Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Second rate reporter says what?

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Consistently wrong since 2002

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Another Ramp-Up in the Repub Clown Contest

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Another Ramp-Up in the Repub Clown Contest

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Hey, remember Liz Mair’s cunning plan? Maybe she was a Trump operative all along!

***********

Apart from pointing & laughing, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

Reader Interactions

81Comments

  1. 1.

    Betty Cracker

    Trump is right — that wasn’t the deal, so if the Establishmentarians conspire against him, he should totally go third party!

  3. 3.

    Calouste

    Trump is just reminding the GOP that he has them by the short and curlies, and that they can either lose with him running for the party, or with him running against it.

    ETA: He is still polling with a decent lead fairly close to the first primaries, so if he start losing he can scream shenanigans and take whatever is left of his voters third party.

  4. 4.

    scav

    @Betty Cracker: Just wait until he announces that the Democrats raising money against him wasn’t a part of the original deal and he’s going to run for leader of a different country. That’ll show us!

  5. 5.

    NotMax

    Pouting, sniffling five-year-old: “That’s not fair!”

    Donald Trump: “That’s not fair!”

    Q.E.D.

  6. 6.

    Germy

    John Fugelsang ‏@JohnFugelsang Nov 23
    Inherited power, imperial arrogance, surrounded by yes men.
    Donald Trump is Kim Jong Un with worse hair.

  9. 9.

    shell

    Been trying to work out how to print postage from the USPS site. Got my account okay, but theres no information on exactly what you print the postage labels on. Do you have to get them from the the post office? Can you use compatible Avery labels? What size? Theres no info at all on what you need to have.

  12. 12.

    Amir Khalid

    @Calouste:
    I think the Republican party establishment is afraid of him because he’s a loose cannon who might actually win the nomination, drag the party God knows where in his run for President, and break it as an organisation. It has no playbook for dealing with a guy like him.

  16. 16.

    NotMax

    @shell

    AFAIK there are blank labels and also stamp templates for postage printing which you can purchase at places such as Staples, Office Depot, Walmart (if you must), etc.Also orderable online.

  17. 17.

    Mike in NC

    @Germy: Trump smears all Mexicans and rockets in the polls. Trump smears all American Muslims and continues to rise. Next, Trump will smear all Koreans and by implication all Asians. In the end the only non-hostile people backing him will be rascist evangelical GOP primary voters of Iowa. Not exact the road to the White House, is it?

  18. 18.

    greengoblin

    I received from my CSA cranberries, a pear, fresh ginger, a lemon and an orange for cranberry sauce but no recipe. Does anyone have a good one?

  20. 20.

    catclub

    relevant from other thread: WaMonthly Martin Longman

    So, another way of putting this is that even if Silver is right and Trump only has a 20% chance of winning the nomination, what are the chances that either he, Carson or Cruz will win? And, given the likely answer to that question, why should we all stop freaking out?

    I think the situation absolutely warrants a good long panic attack.

  24. 24.

    Archon

    At this point If I were in the GOP establishment I would rather risk Trump going 3rd party then him being the Republican nominee. Not only does Trump has a real chance to win it’s actually plausible he could sweep into the nomination. If Trump goes indie the GOP is done in 2016 but the damage won’t be everlasting. If Trump goes into next year basically running an openly fascist campaign to the cheers of the now openly GOP fascist base, the damage he will cause might be irreversible.

  27. 27.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mike in NC: I’m wondering how much of the non-white vote he can suppress through outright threats of violence, because it might come to that.

  29. 29.

    Mike J

    @Mike J: The guys who did the shootings:

    Ms. Noor said that groups of men had been showing up to the demonstrations and “acting shady” since Friday. Witnesses reported that the men were filming protesters and refusing to answer questions about why they were there, she said. In response, the group put together a safety committee to watch for potential agitators and escort them away as a preventive measure, she said.

    What are the chances they work for the MN RNC or the police union?

  30. 30.

    Betty Cracker

    @rikyrah: I was sure he was going to implode. Looks like I was wrong. Maybe he actually wins this thing (the nomination, not the election).

  32. 32.

    Waldo

    @Mike in NC: Yeah, the GOP can’t win with him, and because of the 3rd party threat, they can’t win without him. The only question now is will Trump will be the new Goldwater or the new Perot.

  33. 33.

    Peale

    @Archon: Yeah. Our republican establishment is much better at playing the long game than progressives, but they still probably aren’t the brightest bulbs in the room. They are rich and have been powerful and probably think that fascism is for other people to experience.

  35. 35.

    RSA

    @Betty Cracker:

    I was sure he was going to implode.

    Me too, but it was always the thought, “Trump will say something so extreme, so crazy, that he’ll lose all support.” And he’s lived up to that expectation–but the Republican base hasn’t cooperated.

  37. 37.

    Spinoza is my Co-pilot

    And some asshole at the Wash Post (didn’t recognize the name, don’t care) just put out an article excusing Trump’s bullshit about the 9/11 celebrating Joisey Mooslems. False memory, don’t you know, not lying, oh no, happens to the best of us. Backed up by some psychologist from somewhere. Buried way at the bottom (right after a “both sides do it” paragraph regarding Hillary and the Bosnia sniper fire which didn’t happen, but which she apologized for and admitted never occurred) is an offhand comment about Trump not backing down after being “confronted” by Stephanopolous (I mean those air quotes) with the fact that nothing of the kind actually happened. And he’s still not backing down, sticking to this ridiculous fairy tale at a campaign event in Ohio. But, you know, he’s not lying, even-the-liberal Wash Post says so.

    We’re fucking doomed.

  38. 38.

    Calouste

    @rikyrah: Not only is Trump still in, he has had a solid lead for about four months nationally, only punctuated in a few polls by Carson, who now seems to be on the slide, as well as leading most of the time in Iowa and all the time in New Hampshire. Yes, Giuliani also lead nation-wide for a long time in 2007 and managed the grand total of one single delegate, but he was nowhere in Iowa and never got better than second in New Hampshire.

    The only path I see for the GOP to not end up with Trump as their nominee is if Carson’s support in Iowa collapses and goes to Cruz, and Cruz rides it from there (Cruz has been second in Iowa behind Trump in a few recent polls). I can’t see why people think Rubio is the favorite, because he is 3rd or 4th in Iowa and at best a distant second to Trump in New Hampshire. Other candidates are going to pick up the momentum from top finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire and run over Rubio like a steam train.

  39. 39.

    singfoom

    There is literally nothing that the Donald can do or say that will make people turn away from him. He’s the political equivalent of a black hole. Nothing can escape his event horizon and he somehow will be stronger for it.

    I’d love to be wrong, but at each point over the last 6 months he’s ratcheted up the rhetoric to new heights and each time I think he’s toast and he just sails through. People support him because “he’s strong”. Now that means that they’ve decided he’s strong, whatever that means and that overpowers everything.

  41. 41.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @Germy: Great. We’re going to run with the most lurid accusations possible, and then get poleaxed when the investigation finds that the shootings were just horrific. Raw speculation an uncorroborated statements need to be treated with skepticism, especially when they confirm what you already believe.

  42. 42.

    catclub

    @singfoom: Plum Line this morning made the same point.
    When media points out his lies, it just makes him look stronger in the eyes of his supporters.

  43. 43.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    I’ll be updating my CLE presentation for tomorrow with new developments on last year’s examples, and adding in any exciting new ones. The title:
    Outrageous Ethics Cases
    From All Across the United States
    With a Canadian Bonus
    You Could Not Make These Up
    What’s The Weirdest?

    I’ll skip the Canadian bonus this year, but I just copied the title. See ya later.

  44. 44.

    Gimlet

    WP

    “Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would — in a heartbeat,” Trump said to loud cheers during a rally at a convention center here Monday night that attracted thousands. “And I would approve more than that. Don’t kid yourself, folks. It works, okay? It works. Only a stupid person would say it doesn’t work.”

    “It works,” Trump said over and over again. “Believe me, it works. And you know what? If it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing.

  45. 45.

    jl

    @Mike in NC:

    ” In the end the only non-hostile people backing him will be rascist evangelical GOP primary voters of Iowa. Not exact the road to the White House, is it?”

    Trump has already insulted that group, or at least evangelical GOP primary voters in Iowa, because it gives so much support to Carson. Said they were ‘stupid’.

  46. 46.

    MattF

    @Calouste: Breaking into double digits in the polls isn’t enough for Rubio to get the nomination. There has to be a path– and I don’t see a path for Rubio that gets him to the nomination– except maybe over over the dead bodies of Trump and Cruz.

  47. 47.

    dmsilev

    @? Martin:

    Thanks, Obama.

    May actually be literally accurate. Weren’t there reports floating around that one thing which spurred Trump into actually running was the vicious mocking that Obama gave him? And also, I seem to recall Trump claiming that Bill Clinton encouraged him to run.

    I guess winning the Presidency as a Democrat gives you Jedi-Mind-Trick level trolling skills.

  53. 53.

    bemused

    @Gimlet:

    Trump fans just grow more deeply in love with him every day. He’s reading the same made up internet trash they are. He’s saying what they all “know” but not letting the PC police shush him. He’s one of them, a dream candidate come true.

  54. 54.

    Althea

    @Spinoza is my Co-pilot: Doomed? I’m pulling for him or Carson to land the nom. Either would be beyond awesome for our side. If he decides GOP is being too mean to him, he runs as a third party candidate and peels away some of the crazy vote. It’s a win-win.

  55. 55.

    moderateindy

    Actually pretty smart on Trump’s part, because he is laying the groundwork to run as an independent without losing much of the support he currently has. If the establishment attacks him and he loses, then decides to run 3rd party, people might turn on him for splitting the vote in a general election.
    But this way he insulates himself from some of that backlash by starting to generate the meme that he didn’t have a choice because the GOP establishment conspired against him.
    Since the current Trump supporter hates the “establishment” they will not hold an indepedent run against him because he was forced into it by said establishment. So it’s very possible that they go with him to a 3rd party, and assure the GOP’s defeat.
    I’m sure the Repubs know this, and it may well keep them from having superpacs deluge the airwaves with attack ads. Going public with the threat is the best possible way of leveraging the threat of going rogue while setting himself up as a sympathetic victim so he can actually go 3rd party if he chooses.
    The guy is a buffoon in so many ways, but this is a really astute political move. By going on record about the idea that the establishment might force him to go the 3rd party route, he simultaneously improves his ability to run a 3rd party campaign without the usual “traitor” repercussions that accompany such actions, which in turn gives him more leverage, and decreases the chances of outside groups hammering him with negative ads.

  56. 56.

    Mandalay

    @Archon:

    If Trump goes indie the GOP is done in 2016 but the damage won’t be everlasting.

    I think that is highly unlikely since he would get his ass kicked by a “weak” woman, and he would earn the undying hatred of the GOP for shitting the bed and giving the presidency to the Democrats after pretending to be a Republican.

    He might talk about it to scare the establishment, but there is no upside for Trump in actually running as an independent.

  58. 58.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    @singfoom: People ask how Nazi Germany happened.

    This is how Nazi Germany happened.

    A good chunk of the American public has been marinating in its own adrenaline and paranoia for the better part of 15 years, egged on by an outright propaganda arm of a particular political party, and they are so fucking scared of those people that they’d be perfectly happy if those people were rounded up without due process and herded into concentration camps to never be seen again. Maybe not so much with the Zyklon-B, but you never know.

    Negro President, queers coming out of the closet and getting married, hijabs in the supermarket – it’s just too much for simple, God-fearing white folk to deal with. They need someone to remind them that White is Right, that white Christian men are naturally empowered to be the leaders and it’s everyone else’s job to sit down, shut up, and do what they say.

  59. 59.

    gene108

    @Archon:

    At this point If I were in the GOP establishment I would rather risk Trump going 3rd party then him being the Republican nominee. Not only does Trump has a real chance to win it’s actually plausible he could sweep into the nomination. If Trump goes indie the GOP is done in 2016 but the damage won’t be everlasting. If Trump goes into next year basically running an openly fascist campaign to the cheers of the now openly GOP fascist base, the damage he will cause might be irreversible.

    Your overthinking things.

    The GOP is just worried Trump, at the top of the ticket, will hurt down ticket races like competitive Senate seats and maybe narrow their margin in the House a little bit.

    For the most part, the GOP establishment is just worried about losing the Senate in 2016.

    There’s nothing that will cause lasting damage to the GOP brand.

    The Bush mal-Administration could not sink the GOP in the hearts and minds of voters for more than two election cycles.

    A failed Trump candidacy will not hurt nearly as much in the long run.

  61. 61.

    singfoom

    @Grumpy Code Monkey: That makes sense. I was trying to come up with a non-thread-Godwinning way to discuss how Trump is basically Hitler after the “Muslims wear badges” comments he made, but it’s impossible.

    None of the things he’s suggested are even close to constitutional, but his popularity does say to me that a large amount of people don’t fucking care, they want it macho. Hell, less Hitler, more President Camacho.

    I’d like to think this is the wingnutlarity, as eventually the crazy boomers (not all boomers) with nothing to do all day but watch Fox and repeat that shit like it has truthiness will shuffle out the mortal door and demographics will mean a shift to less paranoia but I’m afraid that it’ll never change.

  63. 63.

    Mandalay

    @gene108:

    There’s nothing that will cause lasting damage to the GOP brand.

    There is: Trump’s overt hostility towards immigrants and Muslims.

    Every day old white GOP voters die, and young non-white people become eligible to vote. The establishment of the Republican party is well aware of these trends, and Trump’s anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric will cause long-term damage. And doubly so because his GOP rivals lack the balls to denounce Trump’s extreme positions.

  64. 64.

    Brachiator

    @Calouste:

    The only path I see for the GOP to not end up with Trump as their nominee is if Carson’s support in Iowa collapses and goes to Cruz, and Cruz rides it from there (Cruz has been second in Iowa behind Trump in a few recent polls).

    As a recent story at the 538 site noted, none of this popularity preference means anything until and unless it is reflected in primary wins. Let’s put it into a little perspective:

    One problem with this is that it’s not enough for Trump to merely avoid fading. Right now, he has 25 to 30 percent of the vote in polls among the roughly 25 percent of Americans who identify as Republican. (That’s something like 6 to 8 percent of the electorate overall, or about the same share of people who think the Apollo moon landings were faked.)

    Yes, Trump is showing more strength than other candidates, but “beauty contest” preference polling is easy. If Trump starts winning actual primaries and caucuses, then be afraid, be very afraid.

    I also note that Trump and Carson indicate that the GOP voters want some firm action that they have not been getting from the GOP mainstream. Cruz seems most crazy enough to give it to them. This is as worrisome as anything coming from Trump.

    BTW: Bush’s poor showing in the polls is bad for him since he hasn’t risen from his initial negative ratings. He has to work harder, maybe convince that he has some foreign policy smarts. The others: whatever for now.

  65. 65.

    gene108

    @singfoom:

    I’d like to think this is the wingnutlarity, as eventually the crazy boomers (not all boomers) with nothing to do all day but watch Fox and repeat that shit like it has truthiness will shuffle out the mortal door and demographics will mean a shift to less paranoia but I’m afraid that it’ll never change.

    Millenials and GenX’ers have pretty much internalized Reagan’s “government is the problem” mantra, because for most of their lives government has not been entirely reliable in many categories.

    Don’t expect these demographics to embrace sweeping liberal reforms that require a bigger government roll in our lives, such as what we see in Europe and which many liberals admire.

    Edit: The paranoia has been so deeply internalized in younger generations you have people refusing vaccinations for their kids, deciding fluoride in toothpaste and water is corporatist plot at mind control (or something), and the list goes on and on. The paranoia will never end is my point. The targets may shift, that is all.

    @Mandalay:

    Every day old white GOP voters die, and young non-white people become eligible to vote. The establishment of the Republican party is well aware of these trends, and Trump’s anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric will cause long-term damage. And doubly so because his GOP rivals lack the balls to denounce his extreme positions.

    I didn’t vote much in my 20’s. I registered to vote in high school, in 1992 and was thrilled to vote. I voted regularly for the next couple of elections. I got out of college, moved to a different state and didn’t see the point and was more interesting in hanging out than politics.

    The disaster of the Bush & Co. years changed my mind about not being involved in politics, but I can see how a lot of younger people would not be interested in voting.

    I’m not pegging long term hope demographics.

    It seems a lot of younger people seem resigned to the belief voting does not matter and everything is going to suck forever.

    For me, it seemed, by the 1990’s that there was broad agreement between Democrats and Republicans about the economy and other issues, so even if a Republican was in charge there should not have been much difference. Little did I know how fucking crazy Bush, Jr. and his stooges would be.

    Anyway, long story short, I’ll believe the GOP will suffer long term damage, if and when they start losing big election cycle after election cycle. I was promised the demographic shift would seal the Republican’s fate in the near future, way back in 2006 or 2008 and nearly 10 years later, it still has not kicked in.

  66. 66.

    MomSense

    @rikyrah:

    As soon as he lost his Univision, Macy’s, NBC, etc. deals I knew he would stay in it to win.

    He is not saying anything more radical or racist than any other Republican candidate. He just doesn’t say it in the focus group tested and GOP approved language. He represents exactly what the Republican party has always been since LBJ passed the Civil Rights Act.

  67. 67.

    Calouste

    @Brachiator: I read that article on 538. Silver makes the mistake in thinking that people saying that they don’t decide until the last week means that people actually change their vote in the last week. In most cases, it’s just firming up what they were going to do anyway. Trump as a personality, not as a politician but as a personality, is a known quantity to a lot of people, far more so than any other candidate in the race. It’s not like 2012 where there was a new not-Romney every few weeks that rose and flamed out as people actually got to know them better.

  68. 68.

    ruemara

    @shell: I print it on plain paper and use packing tape (clear) to adhere it to the box or envelope, leaving open where the barcode for the label is.

    @MomSense: 100% this

  69. 69.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Brachiator: There are several unique factors at play here that Silver continues to ignore, and which make ignoring all polling rather foolish. He seems to think this is like picking a fantasy team and doesn’t have much of a clue about the current Republican electorate.

  70. 70.

    feebog

    You can put me in the camp that thought Trump would fade sometime in October. As Rick Perry would say, “oops”. We are now just over two months from Iowa. If Trump does well in Iowa, not wins, mind you, just does well, then New Hampshire will be crucial. Trump leads in most polls in both states, but I can see the Evangelicals swinging Iowa to Cruz. If Trump then takes New Hampshire, I don’t see what is to prevent him from running the table. Of course we don’t know at this point what kind of organization he is putting together, especially in the caucus states. But if he wins a couple of those early, whoa.

  71. 71.

    sm*t cl*de

    Trump has written signed his name to self-promotional books about how to succeed in business by reneging on promises and deals. That, plus his electoral promises, are what his supporters love him for.

  72. 72.

    J R in WV

    US Today coverage of the Medal of Freedom has individual pictures of each honoree, and when you hover your cursor over the picture, it has a little description which gives you the name of each person, why they are famous, and tells you that every one of them is a posthumous award.

    They killed off Barbara Streisand, Stephan Sondheim, Itzac Perlman, Barbara Mikulski, etc. I know Willie Mays is dead, and I think Yogi Berra is dead, but most of the rest of them are there!

    Link!

    Go to the bottom of the story, and look at the photos of each famous not-dead persons! How humiliating for Gannet!

  74. 74.

    Turgidson

    @jl:

    He also retweeted something about how Iowa voters must have Monsanto-induced brain damage. (which was maybe the only thing he semi-walked back by blaming an intern)

    Was my favorite moment of the campaign other than when he started off the second debate by going out of his way to insult Rand Paul, and his “puppets?” tweet early on.

    Given his continuing strength in Iowa, I’d say their reaction was a gleeful “give us hell, Trump!”

  75. 75.

    Brachiator

    @Calouste: Trump as a personality is known. The question has yet to be answered whether GOP voters actually want the personality as a politician. I don’t see much historical precedent for this in US politics, so I still see no need to worry about Trump, yet. I will still bet small money that he will end up a huge loser.

  78. 78.

    Jeffro

    @gene108:

    Edit: The paranoia has been so deeply internalized in younger generations you have people refusing vaccinations for their kids, deciding fluoride in toothpaste and water is corporatist plot at mind control (or something), and the list goes on and on. The paranoia will never end is my point. The targets may shift, that is all.

    Yes…it was there 20, 30, 40, and 50 years ago and will likely never go away. I think there’s a Hofstadter book on this? it’s a recurring theme in American politics. What do you expect with a nation of tax-dodging riffraff here since Day 1?

    Having said that…it has been quite a while since a major American political figure made outright lying and hatemongering a central feature of his campaign, not to mention blithely disregarding physical attacks by his supporters on hecklers and others.

    Trump and the Angry Party are going to ride this wave right on in unless (and yes, I would like a pony for Christmas, too, why do you ask?) the GOP unites quickly and says as a party, we will not stand to have this man represent us. They just won’t do it, their party is too far gone institution-wise and morally, and so they will follow him down to their mutual destruction.

  81. 81.

    tam1MI

    Having said that…it has been quite a while since a major American political figure made outright lying and hatemongering a central feature of his campaign, not to mention blithely disregarding physical attacks by his supporters on hecklers and others.

    Richard Nixon.

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