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

Oh Huckabee had that shit on an index card in his back pocket. For him this is absolutely a pre-planned exercise, the calculated response to a scenario he and a few staff "what-if'd" years ago.

gotta give it to him for being the only GOP candidate to have his index card ready to go, though

I think when you let Huckabee get out ahead of you on the moral high ground, it's time to set your campaign headquarters on fire and retreat to the mountains to live off of the land.

― you're breaking the NAP (DJP), Monday, November 30, 2015 12:58 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM

UPDATE NOV 30, 2015 8:14 AM
Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler clarified of the candidate's remarks, "He was making the point that there isn’t enough information. You can’t expect a full response to a story that’s developing. The point was there’s a lot of raw information going around that’s not confirmed.

The campaign also explained that Cruz received his information from "The Right Scoop," which similarly used the voter registration form to ask, "WAS THE COLORADO SHOOTER A TRANSGENDER PERSON?!?!"

there's always the risk that if Ted Cruz retreated to the mountains to live off the land he'd end up like Robert Lewis Dear.

"transgendered" is basically a slur right? like a "Democrat party" kind of jab but a billion bajillion times more reprehensible?

While I'm sure the rightwing echo chamber views the transgendered as freaks and monsters, transgendered is an actual term used by transgendered people (as opposed to, say, "tranny" which is def a slur). By contrast, no Democrat says they belong to "the Democrat Party".

my bad. I thought "transgender" was the preferred term.

lmao look at this trash

https://twitter.com/therightscoop

huh sorry crut I stand corrected, I was not aware of this distinction:

The term trans man refers to a man who has transitioned from female-to-male, and trans woman refers to a woman who has transitioned from male-to-female. Health-practitioner manuals, professional journalistic style guides, and LGBT advocacy groups advise the adoption by others of the name and pronouns identified by the person in question, including present references to the transgender person's past; many also note that transgender should be used as an adjective, not a noun (for example, "Max is transgender" or "Max is a transgender man", not "Max is a transgender"), and that transgender should be used, not transgendered.

The point was there’s a lot of raw information going around that’s not confirmed.

most otm Cruz campaign will ever get

u got to admit it is a unique if cynical and exploitative way to dodge the issue of domestic terrorism

TBF, if we can't keep the accepted terminology straight, I'd be hard-pressed to call out a republican for using something that isn't an outright slur when he's throwing transgender people under a bus.

The point was there’s a lot of raw information going around that’s not confirmed. And we're committed to issuing uninformed, wild speculation of that raw information as quickly as possible.

I'll never understand how politicians can get so much support when they're the type of people who, as neighbors or coworkers, others would rightly avoid and wholly mistrust.

Did not expect to open this thread and hear about a candidate for president of the United States - not named Trump - tie the Planned Parenthood shooting into lol trans jokes.

Huck's got that broken clock thing going for him, if you're into small appliances that don't work 99% of the time. He was somewhat in the right when he condemned Rev. Wright's sermons, but not Wright himself, saying to cut him some slack. That might have more to do with (A.) Being a Rev himself and (B.) serving a term as governor while Nolan Richardson was the state's head basketball coach.

Calling criticism of her misrepresentations about Planned Parenthood “typical left-wing tactics,” the Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said, on Sunday, “I will not be bullied into telling the truth.”

oh curse you Borowitz, I need to read bylines more closely

'I'll never understand how politicians can get so much support when they're the type of people who, as neighbors or coworkers, others would rightly avoid and wholly mistrust.'

Easily, I think, since presidential campaigns are way more about hopes-and-fears/broad narrative stuff rather than the particulars of actual living & breathing people.

C.f. Hunter S Thompson hating everything about "Nixon" but able to talk football with the actual man.

'I'll never understand how politicians can get so much support when they're the type of people who, as neighbors or coworkers, others would rightly avoid and wholly mistrust.'

There's also the line of thinking that goes, "Of course they're all liars and thieves and douchenozzles: they're politicians. If they weren't lying shits, they'd go into a more honest line of work. If we're going to elect a lying shit no matter what, I at least want to vote for one whose rhetoric aligns most closely with my own views."

Put another way: Power should only be entrusted to people who don't want it.

On this view, thinking you deserve to be president is pathological to begin with; it is almost a disqualifying factor on its own. And yet you need to run to be elected, and we're supposed to have a president. So we have to pick from among the people who want the job.

Yeah, but there are a lot of candidates these days that don't even strive to be "likeable" in that vague way that politicians are considered likeable. Some of this gaggle of republican candidates come off as deeply unpleasant people to an extent that I imagine for many isn't even ameliorated by party affiliation.

thinking you deserve to be president is pathological to begin with

I do p much think this tbh - which is one of the reasons Obama is such an interesting president. Where others' pathologies are nakedly obvious (both Clintons, Dubya, Nixon, Reagan etc.), Obama's are much harder to detect.

Power should only be entrusted to people who don't want it.

This is pithy and I've been guilty of flippantly tossing it around more than once over the decades, but it would be truer to say that people who truly don't want power will generally be inept at handling great power, because they have no practice wielding it. It would be like handing a chain saw to a person who has never even held one and telling them to fell a hundred fifty foot tree growing next to high voltage lines.

imo the pathological nature of the job is in the willing acceptance of, even enthusiasm for, having a job where you will be directly responsible for the deaths of innocent people. No matter what you do as president, this is something that is gonna happen, and because of decisions you make. Accepting that is p messed up imo, only crazy people with advanced compartmentalization skills can/would do it.

people in this thread finding the republican candidates unlikable shocker. also, anyone that pays taxes has to willingly accept that some of that money will be used to drop bombs on innocent people.

true, but I think that's different from actually being the one calling the shots

“And what he did is absolutely abominable, especially to us in the pro-life movement,..."--Huckabee

Nice trick. The real victims here are the pro-lifers.

he probably noticed how after every jihadi attack everyone got really worried about islamophobia

No, I read that more as "They already think we're crazy, this guy isn't helping."

restraint probably kept him from going full-on christian blowback victimization

You're probably right.

I think of that line by Lincoln's longtime law partner: the ceaseless tick-tock of Lincoln's ambition. To enjoy power isn't itself corrupting. FDR enjoyed power too, used it well and not so well (used it less well than Lincoln but was in office longer).

after every jihadi attack there are reprisals against muslims

i doubt the same thing happens to pro-lifers but i'll keep my eyes open

You're right, Austin, but he just can't help position himself as also being at least a kind of victim in this. it's absolutely pathological.

it's p clear what huckabee means tho

i suppose the closest thing to a left wing shooting we've had in a while is the Family Research Council shooting, which the shooter said he got off a list from the SPLC

GOP considers Islamists leftists afaict

Like, "They already think we're crazy. Now they think we're shoot up the place crazy. Woe is us."

I can see that.

And yeah, it's uncomfortable. But at least it's in line with the usual batshit Huckabee rhetoric.

GOP considers Islamists leftists afaict

Actual LOL.

i think huck means "abortion is murder, murder is murder, murder is bad"

"except for kids murdering dogs, that's cool"

it's v true jihadists couldn't be 'further' from 'the right' #freedom

Xpost

Huckabee is saying domestic terrorism is especially abominable to those with the ethical purity and resolve to be 'pro-lifers' afaict.

or just especially abominable because the ironic lol of "pro-life" ppl murdering is clear even to huckabee

Wait, these guys are still running?

who the fuck even knows

Well it took great bravery to say in public that murdering people is v bad.

'There is no excuse for killing other people whether it's happening inside the Planned Parenthood headquarters, inside their clinics where millions of babies die, or whether it's people attacking Planned Parenthood,' he said during an interview on CNN.
'I don't know of anybody who has suggested violence toward Planned Parenthood personnel or some act of violence towards their clinics. I've not heard that, not from one single pro-life person.'

Not a single pro-life person ever personally warned Huckabee that he was about to go murder anyone at PP.

"yo Huck, just a heads-up..."