If you want a good sense of just how out of touch elites are right now, here’s Joe Scarborough comparing Donald Trump to Reagan, then retreating slightly to saying that Trump will “shake up politics in a way not seen since Ross Perot sought the nation’s highest office in 1992”.
Look, I would love for Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee (I’d love for him to run third-party on the Birther Ticket even more), because that would ensure a huge Democratic victory in 2012, but there’s absolutely no evidence — none — that Trump would do well in a Republican primary. I cede to no one in my contempt for Republican primary voters, or so I thought. I guess I may have to cede to Joe Scarborough.
Update. Holy shit, I guess there is evidence. I still don’t think Republican primary voters are crazy enough to do this and I say that as someone who thinks they may be crazy enough to put up Michele Bachman.
Redshirt
It’s just air-defense flack, designed to throw off the trackers.
OzoneR
There is that PPP poll that show him second in New Hampshire, only six points behind Romney.
Comrade DougJ
@OzoneR:
For reals?
Joe Beese
Well, both men enjoyed their heyday in the “Rocky IV” 80s – back when people could still pretend we were #1. So why not?
Roger Moore
I think we’re going to have to wait a while for the
bullshitsmoke to clear before knowing what’s going to happen with the Republican nomination. The Republicans have been given a big bag of dicks, and now they have to decide which one they’re going to nominate. I don’t think that process is going to go smoothly or predictably.fasteddie9318
I can’t believe that Comrade DougJ, of all people, is arguing that it’s possible to underestimate Republican primary voters. Is Up still Up in this universe?
Also too, I’m pimping this.
trollhattan
@Comrade DougJ:
Yep. I think Chuck Norris could be a top-three candidate at this point.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/poll-trump-trails-romney-by-just-six-points-in-nh-primary.php?ref=fpb
dr. bloor
Are the Repubs still doing Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina? That’s going to be one entertaining, three-ring circus of head-trauma craziness. Mitt will be forced to speak in tongues and handle snakes to stay in the race past February.
Maude
Trump lost the tea party vote when he said that Ron Paul would never be elected president.
Kinda like McCain saying in Michigan, Those jobs are never coming back, my friend.
Resident Firebagger
The worse shit gets, the crazier people will get.
Do I think Trump will be president, or even come close? No. But not 100 percent no. Maybe about 98 percent at this point.
Because the worse shit gets, the crazier people will get…
Three-nineteen
This has “Fred Thompson fail” written all over it.
Southern Beale
OT, but here’s another example of what Doug said yesterday about our Galtian overlords not inventing perpetual motion machines but instead charging people more for fruit:
Sillicon Valley venture capitalists are throwing their money behind start-ups trying to reinvent the internal combustion engine.
And up next: the latest in space-age buggy technology!
Ash Can
Between Joe Scarborough’s incoherent blatherings and the feces flung around by certain commenters on this site, I believe I’ve exceeded my daily maximum dosage of crazy by a wide margin.
Martin
@dr. bloor: They’re all such different GOP bases. NH is a lot more like SoCal ‘worship the bankers’ Republicans. SC is a whole other diagnosis.
It’ll be entertaining for sure.
different church-lady
Pop quiz:
1) In the spring of 1992, which presidential candidate lead in the polls?
2) Who won the New Hampshire Republican Primary in 1996?
Lev
Yup, PPP had a poll showing Trump in second in New Hampshire, six points behind Romney, with very high support among teabaggers and birthers. He might not be as dumb as we think he is. I doubt Trump will be able to sustain it if he in fact runs–it’s impossible to see him doing retail politics, and he doesn’t exactly have the common touch. But if Bachmann wins Iowa and Trump wins NH, we might just have the greatest two-way race ever (maybe three-way if Haley Barbour wins SC, and why wouldn’t he?).
Doug, with all respect, you should never assume that birthers will come to their senses about anything.
Failure, Inc.
LOOKY MAW, HE THE MAN ON DA TEEVEE
Trump would do very well as a GOP candidate.
MattF
The notion that Trump has any viability as a candidate is just amazing– and “Politics for Dummies” is the least of it.
The only sort-of-rational explanation I can think of is that the powers-that-be in the Republican Party don’t believe they can win the Presidency in 2012, so they favor anything that motivates the base to get out and vote locally. But this is assuming some kind of rationality is going on somewheres in Republican-land, and that’s getting hard to believe.
danimal
@Roger Moore:
Is it necessary for the nominee to, um, have a dick? Cuz I’m in the minority that sees a pretty clear path to the nomination for crazy Michele B. While T-Paw and moRomney split the semi-insane vote, Michele has a clear run at the completely insane vote, especially if the Snowbilly Grifter and the Mean Preacher take a pass this go-round. The stupid vote is still up for grabs, but Gingrich may hang around long enough to mud-wrestle Trump (on live TV!) for that crucial demographic.
Seriously, Iowa and South Carolina are two of the first three races and look really good for Michele. NV and FL are states where she can be competitive as well. She’s got money, talk radio backers and scratches the crazy itch in the same way that Palin does, without the accumulation of Palin’s negatives.
Convince me I’m wrong. Please.
Midnight Marauder
By nature, Republican primaries are resistant to evidence.
rikryah
Trump vs. Bachmann…..
Love it…LOL
Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama
@Ash Can:
Now you’re sounding like just another riddikkulous! sanity boggart.
RareSanity
Just passing through folks, trying to re-cookify my mobile browser.
BTW, @DougJ, that “I just crush a lot” post title was awesome! Time to dig into the archives and pull out the Big Pun!
Sentient Puddle
@different church-lady: On that line of thought, now that I think about it, you’d have to go back beyond ’92 to find a non-incumbent candidate who won the New Hampshire primary and went on to win the presidency. Didn’t it used to be said that you can’t win the presidency without winning the New Hampshire primary?
OzoneR
@Comrade DougJ:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/05/mitt-romney-still-up-in-n_n_845133.html
Even DKos/SEIU says Obama only up on 9 NATIONALLY with Trump winning whites and men.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/05/963613/-Daily-Kos-SEIU-State-of-the-Nation-Poll:-America-hates-Trump#comments
freelancer
@RareSanity:
Here you go.
RareSanity
@freelancer:
ahhh… back when hip-hop was still a legitimate art form.
Southern Beale
@OzoneR:
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Thanks! I needed a good laugh!
Roger Moore
@danimal:
It is possible to be a dick without having a dick. I can’t reassure you about Bachmann getting the nomination, because I really think the whole nominating process is up in the air. Nobody on the right side of the fence looks both good enough to grab the nomination and actually inclined to step into the cesspit that is the Republican nominating process. That means every single likely candidate is deeply flawed: stupid, crazy, evil, unpopular, personal problems, personality problems, or several of the above. You can come up with a plausible sounding scenario for why the candidate of your dreams/nightmares will win the election, but several equally plausible scenarios for why they’ll be gone after the first couple of states. The only thing to do is to root for friendly fire to cause as many casualties as possible.
StevenDS
No way in hell on Trump. No way. At the very least, a presidential nominee has to pretend to be able to care about the plight of the working man, of the folks (as Bill O’Reilly would say).
Martin
@OzoneR: Trump can’t keep his mouth shut or his ego in check. He’ll fuck it all up once he’s on camera 24/7.
Comrade DougJ
@OzoneR:
Hitler himself would win whites and men if he had an R by his name.
Seriously, he would.
Comrade DougJ
@RareSanity:
Thanks!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@OzoneR:
9 points is a huge lead when both contestants have very high name recognition and well defined public images. Trump’s problem is that he can only improve his current polling numbers against somebody most of the public doesn’t know very well because he is already so well known himself. That might work for him in the GOP primaries against a ragtag collection of who-dat’s, but it won’t work in the general election against Obama.
Culture of Truth
“shake up politics in a way not seen since Ross Perot sought the nation’s highest office in 1992”.
Holy crap, that is exciting.
They are out of touch, but Morn Joe is not a complete idiot. It’s all an entertaining game to them. I mean, they’re on, what, 3 hours every morning? Gotta talk about something.
Dan
A fight over who gets to be the president of the short bus.
cat48
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ TO BE HEAD OF DNC! YES!
eemom
You DO realize that every time you post about that bathroom-rug-headed motherfucker I have to look at his hideous mug smirking at me from the side of the blog.
Can’t one of you computer wizards tweak that ad pop up thingy so it doesn’t do that?
Roger Moore
@Comrade DougJ:
FTFY.
Roger Moore
@eemom:
Just think of it as “every time the mention him, they’re charging him for blog upkeep”. It will help you to retain your sanity.
Martin
@cat48: Wow. That’s pretty cool. I didn’t much care for her defense of Hillary and the Florida primaries (which I understand), but that aside, she’s one of the best voices in defense of Democratic goals. I hope she books a lot of airtime.
Calouste
@Comrade DougJ:
I think Hitler did pretty well at winning whites and men anyway. Hitler being Hitler isn’t that much of a negative with some American demographics as being non-white is. His biggest negative with those demographics is probably that he was kind of a lapsed Catholic rather than an evangelical.
Nellcote
Well, there’s the whole being famous thing. See also Arnold Schwarzeneger (bad spelling, I don’t care)
MikeJ
@Calouste:
Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh seemed to like him ok.
Ash Can
@cat48: That sounds dandy. Like Martin, I had a couple of gripes with her during the 2008 primaries, but since then she’s been a pro-Dem powerhouse AFAIC. Good move.
Nellcote
@cat48:
Oh noez, it’s the Mommy Party! j/k
Seriously, that’s the best news all week. Hopefully she’ll leave the non-agression pact with Illiana behind.
Martin
@Nellcote: Arnold was a complete outlier. He was on the ballot with 134 other people. You can’t draw any conclusions from that election as there’ll be nothing else like it ever again.
Chris
@Comrade DougJ:
Are you kidding? Of course! And as someone else already observed, his original platform wouldn’t have put him in very bad standing at all.
Paging the Tea Party Movement…
JCJ
As I’ve said before, a dead cat with a birth certificate would win several electoral votes as long as it runs as a Republican. Whoever the nominee is will win all the states McCain won, then would only need to win a few of the states which recently switched to R from D in the recent gubernatorial elections (WI, OH, MI, PA) plus FL, NC, IN. I fear the future.
jl
@Martin:
Arnold did not have to go through a GOP primary to win election for gubernator uv Gawlivawnia.
Arnold could not survive a GOP primary anywhere, including CA, where the state GOP machine puts on slightly a more sophisticated and polished PR face, but has grown just as vicious and insane as in the rest of the country.
nota bene
Rather than just invoking Godwin’s Law on this thread, how about we substitute this guy instead.
Seems to me the national arguments are increasingly running along lines roughly similar to Hoover vs FDR….Democrats probably couldn’t go wrong trying to tie the modern GOP to Hoover. Hoover’s rhetoric is smoother than the teabaggers, and Obama’s is much less confrontational than FDR’s, but the parallels are inescapable.
(Hopefully we can avoid tying ourselves in knots arguing about who is or isn’t the second coming of FDR….)
Anyway, Donald “I Lost Money In The Casino Business” Trump would be a perfect foil for this….he doesn’t even have to win the nomination. Obama (or most likely his surrogates) can just take potshots at him during the primary season and try to hang a really, really simple frame (GOP = BILLIONAIRES) on the entire presidential field, not to mention the party at large….in the meantime, that could help during all sorts of political/legislative wrangling, like say over budgets….
JPL
OT…The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s initial analysis of the House GOP budget released today by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is filled with nuggets of bad news for Republicans……………………………………….
In addition to acknowledging that seniors, disabled and elderly people would be hit with much higher out-of-pocket health care costs, the CBO finds that by the end of the 10-year budget window, public debt will actually be higher than it would be if the GOP just did nothing.
must thank TPM… I’m sure the MSM will cover the fact that Ryan’s courageous plan is bullshit.
different church-lady
@JCJ:
On the birth certificate thing, apparently Trump can’t produce his.
On the dead cat thing, well I suppose that would explain the hair…
Failure, Inc.
@nota bene: Democrats couldn’t go more wrong. I doubt 1 in 10 voters could tell you who Hoover was.
Let’s not pretend we’re going to win in 2012 using election stratagems from 1932. A lot has happened in the last 80 years.
Splitting Image
You know how in 2008 they said that Romney’s problem was that he looked like the guy who fired you?
Trump’s will be that he looks like the guy who paid Romney to fire you.
Trump/Romney 2012!
jl
huh, people weren’t kidding about Schultz running the DNC. That is good news for today.
April 5, 2011 5:43 PM
Debbie Wasserman Schultz to take over Democratic National Committee
Posted by Brian Montopoli
CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20051006-503544.html
The bad news for today is that it looks like the GOP will try the shut down stunt again. They figure they will get it right this time. They won’t fall for some underpants gnome business plan again. it will go like this:
1. Shut down government
2. Somehow make the public, who approve of Obama and believe him far more than they do us, think that it is all his fault.
3. WIN!!
Let’s hope they are wrong again.
If the government shuts down, Newt will think it is a supernatural sign that his vision has been vindicated, and that the way is prepared for his grand return.
Mike in NC
There’s just something about loudmouthed bombastic assholes like The Donald and Chris Christie that appeals to a certain element.
cat48
@Martin:
The prez loves strong women and making History! (First female to head DNC). I think she’ll be great. She has soundly defended the Obama Admin. since the primaries were over. She was really great on MTP when defending HCR. I have Cable on constantly & she always does a great job.
Tweety said it wasn’t announced yet, but he was telling anyway.
Failure, Inc.
@different church-lady: That is awesome beyond words.
Where’s the birth certificate, Donald?
Redshirt
Just to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment, any chance Trump might be less crazy than your typical Wingnut? More cynical than crazy? And thus, of all the horrendous choices on the R side, he’s the least worst?
Roger Moore
@Splitting Image:
Trump’s is that he’s made a career out of firing people on TV. The dude’s tag line is “you’re fired” for FSM’s sake.
Mike in NC
@Splitting Image:
Trump’s massive ego wouldn’t permit him to even have a running mate.
jl
@Failure, Inc.: Oh well, there goes the Great Orange Headrug Hope. Too bad.
And the links says he born in ‘Jamaica Hospital’.
Jamaica!
What the hell? He was born in Jamaica?
Anyone want to bet that thought will not go through many of the teabaggers’ heads?
jl
@Redshirt: No, IMHO.
nota bene
….adding,
I’m not sure how serious Trump is about running. He might be doing what Palin is, i.e. pretending to run to drive up publicity for the affiliated TV show.
If he is genuinely going to try to become President, though, the only real political space that seems to be available to him is the H. Ross Perot Memorial RW Vote-Splitter path. A three-way election between Obama, (say) Huckabee on the GOP ticket, and Trump on the “I’m A Fucking Billionaire That’s Why” ticket would be every Democrat’s best-case scenario, I should think.
I will say that the GOP field is pretty obviously weak, so maybe it’s vulnerable to a dark horse sort of candidate. Trump’s not exactly a dark horse per se, but since he’s new to electoral politics, he might have just enough outsider cred to think he’s got a shot at the nomination. (Although it’s possible Bachman would steal a lot of the “outsider” oxygen Trump would need….)
different church-lady
@jl: thought… teabagger head… same sentence… you make a funny!
Nylund
Why is it that Republicans get a hard on for any candidate that has been on TV or in a Movie? Reagan, Fred Thompson, and Trump. For all their talk of how evil Hollywood is, they sure seem to be easily start struck by anyone who has been on the boob tube.
Martin
@Failure, Inc.: Too bad the Republicans are using that strategy. ‘Everything since 1932 is fucked up. Repeal it all!’
Elizabelle
@cat48:
Win!
Debbie Wasserman Schulz for DNC chair and
Tim Kaine for US Senate candidate from Virginia.
Win all around there.
nota bene
@Failure, Inc.:
The point is that the modern GOP sounds a lot like Hoover (with shorter sentences). Did you read the link?
What I’m trying to say is that it’s the Republicans that seem to want to re-fight the 1932 election. They still hate the New Deal and all of the social progress that’s been made since then. Why not take them at their word?
I don’t know if I agree with that, but I bet more than 1 in 10 knows what the Great Depression was, though. Depression/recession’s kind of been a topic of general interest the last few years, or hadn’t you noticed….
jl
I gathered, from the recent Lewis Black skit on the Daily Show, that Trump was in some kind of reality show where he got involved in a face off between Meat Loaf and Gary Busey in a rehab clinic in a fight over some pizza slices?
Trump would probably have to work those heroic scenes into a campaign ad spot to counter the T Paw action sequences in his World Doomslayer themed campaign.
T Paw, Doomslayer, and Mr “You’re Fired” would be such a totally totally totally awesome matchup.
Too bad it turns out Trump was born in Jamaica. That is worse than Nevis and St. Kitts, by far, which at least have some jet set class and classy old style resorts featuring old plantation days atmosphere (which should appeal greatly to our modern TeaGOPers).
Damn, looks like the second part of my planned vacation will be cancelled, since it involved cheap camping in a national park. Too bad I am one of the ‘lesser people’ who cannot afford something like a Nevis and St Kitts vacation on short (or even medium term) notice.
Spaghetti Lee
@JCJ:
In case you haven’t noticed, WI, OH, MI, FL, and PA are really fucking pissed at their new teabagger overlords. Obama won 373 electoral votes last election. How exactly does he lose 104 of them? All those states above would have to go Republican (and Wisconsin and Michigan haven’t since, what, ’88?) plus a few more. I just don’t see it happening.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
OMG! This is the sign! I LOVE DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ! The Democratic Party did something smart! Search the archives – I know I’ve raved about Debbie Wasserman Schultz on here (along with Mark Green).
This is great news!
Spaghetti Lee
I get that a lot of the old rules are out the window, but when was the last time someone won their party’s nomination coming straight out of the house of Representatives, especially someone who’s only been there for 3 terms and doesn’t hold any leadership positions?
I think it depends on if the GOP decides they can really beat Obama, or not, because it’s looking like not. With that in mind, I figure they’ll say fuck it and nominate Bachmann or whoever to keep the base energized.
General Stuck
Krugman has the dumbest article up he has ever written imo. Has every left wing trope on steroids for Obama sellout blather. If I didn’t know better, I would suspect Joe Beese ghost wrote it. I hate this kind of pol pandering to a fringe of the dem base, in a paper with the high profile of NYT’s, and the otherwise solid stature of Krugman on the subject of economics. He is better than this shit.
The Threat Within
Maybe he is just navel gazing for a Clinton/Obama redux for the coming election. Dems are not going to sell out medicare or let one nickel of privatization into it, nor SS. Not Obama, not any of the leadership. If he did, Obama might as well move back to his home digs in Kenya
Splitting Image
@Redshirt:
My personal opinion is that if Trump is more cynical than crazy then he’s the most worst, not the least. This is also true of Newt Gingrich. The reason is that a crazy person will pound the table for his pet issue (be it the gold standard, UFO conspiracies, or Trig Palin’s birth) long after everyone else as moved on. That makes them less successful politicians.
A cynical person knows when one scam has outlived its usefulness and hops on the the next one just as attention is being drawn to it. Trump is closer to Gingrich in this regard than he is to Michelle Bachmann. Bachmann is highly likely to make one gaffe too many and flame out in a long campaign. Gingrich will still be around whatever happens dispensing valuable advice to whoever does win.
See also: Greenspan, Alan.
Martin
@Spaghetti Lee:
Updated for 2008 rules.
Guster
@General Stuck: ‘He is better than this shit’ is one possible explanation.
JPL
@General Stuck: IMO, our President is trying to communicate with educated adults, not bullies. He has to take some lessons in fighting back.
jl
@General Stuck:
You can characterize the political comments in Krugman’s blog post as you wish, but I do not see what historical facts Krugman cites are mere left wing tropes.
The post was shrill, but I do not mind that at all. I do not consider ‘it doesn’t have a chance of passing’ as an adequate response. The proposal would be a moral and economic disaster if enacted, and I think it has to be pointed out loudly.
It also shows the inconsistency and total bad faith of the GOP, though that was not emphasized in the article.
I think the Democrats need to loudly offer a competing narrative to the public. One that has the advantage of being based on reason, facts, and history rather than fantasy, swindles, and lies.
Otherwise the other side, which is dangerously immoral and insane will try to sell whatever story they please, and win by inches over future election cycles.
JCJ
@Spaghetti Lee
I hope it wouldn’t happen, and maybe I’m an ultrapessimist since I live in an area where people put Scott Walker signs up again during this whole debacle here in Wisconsin. (I live among wingnuts and assholes – Waukesha County) Even if you leave out WI and MI it is doable (OH – 20, PA – 21, FL – 27, IN – 11, NC – 15, VA – 13, total of 107)
General Stuck
@JPL: @jl:
The GOP issues TODAY an insane plan to destroy medicare as we know it, and it is already time to bring out the pearls to clutch and for Kthug to write a thoroughly scurrilous, premature scree that conflates Obama’s posturing of pol optics to bipartisanship, with actual substance to actual selling out anything to the wingnuts the past two years. There is no Obama sellout, and has not been any. Just ask the wingnuts. What selling out with compromise has almost entirely been to satisfy the whims of a handful of blue dog senators. Yawn. Catfood commission redux on the lib blogs.
JPL
@General Stuck: I agree that the President is not selling out and will not sell out. Jay Carney made that clear today.
The CBO numbers analyzing Ryan’s plan should put a nail in that coffin but it won’t since the MSM won’t cover it.
nota bene
@Failure, Inc.:
I guess my reply got eaten by the spam filter, so I’ll try again. Anyway, the point is that it’s the Republicans that apparently want to re-fight the election of 1932. Why not give them the fight they’re obviously itching for?
Read that wikiquote link for Hoover. Does he or does he not sound like a modern Republican?
I don’t know if I buy that, but I bet more than 1 in 10 voters knows what the Great Depression was. It’s been invoked at least once or twice in the last couple years, if I’m not mistaken….
Guster
I will adopt Rosie if Cole uses this as a new tag for the site.
General Stuck
Paul Ryan just handed the dems the mother of all campaign ads for the election. All dems have to do is produce the video and air it, and travel the country telling seniors what it is. They did it to us on the HCR, and it was mostly lies. Dems will have the good fortune to tell gramps and grams the truth about what the wingnuts are up to. They will get it, and you could see top ten wanted posters of House wingnuts on the B boards of assisted living centers across the country by election day. STop worrying so much about whether Obama and dems are going to commit political suicide for themselves and the dem party over medicare or SS. AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN
jl
@General Stuck:
I did not accuse Obama of being a sell out. I said that the current approach of the Democrats is too weak to stand repeated assaults over election cycles and win consistently enough to protect the country from dangerous proposals like this Medicare phase out bill from the GOP.
And this plan has been around for quite awhile. Today was its strategic official legislative unveiling for some PR reason or other.
Other than that, you have your opinion, and I have mine, and probably that is all there is to say for now. We may or may not determine who is correct someday.
I am still sad because the chances of seeing Trump recycle bits from his reality shows in Pres ad campaigns has just gone down.
General Stuck
@jl:
Fair enough
Cacti
@General Stuck:
Krugman will never forgive Obama for denying his gal Hil her patrician right to the Presidency.
JPL
@jl: Don’t worry about Trump. What is he going to run on, how to declare bankruptcy and still end up with millions of dollars?
General Stuck
@jl:
The ideas on health care delivery via a voucher system has been around a while, and I think was last used during the HCR debate as a general GOP alternative.
But a still wet inked actual budget applying this philosophy to medicare in lieu of the current system is brand spanking new, and with any luck and the FSM, will be the nail in the GOP coffin on this debate. and maybe the election.
AxelFoley
@fasteddie9318:
ROFL
AxelFoley
@danimal:
Michele has a vagina. That will only take her so far in the GOP.
AxelFoley
@JPL:
If he needed lessons in fighting back, he wouldn’t be in the White House today.
Mnemosyne
Donald Trump will be 2012’s Rudy! The more people see of him, the more they’ll hate him, until he’s forced to slink away with his tail between his legs.
Also, I still think that Palin will be 2012’s Fred Thompson, too lazy to do the work you need to do in order to run for president.