delusions of sacred grandeur. In both cases, you are a big bag of hot air in search of a needle. That is He, Trump’s only consistent political skill. No wonder Tom Brady loves him. Nobody is more skilled at deflating people than He, Trump.

I’d add — it’s hard for me to read this as anything but Barack I’m-So-Going-To-Miss-This-President Obama’s parting gift to that self important dweeb with delusions of sacred grandeur:

The White House is considering the creation of a national monument to the gay rights movement on a small piece of Greenwich Village parkland across the street from the Stonewall Inn, where a 1969 uprising helped inspire the push for equality, advocates said on Tuesday.

I know, I know. Not a done deal yet; just kicking the tires; who thought to get this out there today…

But still, even if it is a coincidence (and I’m really not sure that it is), a fine story becomes that much sweeter juxtaposed with Torquemada Cruz (you can’t torque ’em ada anything) on the occasion of his exit, stage far right.

Pedro_Berruguete_Saint_Dominic_Presiding_over_an_Auto-da-fe_1495

So yeah, while as many here have noted, Trump is a terrifying existential threat to the idea of the Republic, I still get some naches any day that Ted Cruz gets his comeuppance upside and down.

Open, the thread, it is.

Pedro Berruguete, Saint Dominic Presiding Over an Auto-da-fe, 1495

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Open Thread: (Character) Assassins on the Loose in Indiana!

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This is 2016, and #LeeHarveyOswald is trending on Twitter, because such is the state of the Republican presidential campaign. Per Politico:

Donald Trump on Tuesday alleged that Ted Cruz’s father was with John F. Kennedy’s assassin shortly before he murdered the president, parroting a National Enquirer story claiming that Rafael Cruz was pictured with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963…

“I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?” Trump continued. “It’s horrible.”

Trump’s tangent followed his rebuke of Rafael Cruz using the pulpit to court evangelicals for his son.

“I implore, I exhort every member of the body of Christ to vote according to the word of God and vote for the candidate that stands on the word of God and on the Constitution of the United States of America,” Rafael Cruz said in a video clip aired by Fox News. “And I am convinced that man is my son, Ted Cruz. The alternative could be the destruction of America.”

Asked to respond, Trump called it a disgrace. “I think it’s a disgrace that he’s allowed to do it. I think it’s a disgrace that he’s allowed to say it,” he said, before touting his support from Jerry Falwell Jr. and other evangelical leaders.

“You look at so many of the ministers that are backing me, and they’re backing me more so than they’re backing Cruz, and I’m winning the evangelical vote,” Trump continued. “It’s disgraceful that his father can go out and do that. And just — and so many people are angry about it. And the evangelicals are angry about it, the way he does that.”…

Failgunner Ted promptly returned fire, per the LA Times:

… “This man is a pathological liar,” Cruz said. “He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth.”…

Cruz called Trump “a narcissist at a level that I don’t think this country has ever seen. … Everything in Donald’s world is about Donald.” Not only that, Cruz said, Trump is “utterly amoral. Morality does not exist for him.”…

For good measure, Cruz also called Trump a “serial philanderer.”

“And he boasts about it … describes his battle with venereal disease as his own personal Vietnam,” Cruz added…

Me, I’m rooting for injuries. But the Sad! part — to quote one contestant — is that we all know where this will devolve, once Cruz has lost his final primaries…

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Open Thread: Cruz + Fiorina = There Is No Such Thing As Equality Within Today’s GOP

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cruz fiorina hastert luckovich

(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)
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So the analysts have spoken, and boy are they not impressed. Ed Kilgore, at NYMag, “Cruz Names Fiorina As Veep Pick — Smooth Move or Last Gasp?”:

… The only other time a presidential candidate has announced a running mate before winning the nomination was famously in 1976, when Ronald Reagan announced Pennsylvania senator Richard Schweiker as his veep choice before the Republican Convention in Kansas City. That, however, was three weeks prior to the August convention, not in April…

…[I]t’s not clear that Fiorina (who endorsed Cruz some time ago) will help him much in her “home state” of California. In her one political race prior to 2016, she lost to Barbara Boxer by ten points in the wildly pro-Republican year of 2010, though she did win the GOP nomination handily over mispositioned centrist U.S. representative Tom Campbell and conservative firebrand Chuck DeVore (Campbell was the target of the famous “demon sheep” ad crafted for Fiorina by consultant Fred Davis, who is now on John Kasich’s team). She immediately moved away from the scene of the political accident, relocating to a gated community in a suburb of that well-known entrepreneur’s paradise, Washington, D.C…

Simon Maloy, at Salon, “The way Ted Cruz made the “solemn choice” of picking a running mate reveals how awful a president he would be”:
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