this is legit terrifying from Ted Cruz, holy hell pic.twitter.com/KRV484F9pB
— Tim Dickinson (@7im) January 5, 2016
Ladies and gentlemen, your “non-extreme” GOP alternative to Trump. https://t.co/w6Aw8emX7m
— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) January 5, 2016
The guy who wrote this for the NRO, back in 2008….
Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America.
… has a new heartthrob to burble about today, for Politico:
The lazy conventional wisdom is that Ted Cruz is the new Barry Goldwater doomed to suffer an electoral landslide defeat should he win the Republican nomination.
Not only is this wrong about Cruz’s general-election chances, it may compare Cruz to the wrong 20th-century Republican forebear. The better analogue for Cruz might be Richard Nixon, not in the crudely pejorative sense, but as another surpassingly shrewd and ambitious politician who lacked a personal touch but found a way to win nonetheless…
… He wears his ambition on his sleeve and is not highly charismatic or relatable. In high school, he could have been voted most likely to be seen walking on the beach in his dress shoes. If Cruz wins the nomination, it will be on the strength of intelligence and willpower. He will have outworked, outsmarted and outmaneuvered everyone else.
Certainly, Cruz is not ascending on the basis of warm feelings from his colleagues. Cruz portrays his unpopularity within the Senate as establishment distaste for him as a lonely man of principle. But it is a genuine personal dislike. Not that Cruz cares. In fact, a key to what he has been able to achieve is his apparent immunity to the reflexive desire to be liked by people around you, a weakness to which almost all of us fall prey. Cruz is free of the peer pressure that typically makes all senators, at some level, team players.
Cruz is a Reagan Republican, although with considerable flexibility within those parameters. When Rand Paul seemed to be on the ascendancy a couple of years ago, Cruz was a Reagan Republican with Paulite accents. When Donald Trump began to dominate, Cruz became a Reagan Republican with Trumpian tendencies. If Jim Gilmore were to catch fire, Cruz would presumably find a way to incorporate a Gilmoresque element into his platform…
At the moment, if Trump loses the nomination, Cruz is most likely to be the instrument of his defeat by flattering and co-opting him and his supporters.
This speaks to deft political sense that runs counter to his caricature as a mindless hard-liner. Indeed, Cruz is an amazingly supple adamantine politician. He benefits from the old Mark Twain adage that once you get a reputation as an early riser, you can sleep ’til noon every day. Cruz’s unbending image makes it possible for him to bend as it suits him…
Marco Rubio and Chris Christie are both, in their own ways, more winsome and it’s easier to see how each of them could pick off Obama states. But Cruz has always understood that you have to win the primary to win the general. He has set about to do it in truly impressive fashion. Whoever is going to beat him, better know what he’s doing—because Cruz certainly does.
Hands outa yer pants, Lowry, this ain’t one of your low RWNJ dives.
Emerald
If any one needed more evidence that Villago Delenda Est is correct when he calls for tumbrels . . .
Amir Khalid
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that Ted Cruz is unpopular in the US Senate because he’s the biggest jackhole in DC.
Chyron HR
Literally brain damaged? You said it, buddy, not us.
msdc
“winsome”
As usual, Lowry manages to be wrong on so many levels.
Patricia Kayden
Yeah sure. Put greasy Cruz up against Secretary Clinton. It will be fun to watch him getting crushed by the first woman President. Cruz isn’t even liked by his fellow Republican Senators. Just look at how Senator McCain threw him under the bus about the birther issue.
cmorenc
The more apt analogy is that Nixon was a charismatic cuddly teddy-bear with impeccable integrity, compared to Cruz. Or put a different way, Nixon might be the guy at the end of the bar drinking by himself who doesn’t give off the sort of vibe tempting you to sit down next to him and strike up a conversation, while Cruz is the sort of guy at the end of the bar that gives you the immediate urge to leave the bar and find a more hospitable watering hole.
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid: Weelll, yeah… but in Sparklepants Lowry’s argument, that just proves Cruz is better than us ordinary mortals: “In fact, a key to what he has been able to achieve is his apparent immunity to the reflexive desire to be liked by people around you, a weakness to which almost all of us fall prey…”
I’m waiting to see if Cruz actually winks at the camera during the next Repub debate. Not that I’ll be watching the debate so closely, but Tailgunner Ted is such a clumsy overactor that it’ll be a WTF moment for the ages!
Hungry Joe
” … his apparent immunity to the reflexive desire to be liked by people around you, a weakness to which almost all of us fall prey.”
Right: the “weakness” of having blood in your veins, a heart your chest, and responding to others like a human being.
For my money (what there is of it), this makes him the scariest of the bunch — and right now I give him the best chance of getting the nomination.
(Though I wonder who he could get to sign on as VP. I mean, would YOU want to work for that guy?)
gogol's wife
So which is it, the “tearful Obama” trumpeted in the NYTimes headline, no doubt to emphasize his wimpiness, or black helmets? They just can’t make up their minds.
jl
I saw that someplace earlier. My first reaction was ‘total iconography fail’.
WTF is Obama supposed to be in that pic? Looks like Dean Jagger playing Major General Tom Waverly in White Christmas. They want a tyrant, right? Not an intrepid GI Joe from the Good War.
I readily admit it is all just hunches and amusement in my spare seconds looking at the dreck the GOPers are pumping out, but everything they do strikes me as politically inept. Trump is right in one thing, they are losers. And from what junk Trump has been pumping out over the last week, he might be a political loser in anything but the fetid and stagnant dried up de-oxygenated cesspool of the GOP primary, full of dying political minnows.
Any of them will seem like goofs against HRC, or if something unexpected happens, Sanders. That doesn’t guarantee a Democratic win, since a major unexpected disaster or scandal can upset things, so I still worry.
Romney stands like a colossus over these dwerps.
feebog
So, being a flaming asshole who no one likes is a positive going into the general election. Got it. This is why no one ever listens to Rich Lowry.
cmorenc
Lowry is right that Cruz is running a very clever campaign in the GOP primaries that might just give him a realistic shot at getting the breaks he needs to win the nomination. Fortunately, his primary campaign strategy and personality are catastrophically counterproductive to his chances at winning the general election. To folks who are not like-minded zealous wingnuts and evangelicals, he gives off the vibe of some arrogant ass hole they remember from school or work whom they could not stand to be in the same room with.
piratedan7
It’s pretty apparent that Mr. Lowry is nothing more than a journalistic hooker, willing to blow any GOP candidate if the price is right.
jl
@gogol’s wife: They have been wading in their own private language BS dos whistles and wingnut code for years, which is increasingly incomprehensible to anyone outside their club. The GOP base does not care: it has become for them a kind of emotive Pavlovian theatre inside their own minds.
Now they are in over their heads swimming through their own bullshit. Probably no trace of them will be visible my next summer, except swirls of disturbed and swirling rhetorical and iconographic clow flops we can barely track on the surface of mess.
cmorenc
@Hungry Joe:
I doubt even Chris Christie could stand to be Cruz’s VP. Perhaps James Dobson would be willing to do so…
Mnemosyne
@cmorenc:
Not to mention that Nixon got elected in 1968 by working his ass off for every other Republican elected between 1961 and 1967 and then calling those chips in when he was ready to run. Where’s the evidence that Cruz has paid his party dues the way Nixon did?
kindness
Well it just goes to show you that when the French had their Revolution, they weren’t completely wrong about how they did it.
@cmorenc: Careful or we’ll get Vice Presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann.
jl
@cmorenc: Could maybe tap current Larry the Cable Guy for VP?
MattF
@gogol’s wife: Well, yes. I’m reading Stacy Schiff’s The Witches these days (it’s a slow read) and the Devil in Massachusetts in 1692 had all sorts of tricks up his sleeves. Just ask those hysterical children over there– they’ll tell you. And that hasn’t changed.
Roger Moore
@msdc:
You know, you winsome, you losesome.
Kay
Ewww. I hope they nominate him. People won’t like him :)
Mnemosyne
@jl:
Fun party game when you’re stuck being forced to socialize with wingnuts, as at a family event: when they make one of their coded allusions, play dumb and ask them what it means. Try and get them to explain the whole conspiracy. I guarantee you that 9 times out of 10 they’ll get no more than halfway through the explanation before they realize how stupid it sounds and abruptly change the subject. (In the 10th case where they do get all the way through their screed and seem to think that what they said made sense, you may want to have that relative screened for dementia or mental illness, depending on their age.)
WereBear
He’s right about one thing. I haven’t felt this much brain-stem-reflexive revulsion for a Republican hoper since Nixon.
Jager
@cmorenc:
Actually Cruz is the guy sitting at the end of the bar who you instantly know needs the living shit kicked out of him.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
That has to be a first for Chris Christie, even as a child.
MattF
@WereBear: The lizard brain is right sometimes.
Tim C.
Sorry, the Cruz tweet/advert is nothing special. He’s just doing openly what’s been going on since the mid 90s. In fact this is better as it completely tosses aside the subterfuge the Republican party has been allowed to get away with. This is what they are.
gogol's wife
@jl:
We’ll follow the old man, wherever he wants to go . . .
Kay
@WereBear:
Yeah, it’s pretty gut-level. He’ll have some surmounting to do! He must become a completely different person, and soon.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’m gonna wait until Bloody Bill Kristol pronounces Cruz’s campaign dead before I give Cruz a chance. You just can’t trust Lowry. He gets starbursts in his eyes and can’t see clearly.
Brachiator
People keep mentioning this as though it is important. It’s not. Cruz is popular with a core group of GOP voters. The question is, can he build upon this base, not whether other senators like him.
And as creepy as he is, he has been more effective in deflecting Trump’s attacks with humor and grace than has most of the other contenders. Jeb whines, Rubio gets nervous, Christie breaks out into a sweat. Cruz whips out the clip comparing The Donald to The Fonz jumping the shark.
Smooth.
John Revolta
@msdc: Apparently this clown thinks “winsome” means “full of win”.
Anyway, we can enjoy having been there when Chris Christie was described as “winsome”, and the English language somehow managed not to burst into flames.
Just Some Fuckhead
Although it will be interesting to watch our national media embarrassment pronounce him “the candidate no one wants to have a beer with” and how this doesn’t matter anymore.
jl
@Mnemosyne: The good neighborhood laundromat was closed over the Holidays, so I had to go to the crummy one where the hobos hang out and do their laundry. The manager, or maybe owner, is there all the time, though what he does is a mystery since I’ve never seen a place with so many poorly maintained and broken machines.
He usually has wingnut TV on, and one day came over and started to talk politics with me. I posed as a kind of thoughtful independent undecided right-thinking (aka bigoted) ‘radical moderate’ in order to draw him out. I swear, 90 percent of his argument was repeating that ‘Obama is a communist’, or ‘Obama is a dictator’ or ‘Obama is weak’.
JPL
@Jager: Hopefully, there are no lesser ivy alums there.
Felonius Monk
Rich Who? and why should I care if he farts in public as long as I’m upwind?
Mike J
@Roger Moore:When I hear winsome, one use of it springs to mind:
Winsome,
What I am is winsome,
Radiant as in some
Dream come true.
Oh, Isn’t it a shame?
I can neither sew
Nor cook nor read or write my name.
But I’m happy
Merely being lovely,
For it’s one thing I can give to you.
Just Some Fuckhead
It’s all moot anyway. 50% of Republicans won’t support a foreign-born President according to all the polls from the last seven years.
MattF
@Brachiator: And not just that– Cruz continues to succeed at the double game of appealing to the Evangelicals as a true believer and appealing to the oligarchy as a Harvard lawyer. There’s a lesson there: a con artist doesn’t have to be pretty or popular. Just convincing.
jl
As long as we are on politics. Sam Wang’s Princeton Election Consortium seems to be focusing more attention on forecasting 2016. Prof Wang sayeth: slightly under 50 oercent ceiling for Trump does not prevent him from getting nomination, Rubio needs to step up big time real soon or he is toast.
Roger Moore
@cmorenc:
FTFY.
Mike J
@Jager:
Cruz is the guy at the end of the bar talking about how his business card is bone colored. And the lettering is something called Silian Rail.
Germy
The Second Amendment Original Intent
Nice humor piece for a change from the New Yawker.
danielx
Shopping list:
1. brain bleach
2. brain bleach
3. brain bleach
4. whisky
5. fresh chicken….
No, scratch #5, my appetite has done gone missing, possibly forever.
Speaking of Republican douchery, do a google search on ‘brad wurfel’ and ‘michigan department of environmental quality’, who resigned his position on 12/29. He’s the smirking sonofabitch who denied, denied, denied any problems with lead in the city of Flint’s water supply.
MazeDancer
@Hungry Joe:
Nikki Haley, Jodi Ernst, Carly Fiorina (Though Carly not exactly gonna warm up a ticket with Ted)
GOP likely to choose a woman no matter who’s the nominee.
Fortunately, Susana Martinez had a recent development at a wild party night in Santa Fe, where things got thrown off the fourth floor of the Eldorado Hotel, that might have tarnished her chances. Though, the all-Hispanic ticket would be interesting for the GOP. Especially, when they lose 75% of the Hispanic vote.
Keith P
I can always pick out the Rich Lowry op-eds at Politico just from the headline
Kay
He’ll probably be so relieved when he’s allowed to quit:
Keith G
Cruz has been doing a lot of good things (in the contest for becoming the uber-ass most likely to get nominated). He is media savvy, seems to have a plan that reaches out a couple of weeks ahead. Most importantly, he knows how worthwhile it is to act as if he is having fun. And actually, I think he is enjoying this.
His “Obama as Waffe” fund raiser is brilliant – terrible, tasteless, regrettable, but for his purposes…brilliant.
I would rather not see him run against Hillary, yet I feel that may be what happens.
Roger Moore
@piratedan7:
I thought he was more of a
BaseballRepublican Annie, throwing himself at any Republican he can get close to in the hopes of becoming their girlfriend.Mnemosyne
@gogol’s wife:
Even beyond the other issues with it, that’s just a weird-ass movie with the mix of tanks and musical numbers.
geg6
@Roger Moore:
Exactly. He’s the creepiest of creeps, the smuggest of smugs, the slimiest of slimes. I’ve seen people who don’t know who he is recoil when seeing him on tv. Just a visceral recoil.
MattF
(Replying to MazeDancer) It’s a calculation. If he decides he needs an Evangelical to bolster his cred among the believers, it’ll be someone like Bachmann. If he decides he needs more cred with the oligarchy, it’ll be Ann Romney.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: I’ve always been amazed when the call Obama a “weak dictator”.
Gimlet
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/tearful-militant-discovers-friend-drank-away-donation-money-its-like-finding-out-there-is-no-such-thing-as-santa/
A heartbroken militiaman announced that one of his buddies had walked off the Oregon nature preserve they had overtaken and had holed up in a local motel to drink away donation money.
Joe Oshaugnessy, an Arizona militiaman, has been actively seeking volunteers through social media to join the occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
His friends tearfully announced that Oshaugnessy, who is known as “Capt. O,” had left the refuge Wednesday and was instead staying at a motel nearby — as some others associated with the militants have apparently been doing, according to sources.
Some of the militants have reportedly been spotted eating at area restaurants during the standoff, as well.
The militants have been allowed to come and go freely from the nature preserve in the absence of a law enforcement presence, but at least one of them, Brian “Booda” Cavalier, failed to return after a newspaper report revealed he had lied about serving in the U.S. Marines.
Jon Ritzheimer, the Arizona militiaman known for organizing anti-Muslim rallies and fundraising through his “Rogue Infidel” site, went to see Oshaugnessy at the motel and found him drinking there, according to Maureen Peltier, a disabled National Guard woman who claims to be the group’s official spokeswoman.
Peltier said Ritzheimer had confirmed that Oshaugnessy had kept the money he had raised through social media for himself and had spent at least some of it on a drinking binge.
trollhattan
@MazeDancer:
Jesus, I never once considered a Cruz-Fiorina before now. They’d make the team of McCain-Palin seem like Pryor-Wilder by comparison. 73% of the nation would be rooting for a campaign plane crash.
trollhattan
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I prefer the more-sophisticated “feckless tyrant.” How does he do that?
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I’m not sure if his tactics will work against Hillary or Bernie, though. They both seem to have a pretty good sense of humor about themselves and won’t wilt if they get mocked.
Kay
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I’ve come to believe it’s about making Obama a lawbreaker. They have to portray him as literally violating a law. That’s the “weak dictator” contradiction- it’s illegitimate authority.
Mike in NC
If invited to have a beer with Ted Cruz, I’d immediately join the League of Temperance and give up drinking for life.
Brachiator
@MattF:
I don’t see Cruz as a con artist. He has all the unpleasant zealotry of the most furious right wing true believer.
And in an election year in which increasing creepiness does not always lead to disqualification, Cruz should not be under-estimated.
jl
@Kay:
” Now, how do they get 5,000 people going to a rally and only 58 people showing up to organize? ”
My theory, which is supported by my hunch and nothing else, is that a lot of Trump supporters are goofballs. A Trump event is exciting entertainment and political cosplay for them. Just like a monster truck rally or football game, sure, they will drive a hundred miles and stand in long lines to go to that. They get to yell and scream. They get to bask in the glow of the winner billionaire, and feel like winners themselves vicariously (and that is I think the key).
My own humble experience in GOTV, when you show up to organize, the experience is completely different. You do not feel like a winner, in the sense that you are rewarded with the immediate psychic equivalent of ultra hot hookers and extra potent blow. No, you are given boring tasks to do, you receive lists describing very long walks that appear to be very tedious and complicated on paper, or you are asked to take on responsibility for organizing and conducting scut work in the future. Goofballs need not, and usually do not, apply.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: Well illegitimate goes without saying, since Obama was born in Kenya.
Jebediah, RBG
@piratedan7:
I think he would do it for free, making him more of a suckophant.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: For a counter-point, remember the Governator.
jl
@BillinGlendaleCA: True. But, my view is that luckily, neither HRC nor Sanders are Gray Davis, or Cruz Bustamante. (will have to check if I got the right guy -I think so, and if I spelled it correctly -no chance!)
Edit: WOOT WOOT! someone email me a beer!
dedc79
Someone at the NBA store is about to get fired.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
One commenter said it well. Trump typically lashes out against the slightest criticism, but instead of counter-punching, Cruz would go in for the clinch, with humor instead of anger.
This indicates a certain degree of smarts on the part of Cruz, especially since nobody else figured out how to deal with Trump’s unorthodox style of pithy attack. I think he could come up with effective approaches to deal with the Democratic nominee.
I am not all that worried about Clinton. Not yet. But she is often a grim, plodding campaigner, not very humorous or fast on her feet. Sanders is better, but I am not yet convinced that he has a serious chance at the nomination.
jl
@Mike in NC: I don’t even want to think about it. Chances of doing hard time for assault and battery with beer mug too high. It is true, there is just something about that face.
Making fun of someone’s looks is not nice But I don’t think that applies here unless he suffers from some condition that makes his insufferable smirk permanent and unavoidable, rather than a choice reflecting unsavory personality traits.
jl
@Brachiator: Have some confidence, man, HRC will grimly rehearse good humored spontaneity until she gets it right.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Yup, you did spell it correctly; would you take a diet coke instead?
ETA: Also you’re thinking general, I’m thinking primaries.
jl
@dedc79: Poor sap can get work with a GOP presidential contestant. They seem to prefer PR and marketing work like that. Except, whether by choice or chance, that gaffe is just too good. If the culprit can do the same but make it clunkier and dumber, there are many GOP job offers waiting.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I think she’s shown otherwise on this campaign. My pet theory is that her old campaign staff wanted her to act like a totally serious badass because they were worried about her being characterized as a flighty female. Instead, she came off as stiff and over rehearsed. She’s switched campaign staff, and the current group apparently trust her to act like herself. She comes across as much more personable as a result.
jl
@BillinGlendaleCA: Primaries? Well, OK then. Sorry.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: Her joke about not looking old and gray as President was pretty good.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
She’s not terribly spontaneous, but watch the clip of her on “SNL” playing a bartender opposite Kate McKinnon playing Hillary and you can see she doesn’t mind people poking a little fun at her. Cruz will have to come up with a new tactic.
Kay
@jl:
I’m not sure 10 per thousand is a bad number for volunteer organizer turn out.
Botsplainer
Cruz is the guy at the end of the bar who talks about how great high school was while in reality, he got a swirly every day in gym because he changed his clothes in the toilet stall.
Anne Laurie
@Mike J: The Henshall/Burnett version is even better, for our purposes!
jl
@Gimlet: Thanks for that link. My hope is, and hopeful guess has been, that for every stolid and competent cowboy who can safely spend many nights outside in the snow under a tarp, his trusty rifle at the ready, there are three or four pathetic goofs.
Southern Beale
I know it’s not the point of this post bug “winsome” is not a word I would ever associate with Chris Christie. Holy hell.
jl
@Kay: OK. You would know more about it than I do, since I have always been the grunt in GOTV and organizing. My thinking has been influenced by a couple of news articles I’ve read (sorry, some weeks ago, so no links) that the Trump campaign has been plagued by unreliable staff and no shows for work. One said that despite all the money spent on organizing and lists, 90 percent of the NH GOTV areas (precincts, whatever they call the election districts there) remain unfilled.
So, my working theory is that Trump attracts goofballs, and will under perform his polling in early caucuses and elections. I admit that I could well be wrong, and also that where he has double digits leads, it won’t make enough difference to matter much.
bemused
@Gimlet:
When these dipshits moved into the Wildlife Refuge center, I thought it wouldn’t take long for them to start squabbling in the sandbox but it’s only been, what, three, four days. They even surpassed my low timing bar.
Botsplainer
How to handle Trump…
Obama shows how its done.
MattF
@Anne Laurie: Have to include this.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: I tend to agree, remember President Dean. OTOH, Trump has a celebrity factor that most other candidates don’t have, so that might mitigate the lack of an effective GOTV.
MattF
@BillinGlendaleCA: My friend from Minnesota keeps bringing up Jesse Ventura. It worked for him.
lonesomerobot
Rich Lowry’s description of Cruz sounds like the Borg is running as a candidate on the GOP side.
Jager
@Mike in NC:
Geez Mike most people would want to crumple the can in his face or at minimum pour it in his lap.
Gimlet
@bemused:
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2016/01/at_bundy_encampment_outsider_s.html#incart_big-photo
BURNS — Violence broke out at the Bundy compound Wednesday night between its militant occupants and members of an outside group whose leader says he wants to get women and children out of the compound.
Lewis Arthur, who leads a group called Veterans on Patrol and calls himself an anti-violence patriot, arrived Wednesday afternoon with a small crew.
By Wednesday night, one of Arthur’s three-person crew was in the hospital, his eye blackened from a punch to the face.
In an interview Thursday, Arthur blamed the injuries on Blaine Cooper, a prominent member of the group of militants who since Saturday have staged a standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
Arthur said those inside the refuge didn’t agree with his mission to remove women and children — as well as prominent militant Ryan Payne — from the compound.
Jason Patrick, another participant in the refuge standoff, tells a different story.
In a Facebook post Thursday morning, he said Arthur initiated the scuffle when he “assaulted a guard” in an attempt to enter the compound.
Botsplainer
Damn – one of the guys in my law shop just got himself elected President of the Metro Council for the People’s Democratic Socialist Kenyan Shariah Republic of Louisville (the city legislative body). We’ve got two members of the 26 in our office of 20 lawyers, which is kinda cool. It’s kind of a big deal – we’ve got a strong council president model.
JPL
@Gimlet: According to a commentor on the Oregonian, one of the militants took money they raised on social media, bought some whiskey and is now holed up in a hotel. Maybe the FBI is right in their stand back/off approach.
Redshift
The wingnut version of “contrarianism” tends to consist of making up a point of view that no one actually holds, attributing it to “everyone,” and then acting like you’re clever for disagreeing with it.
Seriously, is there anyone who thinks Cruz is a “mindless hard-liner”? He’s widely perceived to be an asshole and (if you’re not a wingnut or a Villager) evil, be he’s not stupid.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
I was thinking, Obama looks like a I guy I would like working for but not one I would like to cross. Which I think is a good thing in a leader. Ted Cruz is the kind of guy you mine as well mess with since he’s just going to make up something to scream about the first chance he gets no matter what is really happening.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: John McCain was denouncing him today, and actually being sympathetic to the “he was born in Canada, he can’t run for President!” meme.
jl
@Gimlet: Took a couple of weeks before the NV Bundy gang dissolved into squabbling factions, IIRC. Not much to do out there is the cold and snow.
I hope it works, and one by one they wander off, or get into squabbles and huff themselves back home.
OTOH, they might break into feuding clans holed up in the different compound buildings taking pot shots at each other.
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshift: He’s shrewd, that is for sure. He has a cunning plan.
boatboy_srq
@Amir Khalid: @cmorenc: Are y’all still asking why I say “Kuala Lumpur looks better every year”?
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
I agree with you that she is often much better this time out, though she often still seems stiff to me, and sometimes insincere.
@Mnemosyne:
Agreed.
Mike J
@Anne Laurie: That was awesome.
ThresherK (GPad)
@piratedan7: Wow, that side of the street is crowded!
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: That’s what sealed Bob Dole’s fate in ’96. His staff wouldn’t let him be Bob Dole. After the election was over, he was on Letterman and came across as funny, personable, and anything but stiff.
Hillary’s doing well just being Hillary.
Grumpy Code Monkey
I do have to admit, there’s a small, unpleasant part of me that’s morbidly curious about Lowry’s late-night browsing habits.
Starbursts aside, Lowry’s not wrong to compare Cruz to Nixon. Don’t underestimate the value of being loathesome to the right people. And he can spin his lack of legislative accomplishments as being an “outsider” (which, strictly speaking, isn’t a lie – opportunistic assholes do tend to be outsiders).
Although, frankly, the bigger threat is that a not-very-well-informed-or-involved general voting public who swallow the whole “both sides do it” line with enthusiasm will vote for him simply because he’s not another Democrat and not another Clinton. That would be true for Rubio as well. In that respect, either of them would be a legitimate threat in the general. Hell, I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of multiple Presidents Clinton so soon after multiple Presidents Bush (which, I have to admit, is one of the reasons I preferred Obama over Clinton in ’08). That’s too much power in too few hands.
Yes, I’m assuming that Clinton will be the nominee. While my political beliefs track Sanders’ more closely than Clinton’s, I don’t think he’s a good fit for the office. I wish that our bench was deeper and younger, but here we are. I put that blame squarely on the DNC.
boatboy_srq
@MazeDancer: Ben Carson. Because the only thing scarier than a Cruz pResidency is, well…
Makes for instant insurance that neither assassination nor impeachment is a likelihood.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gimlet: I’m shocked, shocked! to learn this.
Grifting assholes, all of them.
debbie
@Kay:
Hey, Kay. I didn’t see until much later your comment about your son getting the heck out of Ohio. I can relate. They had to tie me down to keep me in Ohio until my freshman year. I swore I would never come back but was unschooled in the ways of the irony of the universe. Hope he’s able to stay where he’s happy!
Sad_Dem
@MattF:
Didn’t the Romans divorce and remarry in order to forge political alliances? Babs wouldn’t need much convincing, I think. Ann may need a couple of dancing horses.
debbie
@Southern Beale:
I blame his editor, who has to take some responsibility for letting that get through to publication.
bemused
@Gimlet:
Whoa. Ha. Not surprising they’d come to blows. Just leave them alone and they’d do themselves in.
lamh36
What the holy hell..I mean
“D-Money, Smoothie…” come on
LePage makes racially charged comment at Bridgton meeting
cleek
Cruz has all the charm and slime-producing capability of a hagfish.
see also, me.
debbie
@JPL:
My very bad day at work will dissolve into nothingness if that turns out to be true!
Baud
@lamh36:
Holy ovulation, batman!
LePage is an embarrassment to a historically decent state.
catclub
@MattF:
Somebody at LGM noted that since Cruz is claiming that the GOP was NOT CONSERVATIVE ENOUGH with Romney and McCain, and hence that is why they lost, he will want a true believer for VP – or put it another way,
the delegates who put him over the top ( assumption of winning) will demand a true believer and would revolt
if he picks, someone who is establishment GOP.
ETA: So Sarah Palin could be relevant.
Baud
@Gimlet:
Long will they sing the epic song of Masada West.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
I deal with the conspiracies and talking points the same way. I play sincerely curious and ask lots of questions. They can’t explain anything beyond the sound bite.
On a happier subject. I spent Christmas break with some friends I hadn’t seen in a long time. They are absolutely 1% ers now. I was almost ready to sell my soul for the guest bathroom (that toilet was advanced!). Anyway, I became the cool pauper friend when the kids, maid and I were hanging out in the kitchen watching all the ham4ham videos. Turns out the teens are hamilmaniacs but their parents were clueless about it. They are now going to get tickets and fly me to NY to see it with them. We’ll see if/when they find tickets.
dogwood
@Villago Delenda Est:
Bob Dole has one of the best dry wits around. I used to like to watch Mitchell and Dole cover the conventions on CNN. I think the problem for people like Dole who tend to be quick on their feet with heavy doses of sarcasm is that their handlers fear they will say something offensive. So they shut them down.
MomSense
@lamh36:
I’ll tell you what is up with him. He is a racist ignoranus and he disgraces our state every single day he “serves” as our governor.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Paul, Paul, Paul LePage!
The Con-Tin-Ent-Al liar from the state of Maine!
Gimlet
@Baud:
More likely Jim Jones and the big kettle of Kool-Ade.
Brachiator
@jl:
That’s funny. And on point.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
I had a couple of friends-of-friends in my Facebook feed post pictures of getting their kids “Hamilton” tickets. I’m still willing to take G to see it when he graduates in 2017 or 2018 since neither of us have ever been to NYC, but I’ll have to wait until those blocks of tickets open up. I’m not sure how long they can hog the Richard Rodgers Theater, but it probably depends on how long they keep attracting sellout crowds.
lamh36
but wait…the Guv spox says “the governor wasn’t talking about race”.
Really dude…really!
D-Money, Smoothie…I mean did he pull them names out of a hat labelled “what white folk think black gang members nicknames”
jl
@Brachiator: I stole that from Colbert.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
Of course, actual experts will tell you that the heroin crisis is happening because the Feds cracked down on prescription drug abuse and it’s easier for people who were already hooked on Oxy to get heroin right now, but conservatives have never let reality stand in the way of a racist assumption.
Hungry Joe
Dole was (and I assume still is) sane, and although I disagreed with just about everything he said, I have to admit he was qualified to be President. But despite all that, and his dry wit, and his for-real heroism in WWII, he was (and I assume still is) a nasty piece of work. Remember, just for example, “Democrat wars”? It’s only in comparison to the current GOP liars, lickspittles, and lunatics that he looks good.
Baud
@Mnemosyne: And who’s responsible for half the white women in Maine getting knocked up? Hmmmm?
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
Thomas mother-effing Jefferson.
Kay
@lamh36:
We had a lawyer-lecture by the AG’s office and they blame physicians/pharma companies. There was an explosion in prescribed pain meds over a 10 year period. Younger people start on it here by stealing opiates from family members- parents or grandparents. When they are then hooked and can no longer get those they replace with heroin, which is also cheaper than the stolen prescription meds that are re-sold.
They showed us a over-time map of the increase in pain med prescriptions by county. It was really shocking. Apparently people in this state were in extreme pain 10X more (or more often) from 2000 to 2010.
Baud
@Mnemosyne:
also know by his rapper name, TJ Two Bucks.
lamh36
@Mnemosyne: Ha…gonna miss Key & Peele
Brachiator
@jl:
I appreciate good taste in theft and appropriation.
Anoniminous
@jl:
Unless the polls are lying to us, as of 1/7/16 Trump will be the GOP nominee. There isn’t anyone even close to competitive with him.
geg6
@Kay:
West Virginia is going after the doctors and pharmacists, which is totally proper, IMHO. They really are the ones writing and filling these ridiculously inflated numbers of prescriptions for pain killers. And of course, it’s cheaper and easier to get her ion than oxy. They have created entire towns of addicts. They had a good report about it on CBS News last night. I don’t watch much tv news, but my John had it on and I just happened to catch it. I don’t often point to Cole’s state as a good example for many things, but this is the right approach, I think.
MomSense
@Kay:
You can’t believe how many families I’ve spoken with who tell me their kids got started with the pain killers they were prescribed after having their wisdom teeth removed. I told our dentist that each kid only needed one pill not 15.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
Isn’t that Charles Shaw?
serge
OMFuckingG, I just turned on the television device and saw a new daily show on MSNBC that is an hour of John Heileman and Mark Halperin. I mean, that’s just not right. It must violate some international human rights statute. No one should ever be subjected to that level of wanton cruelty. Not to mention the sight of two men who are not fellating each other live on TV only by virtue of not being in the same room…
Mike J
@Anoniminous: And as of Jan 4, 2004, Howard Dean was going to be the Democratic nominee. There was nobody even close to competitive with him.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
I don’t think you can ignore the social conditions that lead people to become addicts. I’m pretty sure this is tied in to that recent study showing that mortality rates for poor, middle aged whites had gone up.
MomSense
@gogol’s wife:
Trevor Noah talked about the reaction on The Daily Show last night. Worth watching.
MazeDancer
@MattF:
Whoa! The Netflix Original Series fictionalization of the behind-the-scenes of that would be practically Sophoclesian.
Also, imagining the Mittster and the Big Dawg on the campaign trail for their womenfolk creates the immediate sitcom spin-off. Though the reality series of interns, that I forget who is planning to cover the actual 2016 campaign – further destroying democracy – with teams from those two guys would be a laugh riot in itself.
lamh36
Ugh..this son of a bish right here…
Ben Carson humiliated a fifth grader in front of 500 people
Anoniminous
@Mike J:
Yup. That’s why the introductory subordinate clause to my post was “Unless the polls are lying to us.”
Schlemazel
@Anoniminous:
Many a slip ‘tween cup and lip. The nomination is a long way off yet. The Dumpster is certainly far ahead of anything my fevered mind could have predicted 3 months ago but his doesn’t have a single delegate yet. In one way I hope you are right because I think it would be horrible for the GOP but then again it scares the crap out of me because once he is nominated he as a chance to be elected and that would be the final nail for the US I believe.
Baud
@Schlemazel: Who wouldn’t be the final nail on their side?
Benw
Obama looks pretty sweet in that Geshtapo-gear. I bet he’d be a badass Sith Lord. Darth Barak.
Baud
@Benw: He really does.
Elizabelle
Hot off the press: President Obama’s op ed re guns in the NY Times.
The Times news alert breathlessly picked out the political.
We can haz thread on Obama’s Town Hall via CNN at 8 tonight?
Schlemazel
@Baud:
There are a couple that would continue us down the road to oblivion but not at the break-neck speed of Dump or Crud.. Krust Krusty would at least worry about appearance, Kasich could at least act like he cared, even the dumber brother would only make things incrementally worse, thereby insuring our doom. But only those two could end it all within their term of office.
The others I am praising with faint damns
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Actually, the problem was not just with “poor” middle aged whites, and further analyses, such as the ones here and here indicate issues with drugs in maybe half the deaths, but that this data is just a good beginning for great research.
JPL
@MomSense: He did a great job and he’s right. I hate that those folk are part of the human race.
Elizabelle
Paragraph the NY Times picked out, one out of about 12:
Svensker
Youse guys are making fun of “winsome” Chris Christie, but a previous sentence really struck me:
Cruz is an amazingly supple adamantine politician.
I want to marry that sentence.
Baud
@Elizabelle: It is kind of news for a president to draw the line like that. OTOH, any one who wouldn’t support common sense gun reform probably has to win in a state where Obama would not be an asset.
jl
@Elizabelle: The GOP presidential contestants must be horrified by that pledge.
Brachiator
@Anoniminous:
No worries, yet. The polls this early on don’t have much predictive value.
Just get your primary on and let’s see what develops.
different-church-lady
Am I the only one who thinks that pic makes Obama look kind of bad-ass, in a WWII military hero sort of way?
Shell
What exactly is Obama supposed to be wearing on his head in that photo? It looks like a Le Creuset casserole pot.
Mnemosyne
@different-church-lady:
@Shell:
I think he’s supposed to look like a Scary Nazi Coming To Take Your Guns, but it looks more like a picture of Dwight Eisenhower with a sepia overlay.
Anne Laurie
@lamh36: Ugh! Charlie Pierce refers to Guv LePage as “the human bowling jacket”. This may be an insult to bowling jackets…
Gvg
Does Lowrey Like Cruz or hate him? Because that puff piece had knives in it. Compares to Nixon, oh not in a bad way….not popular, not liked, high school hated him etc and so on. With friends like that, Cruz doesn’t need enemies…though he has plenty of those. Did a rival pay Lowrey to write that?
I think Obama looks cool in that pic and rather America hero like WWII soldiers so why does someone think it’s scary?
The Pale Scot
I read that and had to reboot my brain,
Please give a warning, thnx
Anon A. Mous
OK, here I go.
Having been born raised and still living in West Virginia, I was attracted to the TV when I heard the words “West Vriginia” on the CBS news in the other room the other day. It wasn’t a one-day piece, they’ve been going on about it all week, it seems. For sure 3 days, I’m thinking. Mostly meaningless numbers as far as I noticed. 13 painkiller pills for every citizen of the state. WTF is that supposed to mean?
This is a state with timbering, Oil and Gas and coal mining as the major occupations, followed by farming, construction, etc. These are dangerous occupations, subject to a high level of accidents even when there is vigilant safety inspection and enforcement. Is there any safety inspection and enforcement in WV? NO.
OSHA shows up after an accident with multiple fatalities – or with lots of people involved, and great video running on the local evening news. They never inspect building sites or factories routinely.
Lots of people in WV get hurt on the job, and wind up with chronically painful injuries they have to live with for the rest of their lives.
I was injured while on the job as a bosun’s mate in the US Navy, and again just after work one evening when I was hit by a car. What a surprise that I have chronic pain issues with lower back muscle spasms, osteoarthritis causing a need for multiple joint replacements, etc. I’ve strained various body parts working on construction jobs, and wound up with terrible pain in my shoulders after two days of cutting bedrock with a hand sledge and a chisel.
Am I now not allowed pain killers for the obvious chronic pain I suffer? Guess not, CBS.
Because the thrust of the CBS show was that 100% of the people receiving prescriptions for pain killers are doing so to get high! Business owners here hire law firms to fight injured workers seeking worker’s compensation for on-the-job injuries.
I’ll never forget the lawyers who showed a film in court showing a supposedly injured coal miner. He could climb a ladder with a small paint bucket and a brush and work for an hour or so. So can I! Then they showd more film of the guy “carrying a concrete fountain weighing at least 90 pounds across his lawn!”
The next the coal miner’s lawyer showed the jury the concrete fountain – it was plastic and weighed about 24 pounds. The lawyer (not a job class noted for strength!) was able to pick it up and wave it at the company lawyers with one hand! Not so strong after all. Being able to paint for an hour isn’t the same as being able to work 12 hour shifts underground!
People in rural places do work that is hard, strenuous, and dangerous. I once was driving home and passed a truck load of oil and gas workers plugging an old oil well on our farm. They were all black with soot, and so I rolled my window down and asked how they were. It seemed that the well exploded and burned their clean-out rig up. But no one was so burned up enough they called 911 – well, back then they didn’t have radios, and cell phones still don’t work out here. They didn’t think anything much of having a well site explode, their rig destroyed, driving home covered with soot. It was just another day working in the Oil Patch.
So CBS is surprised that lots of pain meds get prescribed here? Amazing!!
Out in Arizona I was surprised to learn that a DMV from WV had bought a cabin near ours, out on the ranch as people remark. He was disabled after a terrible auto accident. A few weeks after he moved in out west in AZ, he was found sitting in a recliner in his cedar cabin, with an empty bottle of very robust pain killers, and a half gallon of Jack mostly empty – dead of suicide. He hurt too much to go on with it. I understand that completely.
And CBS is shocked, Shocked!! I tell you!! that pain medication is used out here in the fly-over country!!
I am so amazed. I thought even big TV reporters understood that blue-collar workers were prone to life-threatening injury. People who do sports that involve adrenaline get hurt, have surgery to enable them to walk. I see my surgeon tomorrow, the guy who replaced both my shoulder joints last year. Yes, there was pain medication involved. I don’t take much any more, but when the weather changes, the fronts come through, where the bone meets the metal, it hurts a bit!
And now these big city reporters and lawyers who have never worked a physical day in their entire lives want to stop doctors from giving their patients in pain medications for that pain? That sucks! That just sucks, because people who work hard on farms and ranches, who weld pipelines, who cut timber for the furniture the rich TV reporters need for their NYC apartments, they get hurt. They take workers compensation, because they can’t do the timbering, the plowing, carrying the tool to the rig, any more. It hurts too bad.
So sad, too bad! Just suffer with it, boys. You don’t really need pain killers after those motor vehicle accidents, factory injuries, timber accidents. My neighbor to the east fell down his steps years ago, broke his back and wore a brace between his shoulders and his pelvis for a year. My neighbor to the west worked cutting timber, until a tree broke while he was chain-sawing it, and knocked him into the Cat-skidder that dragged the timber out of the woods. His back hurts too.
I get around OK, and still grade the roads in the neighborhood after floods rut them out, or after a winter snow drops a foot of snow. I’m better off than a lot of people. And I’m not saying there aren’t pill mill pharmacies and doctors who will pass out prescriptions. But that doesn’t mean that real doctors caring for people with real injuries should be interfered with.
The next time I see my doctor, I don’t want CBS in the exam room with us. Nor the government. Fuck that!
PurpleGirl
@MomSense: I hope you (they) get tickets and you get to see the show.
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne: As long as the play sells out, they’ll have the theater.
PurpleGirl
@PurpleGirl: Cats had the Winter Garden for years, Phantom of the Opera, Mary Poppins, countless other shows had their theaters for years.
Dread
Given how much the Senate hates him, you’d have to quadruple the number of secret service agents just to keep an eye on President Cruz’ former GOP colleagues.
Paul in KY
@cmorenc: I think Ricky Satanum would take the job.
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: He is a very smart SOB.
Paul in KY
@jl: You would have received extra points if you had got him to call the Pres a ‘commie-nazi’.
Paul in KY
@Jebediah, RBG: He’s a GOP lickspittle.
Paul in KY
@MattF: Jesse did need a third party candidate, or he was the third party candidate, to win 1st time.
Paul in KY
@Gimlet: Those wussies want the women/children there to act as ‘shields’ for them.
Paul in KY
@Sad_Dem: Julius Caesar did.
Paul in KY
@lamh36: And why oh why did he have to mention that those poor girls were ‘white’.? What would it matter & aren’t 99.09 percent of Maine ‘white’ anyway?
He makes Evan Meachum seem like Seneca.
Paul in KY
@lamh36: I’d like to hear what his campaign team is privately saying about him!
Paul in KY
@Anon A. Mous: Excellent post! Hope you get the meds you need.