Buttload of Faith: the 2016 Presidential Primary Thread (Pt 2)

I am guessing no-one here felt like watching Fiorina Santorum and Huckabee do anything other than juggle chainsaws?

that was it for the kids table? damn.

so i guess Paul's appeal to Alex fucking Jones and his army of nitwits to Let Rand Debate didn't produce results?

I was checking the feed for the later one, so I ended up looking in for five minutes. Each person clinging to one hope--Huckabee to Iowa in 2008, Santorum to Iowa in 2012, Fiorini to October of 2015 or whenever her 5-minute surge was. I liked that clip of Paul (literally) giving the finger to Fox on the radio today, although he seemed to be okay with the also-ran debate when he was part of the main one.

I had that Trump speech on in the background (curiosity is a terrible thing) and it's not news, but he's very good at what he does, and he is fantastically shameless in an "oh no, he's not going to..!?!" way. Here's the transcript only of the last minute:

"And we're going to win so much - and I say it - and I mean it! We're going to win so much, we're going to win with all of those things - Healthcare, everything! We're going to win at everything we do, and other countries are going to respect us, because we're winners, we're not losers. And we're not going to be kissing ass when 10 wonderful people get captured. We're going to win at every single level, we're going to win so much you're going to beg me, you're going to say 'Mr President, we're so tired of winning, we can't take it any more, please - don't win any more, Mr President, please, have one or two losses!', and I'll say 'No, I won't do that! I won't do that, because we are going to make America so great again!' We are going to make America great again. The American Dream is dead, but we're going to make it bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and I love you, thank you very much."

― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, 14 January 2016 18:27 (Yesterday) Permalink

Fuck it, he's got my vote for 8th grade class president

And we're going to win so much - and I say it - and I mean it!

In other news, I sort of love "All I Do Is Win" after hearing it just once

I hope Obama's listening to Carson's patient explanation of the things he doesn't understand about the world today.

A sick part of me wants to tune in but so far I'm resisting the urge

Cruz is basically re-enacting the Checkers speech at the moment.

Concern Trumping

Joke of the night: Ben Carson! (Seriously, it was a great line.)

Was the line "Ben Carson"? Because that is a pretty funny punchline to any joke.

Q: How many Republican candidates does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Ben Carson.

Nah, he actually said something really funny (I thought, anyway).

ugh come on say 'well ted cruz has canadian values'

Cruz--who I can't stand--had been doing really well until that exchange. He looked pretty deer-in-headlights at the end of it.

Not sure anything can derail Trump at this point, but the one time when the debate audiences tend to turn on him--last night and every debate--is when he starts rhyming off his poll numbers, generally as a weapon to belittle someone else. I've never seen a politician so openly fixated on polls. (Openly--I realize they all are out of view.) It's a weird and completely unnecessary tendency that does seem to alienate.

It seems pretty crucial for him! What makes a winner? Winning!

The crowds don't react well, though. (Debate crowds--I guess it goes over well at his own events.)

I didn't get a chance to watch it until last night, but if I saw that Trump rally song & dance routine in a movie, I'd think it was a little too over the top to be believable. I'd love to think he's intentionally descending further and further into self-parody just to see how far his adherents will follow him into pure insanity.

I mean, "love to think" in the sense that he's ultimately going to pull out of the race and be like, "you couldn't have possibly thought I was serious about all that bullshit."

I mean, I honestly thought that Trump transcript posted yesterday was a joke. Occam's razor and all that.

bob roberts got nothing on this guy

Not to Godwin too hard, but people feel that something is generally shit with the country, and are looking for a structure where a convincing man will make it right. Feed them that and add some impressive sounding specifics* and they're fine.

*There's a bit in the speech where he talks about how well 'Eastern' companies are doing, and then stops to say "Apart from Sony, not sure what's going on there, they're not doing too good", which is exactly what sells as Jim Cramer-level "Yes, he seems to have some insight that he's not sharing with us there, he has heard of some problem with this company that we all know the name of".

was the 'new york values' thing a specifically antisemitic whistle?

i don't think so. i think sometimes 'new york' has been used as a surrogate term for Jewishness (and sometimes the 'new york' and jewishness are combined like in 'jew york'). but here i think it's a more general stand-in for liberal, urban values. and it's directed at trump who is the least jewish person i can imagine. in antisemitic imagery the associations between cosmopolitanism and jewishness are prolific + interchangeable but i don't think 'big city' resentment necessitates latent antisemitism. but i think more importantly trump has been praised everywhere for the way he responded and i read something that suggested it was bc small town values v big city values paradigm in conservative narrative has been replaced by a more tragic small towns are being destroyed who can we blame.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/01/ted-cruz-still-thinks-is-an-epithet.html

It’s also arguable that the perception of New Yorkers as nicer folks comes from the ending of openly displayed, socially acceptable anti-Semitism. The view of New Yorkers as fast-dealing business sharks is not without racist roots — as the columnist Cynthia Heimel once noted, “the cultural elite” was a lightly coded way of saying “Jews.” As the right has gradually recast itself as Israel’s best friend, it has had to cast out the Bircher anti-Semites within its ranks. You’ll notice that, whereas a generation ago, conservatives routinely spoke of “our traditional Christian values,” that phrase today has always become “our Judeo-Christian values.” That’s no accident.

I think it's just an "anti big city" whistle

i didn't think so either, but saw the question being asked. figured it was more homophobic than anything, but probably just harking back to palin's 'real america' (or john rocker on the 7 train)

it's nice that cruz will never forget 9/11 tho

I mean just in case there weren't enough examples of being an un-presidential moron littering his path, that really takes the cake, I mean you just handed Trump the biggest softball of the entire campaign to date. Look at this nonsense

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/15/the-most-surprisingly-noble-moment-of-the-gop-debate-courtesy-of-donald-trump/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republicans-now-see-a-trump-cruz-race-with-time-for-a-shift-running-out/2016/01/15/9b5d91f0-bbb4-11e5-b682-4bb4dd403c7d_story.html

Those girls in the "Trump Jam" video seem to be lip-synching.

trump who is the least jewish person i can imagine.

oy rly?

The Pope is more Jewish than Donald Trump

If it does come down to Donald vs Hillary it is hard for me to imagine that the big money donors of the Republican Business Establishment would deem Donald to be a good investment, compared to trying to get in HRC's good graces and reaping whatever they could from that relationship. Trump, even if he had a prayer of winning in the general, strikes me as much too loose a cannon for the kind of donors who've backed Jeb! to the hilt.

I feel like HRC would be a good lifeboat for people trying to bail on the GOP. People who couldn't deal with a black president could make amends with the first woman. Lots of Clinton connections everywhere

https://twitter.com/costareports/status/688166293690687488

lots of rich guys are giving money to this one rich guy, news

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republicans-now-see-a-trump-cruz-race-with-time-for-a-shift-running-out/2016/01/15/9b5d91f0-bbb4-11e5-b682-4bb4dd403c7d_story.html

URL sez it all: https://gobling.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/nate-silver-calls-it-for-clinton-in-ia-and-nh/

The writer forgets to mention though, that 538 made two predictions, Polls-Only and Polls-Plus, and in the first one Sanders has a 72% chance of winning NH.

xpost It doesn't, though, right? I mean, not to say it's the wrong conclusion, but Silver hasn't actually "called" either race that I can find - rather, the forecast currently proclaims those odds for each race, as of today, right? So the forecast could change as new data comes in, though as it gets closer to the day, it would take huger and huger shifts in the polls to have the same shift in the forecast. As well, in NH there's a difference (noted above) between their two forecast models - one says Bernie has a 72% chance, one says Hillary has a 57% chance. Not really seeing the "call" there.

yeah i don't see we need to look at someone else's 'summary' of predictions when they are made in public on 538

Man, this election. Might be the first time I might not vote.

Silver's projecting, not predicting. (Everything I know I learned on ILB.)

This lawsuit out of Houston looks a little too deus ex machina to be true. Trump was terrible in the debate when Cruz's citizenship came up; 48 hours later, Trump's altruistic concern over Cruz is validated. The guy launching the lawsuit will probably turn out to be a regional campaign manager for Trump, there'll be a huge outcry, Trump will be declared finished, he'll explain he was doing Cruz a favour by getting it out of the way now, then he'll immediately shoot up another 10% in the polls.

oh, there's a democratic debate tonight. Sunday night before MLK day; the ratings should be through the roof

We'll see if it does better/worse than the last Dem debate, on a Saturday night.

guys - http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/01/have-republicans-given-up-on-fighting-trump.html?mid=facebook_nymag

combine this w/ a few signs we could be heading into recession and i'm a little worried