a clown car full of millionaires: the 2016 presidential primary thread

i think you have to be polling w/ minimum 10% support to get into the general election debates. that number might be higher and it's not a set number in any case (i might just be remembering the bar w/ vote % you have to clear to qualify for federal funding next election). whatever the bar is perot met it in 92 but not in 96. there was controversy w/ leaving perot out in 96 though. no other third party candidates since have come near that bar. only way i could even imagine trump doing it is if bush won the nod, tacked toward the center, picked someone for veep the base wasn't wild about, and generally looked noncompetitive/like a loser. even then trump would have to manage that tightrope of saying stuff batshit enough that it would fire up the crazies but not cross whatever uncrossable line. tbf he's kinda managed that for nearly 30 years, he's almost in that barkley zone, so it's not completely implausible. where it would hurt the gop isn't so much the votes it would steal as the dumb shit whatever candidate gets the nod would have to say and do due to worrying about getting outflanked. it could get out the hispanic vote also.

"accidentally making fun of jesus"--love that. John Lennon dodged that one, no problem for Trump.

― clemenza, Thursday, July 23, 2015 6:04 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Already been there, said in Iowa that he "drinks the wine and eats the little cracker" in church but never asked for forgiveness...

that's specifically Catholic - evangelical base of GOP doesn't give a shit about Catholics (Santorum's an outlier)

Admit it, we've all tried this by now--had to give Jesus a go.

Jesus works really hard but is a guy who just doesn't have it--a total loser!

hasn't he said enough shitty things about latinos already

Already been there, said in Iowa that he "drinks the wine and eats the little cracker" in church but never asked for forgiveness...

― Iago Galdston

That line reminds me of my sacristan days in high school when my buddy and I stuffed unconsecrated little crackers in our shirt pockets to munch on b/w classes.

conversion to catholicism has become this sort of weird marker of seriousness and intellectualism in the gop, i'm guessing combination of two popes before francis and buckley. they've tried to make serious inroads w/ the catholic vote (abortion) and thought it would help form a natural alliance w/ hispanic vote, similar to how they've tried to make serious inroads w/ jewish vote by become likud east on israel but it hasn't really paid off. jeb's a converted catholic, newt converted, sam brownback converted, i'm sure there's many many others i'm forgetting. every conservative on the supreme court is catholic.

Trump is a fucking clown, but so was Herman Cain..

rubio, jindal, kasich, christie, pataki also catholic. last two are more 'these are the kinda ppl who become republican in the northeast' which is kinda different. jindal's a convert. rubio apparently had a flirtation w/ mormonism when he was a kid but basically grew up catholic and came back to the church. ted cruz is a southern baptist, i thought maybe he converted for political reasons but then remembered his dad is a nutcase preacher. ben carson's a seventh day adventist! rand paul is episcopalian and will quote dostoevsky if you ask him about his faith. found this quote from trump looking into candidates' affiliations - "I believe in God. I am Christian. I think the Bible is certainly, it is THE book. It is the thing." i think that's from the house of the dead iirc.

Santorum also catholic

I never noticed the rise in catholicism in the GOP, certainly conversion-style being a trend. Most people I that know who have converted did it just to shut their spouse up.

yeah i think that's the case w/ jeb at least (not to cast aspersions on his spiritual journey)

i think that's from the house of the dead iirc.

lol

the lay Conservative Catholic Intellectuals are a fun bunch, and by fun I mean their worldview is utterly alien to me but at least it's more or less honest. I don't think any of them have any particular fondness for any current GOP politicians

I think that segment has lately taken the view that America is a doomed Mammon-worshipping edifice and the faithful should just withdraw from the public sphere

I read an article on a website about this

good idea imo

Chris Hedges:

"Bernie has cut a Faustian deal with the Democrats. And that’s not even speculation. I did an event with him and Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein and Kshama Sawant in New York the day before the Climate March. And Kshama Sawant, the Socialist City Councilwoman from Seattle and I asked Sanders why he wanted to run as a Democrat. And he said — because I don’t want to end up like Nader.”

“He didn’t want to end up pushed out of the establishment,” Hedges said. “He wanted to keep his committee chairmanships, he wanted to keep his Senate seat. And he knew the forms of retribution, punishment that would be visited upon him if he applied his critique to the Democratic establishment. So he won’t.”

“The lie of omission is still a lie,” Hedges said. “Bernie’s decision to play the game within the Democratic Party and in essence lend credibility to the party and lend credibility to Hillary Clinton is very destructive. A liberal feeding frenzy within the Democratic Party would see a rise of an actual liberal establishment within the party – I’m not sure one exists any more — that challenged the Party for selling out working men and women.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/15/chris-hedges-on-bernie-sanders-and-the-corporate-democrats/

maybe he wants to win

where is this 'liberal feeding frenzy' going to come from

maybe he wants to keep his senate seat and chairmanships because they're incredibly powerful venues to accomplish things with

I heard Trump babbling on about the benefits of a President that doesn't use a teleprompter, and then remembered that for a while Obama using a teleprompter was a thing with the crazies. "He's reading from a screen, but what is he really thinking, hmm!?!?" or "He's too dumb/Muslim/socialist to speak off the cuff, we need a straight shooter!"

I think it's more a distraction from Obama being one of the best and most presidential orators to get within a stone's throw of the White House for a long time.

man listening to Bush fumfer his ways through speeches was so painful

the slide towards doom, easy on the ears.

maybe he wants to keep his senate seat and chairmanships because they're incredibly powerful venues to accomplish things with

Check w/ Matt A, who sez he wants to win.

I think that segment has lately taken the view that America is a doomed Mammon-worshipping edifice and the faithful should just withdraw from the public sphere

― go hang a salami I'm a canal, adam (silby), Thursday, July 23, 2015 9:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the "benedict option". this is rod dreher's thing. i've never read what it really entails

(someone zinged him on twitter saying "you've switched religions more often 15 years than i've changed cars"

the benedict option seems like some insane mel gibson-ish denial of the legitimacy of francis and assuming that benedict is de facto pope rather than pope emeritus.. or some bullshit like that

http://theweek.com/articles/555734/benedict-option-why-religious-right-considering-allout-withdrawal-from-politics

It refers to Saint Benedict of Nursia fyi xp

http://...benedict-option-why-religious-right-considering-allout-withdrawal-from-politics

http://i.giphy.com/64HkOiFLJ4LpC.gif

seriously i promise to believe in god if the religious right promises to withdraw from politics

is total withdrawal the last step on the road of epistemic closure?

pretty sure that's their preferred birth control method

Nah you're thinking of rhythm method, pull out is just as problematic as a condom

"Pope emeritus" = ex benedict

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/why-progressives-shouldnt-support-bernie-120484.html#.VbJ_rHiPAeK

ugh, Frank, what an overcelebrated shit. I am *shocked* a dyed-in-the-wool partisan wrote a vote-for-Hil piece.

Without any substance, some argue that she has been insufficiently committed to economic and social reform — for example, that she is too close to Wall Street, and consequently soft on financial regulation, and unwilling to support higher taxation on the super-rich. This is wholly without basis.

^sucks Dow Jones' meat

srsly that 'no substance' comment on HRC is pure chutzpah.

bad show, Barney

politico going ham

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/is-bernie-sanders-a-socialist-in-name-only-120545.html?ml=m_t2_2h

(cw: freddie deboer)

I'm wondering how much the "Clinton is the only viable GE candidate" argument is based on a naive view of how her campaign will actually go. This is how MSNBC reported her comments about Sandra Bland yesterday:

Clinton also addressed the recent death of Sandra Bland, an African-American woman who apparently committed suicide after being arrested during a traffic stop in Texas.

“I was heartbreaking to read about,” Clinton said of Bland. “It is essential that we all stand up and say loudly and clearly, ‘Yes, black lives matter.’”

Maybe she said more? If not, that's just totally inadequate. (The MSNBC reporter was praising this, by the way, compared to Sanders' "stumble" when he got interrupted on stage the other day.)

eh the headline's more disingenuous than the article. He says nothing unkind about Sanders. And:

While I wish that she, Joe Biden and John Kerry had not been spooked into believing that no one who voted no would have the national security merit badge required to win the presidency, I regard liberal senators’ support for the Iraq War as a response to a given fraught political situation rather than an indication of their basic policy stance — like Obama’s off-again, on-again support for same-sex marriage. (Yes, I am saying that in deciding whether or not to support a candidate with whom I have disagreed on a fundamental issue, I am more at ease if it was a one-time political accommodation rather than a genuine conviction.)

has been his conviction for thirty-five years, for better or worse. He's not a Wall Street toady like HRC (you should read Act of Congress to learn how WS hacks tried to pick off his staff one by one); he decided in 2007 and 2008 that HRC was the better candidate than Barack Obama.

I regard liberal senators’ support for the Iraq War as a response to a given fraught political situation

this is fair but a "yes" vote is indicative of general stupidity and political ineptitude - a "yes" vote indicates either 1) an acceptance of DubyaCo's snake oil or b) a belief/hope that the war would not turn out to be a total clusterfuck disaster. The former demonstrates credulity, the latter lack of foresight.

(3) I'm a post-DLC Democrat who must look tough if I want to be president

I think that falls under b) tbh, cuz you don't look tough for voting for a war that is a colossal failure

you look like a gullible idiot

which is precisely the defense Hillary, Biden etc all fall back on "well, based on what we knew at the time..."

the problem is "based on what we knew at the time" it was still obviously a boondoggle, and there were millions of people that loudly pointed that out

Depends. I know Republicans and Dems whose thinking the war a mistake had nothing to do with its success. Grenada was a 'success.'

you bet your ass Grenada was a success!
http://imoviequotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/1-Heartbreak-Ridge-quotes.jpg