2016 elections - because it's never too early

[jimmy olsen]

Lol, Jeb!

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/12/jeb_bush_s_super_pac_is_spending_millions_to_destroy_other_gop_establishment.html

Jeb the Destroyer

Bush's campaign strategy is a perfect capstone to the ineptitude of the Republican establishment.

By Jim Newell

One would be hard-pressed to find a better year-end encapsulation of how the Republican establishment has screwed up the presidential contest than news of a certain ad-buy Tuesday. Jeb Bush's super PAC, Right to Rise—after burning through $40 million already—has made a $1.4 million buy in ... Iowa? To go after Sen. Marco Rubio? Yes, the same Rubio who currently polls at a distant third in the first caucus state, one that no one (including Rubio) expects him to win.

The ad itself goes after Rubio's attendance record in the Senate, the same line of attack that Bush tried and failed cataclysmically to stick in Rubio's face in an October debate.

"Presidential candidate fundraises instead of attending hearing"—now there's some fresh stuff. The questionable effectiveness of this retread aside, what's the strategy here? Bush isn't really contesting Iowa—his official campaign announced Wednesday that it was canceling its remaining Iowa ad-buys—and Rubio isn't in position to win Iowa, either. It's possible that Mike Murphy, the chief disburser of funds at Right to Rise, is simply lighting money on fire as a performance art piece challenging contemporary absurdities of unrestricted campaign finance regulation. That we could all appreciate.

But it's much more boring than that. Right to Rise has recognized that Rubio is expected to place third in Iowa and is trying to prevent him from doing so, to "blunt his narrative" or whatever heading into New Hampshire. It's not like Bush has much chance of placing third in Iowa; he's not campaigning there and for good reason: He's disliked by Iowa Republicans. But if Murphy's money can shove Rubio behind, say, Ben Carson in the final Iowa caucus results, Rubio would theoretically head into New Hampshire carrying loads of negative press about how the supposed leading establishment candidate can't close the deal (for third place, in one state).

It's not just Rubio in Iowa that Team Jeb! is going after. More pertinently, Right to Rise also released a New Hampshire ad going after Jeb's other establishment rivals in the first primary state, Govs. Chris Christie and John Kasich. The ad, "Three Governors," makes some puffy claims about Bush's record as governor of Florida. "Three Republican governors," the ad says. "Which governor won national praise for tough leadership handling nine hurricanes? Which governor made his state No. 1 in job creation? Which governor led the fight to stop Obamacare expansion in his state? And which governor laid out a tough plan to destroy ISIS months before the Paris attacks? Jeb Bush." We hadn't known that Bush, who left office in 2007, "led the fight to stop Obamacare expansion in his state," but apparently he made some calls.

So, kneecap Rubio in Iowa to hurt his chances in New Hampshire; take down fellow permanent New Hampshire lodgers Christie and Kasich in New Hampshire itself; and then leave the Granite State as the designated establishment candidate around whom moderates can rally before losing to Donald Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz. This looks an awful lot like an execution of the Murphy plan floated to Politico a few weeks ago: "Spend the bulk of the $75 million to carpet bomb Rubio, Cruz, Carson, Chris Christie—everyone but Trump. The thinking: Making the race into a binary choice between Bush and Trump might be the only way a majority of primary voters go with Bush." Except they would want Carson to beat Rubio in Iowa, and they're apparently not bothering with Cruz, which is odd, since Cruz is poised to win the first month's worth of nominating contests.

Well, a strategy's a strategy. May we point out just how sad this strategy is? It's not Murphy's fault, entirely, that Bush has proven to be an inept campaigner who's unable to build traction anywhere. His job is to come up with some strategy to get this boob of a candidate through the primaries, and if step one of that strategy is something as hilarious as "spend lots of money to make sure Marco Rubio doesn't finish third in Iowa," well, at least one can admire Murphy's professional loyalty to a doomed cause.

Let's blame the stupid Bush donors instead, the dolts who gave this guy $100 million upfront without asking for so much as a single demonstration of political skill in a 17-man, 2015 political environment. In September, I asked if the donor class had created a monster in Bush: a weak candidate with too much pride and money who would get in the way of a more viable candidate like Rubio or even, at this point, Christie. This is exactly what his super PAC is now doing. It would—even now!—be foolish to completely rule out Bush's chance of winning the nomination, simply because of all that money and the breadth of his national organization. But it's a slim chance, and it requires the total destruction of every other candidate whom the party establishment could tolerate.

[garbon]

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/bernie-sanders-bill-clinton-sex-life-175027335.html

Bernie Sanders: 'We've got more important things to worry about in this country than Bill Clinton's sex life'

First it was Hillary Clinton's "damn emails" that Bernie Sanders said Americans were sick and tired of hearing about. Now it's Bill Clinton's sex life.

"We have more things to worry about than Bill Clinton's sexual life," Sanders said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday.

The Vermont senator and Democratic presidential hopeful repeated the line on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday.

"I think we've got more important things to worry about in this country than Bill Clinton's sex life," he said.

Sanders was asked about Republican frontrunner Donald Trump's suggestion that the former president's sexual past is fair game — and will dog Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in her bid for the White House.

"I think Donald Trump might want to concern himself with the fact that he is dead wrong when he says that we should not raise the minimum wage," Sanders said on ABC. "He's dead wrong when he says we should give huge tax breaks to billionaires like himself. And he's dead wrong when he thinks that climate change is a hoax when virtually the entire scientific community says that it's the great environmental crisis that we face. Maybe Trump should worry about those issues rather than Bill Clinton's sex life."

Bill Clinton's sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a 22-year-old White House intern, led to his impeachment in 1998 and subsequent trial for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Last week, Trump threatened to rehash Bill Clinton's infamous sexual indiscretion after Hillary Clinton announced that her husband would be joining her on the campaign trail.

"Hillary Clinton has announced that she is letting her husband out to campaign," Trump wrote on Twitter, "but HE'S DEMONSTRATED A PENCHANT FOR SEXISM, so inappropriate!"

Meanwhile, Sanders doubled down on his recent assertion that the brash real estate mogul is a "pathological liar."

"I do not get engaged in personal attacks, but Trump really is over the edge," Sanders said on ABC. "Time after time, this guy just comes up with things off the top of his head that are lies. And somebody has got to say that."

Sanders, who is openly courting Trump's working-class supporters, said they share similar goals.

"Working-class Republicans are also seeing their wages going down — they're seeing almost all new income and wealth going to the top 1 percent," he said on CNN. "They can't afford to send their kids to college. They're seeing their jobs going to China. And I think they want a president who has the courage to stand up to the billionaire class, to raise the minimum wage, to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and, by the way, to address a corrupt campaign finance system, where millionaires and billionaires and corporations are now spending unlimited sums of money to buy elections.

"That's a pretty across-the-board sentiment," Sanders said. "The American people want change. And I believe that I'm a vehicle of change, being prepared to stand up to the wealthy and the powerful and create an economy that works for all Americans."

I do wonder, does anyone still care about Bill Clinton's sex life?

[Monoriu]

Jeb Bush is probably the single most tragic story of the entire election

[Jaron]

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/bernie-sanders-bill-clinton-sex-life-175027335.html

Bernie Sanders: 'We've got more important things to worry about in this country than Bill Clinton's sex life'

First it was Hillary Clinton's "damn emails" that Bernie Sanders said Americans were sick and tired of hearing about. Now it's Bill Clinton's sex life.

"We have more things to worry about than Bill Clinton's sexual life," Sanders said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday.

The Vermont senator and Democratic presidential hopeful repeated the line on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday.

"I think we've got more important things to worry about in this country than Bill Clinton's sex life," he said.

Sanders was asked about Republican frontrunner Donald Trump's suggestion that the former president's sexual past is fair game — and will dog Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in her bid for the White House.

"I think Donald Trump might want to concern himself with the fact that he is dead wrong when he says that we should not raise the minimum wage," Sanders said on ABC. "He's dead wrong when he says we should give huge tax breaks to billionaires like himself. And he's dead wrong when he thinks that climate change is a hoax when virtually the entire scientific community says that it's the great environmental crisis that we face. Maybe Trump should worry about those issues rather than Bill Clinton's sex life."

Bill Clinton's sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a 22-year-old White House intern, led to his impeachment in 1998 and subsequent trial for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Last week, Trump threatened to rehash Bill Clinton's infamous sexual indiscretion after Hillary Clinton announced that her husband would be joining her on the campaign trail.

"Hillary Clinton has announced that she is letting her husband out to campaign," Trump wrote on Twitter, "but HE'S DEMONSTRATED A PENCHANT FOR SEXISM, so inappropriate!"

Meanwhile, Sanders doubled down on his recent assertion that the brash real estate mogul is a "pathological liar."

"I do not get engaged in personal attacks, but Trump really is over the edge," Sanders said on ABC. "Time after time, this guy just comes up with things off the top of his head that are lies. And somebody has got to say that."

Sanders, who is openly courting Trump's working-class supporters, said they share similar goals.

"Working-class Republicans are also seeing their wages going down — they're seeing almost all new income and wealth going to the top 1 percent," he said on CNN. "They can't afford to send their kids to college. They're seeing their jobs going to China. And I think they want a president who has the courage to stand up to the billionaire class, to raise the minimum wage, to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and, by the way, to address a corrupt campaign finance system, where millionaires and billionaires and corporations are now spending unlimited sums of money to buy elections.

"That's a pretty across-the-board sentiment," Sanders said. "The American people want change. And I believe that I'm a vehicle of change, being prepared to stand up to the wealthy and the powerful and create an economy that works for all Americans."

I do wonder, does anyone still care about Bill Clinton's sex life?

Some conservative sites are pretty obsessed with it right now.

[alfred russel]

I do wonder, does anyone still care about Bill Clinton's sex life?

It has been a long time. Lots of new voters since he left office. Also, at the time, everything was clouded by impeachment.  He did pay a lot of money to settle a sexual harassment claim, and an executive banging the interns is frowned upon.

[jimmy olsen]

What happened to the GOP of yesteryear?

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/01/republican_candidates_are_portraying_themselves_as_the_serious_choice_for.html

What If Republican Voters Don't Value Seriousness Anymore?

That would be bad news for every GOP candidate, with one obvious exception.

By Jim Newell

Republican presidential candidates and their super PACs have begun 2016 by appealing to the primary electorate's sobriety, despite scant evidence of its existence. Various candidates, with the key exception of Donald Trump, are offering a message of serious leadership, a trait either that too many candidates possess for voters to decide among them or one about which few voters care. The message serves as both a lament over the decidedly unserious nature of the 2015 leg and a hope for a better stretch in 2016: Either voters will come around to valuing seriousness as voting nears, or Trump will be the Republican presidential candidate.


Trump on Monday released his first television advertisement,  which can best be described as an actualization of the hilarious thought experiment, What if the archetypical "somber-voiced political ad narrator guy" tried to speak like Donald Trump? It is what it is. The ad will earn exponentially more airtime in free media coverage than the hard-dollar New Hampshire buy allots for, reinforcing Trump's theory that paid media is a waste for a candidacy like his. But it is not the only new message out on Monday.

Gather 'round, family, for the Rick Santorum campaign has scrounged together enough loose change to produce a television ad. It goes after Iowa front-runner Sen. Ted Cruz, who is depicted reading stories to his children on the Senate floor. "Ted Cruz is wonderful at reading children's fairy tales on the Senate floor," the narrator begins, even though Green Eggs and Ham is not a fairy tale. "Rick Santorum spent his time in the Senate a little differently." The ad mentions how Santorum was on the Armed Services Committee for eight years, wrote a law imposing sanctions on Iran, and other superserious things that Iowa voters won't care about because they like Cruz better. "If you want to protect America and defeat ISIS, Rick Santorum's your president," the ad concludes. "Because serious times need serious people."


One of Cruz's amply funded super PACs, Keep the Promise 1, released an ad Monday that does to Sen. Marco Rubio what Santorum does to Cruz: Unfairly cherry-picks some footage of the candidate in a lighter moment to prove that he's not serious enough to be America's war president. The ad overlays the usual scary footage of armed foreign people with commensurate scary music and asks, "What would Marco Rubio's leadership look like?" It then shows a clip, originally shot for a dumb Web video the Rubio campaign released in October, of Rubio making his fantasy football picks. Vote Ted Cruz: As president, he will not enjoy a single moment of levity. (Rubio, for his part, attacked Cruz in New Hampshire on Monday for not being serious enough to spend infinite amounts of federal money on bomb procurement or to spy on every American all the time.)


Jeb Bush will also begin running a new ad in New Hampshire on Tuesday. It, too, shows scary pictures of terrorists, over which our man says, "serious times require serious leadership"—almost identical to the lame slogan in Santorum's ad.


Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, like Santorum, is a previous winner of the Iowa caucuses. And Huckabee, like Santorum, is losing pitifully this year as novice candidates like Cruz and Ben Carson suck up Iowa's social conservative vote. "This has been, of all the election cycles I've been involved in, this has been one of the most bewildering," Huckabee, per the Des Moines Register, said at a Sunday event, "because it's almost as if the more experience, the more preparation one has had for this job, it's almost like it's a detriment than it is an asset."

Huckabee should feel especially offended, since he has experience as both a longtime governor and a conservative entertainment personality who's constantly spouting off attention-grabbing nonsense. But his venting of frustration at the oddness of this cycle harkens back to New York magazine's Jonathan Chait's description of the process in September, after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker dropped out: "The Republican presidential race has appeared to take the form of a kind of reverse meritocracy, in which the candidates with real political accomplishments (Walker and, before him, former Texas governor Rick Perry) are driven out, and novices with strong television skills rise to the top." This remains the dynamic of the race, as Trump, Cruz, and Rubio, who have zero hard political accomplishments between them, sit atop the field. And Rubio is the least likely of those three to win the nomination, largely because he committed the heresy of almost accomplishing something serious and noteworthy.

What is "seriousness"? It doesn't necessarily have to go hand in hand with "political experience," and when political candidates urge voters to select the "serious" choice, they always just mean, "select me." I would say that "seriousness" connotes an understanding of the job of president and a fluency in major policy issues. What we have this cycle is a front-runner who's both politically inexperienced and visibly unversed in major policy issues—something that's hurt Carson, but not Trump.

There must be something the non-Trump candidates see while crafting their messages about "seriousness" that's not apparent to the naked eye. It's a message that hasn't worked this cycle, but they continue offering it. Maybe they're hoping that once voting begins, voters en masse will think, "Oh God, am I really going to push a button that says 'Donald Trump' today?" Or they've just got nothing better to suggest. It's much easier when the electorate cooperates.

[Razgovory]

Okay, a little dippy commentary by me on this article.  It's been a long time since anyone has pointed an accusatory finger and said "Catholic" in American politics, but apparently there's a whispering campaign going on suggest Ted Cruz is really a Crypto-Catholic.  As weird and stupid as that is.

Ted Cruz's six-day bus trip in Iowa launched as more of religious revival tour than a presidential barnstorm. In the most conservative parts of the state on Monday, the Texas senator weaved in faith at every turn, soliciting shouts of "Amen" and prayers from the audience.

In Carroll, he asked the audience to "pray and ask God to continue this awakening."

At a Christian bookstore in Boone, he quoted from the Book of Joshua.

"I was seeing Joshua 24:15 on the wall: 'choose you this day whom you will serve; as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,'" Cruz said. "And what a powerful reminder of the values that Washington, D.C., seems to have forgotten. What a powerful reminder of the values that built this country."

But despite his outward displays of his belief, Cruz, the favorite in Iowa, is facing a whisper campaign of sorts from his Republican opponents: He's Christian, but not Christian enough.

Donald Trump has cryptically questioned whether Cuba raises true evangelicals, pondering aloud whether Cruz is actually a Catholic. Ben Carson's closest aide has argued that Cruz's faith isn't as native to him as Carson's is to him. And a pair of back-of-the-pack contenders, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, charge that Cruz is prioritizing wrong-headed Constitutional commitments over long-held Christian ones.


The attacks on the new Iowa frontrunner are just beginning. Their dark religious overtone is not subtle -- and they could define the final four-week push to dethrone him from the top of the evangelical heap.

Cruz, who attends a Southern Baptist church and paces a stage like one of its preachers, has wooed the leaders of the evangelical grassroots for eight months, a courtship that is paying off this winter as he wins a string of high-profile endorsements. These growing victories also seem to have energized a batch of spurned rivals, some of whom have few cards left to play other than ripping the Iowa leader as a two-faced impostor with more political cunning than deep religious sincerity.

"There's no reason to question his religious integrity," said evangelical leader Rob Schenck, who deemed those blows "not helpful to the process."

But Schenck acknowledged the politics at play: "Yes, it could definitely be damaging."

Negative ads taking hold?

The Christian rebuke is just one of many critiques leveled now at the GOP's target du jour in Iowa. Santorum's campaign on Monday became the sixth group in recent weeks to spend money against Cruz in Iowa with a new television advertisement. Other groups promise more to come.

Cruz, for his part, sees these attacks as a validation that he is a threat to win the nomination.

"You know, I'm looking at the materials some of y'all might've seen. 'Ted Cruz is dangerous,'" he said, reading from a mailer on Monday afternoon given to attendees in Carroll by a pro-ethanol group. "You know what, to the Washington cartel, to the career politicians that are getting fat and happy and want the gravy train to keep going, that's exactly right."

And as he rides his bus throughout the state, he re-pitched himself to the state's Christians, released a soft, direct-to-camera television ad in Iowa in which he promised to not "compromise the values that make us who we are."

But on the ground, there are some signs that questions about Cruz's commitment to the evangelical movement are breaking through. After his event in Carroll, Lea Hoffman approached Cruz and shared her concern about an audio tape (from a Cruz fundraiser in New York City) she had heard in an advertisement by Mike Huckabee's super PAC which used it to portray Cruz as deemphasizing traditional marriage.

Hoffman told Cruz his son would vote for Rubio "because you are for gay rights."

Cruz, ridiculing the "secret tape" as not-so-revealing, said he had a better record than Rubio on same-sex marriage. Hoffman later appeared convinced, telling CNN: "He lines up with what I believe the way the Lord wants this."

Cruz's consistent line has been that marriage is to be decided by the states. But that doubts are being stirred with like Hoffman is music to the ears of the Cruz rivals who charge that he is more corporate than Christian.

"If Senator Cruz is an advocate for states' rights on marriage and on life, then I think would surprise a lot of evangelicals," said Hogan Gidley, a spokesman for Huckabee, who supports constitutional amendments that would define marriage as being between a man and a woman.

"Ted Cruz is just like any other politician. He says one thing in Manhattan, he says another thing in Iowa," Carly Fiorina said Sunday to CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union."

Other candidates have uncorked more biting remarks that speak to Cruz's own personal life. After a period of peace between Cruz and Trump, the New York businessman last week once again implored Iowans to "just remember" that "not a lot of evangelicals come out of Cuba." Trump suggested this weekend that it was possible Cruz, whose father was born there, is natively Catholic.

"Cuba, generally speaking, is a Catholic country. And you don't equate evangelicals with Cuba. I don't," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

Even Ben Carson, who has been averse to much of the hand-to-hand combat that now defines the GOP race, has gotten involved: His business adviser and often-spokesman, Armstrong Williams, said on CNN on Thursday that Cruz, like Trump, was not an "authentic" evangelical Christian.

"There are a lot of people who talk a good game about their faith, including Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz," Williams said. "Dr. Carson lives it."

Cruz allies say they are not worried about the attacks, no matter the realm. They maintain he has the political skill -- and as of this weekend, the television time -- to hold his lead in Iowa, even as he fights a battle against six outside groups and a dozen other GOP candidates. Allies placed $2 million in television advertisements in Iowa, thanks to a pair of super PACs -- Keep the Promise and Stand for Truth -- making their first big plays on television.

Details about the plans Stand for Truth, a mysterious new $4 million group formed independently from Keep the Promise but still blessed by Cruz's big money network, were held close to the vest by group operatives on Monday.

'We are seeking the hand of God'

But on the question of faith, the candidate's defenders project confidence that his reputation will not be impugned.

"They don't think he's putting on a front just for an election," said Tim Ried, an Iowa pastor supporting Cruz who is in touch with many other evangelical leaders in the state. "What he's saying is what he is, and he's lived that way for years before he started running."

In Winterset on Monday evening, Cruz spoke of the emotion of his own family's faith, especially given the rigors of the presidential campaign -- revealing that he and his wife spent 30 minutes on the phone Sunday night in prayer with senior staff.

"Our prayer has never been, 'We are seeking the hand of God,'" Cruz said of the prayer with his wife, Heidi. "We haven't asked God give us your help in winning this race. That is not our prayer. We are not seeking his hand. Her prayer was, 'Let us seek your face. Let this campaign reflect your love, reflect your glory and let your will be done.'"

And at the end of each of event, he had three asks for Iowa voters: to caucus for him, to sign up to volunteer and persuade others, and to pray and ask God to continue the awakening.

In Guthrie Center, he prayed: "I will hear their prayers and forgive their sins and I will heal their land; that is the promise we are standing on."

[DGuller]

Ted Cruz is anything you want him to be.

[Monoriu]

Ted Cruz is anything you want him to be.

So if we want him to be the greatest president ever, he will be one?

I don't understand this Catholic thing.  Catholics are Christians, right?  That's somehow not good enough? 

Kennedy was Catholic, and that was fine, I thought. 

[Admiral Yi]

Kennedy's Catholicism was a big deal at the time.

[Monoriu]

Kennedy's Catholicism was a big deal at the time.

Learn something new every day.  I thought the US doesn't care about these things. 

[DGuller]

Catholics run the one branch that matters, getting the presidency as well would be too greedy.

[Eddie Teach]

Learn something new every day.  I thought the US doesn't care about these things.

Well, we never burned anyone at the stake as far as I know.

[PRC]

Kennedy's Catholicism was a big deal at the time.

Honest question... was Kennedy's Catholicism a bigger deal than Romney's Mormonism last election round?  I imagine it was.  Romney's Mormonism came up, but I don't recall anyone raising serious concerns about it.  Allegiance to the Pope and all that I guess.

[Jaron]

Does anyone seriously think Trump isn't going to landslide this election? It is hard to defend any opposing views at this point.

Mitt Romney represented the best future for America but America predictably said "A serious candidate with a great record who wants to make the country better? Pass."