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

poor poor establishment republicans

In that weird Trump speech he insists America needs an "unpredictable" president. Yeah, that's just what we need.

it's really too bad this is all shaking out a year from the election. these clowns (est. GOP, mainstream-ish conservative media) absolutely deserve to be dealing with this right down to the wire

it's really too bad this is all shaking out a year from the election. these clowns (est. GOP, mainstream-ish conservative media) absolutely deserve to be dealing with this right down to the wire

This is the part I find so baffling, is when political pros (and the journalists who worshipfully quote them) treat all this insane bullshit with so much urgency, like it's a problem that's got to be solved right now or we're all dooooooooooooommmmmed. The first primaries aren't for another 12 weeks. Let the games continue!

They're concerned about the framing of the debate; they want to be seen as a serious alternative to the options on the Democrat side of the election and if there's been a months-long run-up of nonsense and buffoonery before the Democrats and Republicans engage with each other, whoever the Republican candidate is will be painted with that brush, either in terms of their actual positions or what people will assume him to represent (I say him because we're pretty sure Fiorina isn't coming back, right?).

Like, if you spend all of college doing naked keg stands for every camera that comes your way, everyone will remember you as Naked Keg-Stander and possibly not take you as seriously as you might want them to later on.

well they shit the bed, now they gotta sleep in it

I don't disagree, but OTOH having two credible parties is kind of critical for the health of a 2-party system and the longer this persists, the worse it is for the entire country.

Especially when the less-credible party has a structural advantage in the legislature.

for now

idk what's gonna happen w the GOP tbh, neither party has been this adrift in my lifetime

I mean it was sad for Democrats in the 80s but it wasn't like this

One has to assume that non-insane republicans are going to splinter off at a point if they ever want a candidate of their choosing to occupy the White House again.

GOP splintering into two parties would require both sides to be relatively organized - the "elite" is, but the "base" is not and the latter would likely be a repeat of the Reform Party debacle.

and the "elite" won't ditch the established name brand, so that would mean some unifying figure with a ton of resources would have to step forward to lead a breakaway party. Trump, and Carson, are not that guy.

the thing about the elite, and some of the cranks, is that they can do math. the system is effectively wired for two parties at a nearly-foundational level and splitting the party means losing horribly. everyone knows this. that hasn't kept people from doing it periodically in our history but what seems more common is for one or both of the parties to readjust, realign, willingly shed certain constituencies in favor of some other combination that can yield 49-51% of the national electorate. whether that's possible in this particular moment with the demographics and political bases we actually have, i dunno.

willingly shed certain constituencies in favor of some other combination

this is the central problem for the GOP. who do they let go? old racist white guys? evangelicals? Wall Street?

well, alcoholism, cirrhosis, poor diet, and Alabama life will let them go.

For months, the GOP professional class assumed Trump and Carson would fizzle with time. Voters would get serious, the thinking went, after seeing the outsiders share a stage with more experienced politicians at the first debate. Or when summer turned to fall, kids went back to school and parents had time to assess the candidates. Or after the second, third or fourth debates, certainly.

None of that happened, of course, leaving establishment figures disoriented. Consider Thomas H. Kean Sr., a former New Jersey governor who for most of his 80 years has been a pillar of his party. His phone is ringing daily, bringing a stream of exasperation and confusion from fellow GOP power brokers.

“People usually start off in the same way: Pollyanna-ish,” Kean said. “They assure me that Trump and Carson will eventually fade. Then we’ll talk some more, and I give them a reality check. I’ll say, ‘The guy in the grocery store likes Trump. So does the guy who cuts my hair. They’re probably going to stick with him. Who knows if this ends?’ ”

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, herself an outsider who rode the tea party wave into office five years ago, explained the phenomenon.

“You have a lot of people who were told that if we got a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate, then life was gonna be great,” she said in an interview Thursday. “What you’re seeing is that people are angry. Where’s the change? Why aren’t there bills on the president’s desk every day for him to veto? They’re saying, ‘Look, what you said would happen didn’t happen, so we’re going to go with anyone who hasn’t been elected.’ ”

yeah i have no idea what a rearranged republican majority would look like. it's always seemed obvious to me that if we had a proportional representation, multi-party system, the actual slim majority (or most usually plurality) party in america would be a center-right monstrosity making promises to "the middle class," hanging on to existing entitlements but not creating any more, while simultaneously cutting loose the moral-majority, gun-rights and john birch/tea party stuff. like a less wishy-washy but possibly less draconian (because not trying to prove its credentials) clinton administration. but almost certainly "tough on crime." maybe my analysis of the american mainstream is a little dated here but i sorta feel like that's the magic ground every nominated presidential candidate wants to occupy. i realize this makes me sound like that bullshit quiz that proves you're a libertarian, and i should stress that i would be voting for the resurgent minority socialist party in this fantasy world.

when it comes to the presidency, as time passes, the once-essential christian wingnut part of the republican party seems more and more like a ball and chain. but it can't be cut loose that easily because that shit is still genuinely very very popular in the red states that are taken for granted for the presidency to be a fighting chance. so i really don't see the split-party thing happening: the primaries are going to produce either a right-winger, or a center-right-right business-guy who is willing to kowtow to the "base." in neither case is the "business" wing going to split and field another candidate - they'll either hold their noses, stay home, or if the nut really seems like a nut (goldwater), they'll vote for the democrat. you'd need the opposite scenario to get an actual humphrey/wallace or breckenridge/douglas split --- that is, for the nominee to be a milquetoast businessman who not only fails to adequately kiss up to the gay-hating gun-toting right, but actively disparages them as not what the republican party is about, etc. the people that pisses off can actually win whole states by themselves, and would be willing to do so to make their point, since from their perspective the GOP nominee really would not be meaningfully different from the democrat. but that will never happen because you can't win the nomination being that guy.

the Democrat side

not you too

Do you earnestly believe that the election for President of the United States is not the Republican Party vs the Democratic Party?

I think the mookster is concerned that you referred to them as the Democrat side instead of as the Democratic side.

presidential election is Punch and Judy for the modern era

not at all -- i was just referring to the weird sneering republican use of 'democrat party' rather than 'democratic'

I was using it to refer to people rather than the party (ie, members of the Republican Party are Republicans, members of the Democratic Party of Democrats). Because I do not drive myself insane by paying attention to people whose world view is inimical to my existence, I did not realize that that construction would be read as sneering.

http://www.conservapedia.com/Democrat_Party

it's definitely a "joke" conservatives like to make

(i know you weren't using that way; i was j/k)

To be fair, it is a pretty good joke.

i can't exactly recommend this story because it's very grim

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-story-of-the-surgery-that-made-ben-carson-famous--and-its-complicated-aftermath/2015/11/13/15b5f900-88c1-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html

but i'm curious to see if it becomes interpreted as a "hit piece" by carson's supporters.

I'm sure it will be, but he doesn't come off badly at all in that piece - it doesn't seem like it was any failing of his that the outcome was less than positive. And it says that he doesn't use the case to talk himself up, and is honest about the fact that it was more of a technological achievement rather than an all-around success.

Where’s the change? Why aren’t there bills on the president’s desk every day for him to veto?

xxpost I wish there was an easy way for everyone of a like mind to get together and preemptively let Carson's supporters know that that story is very pointedly outside of our list of Carson grievances.

Couric asked Carson to respond to those who don't believe he has enough foreign policy experience to be president.

"When you look at the field of people — I don’t know of anybody who has a great deal of foreign policy experience who’s running for president right now," he responded. "But I do know from my experience as a neurosurgeon who’s done some very, very complex operations, some of which had never been done before, that I don’t know everything."

We're billing Trump $2000 for this:

http://www.citynews.ca/2015/11/13/city-response-to-safety-concerns-at-trump-tower-was-appropriate-report-finds/

Hoping we get a special loser shoutout in some upcoming speech.

https://instagram.com/p/-B_ci4mhdA/

not salivating for the Dem tonight eh? might be an interesting test of Sanders' ability to distinguish himself from the hawkish frontrunner on Paris/ISIS questions.

*the Dem event

i didn't even know it was happening!

ben carson is a remarkable human being btw, i mean that literally. he has a remarkable life story, rose from considerable adversity to become extremely good and something very, very difficult. i don't know if that's the source of his equally remarkable megalomania and self-regard but you have to admit it's an amazing combo.

good /at/ something, i meant to write

'Oh, wait a minute, senator. You know, not only do I have hundreds of thousands of donors, most of them small, and I'm very proud that for the first time a majority of my donors are women, 60 percent. [Cheers and applause.] So I— I represented New York, and I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked. Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy, and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.' - guess who

Wait a sec. Wall Street had to "rebuild" after 9/11?

wtf does that even mean

it means

a noun, a verb, Wall Street

Hillary WalMart Clinton 2016

lol, wait you guys really can't figure out what that means?

there was this thing called "the world trade center"

balls, nonpatronizing Democratic advance man

x-p, boldly advancing the Dem agenda
And this other thing called "the stock market crash."

apparently hillary's been getting some good cheap pops in, not sure that matters really (though i guess it could be argued that ppl in iowa might actually be watching this - somebody somewhere has to be right? - and if she somehow pulled off a win in iowa that would be "huge" in that bs narrative sense). she's looked like she's improved at politicking but, i mean, the falcons looked like they'd improved at football when they played the texans. it's good to see blood drawn at least. bernie went after her for her iraq vote; obv not likely to cripple her like it did in 08 but it'd be nice if it still matters esp since she's shown no sign of having learned much from the mistake.

there was this thing called "the world trade center"

Thank you for that clarification. Until now I had no idea that the World Trade Center and Wall Street were synonymous. I was suffering under the impression that Wall Street's stock exchanges, investment banks, commercial banks, and brokerage firms were largely located in other buildings and were able to resume operations fairly quickly after relatively brief interruptions in 2001.