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

At 90 he'll be the oldest president ever!

Maybe the GOP will turn up another moderate governor of a coastal state by 2020 and that person won't be waiting for a federal indictment to come down like Chris Christie is.

Ben Carson's coming to West Memphis for a campaign rally.

This alone convinces me that his is not a real campaign.

OK, he's black, like most people who live in that metro. But that's about where any similarities between him and the people he'll be speaking to ends.

While this state has gone so red, you can develop film outdoors on the sidewalk, I don't think the GOP even bothers to field local candidates over in that neck of the woods.

love how Barry Goldwater still looks like Attila the Hun.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, October 27, 2015 9:46 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, it's amazing how much of an outlier goldwater was. there's a reason why he lost the popular vote by the widest margin in the last 80 years

if somehow trump were to snag the nomination i think we'd see something similar (or worse for trump)

http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/i-am-fun-51731

. “I’m Presbyterian,” Mr. Trump proclaimed at a rally in Florida last Friday. “Boy, that’s down the middle of the road folks, in all fairness. I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don’t know about.”

trump is really unbelievable. i mean this is kind of stuff you expect from some outsider candidate in a county board election in bumblefuck kansas.

haha my favorite bit from the recent cover story on Trump in Rolling Stone was this:

He burrows into his notes, marking a section in ballpoint. Not 60 seconds pass before he looks at me again. "You know New Hampshire has a huge problem with heroin? Why do ya s'pose that is?"

I tell him that it probably has to do with OxyContin and school kids raiding their parents' medicine chests. They run out of pills, then find that bags of heroin are cheaper. "Yeah? Well, which is worse for you, the heroin or the pills?" I explain that they're both derivatives of opium, which is dicey however it's delivered. "Hunh!" he says. "Interesting. I didn't know that. But I gotta get back to my notes!" (At a press conference, an hour later, he'll respond to a question about heroin in New Hampshire by saying that "it starts probably with OxyContin, from what I'm hearing.")

Good Lord, what's he got to say about the Mormons?

when I was mormon as a kid (ugh) I remember hearing people say the church had a lot in common with seventh day adventists

You remember him saying this last week:

"This should actually be the rule in the entire government, where if you're not doing your job, you should be fired." ---

Naturally, the DNC and Jeb Bush pounced on this because he just isn't bothering to show up for work anymore.

He's had a bunch of excuses:

Excuse #1: It’s normal for presidential candidates to miss votes. (Des Moines Register)
Excuse #2: He gets briefed on hearings by his staff. (Washington Post, Politico)
Excuse #3: He would never miss a vote where he would have been the deciding one. (USA Today, Reno Gazette-Journal, Roll Call)
Excuse #4: He’s leaving the Senate. (Republican Primary Debate in Simi Valley, CA)
Excuse #5: Votes he has missed are “show votes.” (Breitbart, Huffington Post)
Excuse #6: He wants his votes to be meaningful. (CNN’s State of the Union)
Excuse #7: He is frustrated. (Washington Post)
Excuse #8: He feels as if he is standing around and doing nothing. (Washington Post)

digby

if his opponents were competent, ''marco no-show,'' a la children's pool game ''marco polo,'' would make a decent campaign ad.

brb gonna start this at Trump rally

I kind of wish fewer members of Congress would show up.

Sooner or later someone will be elected to the house who doesn't realize they're supposed to show up in DC at all

and 74% of likely caucus voters will approve of that

ben carson said that all that he cares about is selling copies of his books, and that he'd like to shit in your mouth! do you approve?

84% yes
7% no
9% undecided

fuck this asssssshole

http://observer.com/2015/10/hillary-clinton-falsely-calls-bernie-sanders-a-sexist/

i'd rather see the GOP win

D'you mean the author of that post? Because, yeah, playing the man-card without using quotes and dates is pretty assholish behaviour.

i have assessed the situation carefully & am positive that dr morbius was defending hillary clinton

frederik, i'd say get out of my country if you weren't already

if you prefer:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/10/hillary_clinton_is_smearing_bernie_sanders_as_a_sexist_it_s_an_insult_to.html

Fuck William Saletan.

Current Conservative dream- sorta conservative FBI Director Comey will somehow get Hillary charged with crimes

from some right-wing columnist

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2015/10/27/How-FBI-Could-Derail-Hillary-Clinton-s-Presidential-Run

James Comey – not Bernie Sanders -- is the biggest challenge to Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions, a prospect that should keep the former Secretary of State up at night. The fiercely independent head of the FBI is directing the investigation into Clinton’s use of a personal email server and attendant issues raised during the Benghazi inquiry, which could lead to indictments of the former Secretary of State or her various aides.

...

What could bring Hillary down? According to some who have followed the case closely, Mrs. Clinton could be charged with breaking several laws, including willfully transmitting or retaining Top Secret material using a private server, unauthorized removal of classified information from government control or storing such information in an unauthorized location, lying to Congress, destruction of government property (wiping the server), lying under oath to a judge about having given the government all her emails or obstruction of justice.

Digby linked to it last night, and after catching the cadaverous Kraut-ham on a FOX show last week while flipping channels I noticed his fervent hope that the FBI could still indict her in January. That's all they got.

according to some who have followed the case closely

the comey indictment stupidity seems to function as an automated rage release valve. if it didn't exist, something else would form out of the ether to take its place

i'll see you in the spring, millennial fussbudgets, after i search for the perfect poli-circus writers who can meet your rigorous vetting standards!

Have fun, see you tomorrow!

http://i.imgur.com/oht3ald.jpg

Why does it always rain on me?
Is it because I lied when I was seventeen?
mmm mmmm dooot deet doooo
Why does it always rain on me?

lolol lindsey graham plays fmk

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/10/27/lindsey-graham-pours-beers-contemplates-marrying-carly-fiorina

Pretty bad when the Washington Post can't even spell your name right.

"John and Hillary were drinking, toasting; they were with others I won't name because they have political futures," Graham said.

Quality zinger, Lindsy.

Bash concluded the lighthearted part of the evening with a game. "There is a fun bar game, which I will clean up, because we are in mixed company, and on television," said Bash. "So, I'm going to call it: Date, marry, or make disappear forever."

Cringe News Network

the lighthearted part of the evening

who will be the next candidate to appear on Get Wasted and play fuck marry or kill (i mean date marry or disappear forever) on national TV??!!

*campaign advisers explode*

no idea why lindsay's on the undercard, he appears to make really good decisions

never forget

(I know this is Lindsey-adjacent but otoh lmao)

brouhonohohomoha

Graham has said he is not offended by the comment. He has also said that his single life does not make him a defective person.

I absolutely agree that this is not what makes him a defective person.

Fuck William Saletan.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, October 28, 2015 8:49 AM (3 hours ago)

he's right tho *shrugs*

yes yes let's defend bernie sanders mansplaining for the cause of defending the 2nd amendment

or let's pretend that actually bernie sanders is mainly focused on o'malley, the central figure of that debate

I'm halfway through that Saletan article and I am under the impression that it thinks it is criticizing Sanders but is actually reinforcing Clinton's point

I'm also forming the opinion that some dog whistles are so ingrained that the people responding to them don't even notice them anymore

Saletan is such an imbecile he frequently winds up driving people even further toward the position he's attempting to argue against.

ftr i didn't actually read the article, just the headline and sub header, but if you think what bernie did was "mansplaining" then we're gonna be in for a lot of mansplaining over the next 12 months

obv bernie's position on gun control is lamentable -- though he's coming around it seems, kind of like hillary on, oh i don't know, the iraq war, trade agreements, gay rights, banking regulations -- but the uproar isn't about a policy position