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

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/jeb-bush-president-2016-fundraisers-problems-213156

Three top Jeb Bush fundraisers abruptly parted ways with his presidential campaign on Friday, amid internal personality conflicts and questions about the strength of his candidacy, POLITICO has learned.

There are different versions of what transpired. The Florida-based fundraising consultants — Kris Money, Trey McCarley, and Debbie Aleksander — have said that they voluntarily quit the campaign and were still working with Bush's super PAC, Right to Rise Super PAC. Others said the three, who worked under the same contract, were let go because they were no longer needed for the current phase of the campaign.

...

Frontrunner Donald Trump seized on the POLITICO report Saturday morning and took a shot at his rival on Twitter: “Wow, Jeb Bush just lost three of his top fundraisers - they quit!”

Not even Lucianne Goldberg was this scared.

She had different patrons and protectors than a democratic presidential aspirant is likely to rely on for furthering their career.

Struggling to think of dem poltical opponents destroyed by the clintons tbh

vince foster

reminds me i saw clint eastwood's absolute power last night and the hillary proxy in that was amazingly vicious (judy davis played her), there's a moment where a secret service officer tells her he'd like to rip her throat out and it's clearly a fist pumping moment. i'm guessing it was written already but there's an interesting piece to be written about clinton proxies in 90s movies (i think the american president came out the same year)(absolute power easily better but i'm pretty fond of eastwood movies where he's not playing to critics).

Presidential campaigns are not conducted with kid gloves. If you play to win you make enemies not just of your opponent, but of their most ardent and committed supporters. Hillary and Bill have deep, strong connections to a lot of the big money people who back democratic campaigns and they have a lot of chits they could call in if necessary. Probably many more than GW Bush would command in his party.

Politicians are calculating. They don't need the threat of utter destruction to be dissuaded from taking on the Clintons this year. They need only calculate the risks against the likely odds of winning and decide they aren't worth it, especially if they are young enough to wait for 2020 or 2024. Obama played a long shot and it came in for him. He's exceptional that way. You kind of have to be to become the first black president.

Are you guys not following how JEB! is doing? Bushes are a spent dynasty, their support is shallow and isolated, they are in no position to whack anybody, none of them are in office, they have no voter base

― Οὖτις, Sunday, August 30, 2015 12:22 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also at this point all they have is the name. They have not bred a new generation of winners.

― Οὖτις, Sunday, August 30, 2015 12:24 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

All they had in 1963 was a CIA dude who was running a curiously named oil company.

Jeb is still the favorite to win the nomination on the sportsbooks. Does intrade still exist?

Prescott was a force in the GOP prior to '63

Also planned parenthood lol

Or is yr point that the bushes are just in a similar fallow period? Prescott never disgraced the nation or the family in the spectacular manner of dubya, key difference there.

I dont think jeb can win the nomination at this point tbh

i'd kinda agree except walker's campaign has been surprisingly/reassuringly pathetic and i can't buy rubio. i feel like i know less about this race than i did six months ago. there are a lot of reasons to be worried if you're a dem but man the state of the gop race is one thing you can take comfort in.

mitt romney spent plenty of time behind nutcases in the polls before the inevitable happened

I dont think jeb can win the nomination at this point tbh

― Οὖτις, Sunday, August 30, 2015 5:12 AM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you could just bet on the top 3 other non-trump contenders and get a guaranteed profit if it's not jeb...

tbh, nobody on either side seems like they should be able to win an election but it seems like it's too late for a dark horse to emerge in either party. Worst field since 1976?

yeah i don't really see an inevitable in the gop field though and if perry hadn't been somehow too stupid to run for president and too liberal on immigration i think he would've been a very serious challenger to romney (and that's w/ perry being a late entrant). i don't think the gop field is esp weak - you have a popular two term governor of a large swing state, you have a conservative hero governor who managed to beat a high profile recall effort and win reelection in a blue state despite governing as an extreme conservative, you have a young senator from an important demographic and import swing state, you have two other senators that are well known and beloved by the grass roots, you have an evangelical that managed a remarkably successful campaign eight years ago and has hosted a tv show in the interim, you have the runner up from four years ago, you have two former governors of large states that were once routinely mentioned as possible candidates, and you have an extremely famous billionaire running as an outsider. on paper that's an incredible field, the problem is except for trump and maybe kasich (who i didn't even mention up there) everyone is underperforming and i don't think it's something you can just chalk up to the size of the field though that could mean this mess doesn't change anytime soon since some of those losers will keep hanging around if they can just find one billionaire believer to foot the bill.

I wonder if this is the new normal for open seats with no heirs apparent, as Citizens United continues to sink in. 17, 18 individually sponsored candidates, with no wooden hook reaching from offstage and yanking 'em no matter how complete their failure has become. I dunno, it's still early. At the stage in 1999, Liddy Dole and Gary Bauer got to appear in the same pancake-flipping photo ops as Bush and McCain.

remember lamar alexander and the flannel

i don't think the gop field is esp weak - you have a popular two term governor of a large swing state, you have a conservative hero governor who managed to beat a high profile recall effort and win reelection in a blue state despite governing as an extreme conservative, you have a young senator from an important demographic and important swing state, you have two other senators that are well known and beloved by the grass roots, you have an evangelical that managed a remarkably successful campaign eight years ago and has hosted a tv show in the interim, you have the runner up from four years ago, you have two former governors of large states that were once routinely mentioned as possible candidates, and you have an extremely famous billionaire running as an outsider.

Yeah, but when you describe them in such bland terms it takes away the fact that they're all idiots and repellent freaks. Also:

• Kasich is popular in Ohio because his policies have benefited the people of Ohio. National Rs hate him because he says Jesus-y things about taking care of the poor.
• Obama fucked Rubio, and Cuban voters, hard by normalizing relations with Cuba. That used to be an important demographic, but who gives a shit what they think/say or how they vote now?
• Walker is almost as loathed as Christie at this point, both at home and nationally.
• I don't know which senators you're talking about but Lindsey Graham is hardly "beloved." He's John McCain's lapdog, and most Rs hate McCain. Graham's entire base is political journalists, and they don't even vote.

A poll I saw yesterday has Trump at #1 and the one mutant you didn't mention, Ben Carson, at #2.

Wisconsin is not a blue state.

Assume beloved Senator 1 is Cruz. Beats me who 2 could possibly be.

I dont think jeb can win the nomination at this point tbh
--Οὖτις

I think Jeb will still be recipient of the "it's gotta be somebody" award which is basically the way the last two GOP primaries got decided.

There are powerful people still waiting to cash in from another Clinton in office, that's for sure.

Scott Walker says wall between U.S., Canada worth reviewing

sure, sure

like the countless miles of rugged and inhospitable prairie don't cut it

If Walker gets his wall built, I think I'd like to work as a greeter there, like they have in Walmart.

don't you mean an ungreeter

turning away lumberjacks and potential islamic terrorists seeking a northern passage

i was in knoxville recently, in the foothills mall, and as i walked out of a department store (i think it was belk; either that or j.c. penney) the greeter said "have a blessed day!" and i stopped myself just in time from exhorting "praise be!!"

a couple of days later i got "have a blessed day" from the guy selling newspapers at the airport. i never heard this growing up, is this a thing now???

Very much so.

Down here in Dixieland, anyway.

I like when ppl tell me to have a blessed day. It makes me feel blessed.

I'm not sure it's a thing "now" I think it's just a thing

I don't remember hearing it constantly until maybe, idk, 8-10 years ago? But this is very hazy. I have this possibly misplaced sense that it emerged out of some kinda resistance to the secularization of daily life in the South, the whole "they're taking prayer out of the schools!" well. I would assume that 99+% of people who say it have no allegiance to some passive-aggressive CLICK SHARE AND WE'LL SHOW THEM WHO'S GOD AROUND HERE mentality but I'm convinced that kind of thing helped spread and popularize it.

Did they say "blessed" in one or two syllables?

One syllable = ah, it's all good.

Two syllables = arouses suspicion of intent.

Or is it the other way around, dang i'm no good at this.

i think it's kind of cunty

thought i would have aged out of this mindset by now, but alas. i guess that's on me though. i could always move.

my side job brings me into contact w/ many ppl that i have been socially isolated from, yer lumpen proles of the nation basically, and their love for signing off 'have a blessed day' is def. localized to the south but not restricted to there

i double-checked and the gary bauer george bush pancake showdown i was thinking of actually was in late january of 2000. after the iowa caucus, before the new hampshire primary (which sent bauer, with 0.69%, packing). we'll be putting up with this clown car for a good long while folks. though i think we could start a new thread once the first person drops out; somebody has to figure, even before the primaries, that they're wasting their time even for a VP bid.

At a pancake-flipping contest here this morning, the conservative presidential candidate at the bottom of the
GOP pack flipped a pancake over and behind his head, ran back to catch it and fell off the three-foot riser.
Yet, somehow, Bauer managed to catch the pancake in his pan on his way down.
As he jumped back on the stage, Bauer shouted, “I’m a fighter!”

http://ak-hdl.buzzfed.com/static/2014-06/5/15/enhanced/webdr08/anigif_original-grid-image-3950-1401997559-4.gif

Bauer said he hit his elbow and hip, but was not injured. Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who had
just executed a fall-free pancake flip, was behind the stage when Bauer fell. Bush looked up to see him falling
and was heard to say, “Oops, here comes Bauer!”

Looking like a nerd in public is probably the worst sin you can commit in US politics.

Fittingly, Gary Bauer's principal rival at this juncture was Steve Forbes:

Bauer came on stage joking that Bush had a string attacked to his pancake, then said millionaire publisher Steve Forbes couldn't make it because "he was across town at a Faberge egg scrambling contest."

i hear 'have a blessed day' a lot now, often in contexts where it's clearly an order from management (like every kid working the window at cookout says it, no way that's just happening on its own), always w/ complete friendly sincerity, none of that occasional implied 'fuck off' you get w/ 'have a nice day' or those pointed 'merry CHRISTMAS that's right i went there' you sometimes get. thx to #blessed the religious element of it feels very dampened down, to me at least. at the same time when i do hear it internally i think 'will do.'

those pointed 'merry CHRISTMAS that's right i went there'

yeah this. i'm certain i'm being too hard on ppl who genuinely mean well, but i personally know waaay too many folks (mostly via extended fam and high school folks who've reconnected on facebook) who are gleefully throwing it in the face of this imagined freedom-killing PC bogeyman.

I'm so down on Christmas these days I'd honestly be happier if people didn't impose fucking Christmas on me every year.

http://paganwiccan.about.com/od/glossary/g/Blessed_Be.htm

have you guys done Michael Bickelmeyer yet?

http://2016.republican-candidates.org/Bickelmeyer/

Bickelmeyer is something of a dreamer, and has formulated some creative inventions that are interesting, to say the least. He is particularly proud of three such ideas, which he advocates as important Federal Projects, and for which he is in the process of securing patents. The first is a square shaped airport with steam-heated runways and an industrial facility at the center. The industrial structure would be used for recycling, die casting, and manufacturing.

Uh

The third of Bickelmeyer's concepts is arguably the most noteworthy. In what he calls “a gift for children”, Bickelmeyer proposes an orbital weapons platform that would function by the collection of solar radiation, which would then be magnified and directed to the surface as a lethal beam. He claims that this weapon could potentially be as precise as to eliminate a single personal target, or as broad as to effect entire countries. Bickelmeyer advocates the use of this platform against terrorism and in pursuit of the war on drugs. He stresses that, because this is not a nuclear weapon, there is no danger of radioactive fallout.