I will keep doing, but not worth it! The 2016 Presidential Primary Voting Thread

'Movement conservatism' in 2016 defined:

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/02/21/glenn-beck-responds-to-sc-primary-results-join-me-in-a-fast-for-ted-cruz/

He marches to an obscure, mysterious drummer.

Or even better:

https://twitter.com/jamilahlemieux/status/701404636738166786

I'm probably more tolerant of the network people than anyone on here, but Chuck Todd is the worst. He was okay in 2008 as a charts-and-polls guy. As an interviewer, he's on mic through the whole interview impatiently waiting to jump in: "Right...okay...right." You know what he's thinking: "Can't let them spout talking points, must cut that short." Fine--if someone's 30 seconds into an answer and rambling, speak up. Not five seconds after you've asked the question.

I am devastated about Jeb.

he devastated his pants during this campaign

Carson's still in b/c his advisors are still making too much dosh from the process, Producers-style

he's got books to sell

Or like this, basically:

The trickiest question about the Ben Carson campaign is whether or not the former surgeon is himself in on the scam. My guess is that he’s not. Ben Carson strikes me as many things — naive, befuddled, deeply weird, woefully ignorant and incurious about everything other than surgery — but I don’t think he’s particularly cunning. So I suspect he was probably just duped into being the front for this money-making enterprise without ever fully understanding that that’s all it ever was. I’d guess he hasn’t even negotiated a fair share of the take.

If that’s true, then Carson is innocent of being in on the grift, but still not entirely innocent. He’s still guilty of a staggering arrogance. You should run for president, the grifters told him, and he responded by saying, “Yes, that makes perfect sense. Who better than me?”

[....]

Carson gave a (pretty bad, actually) speech at a National Prayer Breakfast, after which a bunch of people said to him “You should be president.” And he agreed with them. He agreed with them even though he seems to have little understanding of what that means other than having the public acknowledge that he is uniquely deserving to hold the highest office....

I look forward to trump giving Rubio the jeb treatment. Gonna be savage.

Problem is the key to beating Trump is having to play ball his way, with schoolyard barbs but also taking the offensive once in a while.

Trump knows as a celebrity that anytime he opens his thrushmouth, he'll go viral in moments. I

None of the other candidates would get thenough proportionate level of media coverage (and if they did, the media will likely still spread it with a Trump lens) but you gotta force the gut to dig himself out of holes once in a while.

Course the easier way would be colluding to have several campaigns pull out and create a three person race and have both people sic Trump but I have less faith that this will happen.

Can't wait for Rubio's first deer in the headlights moment. Guy just cannot think on his feet. He musta been the worst motherfucker at Snaps.

-I -nough

Gut = guy.
Fuckin Samsung

Can't wait for Rubio's first deer in the headlights moment. Guy just cannot think on his feet. He musta been the worst motherfucker at Snaps.

― you are no man. take the balls. (Neanderthal),

it's happened already!

Can't wait for Rubio's first deer in the headlights moment.

Already on to the second, no? No one will agree, but Rubio's actually been much better since his Stepford Wives malfunction. But I think you're both right, he's probably ill-prepared for what's heading his way.

Trump is gonna destroy rubio. Cruz is probably a different story - he has a sense of humor and can think on his feet, plus he's a cutthroat.

I mean against Trump one on one. The Christie debate is always going to be classic.

Cruz also has a hidden third eye in his chin

Why is the party establishment so much more enamored with Rubio than Kasich? Is Rubio just closer to the party backers' ideology or is it a misguided belief that he can be some kind of mirror of Obama, a "young fresh face" with some nominal chance of increasing the GOP's appeal to the minority group that everyone says is their demographic problem? I don't know if Kasich is a brilliant politician, but he comes off a lot better than Rubio, and I'd give him more of a fighting chance against Clinton.

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Saturday, February 20, 2016 10:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't think the "establishment" means anything any more, even the "party establishment." Even so, Kasich is too much of an iconoclast, which may be a euphemism for a little nutty; that is, he's neither sufficiently controllable nor self-controlled. I've been skeptical throughout that the GOP would nominate a youthful Cuban-American, whatever their overestimation of his attractiveness, and remain so. But not sure that a Catholic-raised/Protestant-convert Czech-Croatian-American is any more in the party's old, white, non-"ethnic" Protestant male mainstream, which is why I've been skeptical throughout that the voters would go with the guy who comes closest to the folksiness and faux-compassionate-conservatism of W (few of whose Southern "manners" he possesses), for whom an angrier party seems to have little use now. Kicking his brother, a Catholic convert with a Mexican-American wife who likes his economic royalism without a side of explicit racism, to the curb, and pulling ahead of the homophobic, anti-semitic, half-Cuban/half-Irish-Italian Southern Baptist nut in second place, it's the oldest, most racist, faux-religious and everything else but truest WASP (half-British-/half-German-American) who's running away with this thing (at least until the big metros start voting; we'll see), as far as anyone can in a race in which no one much tops 1/3 of the vote. It's a party that, if it does not come apart, is showing its true face, one that Kasich doesn't much represent on the surface.

I will not post in this useless thread
I will not post in this useless thread
I will not post in this useless thread

ty

Still time for Mitt, but he's too busy either overestimating Marco or being undesirous of going through this shit again

rescinded

lmao mitt is not entering the race, come on

Could a 'normal' republican considerably mount an independent bid to counter Trump?

That's what the Rubio campaign figures, but he's not normal. He's a neo con wannabe with an imbecile's mien and a toddler's stammer.

like if Trump gets the GOP nom can a "normal" one run as an independent?

i would think so. where are they going to find a normal Republican in 2016 though? draft Pataki?

If there were all these normal Republicans waiting in the wings, and their ideas were actually popular with Republicans, wouldn't they have thrown their hats in the ring along with the other seventeen people who were running for president last year? Nothing was stopping them, surely. Anyone towards the Pataki end of the spectrum, and this basically includes Jeb, has nothing really compelling to offer in a general election versus Clinton. The only way I could see it making sense is if Sanders somehow became the Dem nominee, and there was a sense that he was too far left for most Americans and some sort of blah centrist could swing a win in a three-way race.

Quality ethnography from gabbs yet again

Xxp

Dolores Huerta doubling down on her claims from last night: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/20/dolores-huerta-says-she-was-shouted-down-with-english-only-chants-from-a-sanders-crowd/ I can't hear anyone shouting 'English only', that seems to be the conclusion from the moderator?

can a "normal" one run as an independent?

The two parties have set up an incredibly tortuous path for an independent candidate to get onto all 50 state ballots. Starting late makes it all but impossible.

And unfortunately for Sanders's supporters, there's video that at the very least backs up Huerta's assertion that there was a lot of shouting and hissing while she was on stage at a Nevada caucus location. A caucus organizer had called for an interpreter willing to explain the process and latest updates to Spanish-speaking caucus-goers. Huerta, clad in a Clinton campaign T-shirt, volunteered.

incredible reporting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lOL2h8F3aA

Can we kickstart an Odd Couple remake where we force Morbs and Gabbneb to live together for a year?

God. There's definitely no group chant of "English only". What is being shouted is largely unintelligible on that video, but from context it sounds like Sanders' supporters are protesting that she is likely to distort the message pro-Hillary and they won't be able to tell it's happening. it's the Moderator who says "We're going to continue in English only" after he tries to bring order to the crowd without success for about 2 minutes, and then asks the people sitting with their Spanish company to translate for them.

Which is one reason their objections were kind of stupid - no matter who translated, whether it was Huerta or people in the audience translating for their friends, anybody had the opportunity to 'slant' the message in translation any way they wanted to, and no doubt any non-Hillary supporter in the crowd fluent in Spanish would have picked up quickly if that's what Huerta did.

So yes, Sanders' supporters were being petulant dicks, but that quote above pissed me off too because it's basically equating a mob "English only" racist chant with a bunch of one candidate's supporters being shrill assholes at a caucus. Both behaviors are bad, but one is far, far worse than the other.

it's entirely possible that someone in the crowd shouted "English only" ad hoc, but hardly a group effort as all I heard was hissing and "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO".

however I do agree those people now attacking Huerta and Ferrera on the net can go fuck themselves.

Can we kickstart an Odd Couple remake where we force Morbs and Gabbneb to live together for a year?

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Sunday, February 21, 2016 3:22 PM (1 hour ago)

Throw in amateurist and I'll give a hundred bucks.

With Jeb out, I expect Trump to turn the flamethrower on Rubio full strength. It's gonna be disgusting, and I kinda can't wait.

Trump's writers are working around the clock retooling Jeb! zingers into Rubio ones.

Jeb/Trump Odd Couple skit writes itself.

Rubio!

bangarang

I look forward to trump giving Rubio the jeb treatment. Gonna be savage.

― carthago delenda est (mayor jingleberries), Sunday, February 21, 2016 2:03 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have to wonder why he hasn't already though -- don't see how "pick off the weaker enemy first" makes sense as a strategy in primary politics.

bullies bully the most easily bullied

if by "most easily bullied" you mean "most fun to bully", then i agree. (jeb takes the bait, he's awkward, etc).

Jeb may be a bully's delight, but Rubio is the real coward. after Graham and Fiorina left the stage, Jeb has been the only one to openly challenge Trump. Rubio, by contrast, has assiduously avoided any confrontation, unless you count his "I like GWB" moment in the last debate.

if Rubio had been the one criticizing Trump instead of Jeb throughout these debates, I'm pretty sure he would have been the punching bag

It has 100% been in Trump's interest to leave Rubio alone as his numbers rose to where they are now - tied with Cruz, but both of them comfortably below Trump. I don't know if Trump really is capable of scheming realpolitik or if he's just a spoiled racist shithead running on pure ego and id. But if he's been reading any analysis all along, he has to know that the last thing he wants is for the field to narrow early into a two-person race because then he loses (see the "low ceiling" argument). A large field helps him, and picking on people near the bottom risks being the straw that drives them out of the race. I think with Bush he just couldn't stop himself even though it was long since clear that Jeb was a terminal case.

Fwiw the markets have Rubio back to nearly level with trump http://predictwise.com/blog/2016/02/state-of-republican-primary-after-three-primary-votes/, with crux a very distant 3rd (presumably because of his impossible delegate math)

asking out of ignorance, why is cruz's delegate math so impossible?

He's naturally strong in v few winner takes all states iirc

Evangelicals have low sperms count