One of the tweets highlighted in Anne Laurie’s morning thread describes the Jeb-on-Marco action last night as a political “murder-suicide.” That sounds about right. As a Floridian who absolutely loathes both of those vile pricks with every fiber of her being, I can’t adequately describe how much I relished their fratricidal sniping last night.
Here’s a clip that shows the two tossing the Radioactive White Hot Potato of Political Death back and forth:
It is to laugh. But what kept me puzzled during the debate was trying to figure out the FOX News strategy. The consensus seems to be that Trump pantsed FOX but good. If their motivation was to try to punish him for it, it seems like they’d use the opportunity of Trump’s absence to build up one of the alternatives. But they targeted Cruz and Rubio with video montages that clearly show that they’re lying, slippery, flip-flopping bastards.
Was it an attempt to pump up one of the other establishment candidates — Jeb even? If so, it was a miss. Bush’s willingness to own his relative sanity on immigration might elicit what passes for excitement among establishment hacks like David Gergen. But it’s not going to resonate with a rabidly xenophobic base that gets off on hearing Trump call Mexican immigrants rapists.
Rubio may bounce back from last night’s awful performance. The first thing he should do this morning is shit-can the adviser who told him to drop the children’s storybook-reader voice and adopt an angry tone. The only thing he had going for him before was fake optimism. Fake anger just makes him sound like an officious brat bossing the other kids around when daddy’s away.
Anyhoo, about half way through last night’s Republican debate, it hit me anew that one of the charlatans trading blows onstage or the Angry Circus Peanut holding a grift-grudge charity event across town would eventually get 50 million-plus votes. And that the only thing standing between us and one of them in the Oval Office will be the most polarizing woman in U.S. history or a curmudgeonly democratic socialist.
I like our chances, but holy fuck, y’all!
Chyron HR
Call it the “developmentally disabled debate”, please.
Baud
Or Baud!
HinTN
Holy fvck be ‘zackly right.
Hildebrand
The black guy with a muslimy name won twice – comfortably. If we keep our wits about us, and get the vote out, this is hardly an impossible task.
Baud
Jeb looked relaxed. Like a man without a care in the world because he understands and has fully accepted his fate.
ARoomWithAMoose
If Fox effectively kneecapped all the visible not-Trump GOP candidates, maybe it’s a sign R-money really want the chaos of a brokered GOP convention, as the traditional path to not-Trump is about to vanish completely for them.
MattF
Sounds like an actual debate… which explains why everyone lost.
Baud
Jeb seems like someone who’s finally free from care, like he’s accepted his destiny.
hueyplong
I thought the “most polarizing and divisive” person was Barack Hussein Obama.
The most polarizing person in America is and will always be the Democratic nominee, whoever that might be. So there is no need to pretend that “avoiding polarization” is desirable or even possible. That’s baked into all campaigns.
Baud
@hueyplong: Yep.
Sherparick
That is 60 million votes I am afraid. The thing is will Trump’s draw of secular white working class voters be outweighed by defections of “moderate” affluent college educated whites who find Trump’s dominance act a little to much and who can stomach Hilary, even if they don’t “approve” of the Clintons and their marriage.
It appears almost coordinated between Fox and Trump for him to be absent while they take down Cruz and Rubio. Was it all a charade?
Schlemazel
I wish I could remember who it was but a quote was posted here a week or 2 ago from some goopper saying Trump’s loss in the general could be played off as an aberration and the party could go back to ‘normal’ but Cruz nomination & loss would tear the party apart. Maybe Fox and fiends have decided to sacrifice 2016 as part of a long game. They can throttle the Dem President for 4 years and then use 2016 to throttle the loonies and get back to business as usual. Fox would be really OK with this as their business works better under a Dem than an R anyway.
MattF
@Sherparick: No, it’s the old scorpion-crossing-the-river problem. They stab each other in the back because they can’t help it– it’s their nature.
Betty Cracker
@hueyplong: I like both Clinton and Sanders and would never suggest picking a milquetoast candidate in the vain hope that the venal and evil Republican slime machine would keep its claws out of him or her. But I do think it’s a fact that Hillary Clinton is uniquely polarizing among the American electorate. That might even work to her advantage since the right has been lobbing shit at her for so long that people tend to yawn at any new alleged perfidies they throw at the wall. But yeah, Hillz is polarizing. Her name appears next to the entry in the dictionary and everything.
Patricia Kayden
Meh….. They’re both awful. How come they never bring up what Shrub did or didn’t do about immigration reform? It’s not like he wasn’t in for 2 terms, right? It’s humorous how they never bring up that they had their man in the White House for 8 years who did nothing about immigration. Almost like they think we have all forgotten about him.
father pussbucket
I get your meaning, but seriously?
MattF
@Betty Cracker: Hillary Clinton is so polarizing because she’s risen higher politically than any other woman in American history. Period.
Schlemazel
There is an interesting thought. the dumpster has said he often talks to Rupert. /puts on tin foil hat/ could this whole thing be a giant con being pulled on both the GOP and the American public? Could Rupert & Trump have come together to get a good and loyal fiend into the White House? I don’t put this past the evil mordock and the dumpster’s ego is large enough he would be just peachy with it.
Betty Cracker
@MattF: You’re right about their nature, but it is curious that Rubio and Cruz were singled out for the flip-flopping video treatment. They could have assembled a similar video for every single candidate except the addled Carson (and perhaps even he). Why didn’t they?
FlipYrWhig
Does anyone else think that Trump got tipped off to what his own flip-flop video montage would look like, and opted out of the debate for that reason?
Betty Cracker
@father pussbucket: Can you think of another woman in US history as universally known and hated or beloved? I can’t. I’m not saying it’s a knock on her, but I think it’s a fact.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: Perhaps because they knew that Bush and Rubio would be eager to attack each other. Snake and mongoose.
hueyplong
@ Betty Cracker
Agree with everything you said, both in post and the original thread item. Just noting that one of the reasons we/I really liked Obama in 2008 was that he was the opposite of Hillary in terms of “polarization,” but the GOP immediately turned him into “the most polarizing figure ever” by sheer, non-stop demonization and we can assume they’ll do that no matter who gets the nomination.
I think instruments and not the naked eye would be required to measure the difference in treatment they’d give to Candidate Clinton and Candidate Sanders, though one would be characterized as a murderous bitch and the other as a Bolshevik. It’s what they do, and it simply doesn’t matter what characteristics the candidate actually possesses.
Baud
@hueyplong: Like a good pair of sunglasses, Hillary comes pre-polarized.
Schlemazel
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah Hillz is the most polarizing woman, just like the Kenyan usurper is the most polarizing President since Bill Clinton. This is the current state of politics in the US. If Washington and Lincoln had a baby and that baby were Jesus himself. if he ran as a Dem he would be the most polarizing figure evah for the GOP and the beltway club would fall in love with that story. Dems are going to have to deal with that.
@Baud: consider that line stolen!
Betty Cracker
@Baud: That’s it! She’s pre-polarized — everyone already has an opinion. But like the rest of y’all said, whomever the Dems nominate will be slimed; that’s a fact.
SFAW
So the campaign ad on the right side of my screen is for this guy whose name seems to be “Chris Christ.” Were I a religious-type (of the correct religion, that is), then my decision would have been made for me.
ThresherK
Betty, you will be hearing from my Oz geek-girl spouse on your opening imagecraft. And I quote:
Nobody can say that about Donald.
srv
Another victory for Trump.
oldgold
Betty Cracker, back in the day, Eleanor Roosevelt was beloved and hated.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Is it my imagination or does Rubio come across as that punk, some Executive VP’s nephew boss you always want to punch in the face?
Bartholomew
It does seem that Fox wants Trump. It’s all a show though. Monkeys dumb are, that’s why.
It pairs with the odd and not well remarked-upon situation of the entire Democratic field being barren except for the–guess whooooo. Yes, enter Bernie, but he’s an outsider. That he is running at all is probably a sign of something.
Each “side” seems selectively blind: righties will not believe the first statement, and lefties will not believe the second … maybe it’s just history lessons unlearned at this point. Why liberals are playing the Left/Right power game I still don’t quite understand. I think it’s the corporate owned teevee woo, but of course advertising doesn’t work and isn’t really of interest to commerce. I wonder what it could be…
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Eleanor Roosevelt.
ETA: Oops, oldgold got there first.
FlipYrWhig
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: To me he seems like a kid doing Model UN to have an extracurricular activity for his college applications.
satby
@oldgold:
Yeah, and for very similar reasons: her liberal attitudes, her refusal to be a non-entity while First Lady, and for things her husband did. Not a bad act to follow, when you think about it.
Betty Cracker
@satby: I believe it’s an act HRC consciously followed, at least when she was first lady. I seem to recall the GOP scuzzbuckets of the day claiming she held seances to communicate with the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt.
NotMax
Aimee Semple McPherson was certainly well-known and polarizing.
As was Margaret Sanger.
Ditto for Carrie Nation, who among other things for which she is more remembered, publicly praised the assassination of McKinley.
Sondra
About that Bush/Rubio brouhaha. Yep ole Jeb! stuck the knife in and twisted it. He physically dominated by towering over that little mouse. Is anyone but me fascinated by the audio/visual side of that dust-up. There is poor little Rubio looking shorter than ever next to Jeb! and lisping his way into a corner from which he couldn’t wiggle out.
It was a beautiful moment. If I was one of the other candidates I’d point out that a lispy little shortie like Rubio wouldn’t stand a chance going up against Putin even if he stood on a chair to make his point.
gvg
Maybe Rupert has decided business is better with a Democrat as President for them to attack ala Limbaugh. I seem to recall in the past seeing stories that Fox’s and other conservative media’s revenues were better when they were the party ot of power. However Fox’s business model is supporting the GOP. Maybe they have decided that none of their side can win this time but they can’t actually say that.
I don’t think Trump is going to be unattacked even if he wasn’t on that show.
Gin & Tonic
@Sondra: Putin’s a pretty small guy too.
Hildebrand
I am wondering if Hillary’s baked in polarization is only true for those over 35-40. Younger than that, and their only significant knowledge is of her time as a Senator and then Secretary of State, especially at the casual voter level.
The Republicans will throw the 90s version at her and the electorate – that doesn’t mean that people will buy it. Of course, if Democrats insist on replaying the same tapes, that doesn’t exactly help our own cause.
Peale
@hueyplong: by the elites? Until her husband was killed I believe Mary Todd Lincoln was put through the wringer, much like that social striving vacation queen Antoinette currently occupying the White House is.
ruemara
Eating a burger is polarizing these days. Rather than worry about it, volunteer to register voters.
terraformer
I wonder whether the whole “Fox vs. Trump” thing was a designed play. They go after Trump, he goes after them, they both remain in the news, and they relish the result of yet another behind-the-scenes elevation of a preferred candidate appearing as the opposite. Can’t get fooled again…
Steve in the ATL
@Betty Cracker:
Back in the day, the more devout citizens hated that hussy Betsy Ross because she showed her ankles and once refused to ride sidesaddle.
Betty Cracker
@Hildebrand: That’s a great point. My teenage daughter was born during the Clinton admin but has no memory of it and really doesn’t remember the 2008 campaign all that well since she was a third-grader at the time (I took her to an Obama rally once — that she remembers!). She’ll be old enough to vote in the general and is a Hillary supporter, though she likes Bernie too.
If HRC wins the nomination, the media will likely go Clenis on us full-time. If the campaign so far is any indication, so will the GOP candidate. I wonder what the kiddies will make of that. I think I trust them to dismiss it as an absurd, politically motivated exercise in panty-sniffing.
boatboy_srq
@Sondra: the visuals of HEB?/Rubio are indeed delicious. What tickles me is how HEB? continues to belittle Rubio as the nouveau riche upstart kid who doesn’t know how to dress (i.e. doesn’t shop at the right stores and wears funny chows – which latter strikes me as Cuban fashion rather than a real misstep).
Bobby Thomson
@ARoomWithAMoose: I’m increasingly convinced opposition to Trump is for show to build him up. He brings in new voters and has a puncher’s chance.
Bobby Thomson
@MattF: Barack Obama is the most polarizing black man in American history, too.
Bobby Thomson
@Schlemazel: I’ve been thinking that for a while. Doesn’t need to be a conspiracy ex ante, just an unspoken recognition they help each other out.
Chris
@Schlemazel:
Would it? Seems like it wouldn’t be all that hard to claim “he wasn’t a real conservative;” just talk about his birth certificate (“why, he’s just like Obama! Har, har!”) and that time a couple years ago that he tried to increase the number of visas for foreign skilled workers (“he’s soft on immigration!” – which people will latch onto as the shorthand for “he’s Hispanic. You can’t trust these people!”)
That’s the thing: I can think of very few candidates whose failure couldn’t be handwaved immediately afterwards by most of the conservative base as “well, he wasn’t a real conservative” (they said it about George W. Bush, for the love of Zeus). “He wasn’t a real conservative” is their ready-made explanation for every politician on their side who disappoints them; after that, it’s just a matter of finding the rationalizations that’ll explain why this particular politician wasn’t a real conservative, and they’ll swallow them eagerly because they want to believe them in the first place.
Trump winning the primary and losing the general would be interesting because his fight with the establishment has been so high profile that it gives Republican voters an alternate explanation should they choose to go for it – “he lost because the establishment stabbed him in the back.” Seems to me that would have at least as much potential to tear the party apart.
Hildebrand
@Betty Cracker: My son, who is 20, always references her as former Secretary of State Clinton – its his only frame of reference for her. I hope that bodes well.
gene108
I watched the video clip and was blown away by how incredibly ginormous Megyn Kelley’s fake eyelashes were every time she looked down to read a question.
I kept wondering why put yourself through getting such big eyelashes? Who thinks those things are a good idea?
The questions and exchange, to me at least, were trumped by those monstrosities on her eyelids.
Betty Cracker
@Bobby Thomson: Yeah, but Obama wasn’t PRE-polarized as the 2008 nominee, being newer to the scene. I don’t know if that’s an advantage or not. Could go either way. On the one hand, the media will never treat Clinton as a shiny new object, even though her candidacy would be just as historic in a way if she wins the nomination. But on the other, millions of voters are already sick of hearing the anti-Clinton talking points and pretty much tune them out. She could parachute into Benghazi and take a crap on the ashes of the embassy, and no one who wasn’t already a Clinton-hater would believe it because the GOPers have cried wolf too many times.
Gator90
Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Maybe Eleanor Roosevelt?
Paul in KY
@NotMax: Extra points for Aimee Semple McPherson!
Matt McIrvin
@Gator90: Yeah, she’s probably it.
Tractarian
Hm. Sounds like someone isn’t feeling the O’MENTUM
Frankensteinbeck
@MattF:
Hillary is so polarizing because the GOP and national news media have had decades to build on top of their automatic misogyny. They have pre-formed opinions so old they’ve become bedrock assumptions, entire mythologies of sleaze, redneckery and mannishness.
And now she’s tarred with their patrician disgust that a black man became president? It’s a wonder half the Village hasn’t drowned in its own vomited bile, and the GOP base hasn’t spontaneously combusted.
Betty Cracker
@Tractarian: Nah. I’m plenty enthused about the upcoming election and plan to donate and volunteer as much or more than last time. The possibility of losing is just a little scarier this time because sweet jeebus!
redshirt
@Betty Cracker: I’m actually terrified Sanders will somehow get the nomination, not because he’s not a good candidate, but because I think he’ll get eaten alive in the General and will allow for the rise of PRESIDENT TRUMP.
God help us all.
hitchhiker
The problem is with the word, “polarizing” — which usually means tending to create equal and opposite entrenched groups. (Think, abortion. Or, if you’re in the USA, climate change.) It means something that causes people to immediately run to their side.
That’s not what’s ever gone on with HRC.
Instead, she’s stuck with the image created for her over a couple of decades and widely accepted not only by the right, but also (in a milder fashion) by almost the entire rest of public. When I say I’m voting for her, my berner buds will wail about how awful it is that I should have to choose the lesser of 2 evils.
What? There’s no polarity here. Just a solidly accomplished woman who doesn’t take shit with a smile on her face, and a lot of people with their own reasons to put her somewhere on the not-likable-enough scale.
StellaB
@MattF: Since the second most polarizing woman in history is Nancy Pelosi who is, not coincidentally, the woman who has risen to the second highest Democratic position, I have to think you are right.
redshirt
Also, too, I LOVE your Trump artwork, Betty. This one is hilarious.
Betty Cracker
@hitchhiker: Maybe living in Wingnut Land has skewed my view. People tend to either love her or hate her here. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground at all. That also seems to be the case in the media, which is almost universally united in its scorn for HRC, even the “liberal” NYT.
I’m mildly surprised that describing HRC as “polarizing” is even remotely controversial, but that may be down to my provincial perspective.
@redshirt: Thanks!
hitchhiker
@Betty Cracker:
That’s what I was trying to say. Someone universally scorned is universally scorned; there’s no polarity. The press around here in bright blue Seattle likes to talk about the “enthusiasm gap” . . . but that implies (to me) that there’s no balance to this supposed polarity. It’s just you really hate her or you mildly dislike her or you kinda tolerate her. The “enthusiasm gap” is code for nobody really likes this person.
It’s interesting.
I suppose they always call her a polarizing figure because they don’t want to come out and say “widely disliked.” I don’t think she IS widely disliked . . . just has had a caricature stamped on her for so long that it looks the actual person.
Bobby Thomson
@Betty Cracker: according to the guys at LGM, they have personal knowledge that the management of the “liberal” Salon also have it in for Clinton.
Betty Cracker
@Bobby Thomson: That would explain why they’ve showcased posts from morans like this knob and this dolt. It’s legit for a media outlet to give views like that an airing, IMO, but it seems to be a drumbeat over there. Maybe that’s why Joan Walsh decamped…
Miss Bianca
@NotMax:
Wow, I didn’t know that about Carrie Nation…
patrick II
@Betty Cracker:
It may be a “fact”, but only in a mostly sham fact way, unless you believe Benghazi was really worse than Bush’s multiple bombed embassies, mismanaged war with Afghanistan, illegal and tragic war with Iraq. Her being “controversial” is made up status, an unavoidable byproduct, any threat to the power elite would get the same treatment. The only reason Bernie isn’t more “controversial” is that they think he wouldn’t do as well in the general. If he wins the nomination you will see “controversial” . Other than winning, and having the potential for more winning, what has Hillary done to become so controversial? To me she has been a pretty standard middle of the road dem with somewhat more emphasis on female issues.
Betty Cracker
@patrick II: I’m not saying she DESERVES to be controversial, just that she is. That’s the fact — not the metric fuck-ton of wingnut bilge that made it so.
dww44
@Baud: This LA Times cartoon ran in my local paper today: A reality take on “House of Cards”
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/
Southern Goth
@Betty Cracker:
Somewhere, an O’Malley supporter read your response and died a little inside.
Love the artwork.
Matt McIrvin
@redshirt: I am actually not convinced that Sanders is inherently any less electable than Clinton, because the instinctive hatred a large chunk of the US has for Hillary Clinton specifically may match or exceed any political vulnerability of Bernie’s from being an aged secular Jewish socialist with perpetual bedhead.
On the other hand, a Sanders nomination might actually make the Mike Bloomberg doom scenario more plausible. (If Clinton is nominated, I say Bloomberg is a rounding error at best; the reflexive Clinton-haters are not going to vote for him, and he probably wouldn’t run anyway. But Bloomberg might get a chunk of the upscale NPR-liberal vote if it’s Sanders.)
And all bets are off if we have, say, a massive economic crash in the next several months, which could easily happen.
redshirt
@Matt McIrvin: I’m quite convinced there’s a large difference in electability between Clinton and Sanders, and that’s all that matters to me.
debbie
@NotMax:
Also, more recently, Anita Hill and Brooksley Borne.
Groucho48
Clinton isn’t polarizing. She’s been polarized. She is a middle-of-the-road politician who is very competent and incredibly knowledgeable.She has been demonized for 25 years by the right. ANYONE who had been the target of such lies, distortions and vitriol would be controversial. She has handled it all with far more grace and class then most of us could have. Certainly far more gracefully than I would have handled it.