If you thought Marianne Williamson’s candidacy was risible, behold the GOP alternative!
We’re literally addicted to China. They push digital fentanyl via TikTok. Our national debt is essentially financial fentanyl.
The real Declaration of Independence of the 21st century is from the CCP. Time to do it now. pic.twitter.com/i3ctHoWuYV
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) March 6, 2023
Pretty clearly, even more than Williamson, Ramaswamy’s ‘campaign’ is less about politics than about raising his media profile, and I wish the GOP joy of him. Just imagine the epic debates between him and Andrew Yang, while literal dozens of supporters wrangle in the audience.
This is literally the "defund the police" position, just applied at the federal level. https://t.co/rM6HTCbVKx
— Gregg Nunziata (@greggnunziata) March 7, 2023
Vivek Ramaswamy says a Republican consultant called him and offered No. 2 in the CPAC straw poll in exchange for a few hundred thousand dollars.pic.twitter.com/HraGRx1peE
— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) March 6, 2023
Speaking of grifters, No Labels is working their usual corner as well:
No Labels has a plan … to elect Trump. Our new memo featured in Playbook warns Democrats and never-Trump centrists and conservatives that a @NoLabelsOrg 3rd Party Prez run tips the scale towards #Trump https://t.co/yehKwhiHZg
— Jim Kessler (@ThirdWayKessler) March 7, 2023
I don’t trust Third Way either — they have the stink of the Goo-Goos upon them — but it’s not a bad article, although written at approximately a middle-school level.
War for Ukraine Day 376: Russia Wastes More Blood & Treasure at Fortress Bakhmut
Chetan Murthy
AAAAAhahahahaha! This Ramaswamy jamoke is *such* a relief, after Raj Shah, Kash Patel, Seema Verma, Ajit Pai, [memory failing me]. Such a welcome change! Dude, spend your fortune, get as many GrOPers as possible to spend theirs! You go, little guy! Ha!
As an Indian-American, I fully support imbeciles like this contesting the GrOPer nomination!
Ha! Too fucking hilarious!
P.S. My dude, you should check the back of your FUCKING HAND, compare it to a paper bag, fucknugget! And maybe visit East Incest, TX, *without* your personal security detail, and see if you still wanna be a fucking GrOPer, you fucking idiot!
raven
Damn, I got a spinal injection yesterday and, as usual, I can’t sleep. Thanks for a fresh tread AL!
Origuy
I’ve avoided installing TikTok on my phone, but I gotta get me some of that digital fentanyl!
lgerard
Another Thielbot. I supposed we will be plagued with them for the next decade.
lgerard
Also. keep your birth Certificate handy
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Chetan Murthy
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Lord love a duck, Bernie! You’re a good egg, but FFS, you have incredibly shitty taste in friends!
sab
My sister has spent her life doing art history from China. Her kids are biracial (Chinese American). Her whole life is about let us get along and see each others’ culture.
I am not happy to see a new cold war start up, but I do think China started it. But I am often wrong.
raven
@sab: My buddy was a trainer with the Bejing Ducks for a year about 10 years ago. He got deathly ill there and still suffer from it. He also has a Chinese-American spouse and two bi-racial kids.
sab
Not meaning to be rude, but who is this Ramaswamy guy and will America ever even hear of him? We don’t all listen to Faux.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@sab: I’m not sure if I’d blame China as a whole. This seems to be driven by Xi.
JPL
Mitch has been hospitalized after a fall. I for one hope that he’s okay, because the next Senator from KY could be worse. Has trump sent his wishes yet?
NotMax
Well, he’s no Vermin Supreme.
;)
Bruce K in ATH-GR
I can hardly believe we’re at the point where we’re saying “the alternatives are worse” about Addison Mitchell “Moscow Mitch” McConnell. (Stipulate the paint-stripping expletives here, because if I start, I won’t be able to stop, and I don’t want to melt my keyboard speaking ill of the unfortunately-not-dead-ages-ago.)
NotMax
@sab
FYI links included in a February 16th comment.
JPL
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: True!
He was at a private dinner in a hotel, but no one is saying with who. Maybe he was with a young aide, like others before him, but that is just gross. Most likely he was with a lobbyist who promised him great sums of money.
Shalimar
@Chetan Murthy: And wives. And children. I usually agree with Bernie on most issues most of the time, but good god, anyone he even knows turns out to be an asshole.
Geminid
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: McConnell actually has been very forthright in his support of Ukraine, and he helped ensure that $44 billion in funding for military aid was included in the Omnibus spending bill that passed right before Christmas.
Baud
I’m here for the Third Way vs. No Labels action. Centrists in Disarray!
Geminid
The Libertarian Party’s candidate may prove to be the “alternative” with the most reach. They consistently win ballot access in all or almost all 50 states. Gary Johnson won ~4.5 million votes in 2016, over twice as many as he won in 2012. That might have made the difference in Trump’s very close Electoral College win.
The LP is under new leadership after the “Mises Caucus” took control last summer. They’ve dropped their abortion rights plank and adopted language suggesting an “alt-right,” white nationalist tendency. That would possibly win more potential Republican voters than Democratic, but if the money’s right they could choose a candidate with the intent to poach Biden voters. They could only make a difference if it were a close election.
Baud
Amir Khalid
It was always my understanding that the FBI, being mostly a law-enforcement agency, was institutionally right-wing. Why does the GOP hate the FBI now?
Jackie
Does anyone have a clue who would become Minority Leader should Mitch retire? I hate to say it, but I hope the fall was minor and he’s hospitalized strictly as a precaution.
raven
@Amir Khalid:
Groucho Marx – Whatever it is I’m against it
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Jackie: Kim Jung un is next in line
raven
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
Who’ll Be The Next In Line, Kinks
Gvg
@Amir Khalid: I guess not right wing enough to overlook things like breaking the law and trying to overthrow the government. The delusional true believers have told themselves ALL law enforcement and military are really on their side and when the time comes will just join them. It’s a little bit true here and there day to day but not when it’s full daylight full attack on the legitimate elected government etc. So they have reached the point of finding out and are but hurt over being prosecuted and even called names and shot at by cops…the fbi tends to lead investigations that cross state lines and find these felons, so they are getting blamed right now. Good. Hope the right leaning FBI agents are noticing too.
Anyway
@Baud:
There are two different ratfucking centrists groups?! All this while I thought they were the same entity. So much oligarch money out there to kneecap Ds
Anyway
@Chetan Murthy:
Wonder what Bobby Jindal is up to these days… don’t think he was very adept at wangling some of that sweet RW oligarch moolah …
prostratedragon
“The Song of the Sea,” Tsegué-Maryam Guèbru, piano
Frankensteinbeck
@JPL:
There is no possible fucking way that McConnell’s replacement will be more destructive than the Gravedigger Of American Democracy. No. Fucking. Way. Crazier, yeah. Worse for the country? Absolutely not.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Geminid: What boggles me is that this is true, and there are worse Republicans in positions of power. He’s the grave-digger of American democracy, he packed the Supreme Court to the point where it no longer bears any semblance of justice, he can’t be trusted to keep to his word unless you’ve got a knife to the throat of someone whose welfare he cares about, and there’s still worse out there.
bjacques
@NotMax: few people are!
mrmoshpotato
@prostratedragon: “Under The Sea,” Alan Menken
bjacques
I’m wishing Mitch a full recovery, after a long convalescence at home, say 22 months
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Makes me think of Taco Bell.
(I could go for some nachos – from a local taqueria.)
mrmoshpotato
@bjacques: Make it 23 months for good measure.
Frankensteinbeck
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Who? Seriously, who? Crazier, sure. But McConnell started the total obstruction now considered normal in the GOP, when a black man became president and his old Southern patrician ass decided the country needed to be punished. McConnell has a talent for abusing norms that is very, very rare. Trump was nothing without McConnell backing him. McConnell was the lead in accepting Russian money, the acknowledged master of Republican fundraising. His replacement GOP leader won’t have a fraction of his caucus control. Or his ability to work the press. DeSantis would be a flailing loser in McConnell’s job. His replacement will inevitably be an incompetent.
There are no worse options. None.
Marleedog
I think that Cornyn is next in line.
O. Felix Culpa
@Chetan Murthy: How could you forget the other declared R candidate–Nikki Haley? //
schrodingers_cat
@lgerard: Could be but he is independently wealthy. I know an MIT chemist who works for Ramaswamy’s company. This is a vanity campaign to raise Vivek R’s media profile. He is just another toxic CEO to do so.
schrodingers_cat
Tamil Brahmin privilege is going to clash with white supremacy and lose.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: Yes. I’m always surprised at non-white, non-male, non-cishet types who align themselves with their haters, although I probably shouldn’t be. There are always outsiders who want to cozy up to power, even though it rarely ends well for them.
evodevo
@Frankensteinbeck: I’ll raise you a Massie or a Comer…believe me, there are worse alternatives than Moscow Mitch…
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@O. Felix Culpa: They NEVER think that they’re gonna get got.
Yet, they always do in the end.
Paul in KY
@raven: Hope that gets you to feeling better, once it kicks in.
Paul in KY
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Check out Daniel Cameron or Thomas Massie or James Comer. It can get worse…
Paul in KY
@Frankensteinbeck: I hope you are right about that.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: I do like his name: ‘Vivek’. It flows.
billcinsd
@Geminid:That might have made the difference in Trump’s very close Electoral College win.
I guess it might have but it is very, very unlikely to have made a difference in Trump’s electoral college win. About half Johnson’s voters would not have voted for either of the two major party candidates. The other half slightly favored Clinton but not enough to change the result.
Geminid
@billcinsd: The reason I say that the Libertarian vote might have made the difference in 2016 was that it was so abnormally large that year. Gary Johnson got 4,490,000 votes in 2016, 3.3% of the vote. In 2020, the Libertarian vote reverted more to the norm; Jo Jorgenson received 1,865,000 votes, 1.2%. That was ~2,600,000 less than Johnson.
In 2016, Trump won Pennsylvania by slightly under 45,000 votes; Johnson had 146,715 votes, 66,000 than Jorgenson won in 2020.
Trump won Wisconsin by 23,000 votes in 2016; Johnson had 106,674, 68,000 votes more than Jorgenson’s total of 38,491 in 2020.
Trump won Michigan in 2016 by a little under 11,000; Johnson received 172,136 votes there that year, 60,000 more than Jorgenson would receive in 2020.
We’ll never know how those extra Libertarian voters would have voted in a two person race, or if they would have voted at all, which is why I said they might have made the difference. They may have been swayed by a dynamic peculiar to that election, though: a front runner who had been subjected to decades of character assassination, and who was also widely assumed to have the election sewn up. So I wonder how many of the Johnson voters decided that they had a “free” protest vote and cast it for Johnson instead of Clinton, who they might have backed as the lesser of two evils had they thought Trump actually had a chance.
But like I said, a third party candidate can only be a spoiler in a very close election. We’ll get to see if the Libertarians or some other group make a real effort to promote a candidacy designed to peel off soft Democratic voters in 2024. I think the money will be there for them if they try, and so will the candidate.
Personally, I think the 2024 election will be close only if the economy regresses. If the economy is strong, I think Biden will win by a margin that even a strong 3rd Party showing would not overcome.
schrodingers_cat
@Paul in KY: It means good sense of which he seems to have none.
BigJimSlade
Here was my 2 cents:
https://twitter.com/surfwoodroad/status/1633952243744669696
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: Ha ha! Thank you for translation.