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

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looool

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU05TbCAxQM

The night Reagan won I was sleeping over at my friends house and his mom came down sobbing and apologized to us both that we were going to die in a nuclear war because adults were idiots while frantically hugging us so yeah, some people def saw him as a threat.

Thanks jjj, I am now homesick

I have no memory of how the adults around me reacted to Reagan, but my earliest political memory is being in a roomful of cheering hippies while Nixon resigned on TV (I was 8). I was 14 when Reagan came in. I think most adults around me at the time saw it as a step backwards to the Nixon years, but not a potential catastrophe.

Within the first year Reagan cut all the CETA funding and totally screwed up my stepfather's job (director of a non-profit that found employment for alter-abled people). Then I got it, I think we all did.

My parents and our neighbors weren't thrilled about Reagan. I remember the morning after, asking the next-door neighbor mom if Reagan won, and she shrugged and bunched up her face. "Yeah," in the same way you'd answer affirmative if someone asked if it was still sleeting outside. Carter Country was over.

Miss the days when the president would have summits in places like Iceland or Malta. Kinda like when my parents would meet up at the Conway McDonald's to hand me and my sister over for the weekend.

I read the book about Poppy's meeting with Gorbachev in Malta. The waters were so choppy that the summit was delayed hours because the captains couldn't align their ships close enough without tossing someone overboard, and both men wanted Churchilian moments of bravey.

*bravery

I was too young for Ronny. I remember getting into an argument one time with a kid whose Dad spoke well of Ronald Reagan. Mine didn't. After a few minutes me and this kid, who happened to go to my church, both realized that neither of us knew what we were talking about. My Dad never really talked about politicians but it was ~known~ that Ronald Reagan was probably his most disliked President. Not even my Mom knew why he really disliked him. I suspect it had something to do with unions.

Miss the days when the president would have summits in places like Iceland or Malta.

they still do this stuff though, right? read an article recently about how and why it came to be that bush, blair and aznar of spain would end up in the azores in march 2003 to hammer out the iraq war plan.

it used to seem like it mattered more somehow

It's like they remembered that the institution of government hires and trains professional career diplomats to do such things and thusly let those people hang out in the neutral zone for weeks at a time to nail things down. The chief executive can take credit from home. Saves money in about a million dimensions at once.

When two or more heads of state congregate and have their handshake photo ops it's mostly about "our underlings now have their orders to work together on the 3 or 8 specific things we can agree upon at the moment, as we already agreed, via our various emissaries, of political, professional, commercial and military stripes, and any flavor in between that seemed like it mattered at the time."

I think technology and specialization have probably rendered the multi-day presidential summit obsolete. They got other shit going on and as above, they already have people paid to do this.

I also think post-Cold-War optics are part of it - - - like both Reagan and Gorbachev gained in stature from agreeing to meet face-to-face, like it's Yalta or something - then the Big Three, now the Big Two. But without a consensus "enemy" that's recognized as being on equal standing, no President wants to look like they're meeting other leaders as true equals. Gotta be the ONE SUPERPOWER. Hence the real weird off feeling when Bush tried to pretend he had a coalition for Iraq, "You forgot Poland!" etc., it was just obviously not at all the Allied Powers thing he wanted it to come off as. An exception is made for settings where the President can appear to have personally gotten two other mean, stubborn countries to talk to each other, like America is the world's wise Solomon mediating things.

Minnesota was full of Reagan-hate.

My grandmother was hugely and vocally DFL and I can still remember her telling us 'if that broken-down cowboy actor is elected, I will never vote again', talking about his behaviour during the McCarthy era, sneeringly referring to his wife as 'Nancy Davis' and pointing out that the woman had previously distinguished herself by 'putting out' in Hollywood (my grandparents knew lots of actors from my grandfather's time in '30s LA failing to become one, and that's where their gossip originated).

I just had a fairly horrifying thought: if Rubio really does end up the Republican nominee, the party's pretty much guaranteed to insist on a real dust-farting ghoul as the VP candidate, to "balance out" his youth. So get ready for the return of Jim Baker...

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39084000/jpg/_39084040_203dickap.jpg

So get ready for the return of Jim Baker...

flinging darts in Bush's eyes

http://www.bustle.com/articles/120554-republican-candidates-want-debate-overhaul-even-if-that-means-leaving-the-rnc-out

Carson whining about "gotcha" questions. What a bunch of babies. Some of the questions weren't that good, but the main issue was that the moderators should have been prepared with the sources of the quotes they were confronting the candidates with.

The idea that has increasing appeal to me is replacing the debates altogether with something akin to a model UN sesh. Allow the candidates to preselect a handful of cabinet members, give each candidate a random issue that the POTUS might realistically be expected to face, and let them demonstrate onstage how they would handle the problem. 90% of these schmucks would be gone in notime flat.

flinging dust-fartsdarts in Bush's eyes

Radio person pointed out how extra lame it was that they complained about the liberal lamestream media bias this time around, considering the first debate was Fox and the upcoming debate is Fox Business, where they'll be among friends. Though of course, challenging these chumps on any front is tantamount to pinko treason, so I don't see why any moderator would bother taking it easy on them, post CNBC blowback be damned. I mean, fuck it, they should go at them harder, especially when a hunk of the candidates are spouting outright jibberish.

That does sound like something a radio person would say.

mods kinda blew it tbh - questions beginning w the chance to grill candidates on the viability/implementation of their wackadoo policy proposals would finish w/ some dumb shit that's just there in hopes of trolling good TV. the candidates couldn't have answered the first part but they effectively didn't have to. comic book thing a perfect example. and yeah, huge huge opportunity missed to not say "the quote is from a policy paper on YOUR WEBSITE, mr. trump." real weak.

If your going to be a moderator challenging candidates with quotations, and you don't have your sources down, find another fucking job honestly,

^^^

"newsreader"

moderators were a mess and CNBC is fucking annoying anyway

I think the moderators were fine. when the moderator asks anything but a softball question, the candidates routinely ignore it and say some variant of 'biased liberal media is being unfair to me' and the audience cheers. challenging them does not work. rubio's 'best moments' all came from non-responses to legitimate challenges to his record.

I wish there was like a solid year of public schooling in America wholly devoted to rhetorical/logical fallacies.

are you kidding? in US public schools you are now mandated to get 12+ years of rhetorical and logical fallacies

xps yeah, with a full 6-8 weeks on how people lie with statistics and how not to be a sucker, basically. i think about that a lot. honestly would be far more useful as a civics lesson than most of what you learn in civics/social studies (though i would not argue for cutting that either!).

well well

While the slides released to the press highlight Bush's Sunshine State endorsements and Rubio's lack of experience, another page for donor edification gets dirtier.

It's titled "Marco Is A Risky Bet," and it bullet-points Rubio's "misuse of state party credit cards, taxpayer funds and ties to scandal-tarred former Congressman David Rivera."

When Rubio was a state lawmaker, he used the state party credit card for personal expenses, a decision he later called a mistake. In 2005, he and Rivera jointly purchased a home that later faced foreclosure.

Another bullet point says Rubio's "closeness with Norman Braman, who doubles as personal benefactor[,] raises major ethical questions."

Braman, a billionaire auto dealer, is expected to pour $10 million into Rubio's White House endeavor, The New York Times reports. He's also paid Rubio's wife to oversee his charitable work.

The Bush team also mocks Rubio's "tomorrow versus yesterday" argument as one that would be "widely ridiculed by media" should he run against the first potential female president.

The most cryptic slight is left for last: "Those who have looked into Marco's background in the past have been concerned with what they have found."

A Bush aide says that line refers to concerns Mitt Romney's team unearthed when they vetted Rubio for vice president in 2012.

pretty sure Romney dropped Rubio as a possibility because of Rubio's financial mischief, about which I'm sure we'll learn more in a few months.

it would also be good to demonstrate to kids how news articles are structured to avoid taking sides even when one side of an issue is backed up by factual evidence and the other is built on lies

xpost

I agree with curmudgeon and Dr. C that some of the moderators' unforced errors made them look bad - where did I read that, what are the rules, oops. In future they'll be more buttoned-down and, one hopes, better prepared.

Further, I think it's reasonable to criticize questions like "The guy to the right has said you fuck goats for fun. Care to comment on these goat-fucking allegations?" They're clearly designed to incite in a "let's you and him fight" way. On the other hand, it's a primary - the whole point is to draw distinctions.

But honestly those candidates should be thrilled it went down that way. No red meat is as tasty to the Angry Right base as attacking the media. Republicans should be begging Harwood et al. to moderate MORE debates, not fewer.

as for the moderators, while i don't think they would ever get real answers out of the candidates, that doesn't mean there are no consequences to asking poorer questions than they might have asked. a not-very-selective highlight edit of this debate gives so much material for "the moderators were just looking for a cage match, cruz is right" which would not be quite so viable without the totally moronic questions or bits of questions, even if the latter are outliers. terrible answers to real questions can always be picked over later or cited in editorials and campaign speeches by the opposition: senator x was asked how his tax plan would do X when all the independent analyses have said Y. but all he could say was..."

ime viewers are pretty good at picking up on non-answers, even if they're not informed enough to pick up on bad answers to substantive questions. "hey he didn't even answer the question! they asked about how to solve the trash collection problem. and he just keeps giving the same answer about 'a thousand points of light.' guy's got no ideas!" etc. yes, obviously the supporters of said candidate will have answers to that too, "well who cares about trash collection, that's a silly question" but...i dunno, why make it easy for them?

i feel like the "let's start a fight" questions, aside from being obviously ratings-driven and looking for springer-esque brawls onstage, are also a sort of inevitable outgrowth of nobody having any idea why they call them "debates" anymore, or what to do when you have ten people on stage, at which point asking the same open-ended question of each person right down the line just means you've let each one take their stump speech, cut it up by topic, and present it in 1-2 minute blurts.

a while ago i suggested these things would better be called "pageants" and really, even with the driest possible questions, they don't actually do anything more useful than it would be to just say that on a series of randomly chosen nights, each candidate will get a bunch of uninterrupted air time to give the stump speech you would see if you went and saw them at the county civic center. maybe followed after a short break with Q&A where an expert panel, who's spent the day reading all their stump speeches and is ready to actually ask them tough questions, zoom in on the places where the speech elides some big important gap, or whatever. nobody would watch that and few candidates who weren't desperate would agree to it. but it would probably be a lot more helpful. something about the same auratic presence of the politicians getting face-to-face, that we were talking about with Presidential Summits, convinces us that there must be something special about having these people all in a room, potentially talking directly to each other from time to time. it just has Event written all over it, which is colored over frenetically in highlighter by news outlets hyping up how this one could be a GAME CHANGER like maybe the KNOCKOUT BLOW will be delivered and candidate x's MOMENTUM will be stopped in its tracks.

anybody read this? kind of hilarious at this point considering everything that's happened this primary season

http://goproject.gop.com/rnc_growth_opportunity_book_2013.pdf

I guess my advice to any candidate who's all "This is unfair/ridiculous/hard!" in response to a debate question would be "Stop running for president, you choad."

skimming the opening sections, it's kinda fascinating. lots of common sense points about why the party is unappealing and how it needs to articulate a conservatism appealing to people under age 50. some of it fairly self-deluding stuff about reforms made by republican governors that show they can still be relevant to a wide base (skipping over the groups with whom those 'reforms' were and are totally unpopular, often the same groups they're hoping to reach out to here). also of great interest is the length of the section on hispanic concerns about the party, versus the skimpy paragraphs on african-americans, like the focus group team has just given up even trying to sugarcoat the reception they're getting. section on the youth vote is just hilarious - if only the candidates could just be more down with "pop" culture. and then you hit things like:

We have to blow the whistle at corporate malfeasance and attack corporate welfare. We should speak out when a company liquidates itself and its executives receive bonuses but rank-and-file workers are left unemployed. We should speak out when CEOs receive tens of millions of dollars in retirement packages but middle-class workers have not had a meaningful raise in years.

and it's like... but if you actually did anything about that stuff, you would basically not be a republican at this point. everything else about the party and its policies is in the pocket of the CEOs. if you're not on board with them, you should probably just switch back to being conservative democrats.

but yeah lol:

We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too. (...) If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e. self-deportation), they will not pay attention to our next sentence. It does not matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies.

keep up the good work, clown car!

more on the the 'youth' section: they recognize that romney lost the youth vote horribly, and that "for many of the youngest voters and new 2016 voters, their perception of the two parties was born during the Barack Obama era, and that perception will help determine their worldview moving forward." however they aren't willing to say: "... and specifically, if your perceptions were born during the Barack Obama era, you may well think of Republicans as a bunch of sociopathic obstructionists, racists, and conspiracy theorists with no interest in governing." so instead the problem is that "The Party is seen as old and detached from pop culture." there's hope though: the Democrats just won because Obama "was seen as 'cool' in 2008." the Democrats have old people (Biden and Clinton) but the GOP has young ones (Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Bobby Jindal, Kelly Ayotte, and teen sensation Reince Priebus). the good days are just around the corner if they can just talk about "certain social issues" the right way and do more twittering.

basically these clowns are fucked

basically these clowns are fucked
― Frump 'n' Dump (Doctor Casino), Friday, October 30, 2015 1:28 PM (56 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

basically the complete reason it's hilarious

irl lol @ teen sensation Reince Priebus

fucked as far as the presidency goes, but not so much fucked at the state and local level.

"recommendations:
1. Promote forward-looking, positive policy proposals that unite young voters,
such as the Republican Party’s education policies."

yes, when i'm on college campuses, everyone is abuzz about the charter movement

Dr. Casino otm

Specifically in re "why make it easy" and "pageants."