Top line from today’s New York Times/CBS poll of the Republican presidential primary:
The proportion of Republican voters favoring Mr. Carson rose to 23 percent from 6 percent in the previous CBS News poll, which was taken just before the first televised Republican debate in early August. Over that same period, Mr. Trump made modest gains, to 27 percent from 24 percent.
In case any of our MSM friends are truly arithmetically challenged, that means that Donald Trump and Ben Carson — two men who have less capacity to fill the office they seek than I do to perform neurosurgery or figure out how to lose money owning a casino — combine to grab half of Republican electorate.
50%.
One out of every two polled.
Damn.
The key number, of course, one that I’m sure leapt out to this particular audience, is Trump’s total, that “modest” step to precisely the level that John Rogers identified, so long ago, as the crazification factor:
John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is —
Tyrone: 27%.
John: … you said that immmediately, and with some authority.
Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That’s crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.
John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behaviour? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification?
Tyrone: Hadn’t thought about it. Let’s split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification — either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.
John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US?
Tyrone: Does that seem wrong?
John: … a bit low, actually.
Of course, based on the recent polling gains recorded by our favorite lunatic neurosurgeon, we may be in a situation even the great Kung Fu Monkey has not yet encountered. It’s entirely possible that we could soon see a survey that has both Trump and Carson at 27%. Do we have non-overlapping magisteria of crazy working now in Not-Your-Grandparents’-GOP™?
Open Thread, my friends.
PS: Bonus link to Charles Pierce on the special snowflake that is Our Donald. When Pierce nails an image, that image stays nailed:
Trump is so thin-skinned that, if he swallowed a flashlight, he’d glow like a Japanese lantern.
Hieronymous Bosch, Ship of Fools (detail), betw. 1488-1510. (Unsure on the color correction on this one, folks. Been decades since I saw it in the flesh).
Barry
The good news is that we are clearly in the ‘Clown of the Month’ cycle.
Back in 2012, somebody coined the term ‘Not-Mitt’, to describe the desperate seeking of somebody, anybody but Mitt. The Not-Mitt of the moment would get onto center stage, where the spotlight would mercilessly reveal just how bad they were.
SiubhanDuinne
There’s a link in Charlie’s piece to last night’s Balloon Juice thread that Anne Laurie put up. Always nice to be reminded that CP reads BJ.
HumboldtBlue
Jerry Brown takes Mr. 23% Carson to school and tells him to do his homework
Elizabelle
From the crazified NYTimes political coverage: reader comments are slamming CNN about tomorrow night’s debate. They see it as the clusterf*ck it’s likely to become (and $$$ for CNN; about as good as a Kardashian serial killer highjacking a missing airliner).
CNN Hopes to Capture Candidates’ Combative Spirit in G.O.P. Debate
Did that really happen?
NY Times readers put up many comments about steel cages and boxing gloves, and more than a few want Jon Stewart to show up and scold CNN again.
Frankensteinbeck
Bear in mind, Carson’s appeal is also racism, but with the ‘My best friend is black’ caveat. I’ve watched him on FOX. His job there is to explain that he’s successful because he’s a hard worker, and black people today are not successful because they’re lazy, so you should take away welfare and force them to work harder. He doesn’t code phrase it, either.
Yatsuno
@Barry: Except The Donald was supposed to have either flamed out or faded by now. I can only attribute Carson’s rise to those who can’t admit that they would vote for Trump in the primary or who think the right needs their own Obummer. Either way they can’t really be paying attention to what he is saying, which is horrfyingly stupid.
Calouste
Recycling this from the other thread:
The other 5 most recent polls on RealClearPolitics have Trump leading Carson by 12-16 points. This poll is quite the outlier in that context.
Elizabelle
Also, they have the ghost of Ronald Reagan’s Air Force One in the background, and now that the only candidate (to my knowledge) who had some clue on to fly it is out of the race ….
** this would be Rick Perry, a candidate Michael Reagan has described as “Reaganesque.” If we were gluttons for punishment, we could find that Smerconish interview with Michael and see if there is further indication of what he meant by that …
catclub
I bet it leads to more like 90 million, in the US alone. Just think how many in China and India. Or Europe.
I am surprised this got through.
Origuy
Where’s it hanging? Oh, the Louvre. I volunteer to research this in person, if I can get a grant.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Elizabelle: Somehow I missed that CNN was going to be hosting.
It’s gonna be a motherfucking circus. Bet someone who is not Trump will say something so horrendous the entire Republican Party has to walk it back. I bet the Trump man remains pretty calm in comparison to past appearances, he’s doing well enough he doesn’t need to throw shit at this event. Hope I’m wrong lol.
Also predict huge cheers in favor of shooting BLM protestors, the death penalty, and people dying from a lack of health insurance.
SatanicPanic
@HumboldtBlue: That’s fucking awesome. Jerry Brown is the best
Calouste
@Yatsuno: It’s not-Trump instead of not-Mitt this time around. Trump is not going to flame out like the 2012 not-Mitts because he is really well known with the public. Senators and Governors are just not as well known as reality TV stars. There will be a succession of not-Trumps who are going to rise and flame out like the not-Mitts in 2012. Carson is the first, Fiorina most likely the next.
Archon
We obviously know what Ben Carson’s appeal to Republicans is. On a related note I keep hearing Trump supporters say that he is currently polling at 25 percent with black voters in a general election matchup. Does anyone have any cross tabs or polls that shows that?
Roger Moore
@Origuy:
Are you going to bring a neutral gray card to put next to it so you can judge the colors correctly? Because as the gold and white/black and blue dress showed, people’s eyes can play tricks on them when it comes to color correction.
Elizabelle
The prose of Mr. Pierce:
SatanicPanic
@Archon: here m> ya go
ETA- well that came out ugly
NonyNony
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I strongly suspect that the knives will be out for Trump. If one of the not-Trumps can make Trump look ridiculous[*] then he’ll start to crash in the polls. They all know this at this point – they just have to figure out which one of them is going to do it.
[*] Ridiculous to the people who are backing Trump at the moment, not ridiculous in general. They need to pop his bubble with those folks. Honestly what they need to do is have one of them fall on their swords and start mocking him openly. Someone who doesn’t care about winning the Presidency, but wants to take Trump down a few pegs with humor. I don’t think they have anyone qualified to do it since most of them are completely humorless.
Roger Moore
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
And Trump will say something worse but will absolutely refuse to back down. This will enhance his position as the one true candidate.
beltane
@Elizabelle: This is the problem. The media’s infatuation with Trump will not fade. They are Trump and Trump is them. He is the American Silvio Berlusconi, and I would not underestimate the harm he is capable of.
Arclite
Meh, this is the GOP voters sowing their wild oats. “Let’s go out and fuck the hot guy, even though it’s not someone we’ll ever marry.” They’ll settle down next year and go with the predictable, more moderate candidate, like Jeb! or, uh, I dunno.
Roger Moore
@NonyNony:
Not to mention that all of the ones at the big kids’ table are still deluded enough to think they have a chance, so they aren’t going to be willing to sacrifice their chances for the good of the party. They’re all still hoping to be the one to inherit his voters when he flames out.
Elizabelle
@beltane: It’s frightening.
Brooke Baldwin (CNN yesterday, from — where else — Simi Valley) was salivating and just about twirling her hair in anticipation. She said it felt as exciting as the buildup to a Super Bowl.
Which, uh, is a final encounter of champions, after a long and contested season. Not quite the same thing.
Gin & Tonic
@CONGRATULATIONS!: It’s gonna be a motherfucking circus.
I, myself, am looking forward to a quiet dinner at one of my favorite small local restaurants – one which has never had and would never dream of having a TV. With luck, the duration of the dinner will encompass the entire circus, and then I can go home and read the comments here to get the drift without poisoning my brain.
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore: Do they have a kiddie pool this time?
Is Senator Lindsey (ISIS is coming!) Graham in it?
NYTimes article managed to write about the impending debate without ever listing the debaters. Neat trick.
Freemark
The 27% is probably still correct. That number was for the voting population as a whole and is largely Republican. So far more than 27% of Republican voters have to be crazy to get a 27% crazification factor in the general populace. I think Trump and Carson is where the difference is split as mentioned in that quote.
Gin & Tonic
@Elizabelle: Which, uh, is a final encounter of champions,
Which, uh, is one of America’s foremost merchandising opportunities masquerading as a sporting contest. Not unlike 21st century USian politics.
I’m hard-pressed to see the difference between, say, the battle for supremacy between Ford and Chevy, or Bud Lite and Miller Lite, and the state of the 2016 presidential contest.
Mike in NC
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I hope Trump doesn’t disappoint and he shows up dressed as a ringmaster, complete with top hat and tails. Then proceed to get JEB! and the rest of the posse to bark like trained seals.
Hoodie
Pierce argues that none of the other GOP candidates has the requisite sense of humor to ridicule Trump, even though Trump’s vanity is his obvious Achilles heel. Maybe, but you have to wonder if it’s more that they don’t want to imply that Trump’s supporters are idiots, because they want to enlist those same idiots to their causes. Twenty-seven percent is hitting with a vengeance.
Tom Levenson
@Freemark: That’s right, I’d say. But I’m still struck by the eery recurrence of hte 27% figure in so many settings. It’s as if the crazy is fractal.
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
Ford, Chevy, Bud Lite, and Miller Lite all have much more talented and experienced advertizing teams working for them than any of the presidential candidates. Not to mention that their ads are much more likely to marshal actual facts and evidence in support of their position than any of the Republican candidates. Seriously, watch a truck ad sometime. The manufacturers clearly believe their customers rely heavily on hard numbers and evidence- horsepower, torque, payload, fuel economy, etc.- when making their buying decisions. I don’t expect to see that kind of hard-headed analysis routinely in political ads this time around.
Richard Grant
Since John Rogers’ statement “I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic.” has so far not been mentioned, I don’t know whether everyone got the reference or no one got the reference.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@NonyNony: They were last time as well. He rode that into the Neville Chamberlain agreement where the GOP surrendered and took him on board as a full-time member, with a written agreement no less. Along with a smooth ride to the top of the GOP primary polls.
I agree at this point the only thing that’s going to stop him is a full-court mockery, but sadly, the current crop of Republicans are too venal to fall on their own swords, and besides, not a one has a sense of humor.
I expect full panic from the GOP establishment after tomorrow is all said and done. But hey, they made this monster, let them kill it if they can.
raven
@Roger Moore: You sound like my bride and this paint color obsession with the addition we are building. I have gotten to the point where I just look and shake my head because I can’t tell blue from yaller!
Robin G.
@Arclite: Thanks for this. I wasn’t hungry anyway.
catclub
@Hoodie: They should bring up the 2011 White house Press corps dinner a LOT.
Unfortunately, that shows Obama in too good a light.
raven
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I was listening to idiot Hermann Cain for minute and his sage advice is that they candidates don’t waste their precious few minutes attacking Trump. Rather they need to “introduce” themselves .
catclub
The not-Mitts failed because they had no money, AND the far right could not agree on one far right candidate.
Now, the non-Trumps will fail to unite because they all have money to stay in and so not enough will drop out.
Jeb, Rubio, Kasich, Walker, for starters, all have substantial money. Also Carson does, too.
Funny ole world.
Elizabelle
@Richard Grant: Oh yeah, that is brilliant. Pod People indeed.
catclub
@raven: 9-9-9
Roger Moore
@raven:
I’m a moderately serious photographer- serious enough to have a tool to calibrate my monitor- so I have strong first-hand knowledge about how tricky our eyes are with color.
raven
@Roger Moore: I’m sure the both of you are correct.
Roger Moore
@raven:
Please, allow me to introduce myself. I’m a man of wealth and taste.
ETA: See, I’m rich and classy!
SatanicPanic
@CONGRATULATIONS!: This is a good point. What is the upside for any one candidate to get Trump and the morons who support him angry? Trump pretty well inoculated himself by burying Graham and Perry earlier as a warning not to mess with him
Gin & Tonic
@Roger Moore: The manufacturers clearly believe their customers rely heavily on hard numbers and evidence
They pretend to believe it, and the customers pretend to care. But both sides know it’s just a tribe. Try getting a guy who’s been buying Chevy trucks for 30 years to switch to a Ford on the basis of horsepower, torque, payload, fuel economy, etc. Or the people who will drink nothing but one Lite over another when, in a blind taste test, I’ll bet the farm they couldn’t tell the difference between two products specifically manufactured to have no taste whatsoever. It’s tribal allegiance and nothing else.
catclub
Why does John Rogers get the credit when it is Tyrone who states the 27% theory?
Tim C.
I think I saw it here first, so I’ll repeat it. What’s the over/under on how long it takes for one of the candidates to yell out “Hail Hydra!”?
Elizabelle
@HumboldtBlue: That’s a wonderful letter from Jerry Brown about climate science and California’s drought (and wildfires).
Cleaning out the basement this week; saw some old newspaper front pages from 2012, and the killer wildfires were in mid-October. Plus so much more drought since.
It’s got to be heavy sledding to be governor of California now, and see so many communities in peril. So early in the season, too.
Mudge
Math. 27% of the Republicans is roughly 13.5% of the electorate if you assume Republicans are 50% of all voters. However, add in Carson’s 23% and 50% of the Republican 50% is 25% of all voters, which is well within the error of the polls and John Rogers’ estimate. I sure do hope the Trump and Carson supporters become disillusioned and do not vote in the general election when their candidates falter.
Tommy
I saw the Washington Post/NBC poll and Trump is at 33%. Look I like to mock the guy, will continue, but this is getting kind of serious. I thought it would be a summer where years from now we laugh. “Hey recall when Trump ran …”
Worried it might be more serious than that.
trollhattan
@HumboldtBlue:
So polite, so devastating, so Jerry. Newsflash to Dr. Carson, this year’s Sierra snowpack the lowest in at least 500 years. In the meantime half of the flammable portion of the fucking state is on fire.
Oh, right, we’re talking about THIS Ben Carson. Well never mind, then.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: I’d rather push a Chevy than drive Ford.
catclub
I read the whole post. The 27% part is not even the best part. They were talking seriously about Obama in 2005! really?
trollhattan
@Hoodie:
He might be right. Huck has that “Aw shucks” old boy schtick he might be able to play. Christie’s sell-by date is so far past there’s no redeeming him to where anybody will pay attention and Jindal has already used the “squirrel on head” joke. Maybe Fiorina can throw a sheep at him.
feebog
I suspect Fiorina will take Trump on tomorrow night. She put out a good ad in response to his vicious remarks about her face, and she has bigger balls than any of the other goobers on stage. She is one of the original mean girls and articulate enough to deliver a good line that will chop Trump down a peg or two.
gogol's wife
Pierce’s post inspired me to watch the Piranha Brothers sketch again. Brilliant! “The kids didn’t have their heads filled with all this Cartesian dualism.”
Tommy
@raven: The guy that lives next to me. Tried to be nice as a dude, I don’t know, that lives next to him. Had this conversation the other day. Hey that is a nice Chevy. Thought you were a Ford guy. Him, nope. Went back to my shit in my yard. But I should say if I ever bought a truck, his truck is kind of nice.
Mandalay
@Yatsuno:
Carson is a very special and unusual kind of stupid: he’s a neurosurgeon who rejects evolution. He’s read the arguments for evolution, and understands them, yet still rejects them!…..
It’s just mind boggling. He’s like an astronaut who has been to the moon and back, yet still insists that the earth is flat.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Tommy: I have said repeatedly and will continue to do so: Trump will win the GOP nom for president, full stop. He’s giving the “base” – which has very little in common with the moneymen who have always run the party – pure, uncut red meat. And they love it. “Finally, one of us”, they’re thinking. And they’re right, in a sense. The banksters and Chamber of Commerce people have only spoken in dogwhistles, promising them everything and giving them nothing for forty years, and they’re done with that. The spite-filled losers of the Second Industrial Revolution are furious, and by God if they can’t get anything else, they’re at least going to have the satisfaction of running a guy who is not afraid to call a black man (or a Mexican, or really anybody, they don’t care) a worthless nigger.
This election, for the GOP voter, is about nothing else but spite and rage. Who else but Trump could be the nominee?
sharl
I love that now-classic John Rogers Crazification Factor post, and I will always welcome positive citations of that lovely, hilarious bit of writing.
But it must be said that Rogers had this to say some years later:
FWIW, Wil Wheaton refuses to let Rogers off the hook though:
Elizabelle
@trollhattan:
From the NY Times: The California Wildfires: An Escalating Crisis
*** And then the NY Times links back to this article: California Drought Is Made Worse by Global Warming, Scientists Say
So it’s not just the governor saying it’s global warming. And the second article is very worth a read.
Belafon
Someone should paint Clown Car of Elephants in the same style.
SatanicPanic
@Mandalay: That’s… just sad that an otherwise intelligent adult has such a poor grasp of logic
Belafon
@sharl: Idiocracy wasn’t supposed to be a documentary, just a commentary.
Elizabelle
Think I had too many links. Trying again:
From the NY Times: The California Wildfires: An Escalating Crisis
*** And then the NY Times links back to this article: California Drought Is Made Worse by Global Warming, Scientists Say
So it’s not just the governor saying it’s global warming. Second article very worth a read.
Randy P
I was in the National Gallery of Art over Labor Day weekend, and in the gift shop found a huge, 50-pound book of Hieronymous Bosch paintings (including many detail views; you can’t examine a Bosch painting without staring at the tiny details). I wanted it. But $150 is a little out of my price range for impulse purchases.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
In a lot of ways, though, it’s easier than Gray Davis had it. Brown at least has large Democratic majorities in both houses of the legislature, and we no longer need a 2/3 majority to pass a budget. Dealing with the worst Mother Nature can throw at you is a lot easier when you don’t have to fight the Republicans at the same time.
Elizabelle
Tom: FYWP is eating my comments. I put up two articles from NY Times about the California wildfires and climate change. Not sure what banned word I used …
Could you please check the spam filter? Thank you.
Belafon
@Mandalay:
I bet it’s impossible for him to make change.
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore: Yes. Very glad to see that.
U.S. will be in better shape when the obstructionist GOP goes the way of California Republicans.
They’ll still lie about it, and get plenty of media time and no pushback, but Cali and its residents are so much better off now.
Tommy
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I am thinking the same thing. Mom came here to Obama because she felt Palin was stupid. Dad might have voted for McCain and Mitt, but he will NOT vote for Trump. Last time I talked with my folks, he was mocking him. I can assure you it wasn’t positive. When you lose my parents you are doing something wrong.
Bobby Thomson
@Yatsuno: yes they can. A substantial plurality, if not a majority, of Americans are horrifyingly stupid.
Origuy
@Roger Moore: Did I mention I have mild deuteranomaly?
kdaug
@NonyNony: Perry could, with the right speechwriters, but Goodhair ain’t gonna burn those golden bridges. Dumb fucker don’t know nothing but our common largess – he’s mastered our suffering, on our tab.
Omnes Omnibus
@sharl: you know how when some on the right says something horribly offense and then tries to excuse it as a joke? This is a mirror image.
Hungry Joe
Tribalism/brand loyalty is powerful. When I was a kid my family was loyal to NBC over CBS and ABC, Kellogg cereals over Post, Chrysler over Ford and GM, Democrats over Republicans, the NL over the AL. I took it all in with my formula milk. (Hey, it was the ’50s.) To this day not one of us has ever owned anything made by Ford (that can be traced to Henry F. and his antisemitism) or voted GOP (that can be traced to our being, for the most part, sane).
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
Two points:
1) I agree that a lot of car/truck buying is tribal, but people at least need to rationalize their purchases. That is apparently still done by looking at facts and numbers, rather than just saying “Found On Road Dead/Driver Returns On Foot”. That puts it at least half a step ahead of politics.
2) There are probably more true independent vehicle buyers than truly independent voters, and they want some facts to help them with their decisions.
karen marie
I have to agree.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@catclub:
Because it’s on John Rogers’ blog written by John Rogers.
? Martin
We’re all reading Ta-Nehisi, right?
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/
catclub
Bill Kristol has the sads about Donald Trump. He’s claiming he would support a third party if Trump won the nomination.
Kristol thinks Cheney/Cotton is the winning combo. That is unhinged.
Mike J
Daniel Gross @grossdm 9h9 hours ago
we’ve reached the stage where professional observers who utterly failed to predict Trump’s rise from 3% to 30% tell us he has staying power
catclub
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): So is Tyrone an alter-ego? That would make sense.
? Martin
@Mudge:
Worse than that, actually. This is likely voters. Only 16% of voters participate in primaries. Only 8% would then be Republicans (and that’s wildly optimistic). We’re talking about 4% of the population supporting these two.
Everyone needs to vote.
Everyone.
Peale
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Agreed. Nothing our side can really do to stop him at this point, so pointing and mocking coming from the Dems and the Left…or even statements of fear…aren’t going to do much. It’s kind of like trying to figure out whose side you’re going to take in some other country’s civil war. On the one side, you’ve got the authoritarian dictators for life who threaten to kill the opposition and send its children to desert reeducation camps; and on the other the guys who claim that everyone who is against them is a hopeless reactionary who shall be killed and his children sent to reeducation camps in the tundra. In the end, it’s probably best to just go on vacation elsewhere.
sharl
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, I’m holding John Rogers to that post forever, no matter how vigorously he claims it was just a joke. DO NOT DENY THE SAGACITY INHERENT IN YOUR WORDS, JOHN ROGERS!
shell
Maybe for the new head of Slytherin
trollhattan
@Randy P:
Pro tip: avoid Kindle edition unless you have a 4-foot Kindle.
I love books like that, but have neither space nor budget.
trollhattan
@sharl:
“Yoo noo noothin’, Jon
SnowRodgers.”trollhattan
@shell:
He might literally be pulling names out of a damn (choosing) hat to come up with a combo as random as that. Getting the Palin pick must really have gone to his [so-punchable] head.
Patricia Kayden
@Frankensteinbeck: Yet he grew up poor, and benefited from government assistance. Typical Rightwinger who crawls up the ladder and then wants to kick it out from everyone else. He got help getting bootstraps to pull up.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore:
Always fascinates me how brand-originated marketing for heavy equipment is fact/evidence based while political marketing is not. I wonder sometimes what is it about the US that consumers in the Free Market™ are expected to do their homework and consume based on real statistics and performance, yet those same “consumers” are expected to choose a government based on misinformation and exaggerated numbers; but then I recall that these same consumers will buy Hummers explicitly for the conspicuous-consumption-grade fuel economy, then turn around and whine about the price of gasoline.
catclub
@trollhattan: Those are not random. It was no mistake to pick Cotton – who led on the Senate letter to the Iranian leaders – telling them to ignore the black guy, he has no power.
Patricia Kayden
@Archon: This poll shows Blacks at 25% for Trump. That’s really hard to believe though.
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=d950cadf-05ce-4148-a125-35c0cdab26c6
trollhattan
@Patricia Kayden:
More than once I’ve heard Trump say, “The blacks love me.” Maybe that’s 27% within the poll margin of error.
Nevertheless, mind=boggled.
Eric S.
@Gin & Tonic:
I have spent a fair amount of time on both sides of a bar. I have seen over and over again bartenders switch between the Big3 lite beers when pouring pitchers. I’ve never seen one sent back.
Roger Moore
@Hungry Joe:
I think you’re confusing brand loyalty with tribalism. Tribalism isn’t just constantly taking one side over the other; it’s treating people on the other side as dangerous Others who need to be shunned or even fought against. It’s quite rare to see anyone rise to that level of loyalty to a brand of soft drink or breakfast cereal, even if they refuse to buy the competitor’s brand under any circumstances.
That said, I wonder how much of brand loyalty is a logical response to the paradox of choice. There are plenty of choices out there that simply don’t matter very much, but which we have to make anyway. Brand loyalty is a way of making all those decisions once and sticking with it so you don’t have to make them every time you go shopping.
Peale
@boatboy_srq: Government is complicated. There is a segment of the auto market who will buy based on emotional connections, bells and whistles, feelings of safety and hard number comparisons, etc. It’s just that when looking at the numbers for comparing, there are just a few that really matter. The problem with government is that there are lots of numbers and platforms and whatnot and any candidate making an ad would face a difficult time fitting it all into an advertisment. Much easier to note that “Boatboy can’t be trusted. He voted with Nancy Pelosi 21 times” and leave it at that.
Roger Moore
@boatboy_srq:
I think Gin & Tonic is probably correct that people are buying based on brand loyalty, and the facts and evidence are just there to give people enough evidence to rationalize their decisions.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@catclub: No. Well, actually, yes. But what it really is, is desperation. They have nothing better than Trump. I might be giving Evil Dick a second glance too, given the alternative.
Peale
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I think that if there is a brokered convention, we’d come out of it with Cheney on the ticket.
jeffreyw
I drive Ford vehicles because the local Chevy dealer was a sleezeball. I buy union made because I am a Union Man. I vote Democrat because I am not insane.
dmbeaster
@NonyNony:
That person has to be Rick Perry (who wont be there) or someone who thinks like a suicide bomber. Because whoever does it is not going get the Trump supporters.
The remaining spineless bastards are all waiting for someone else to do it so they can hope to obtain those supporters without risk. Or else waiting for the latest back room Bush crime family operative (a Rove understudy) to float rumors that Donald really did “date” his daughter.
HumboldtBlue
@Elizabelle: The forest started burning here in June and only in the past week/10 days did they get full containment on the four largest fires.
The blazes burned more than 170,000 acres but were far from any built-up areas. What we are seeing in Lake county, particularly poor, pretty, little Middletown is something far more destructive. That chaparral and scrub oak were tinder dry and that fire grew from just over 10 acres to 10,000 in the space of four hours and has since grown to more than 80,000.
Drought combined with heavy fuel loads and nearby houses means a lot of people left devastated and these aren’t the irresponsible entitled folks who have vacation cabins in the middle of the woods, these are run-of-the-mill folk left with cinders.
Schlemazel
Of course Pierce is correct but he misses the obvious problem despite pointing to it. Who can make jokes at the dumpsters expense? The right wing never has had a decent comic or joke writer. Every attempt to duplicate the success of liberal humiliation by humor of the right has been unfunny, dull and without redemption.
If anyone will lampoon the dumpster it pretty much has to be a liberal. It would be nice if a gooper reached out to ask for help but that ain’t happening. The thing to hope for is Trump wins the nom and we take him down hard
catclub
@Peale: I think Romney is thinking about a brokered convention. Really no way to get into the primaries at this point.
HumboldtBlue
@SatanicPanic: He is, I only wish he had decided to throw his hat in the presidential ring. The man is a brilliant politician and an outstanding governor, albeit with a large Democratic majority in the legislature to work with.
Baud
@Schlemazel:
That could be epic. I’m looking forward to it.
Schlemazel
@Baud:
Even better would be that it caused a schism and generated a Ayn Paul or Rev. Huckleberry run, best would be both.
Baud
@jeffreyw:
That last line would make a good bumper sticker.
Baud
@Schlemazel:
No chance of that. They are both too into the grift to burn that bridge.
SatanicPanic
@HumboldtBlue: I’d love President Brown, but it would have had to have been last time he ran, in 1992. He’s a great governor, but he’s too old to be president in 2015.
Baud
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I would prefer Trump over Cheney any day of the week.
goblue72
@Yatsuno: He’s Bill Cosby without the raping.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Peale:
Dick Cheney is 74 with a bad heart (despite his deal with the devil). He’s not going to be on anybody’s ticket.
Mike in NC
PACs like the Club for Growth are coming out with ads attacking Trump as a RINO or even a stealth liberal.
Smell the fear.
Baud
@Mike in NC: If nothing else, I’m glad they have to burn money on Trump. Every dollar spent on Trump is one less dollar spent in the general.
trollhattan
@Mike in NC:
It’s what I’ve expected now for a couple months. It’s basically the only avenue to go after him that they have, since he’s already set off all the potential gotchas like somebody tapdancing through a minefield wearing clown shoes.
goblue72
@feebog: Hopefully she’ll bring up his bankruptcies so he can bring up how she destroyed one of the most venerable companies in Silicon Valley & was ousted by her own board. A cat fight over who is the bigger CEO screw up would be amazeballs.
Carly ain’t going anywhere in this race and is solely there as a Trump spoiler. She got trounced by Boxer in spite of Boxer running a completely lackluster campaign in 2010 during the year of the Tea Party revolt. And its wasn’t until just this past Spring that she finally retired her campaign debt.
joes527
@SatanicPanic: All the serious candidates on the D side are pushing or past the Reagan limit. We have collectively signed a suicide pact to not speak of this because it would reflect badly on our own chosen candidate.
We are one bad fall away from president Trump-JEB!-Huckabee-whoever, but … lalalalala I CAN’T HEAR YOU.
Why would this be an issue for Brown?
A Ghost To Most
@Bobby Thomson:
I don’t think that stupid is the right word. Based on family, I would say it is willful ignorance
Baud
@joes527:
This raises an interesting question about why O’Malley isn’t doing better, since he is young, and his policy proposals are just as liberal as Bernie’s.
HumboldtBlue
@SatanicPanic: I know. I wish Bernie Sanders knew it as well.
elmo
@HumboldtBlue: Everything about the Valley Fire has been heartbreaking. I grew up in Santee, eastern San Diego County. At least three or four times I remember watching flames crest ridges only a mile or so from my house, and being anxious. I know what that’s like. I know what it’s like to brush an inch of ash off of everything after a close call. But I was fortunate – we were always spared.
The Cedar Fire in San Diego happened after I left. I had a friend affected by the Oakland Hills Fire. And of course all of my friends in Mammoth are breathing the smoke from the Rough Fire right now. but the Valley Fire is different, and I can’t stop obsessively following updates on Twitter and checking in with our employees in Northern CA to make sure they’re all okay.
HumboldtBlue
@elmo: I had to stop reading yesterday, it’s simply heartbreaking. The swiftness of the fire was extraordinary and it’s so big that two VOLUNTEER engine companies along with three professional companies from HumCo are providing mutual aid. There are more than 2,300 personnel assigned and more than 500 homes and outbuildings threatened.
That wildland blaze is far more destructive than our forest fires both because of the proximity to homes and structure but also because of the type of fuel that is burning. Imagine Santee with 8-foot high chaparral grass and stands of dried out scrub oak and near-dead pine and add some heat and a little wind … christ.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mandalay:
Which is where the whole ‘survival of the fittest’ thing comes in, spreading the very rare good mutations and removing the others from the population.
All species are intermediate species. Evolution is a constant process, not a series of jumps. That’s one reason taxonomy is hard. It’s the taxonomy that has large arbitrary elements, not the evolution.
Of course, scientists and people who’ve read the arguments know both of these things. Right, Dr. Carson?
@Patricia Kayden:
That’s part of his argument, and why FOX and their audience loves him. See, he got welfare, and blacks now are getting welfare. He became successful. Therefor, if they’re not successful, it’s because blacks – I’m sorry, ‘black culture’ – is inherently lazy and dependent. His job is to go on national television and offer himself as the proof blacks are lazy. Since he had money coming out of his ears anyway, I suppose the reward is the ego stroking of everyone agreeing that he, himself, is a truly exceptional human being who earned all of his success.
HumboldtBlue
@elmo: Here, watch this to take your off the fires and the anxiety
kdaug
@Steeplejack (phone): Pssh. If the briefcase that holds his “heart” goes, he’ll get another one. Upgraded.
Fuck’s sake, figures the first “human” cyborg would be Dick Fucking Cheney. Where’s a localized EMP burst when you really need one?
Peale
@Steeplejack (phone): compared to Pete Peterson, Foster Freiss, the Koch Bros and Sheldon Adelson, Cheney is a spring chicken. Practically a twink.
Schlemazel
@Baud:
A guy can dream can’t he?
Heliopause
It’s perhaps even funnier if you look at it this way; all of the “establishment” and “moderate” candidates together, per Nate Silver’s Venn diagram, are polling 27.6% in the current Pollster average. And there are nearly a dozen of them to choose from. Ipsos-Reuters recently ran a hypothetical three-way race where everybody but Trump, Carson, and Bush has dropped out, and Bush finishes a distant third. This is going to take a yuuuuge propaganda blitz from GOP central, maybe bigger than the carpet bombing Romney did four years ago, to get the rubes in line.
Hungry Joe
@Roger Moore: I think you’re pretty much right … except when it comes to Fords.
JPL
Kristol is probably talking about Liz Cheney..
dr. luba
John Rogers (aka Kung Fu Monkey) is clearly one of the greatest political thinkers of our time. He understands the GOP and crazy like no one else–and the right’s obsession with Ayn Rand:
B
@Yatsuno: “@Barry: Except The Donald was supposed to have either flamed out or faded by now.”
IMHO, that’s what Carson’s rise means – Donald is no longer #1 with no #2, 3, 4, or 5, he’s now #1 with a #2 right close behind him.
trollhattan
@elmo:
Possibly the fastest-growing fire in the state’s recorded history. My back of the envelope take, from press releases.
Saturday:
First reported at 1:24 p.m. as 2 acres
1:50: 50 acres
5:50: 400 acres and the first evacuations are ordered
7:30: 10,000 acres
Sunday
6:00 a.m.: 40,000 acres with 0% containment–basically an uncontrollable conflagration at this point,.
3:00 p.m. 50,000 acres 0% containment
Monday
9:30 a.m. 61,000 acres, 5% containment, 400 structures destroyed, 9000 threatened.
In less than 48 hours it went from nothing to burning the area equivalent of a good-sized city. Had our resources not already been off fighting lord-knows how many fires, perhaps they’d have had a chance to stop this one early. We’ll never know.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Heliopause: I honestly think the GOP could throw a trillion dollars into JEB?s campaign and he still couldn’t win the primary.
He simply just does not have what it takes.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@SatanicPanic:
Brown is able to be a good governor because he was able to convince the people of California that California Republicans were refusing to do their jobs and they should vote them out. We did and — surprise, surprise — suddenly CA’s “intractable” problems turned out to not be so intractable after all once you threw the obstructionists out on their ears.
If Jerry had been stuck in Obama’s situation, he would have ragequit long before now.
Origuy
I tend to doubt that. There are only three highways into Lake County from more populous areas, and they are all narrow winding roads. I’ve never driving Highway 20 from the east, but 29 from Napa and 128 from Santa Rosa couldn’t handle a lot of fire trucks even if they were available..
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Being Mr. Grumpy, I’m very disappointed the oil companies, Cal Chamber et al, were able to kill so many important measures this session. I wish I could predict “hell to pay” but no, bidnez goes on as usual.
gocart mozart
@Frankensteinbeck:
See, I told you, Obama invented racism. Even the black guy says so.
trollhattan
@Origuy:
We have a lot of air resources in state at the moment including DC-10 tankers, and they might have had a shot at containment but I don’t know whether conditions allowed flying at the time. CalFire does have stations in the area but whether they were fully manned or skeleton crews I don’t know. The Butte Fire was already pulling crews from across the state, including some of our city engine companies.
Sunday, the smoke just sank to ground surface and here in the city I couldn’t see two blocks distant at times and they don’t fly on those conditions.
Heliopause
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
As I said in another comment, Romney at least had a floor of around 20% even when the polling was bad for him. None of the establishment people this time around are out of single digits. Because Bush’s favorables are so poor they might have to get behind Rubio. That would be funny.
Barry
@B: Sorry, ‘B’ was me.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@trollhattan:
Yeah, I’m not 100 percent happy either. Now that we’ve gotten past pure obstructionism with More Democrats, now it’s time to start building Better Democrats who can oust some of the hacks.
lgerard
@Randy P:
If it is the one I am thinking of, I have seen it on Amazon from time to time for about half that
Mandalay
@Frankensteinbeck:
Exactly. I just cannot understand how Carson can reject evolution. The theory and the physical evidence fit together like a hand in a glove.
I understand why religious people reject evolution (“Only God could have created that beautiful baby!”), and I understand why stupid people reject evolution (“If evolution is true why don’t we see hippophants and crocoraffes?”), but Carson truly understands the biochemistry of living things – he can’t use the GOP’s “I am not a scientist” argument – yet he still rejects the theory.
He’s like people who believe we’ve never landed on the moon, and the Holocaust is a hoax – the overwhelming evidence is just irrelevant to him. And he’s running for president.
A Ghost To Most
@Mandalay:
Forget it, Jake. It’s wingnuts.
joel hanes
@gogol’s wife:
Infants in my family were invariably given two soft hollow plastic toys: a yellow stegosaurus, named “Dinsdale”, and a red hedgehog, of course called “Spiny Norman”
Snarki, child of Loki
While it looks like a “Clown of the Month”, it’s more clearly “Flavor of the Month”.
How can you tell? Because when The Flavor of the Month is SANTORUM? Ewwww….and the process STOPS.
Vanya
The truth is, and it is pretty scary, Trump would probably be the least damaging Republican candidate if he took office. It scares me how much of a pass Jeb gets for being “reasonable”, when he seems to be Dubya all over again.
bystander
@gocart mozart: You really have to stop spreading the lie that Ben Carson said this. Find the original source for the quote (maybe The Mark Levin show?) or STFU you dipshit. (Daily KOS does not count as an original source of course of course.)