Curb Your Authoritarianism? The 2016 Conventional Wisdom Thread (Elections, Part 6)

You guys love this horserace shit, huh? Meanwhile back on Planet Earth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjIqii8bA-Y

wow if only i were capable of considering more than one thing but that is impossible oh well

yeah, and also stop talking about pokemon go! this is SERIOUS BUSINESS!

how dare people talk about the RNC on a thread devoted to the election

anyway now that we've sufficiently demonstrated our disdain for REAL HUMAN SUFFERING, is this the bit where we rehash the argument about whether the 9/11 attackers were "cowards"?

imo theres actually something more important than the syrian war so thinking abt the war is frivolous

Mr. Cruz said the response of Trump supporters was troubling.

“What does it say when you stand up and say ‘vote your conscience,’” he began, “and rabid supporters of our nominee begin screaming, ‘What a horrible thing to say!’”

If the nominee cannot meet that threshold, he said, “We are not going to win and don’t deserve to win.”

honestly, this is what i have been waiting for republican leaders to say.

cruz's lone rebel schtick is tedious and self-aggrandizing -- especially because he champions the cause of evil -- but last night i think he proved that he is more of a human being than rubio, ryan, et al

granted, he was the one who sucked up to trump so much in the beginning.

cruz's lone rebel schtick is tedious and self-aggrandizing -- especially because he champions the cause of evil -- but last night i think he proved that he is more of a human being than rubio, ryan, et al

― Treeship

ok i don't want to be super-pedant here but they're all human beings, ok? we shouldn't judge people's fundamental worth as human beings by a single act, no matter how brave or cowardly. good job, ted. you're still a lowlife prick and i still wouldn't vote for you in a million years, but you did a good thing last night.

christie begging for scraps and getting nothing def doesnt look great in comparison

do think cruz has some hardcore conservative principles fwiw hes a believer where trump/christie/rudy r pure power worshipers

Tim Kaine joins 55 Republican senators & 13 blue dogs in advocacy for bank deregulation. *This week.*

no way he is the VP choice. i can't believe hillary would be that bad at knowing which way the wind was blowing.

ehh

i hope not!

I kind of wonder whether Cruz did it out of spite, based on how nasty things got when they were essentially the last two candidates in the primary. Like if he dropped out early for whatever reason, or had Ryan's job, would he have made the same speech?

Absent all else, 'vote your conscience' should be such a value-neutral statement that any odious piece of shit should feel comfortable hanging their odious piece of shit beliefs on it. Whatever the circumstances, people shouting down the concept basically confirms my belief that many Trump supporters are essentially nihilists.

it was def p personal xp

Based on what I've read I'm not sure anyone heard the "vote your conscience". I think booing more about failure to endorse or even really mention Trump.

"vote your conscience" is a buzzphrase. that's what the delegates who wanted to deviate from the will of their state's voters said they would do.

Kaine is 1/4 on with the UK bookies to be the VP pick with Vilsack closest at 3/1. If anyone has a better suggestion there's an opportunity to make some money.

xps

cruz is a fascinating figure worthy of a sinclair lewis novel. have never quite grasped his psychology but the relentless alienation of those nominally on his "side" strikes me as something derives as much from some deep compulsion of his personality as it does from any political calculation.

xxxp Part personal, part chess move for 2020. I don't think it has much to do with real convictions that Cruz actually holds (although I do agree he's marginally less spineless than most of the other candidatesx is).

cruz is essentially babbitt only creepier

cruz is a fascinating figure worthy of a sinclair lewis novel. have never quite grasped his psychology but the relentless alienation of those nominally on his "side" strikes me as something derives as much from some deep compulsion of his personality as it does from any political calculation.

― ryan,

The only way to tell his story is to view him through the lenses of other characters or to wear HAZMAT gear when writing it.

i know some people who wear hazmat gear when writing, but that's just a fetish thing

Not Babbit imo- Elmer Gantry

i can't believe hillary would be that bad at knowing which way the wind was blowing.

sadlol

xp tho the evangelical bent would lead one that way imo gantry is focused on his internal hypocrite a bit more, babbitt seems unable to come to terms with what a horrible status quo slimeball he is.

I kind of wonder whether Cruz did it out of spite, based on how nasty things got when they were essentially the last two candidates in the primary. Like if he dropped out early for whatever reason, or had Ryan's job, would he have made the same speech?

if you watch the highlights here he says "I'm not in the habit of supporting people who insult my father and my wife." I'm very glad there is at least one prominent Republican arguing that it's meaningful to be so personal and horrible as Trump is, and I just wish he could make that extra reach to say "between the two candidates, HRC is better," because somewhere in his withered heart he knows that's the truth

he does but that's actual career suicide

"Vote your conscience" is what congressional leaders say to their caucuses before a vote to signal that it's okay to vote contrary to the party line. This is the context for Cruz's use of the term - its signalling to Republicans that it's ok not to vote for Trump. I would hope this is obvious.

this morning he said the republicans "deserve to lose"

ya u necessarily dont need to evoke yr conscience if it agrees w the status quo xp

while brushing his teeth earlier he remarked "this fuckin sucks I was supposed to be the fuckin dude you steaming piles of crap"

this quote from the nyt sesh the other day is bringing me over to the 'trump is addicted to speed' camp

I have a friend who builds plants, that’s what he does, he’s the biggest in the world, he builds plants like automobile plants, computer plants, that’s all he does. He doesn’t build apartments, he doesn’t build office space, he builds plants. I said to him the other day, “How are you doing?” He goes, “Unbelievable.” Oh, great, that’s good, thinking about the United States, right, because he’s based in the United States. So I said, “Good, so the country is doing well.” He said, “No, no, not our country, you’ve got to see what I’m doing in Mexico.” He said: “The business there is unbelievable, the new plants we are building. People moving from the United States.” That’s what he does. One-story plants. You understand?

im on board with every trump conspiracy theyre all true but especially that one

“Christie turned over his political testicles long ago,” Cruz’s campaign manger, Jeff Roe, said on the Chris Stigall radio show Thursday. “I don’t take what he has to say with any meaning. You know, he embarrassed himself pretty quickly in this.”

cruz camp feeling itself this morn

"Vote your conscience" is what congressional leaders say to their caucuses before a vote to signal that it's okay to vote contrary to the party line. This is the context for Cruz's use of the term - its signalling to Republicans that it's ok not to vote for Trump. I would hope this is obvious.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, July 21, 2016 12:05 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's obvious what Cruz was doing, yes, but my thing was more about taking like three steps back and observing that people are jeering the idea of allowing conscience to interfere with their jingoistic lockstep and uttering a bemused and dejected 'huh'.

i'm sorry, i just don't understand what ted cruz has to do with bruce babbitt

yeah, he's anything but average. dude is a fanatic whose superpower is his ability to endure the scorn of others.

Cruz seems to be betting not just on a Trump loss, but a Huge Trump loss that will so demoralize the party that they'll come looking for the one who didn't go along to get along.

interesting observation by digby re the tone of cruz speech

Everyone assumes that he did this to set up his run in 2020 and that seems like a good bet. But it's worth listening to his speech if that's so. It wasn't your typical fiery, right wing Ted Cruz speech. It was, of course, extremely conservative, hitting all the hot button social issues and jingoistic high notes. But the rhetoric was couched in words like diversity and tolerance and respect. He even gave a nod to gays and Muslims and atheists and honored the family of Alton Sterling (which was met with stunned silence by the crowd.) It was the most "compassionate conservative" speech of the convention, contrasting sharply with the hard edged, angry verbal violence of the all the pro-Trump speakers. That was not an accident.

seems like hes thinking abt rebranding as gentle ted

he probably believes in compassion and stuff if he is seriously a christian. he just also believes in stripping gays and women of their rights and expropriating the heathens (via dominionism)

Tbh I don't really see a way through for him in 2020 and suspect in his own mind he's playing to be a Goldwater who didn't get the nomination. He wants to be valorized twenty years from now as the guy who was right all along we need to get back to the Party of Cruz that had big solid take-no-prisoners conservative values. Conveniently, being a bridge-burning iconoclast plays to all his interpersonal instincts and how his ego works.

what hurt him most to say aloud – "gays" or "atheists"?

or "Donald Trump"?

Tbh I don't really see a way through for him in 2020 and suspect in his own mind he's playing to be a Goldwater who didn't get the nomination

nah this guy really wants to be president.

yeah the crowd's reaction when he mentioned alton sterling's name was...something to behold

Goldwater was a curmudgeon who became beloved as a Man of Conscience in the twenty + years remaining to him in the Senate. Cruz ain't beloved.