Pat Buchanan on CNN:
1) GOP is facing “death sentence” via demographics
2) “Talking about shooting down Russian planes is madness"
— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) December 19, 2015
If Pat Buchanan ran for president again, he might be the most moderate candidate on the stage. https://t.co/CpcI73u92H
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) December 19, 2015
Crowd-sourcing: Name of the new party we'll have to start if Trump wins the GOP nomination? Suggestions welcome at [email protected]
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) December 20, 2015
The anti-Trump rump in GOP should call themselves the Whig Party. So it'll be Whig Versus Wig.
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) December 20, 2015
Prediction: if Trump does tear the GOP apart, it'll fracture into more than 2 parties. https://t.co/XJKJ1wVgY2
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) December 20, 2015
… to match GOP pants. Steve Benen, at MSNBC:
… Based on the latest, overall national averages, Trump isn’t just the leading Republican candidate, he’s actually dominating by more than 20 points. These same overall averages show the frontrunner, at least for now, with more support than Cruz and Rubio combined.
When was the last time a Republican presidential candidate led by more than 20 points in late December and failed to win his party’s nomination? Never. It just hasn’t happened…
Am I saying Trump is going to win the nomination? Not exactly. I am saying we’re looking at a dynamic in which we’ll either see (a) the biggest Republican collapse in modern American history; or (b) the first Republican nominee since 1940 with no experience in public office…
"This isn't the silent majority. This is the very aggressive very nosy very loud majority" – Trump
— Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) December 22, 2015
"I wouldn't kill them. But I hate them" Trump on journalists. Crowd roars.
— Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) December 22, 2015
Meanwhile, at a rally for Trump’s mini-me….
– Crowd roars with approval.
- Guy walking past informs me President Cruz should put Obama in jail as well.
— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) December 19, 2015
Redshift
That’s life inside the wingnut bubble. If a Republican can’t disagree on anything without being a traitor, anyone who isn’t even a Republican is obviously a criminal.
The Republic, Blah Blah Blah...
So Steve Benin says it’l be either (a) the biggest Republican collapse in modern American history; or (b) the first Republican nominee since 1940 with no experience in public office…
Why does it have to be one or the other?
What’s wrong with both, at the same time?
Following the nomination of the 1st candidate since 1940 with no experience in public office, the GOP IMPLODES in an horrific ball of flame, leaving a crater bigger than the one produced by the Sudan nuclear test in Nevada…
Christ, you could put that on pay-per-view and make a fortune…
east is east
If not for Anne Laurie this blog would have died.
east is east
Why am I kidding myself? This is Anne’s bot posting this. She is sound asleep.
Anne Laurie
@east is east: Nah, my internet provider kicked me off for a couple weeks and things went along just fine. But it’s nice to be noticed!
BillinGlendaleCA
@east is east: AL doesn’t sleep.
David Koch
I wonder if we’ll ever be able to discover his motivation.
David Koch
Trotskyites.
Why not go full circle and return to their origins.
Rashi
I don’t understand how anyone can stomach Trump. Even if you look at his campaign self as theater he’s repugnant on several levels.
Schlemazel
I still think the Dumpster does not get the nomination. So many of the knuckle-dragging troglodytes that make up his fans are not party regulars, have no idea what a caucus is let alone where theirs is held and won’t be bothered to show up when it matters that he may only win in primary states. Even if they do manage to show up in sufficient numbers on caucus night they are still trogs and the party regulars will wear them down, weed them out and out maneuver them into irrelevance. The regulars may only be playing to a tie so they can win a brokered convention (which will have a good chance of destroying the party). Whatever happens though should be good for a lot of hurt feelings and hopefully damage the party of racist, homophobic, sexist, blood-thirsty, reactionary evil. This, to quote Martha, is a good thing.
edit: @David Koch: certainly is the right name for them!
Schlemazel
@David Koch:
He is an unbalance lone wolf, nobody could have predicted.
Rashi
@Schlemazel: Martha Washington?
east is east
Anne. Yeah, you’ve got my number. You spotted it quick. It’s probably pretty obvious. It’s just the addiction thing. oh well.
BillinGlendaleCA
@David Koch: I’m sure he just has some mental issues.
David Koch
Meanwhile, Sanders is stoking conspiracy theories and excuses:
In 2007, Hillary led most of the year by 30 points and Obama never whined and pointed fingers. He just went out and won.
Also, Iowa’s football team was boring and middling last year, going 7-6. This year they were exciting, going 11-1. Somehow DWS knew the team would make a big turnaround?
Schlemazel
@Rashi:
Stewart – is that reference that old or am I being trolled?
amk
Here bill – rump
Rashi
@Schlemazel: trolled lol
Schlemazel
@Rashi:
Well played!
jc
“the first Republican nominee since 1940 with no experience in public office…”
Yes, but he has plenty of experience in the public eye. And it may be that we’re now in an era where too many people don’t know the difference.
I think Hillary had better think long and hard about running a conventional general election campaign against Trump. Because he’s going to try to do to her just what he did to Jeb: Sneer, smirk, trash, dismiss, put-down, insult, etc. No one will hear a word she says, everyone will be too busy cheering Donald’s antics.
mclaren
@Rashi:
“I don’t understand how anyone can stomach Trump.”
Listen to Trump’s rant against pissing away 3 trillion bucks on invading Iraq with nothing to show for it.’ That could have come from Bernie Sanders.
If you squint and listen selectively, ignoring much of what Trump says, he can seem almost reasonable.
There’s a lot selective amnesia and magical thinking going on in the Repib base.
Waldo
Looks like some of the GOPers have moved beyond denial and anger to the bargaining stage. Depression and acceptance are just around the bend.
David Koch
@jc: don’t be silly. The attack ads will drown Trump. There will be an array of attacks. Hillary will simply replay the ’64 campaign playbook against Goldwater.
My favorite will be when they play Meygan Kelly saying:
BOOM!
James E Powell
@jc:
I think it’s always a good idea to be paranoid, but Trump has very little appeal outside of the hard core RW.
mclaren
@David Koch:
Hills can literally use LBJ’s daisy ad against Trump. Clip of Fox news anchor saying “What’s the point of having a nuclear triad if you’re afraid to use it?”
Clips of Trump raving about foreigners. Insert girl with daisy footage, cut to mushroom cloud.
east is east
This is insane. I cannot sleep. I am starting to hallucinate. I always welcome my friends from the other dimension but really… would like to sleep,
Betty Cracker
@David Koch: There’s no point in whining about it now, but DWS / the DLC clearly set the debate schedule to minimize viewership. It didn’t take psychic powers to know that scheduling debates opposite even a crap football game would make it less likely for folks to watch.
east is east
They play a lot of music. An approximation of what we have. And lots of radio conversations that can’t quite be caught.
amk
@James E Powell:
Trump has very little appeal outside the one third of the hard core RW.
fixt.
Gimlet
Another Member of that Republican big tent
Kenny Rogers
I really like him. I think his problem is that he says what everyone wants to hear, but he doesn’t say it well. I love what he says, I have to admit. He can be president and not owe anybody anything; he’s one of the few people has the money to do it, and has the guts to do it. You’re biting off a lot by doing that. He believes everything he says: whether he’s right or not, he says what everybody fears. My older sons laugh at me when I tell them that.
Gimlet
More members, those super Christian Am Patriots
WP
Rachel Pendergraft — the national organizer for the Knights Party, a standard-bearer for the Ku Klux Klan — told The Washington Post that the KKK, for one, has a new conversation starter at its disposal.
You might call it a “Trump card.”
It involves, say, walking into a coffee shop or sitting on a train while carrying a newspaper with a Donald Trump headline. The Republican presidential candidate, Pendergraft told The Post, has become a great outreach tool, providing separatists with an easy way to start a conversation about issues that are important to the dying white supremacist movement.
“One of the things that our organization really stresses with our membership is we want them to educate themselves on issues, but we also want them to be able to learn how to open up a conversation with other people,” Pendergraft said.
Rashi
@mclaren: That Trump may say a few leftish things here and there doesn’t make him or his act palatable. Nor do I think those leftist things are what his supporters like about him; in fact most of them were no doubt for the war in Iraq. And since Trump is mildly informed at best, will change his positions when it’s opportune, most of what he says rings hollow. Trump is just insufferable. Always has been but now he won’t get off my TV.
maya
Yawn. This has all been done before. The Know Nothing Party of the late 1840s – 1850s. Intensely anti-immigrant (Catholic-Irish then). Started in New York and spread down dixie way. Changed their name to American Party.
Absolutely nothing new under the storm clouds.
Still raining like a bitch here in NorCal. Almost 9″ in last 24 hours. Much more to come.
raven
@Gimlet:
Someone painted April Fool in big black letters on a Dead End sign
I had my foot on the gas as I left the road and blew out my mind
Eight miles outta Memphis and I got no spare
Eight miles straight up downtown somewhere
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in
raven
@maya: I keep saying that too.
Zinsky
All this talk about the GOP splitting apart is hogwash. They would vote for Satan, if he had an (R) behind his name. They are shameless, tribal and unable to feel empathy for anyone. No, as Tony Benn, the late, great UK liberal reputedly said, “every generation will have to fight against these fascist bastards”.
David Koch
@Betty Cracker: I left out the context. He said they were limiting the debates to rig the nomination in favor of Clinton. Some time ago I agreed they’re limiting debates, but not to box out opponents but to box out the Beltway carrying water for the RNC.
Hillary is a very good debater, if only because she was a top grad from Yale law school. Debates isn’t what lost her the nomination in 2008, it was the daily carnage on the evening news from iraq (2007 had the highest casualty rate) and the most charismatic candidate in 50 years, who ran an ingenuous guerrilla campaign. Conventional tactics like debates wont defeat the most famous woman in the world. I mean Edwards ran on pure populism and he only got 17% of the vote (and he was more electable).
BillinGlendaleCA
@David Koch: There was the fact that Hillary hired folk who couldn’t count delegates, she seems to have learned from that.
Betty Cracker
@David Koch: Interesting theory about the motive. Myself, I still believe DWS was trying to box out opponents, thinking HRC’s name recognition would seal the deal for her, so why expose her to risk. But HRC has been a fine debater so far (as she was in 2008), and you and Bill are both right about what sunk her in 2008: It was a combination of an unusually gifted competitor and campaign staff incompetence.
John O
I’ll still believe it (Trump getting the nod) when I see it. Seems to me he tops out at about…oh, 27% nationally.
@Zinsky:
My feelings precisely. After Romney’s “47%” comments were leaked, I never understood why some Dem some place didn’t explicitly and repeatedly point out that the R’s are exactly as you describe them, and are therefore guaranteed the “shitty human being” demo. (You forgot “greedy” and “authoritarian” but I know it’s tough to make an all-inclusive list)
If Trump wins things are going to be really weird. Also, count me as slightly less abjectly terrified of Trump than Cruz, who is everything I hate in a human being and strikes me viscerally as a far more electable candidate with true Damien characteristics.
Randy P
@Gimlet: Even if you said to one of those types that he wasn’t saying what you thought, he’d just tell you you were lying. I remember seeing an argument like that about Arab dress. When the guy asking the question heard that no, he was the only person present who got fearful when he saw Arab robes and thought the person must be a terrorist, he concluded everyone was lying about their feelings and only he was telling the truth.
Betty Cracker
@John O:
You and me both.
Rafer Janders
@David Koch:
I know hundreds of top grads from Yale and Harvard law schools — while all of them are highly intelligent, only some of them are actually very good debaters in a live format under pressure. Academic intelligence does not necessarily equal debating skills.
F
It should be noted that the only reason that Pat Buchanan likes Russian planes so much is that he is in love with Putin for throwing gay people in prison for existing in public.
Hurling Dervish
Name of the new party we’ll have to start if Trump wins the GOP nomination?
The No True Scotsmen
magurakurin
@David Koch: Yeah, I’m completely done with Bernie Sanders. He can go fuck himself as far as I’m concerned now. He is still insisting that the Clinton campaign stole data from him even though he has not a single shred of evidence.
He’s going off the rails. This whole primary needs to be put to bed. What the fuck does this data breach shit have to do with issues? I thought that is what Sanders is supposed to be all about. Guess not. Fuck Bernie.
FlipYrWhig
@magurakurin: There’s a far too large cohort of liberal-to-left folks who have convinced themselves that the only reason their superior ideas and candidates aren’t winning is foul play: The Establishment fears their might and has to take them down with sabotage. I didn’t think Sanders himself was one of them, but his cadres are definitely inclined in that direction. This story is entirely that.
NorthLeft12
Why? Because that’s what you do to your political opponents in a dictatorship.
I would say these GOP supporters are clueless and make no connection between what they are saying and what it really means, but I wonder. I think there are more and more of them that are committed to the idea of “taking back their country” [preferably violently]. all they need is the right[wrong] leader to make it happen.
debbie
@David Koch:
The point is that she wouldn’t have even needed to “fix” the time of these debates. She’d still likely be ahead. Why is honesty and fairness such anathema to politicians?
ETA: Yeah, what Betty said.
FlipYrWhig
@debbie: I feel like I remember that last cycle (’08) there were complaints about too many debates. Not newsworthy enough, not enough people watching each one, etc. The Republicans last time (’12) became a joke. I assume that was what drove the creation of a pared-down debate schedule this time around: not to stack the deck for Hillary but to minimize the opportunity for gaffes and the resulting gaffe coverage on the cable networks.
ETA: Looking back, it turns out David Koch said much the same thing earlier. Because he’s right! I can tell because he agrees with me. :P
debbie
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t mind a smaller number of debates; it’s that they’ve all been on Saturday nights that makes for obvious attempts to limit viewership. A very GOP ploy.
magurakurin
@FlipYrWhig: And what does it matter what time the debate is? Does it matter what time a tv show is on anymore? I mean doesn’t everyone just DVR everything or watch it on demand? If you want to watch the debate you can stream right now from any number of locations for free. The whole discussions seems stupid to me. Anyone who is concerned about the candidates can easily watch the debate. It’s not a football game where knowing the final score will ruin the game. It’s a debate. You can watch it anytime. Hell, you can find the Nixon Kennedy debate on line and watch that. What time the debate is on is irrelevant if people actually give a shit about this stuff. The sad thing is most people don’t.
FlipYrWhig
@debbie: Has an insurgent candidate ever powered to the top on the strength of debate performance, much less debate performance unfolding in real time, though? I don’t think it works that way. That’s why I don’t think the DNC would bother to hatch a plan whose whole rationale is to prevent this highly unlikely occurrence from happening.
Penus
Doesn’t a cake sent to an inmate usually have escape equipment inside? Is Cruz saying he’d bust Hillary out?
FlipYrWhig
@magurakurin: Rachel Maddow was saying last night that viewership for the Democratic debates that everyone’s been complaining are being buried in lousy time slots has been higher than viewership for the Democratic debates in 2008. I wouldn’t have expected that.
magurakurin
@FlipYrWhig: And, the truth is, Sanders sucks as a debater. He comes off as angry and scolding. He only appeals to those who already like him. In pure technical terms he needs coaching to stop the finger pointing. He should watch videos of Clinton and Obama with the palms up,open outstretched hands. Body language matters. Sanders is bush league and he would get crushed in the general especially with that ass clown Tad Devine guiding him. They suck. Devine and Weaver shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the general election campaign.
FlipYrWhig
@Penus: Good point. I thought it was a weird remark but hadn’t figured out why…
magurakurin
@FlipYrWhig: I imagine, you could view it in the light that if there are less debates, more people will watch than if there are 20. If there are a large number some people figure they can watch a later one. If there are only a few, it becomes more important to watch. The whole idea that it is designed to help Clinton and stop Sanders is just stupid.
Chyron HR
@FlipYrWhig:
Well, that just proves that Hillary’s campaign is not only evil, but also incompetent.
FlipYrWhig
@magurakurin: As an academic from the Northeast, I have a lot of exposure to and a certain fondness for the Sanders “type”: disheveled, opinionated, single-minded. I’d be surprised to find it traveled well, but I suppose stranger things have happened.
magurakurin
@FlipYrWhig: Hell, I’m disheveled, opinionated and single-minded, but I just can’t get to Sanders. He’s not the guy for this cycle.
Paul in KY
@David Koch: Trumpskyites!!!
(nailed it)
Patricia Kayden
@Rashi: He’s repugnant to sensible people. Obviously Republican voters have lost their ever loving minds. A Black man in the White House pushed them over the edge.
How will they handle a woman Commander in Chief?
Paul in KY
@jc: Pres. Obama shut his ass down at the correspondent’s dinner. Hillary/Bernie should have great joke writers & just savage his ass, like our Pres. did.
Paul in KY
@Gimlet: Multi-millionaire singer Kenny Rogers?
rk
I’m surprised he just said Obama should be in jail. With this evil crowd jail is mild. I’m sure he was being politically correct.
Patricia Kayden
@Zinsky: Agree. Republicans will be fine. Dems better get out and vote next November as if our lives depended on it. Otherwise we will be looking at a President Trump or Cruz.
Han
@Betty Cracker: But they didn’t schedule the debate opposite a football game. The debate was scheduled well in advance of the game. Yes, they knew Iowa would be playing that day, but all games start out being scheduled at 11:05am, and only change if they are going to be televised. Who is picking them up and how good they are/big a deal the game is, determines what slot they go in. Two weeks before they still had an advertised morning kickoff. Was the debate supposed to be moved last-minute to accommodate the game?
Han
@debbie: They have not all been on Saturday nights. Two of the first three were on Saturdays. None of the next three are. And neither of the two forums were on Saturdays either.
NorthLeft12
@Gimlet:
There appears to be some hope for your sons, Kenny.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@jc: Every female voter will then proceed to vote for Hillary, and as female voters are the majority, she’ll win. Also, Trump will not get all of the male vote either. He’ll alienate every minority, female and intelligent white male voter which will leave him with at best about 35 percent of the vote. Cruz will do the same. The GOP is screwed.
I wonder if the press will push back now that they’re the guys in Trump’s cross-hairs? I mean, he is after all advocating violence against them. Do they roll over for him or throw him under the bus? I mean, it voilates the invoilable principles of “balance” and “both sides do it” but on the other hand, well, I’d take it personally if I were them.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@NorthLeft12: Is that Kenny Rogers the singer, or Kenny Rogers the former MLB pitcher?
lethargytartare
@debbie:
I agree – debates should only be held on Tuesdays. Any other scheduling is clearly a ploy to defeat Bernie’s otherwise unstoppable momentum.
cmorenc
@Rashi:
Because Trump has tapped into the fears and resentments of his audience in a way that resonates rather than repels them. This is unfortunately hardly the first time someone has ridden this kind of wave of resentment into leading a political movement, or even into office in the US – Richard Nixon, for example. What’s different is how nakedly and directly Trump is stoking this, instead of through surrogates.
cmorenc
@David Koch:
No, but DWS DID know months ahead that: 1) Dec 19th was on a Saturday (relatively low news-attention day); 2) six days before Christmas, when many folks would either be out shopping, at Christmas parties, or watching some football game on TV. Irrespective of the fortunes of the Iowa football team, this was always going to be a day when the factors attracting public attention to the debate were going to be at their lowest point.
Tripod
@cmorenc:
The factors for low public attention are having to watch a fucking debate.
lethargytartare
@cmorenc:
okay, so I think I’ve got it now:
any debates scheduled on a Saturday, Sunday, Monday or Thursday, and any debates scheduled the last two weeks of November or December are a plot by DWS to crown Hillary.
These scheduling requirements should really be part of Bernie’s platform so Debbie can check his website when scheduling the debates.
Paul in KY
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Either way, they’re both multi-millionaires. So being for a Repub is like a ‘dog bites man’ kind of thing, IMO.
Spinoza is my Co-pilot
@Zinsky:
Agree completely. Statehouses, Congress, the judiciary, the overall media framework of our politics and economy, anyone? Expecting the imminent or even somewhere-over-the-horizon demise of movement conservatism and its political wing in America (the Republican Party) is utter foolishness.
Most likely the Democrats will win the presidency in ’16 (and surely that candidate will be Hillary) but most of the rest of the political power in America (from sheriff’s offices and town councils on up) belongs to the fascists. Not all, of course, just most.
Human nature defaults to tribalism, xenophobia, mean-spiritedness, selfishness, bigotry, hatred. Those are all conservative/fascist traits. It’s the easier path to take, by far, and why the majority of the most devout followers of Christ — for instance — are not at all Christ-like (in the sense of the Sermon on the Mount) but are instead fascist Pharisees. Pushing for liberal ideals (the “better angels of our nature”) is a much tougher, uphill battle that is never over. In fact, it’s rather Sisyphean.
Which is why conservatives in America (and, much more so, in the rest of the world outside western Europe) outnumber liberals, and likely always will. Hell, rightwingers actually dominate even in western Europe, they just enjoy their social welfare states enough to want to keep them intact (because almost everyone, ordinary rightwingers included, benefits thereby). But those social welfare states are 100% dependent on high levels of peace and prosperity. Those go away or are even seriously threatened? If you think the answer is “more liberalism” you’re an idiot. That’s not where the mass of people will go. Which, sadly, we are absolutely going to see in the coming decades when global climate change really starts wreaking havoc. That world, the world of our children and grandchildren, will not, I’m afraid, be a liberal one.
More immediately, expecting the current clown car cavalcade of Republican presidential primary candidates to do anything more than put a slight and temporary dent in Republican primacy in America is whistling past the graveyard.
Tokyokie
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Must be the singer. The pitcher is a lefty.
Matt McIrvin
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
There are a lot of women who are active misogynists, and respond positively to sexist abuse. Not the majority. But enough to make it closer than you think.
gus
Must be a broad definition of “public office,” since Eisenhower never held elected office prior to being elected president.