Short: Trump insults former supporters. Surprise!

I haven't written about this before, but I expect Trump to lose the GOP nomination, and I expect he'll get very nasty when that's happening. He's already complained about being treated 'unfairly' while he was rising. Now imagine what he'll do when he's dropping.

So, what was likely to happen when Trump stopped being the frontrunner in Iowa? Something like this:

Image: vox.com

But NEVER MIND. It was the mistake of a 'young intern.' Not the first mistake, though.

Last outpost of crazy: Joke candidate surges

The two appropriate responses to much of this presidential campaign so far are laughter or suicide. Today I laughed so hard I was lucky that I didn't have a stroke. Of course I'd heard about the candidacy of Deez Nuts, who I assumed was a rapper. Today I read more about him. Okay, he's actually a 15-year-old Iowa boy. That's a good joke, but not apoplexy-inducing.

What was so funny? The straight-faced verbiage in the Wikipedia article. I'm going to quote in order to capture it for posterity and before someone edits it:

In polls conducted by Public Policy Polling in Iowa, Minnesota and North Carolina in mid-August 2015, he polled at 8, 8 and 9 percent respectively, garnering the attention of the media... 

...an analyst at Public Policy Polling... [noted] due to a fringe of the population with a penchant towards anti-establishment candidates, "You could call [the third party candidate] anything, and they would get their 7% or 8%."

But the following bit brought on the longest laughing fit I've had this year:

Relationship to Limberbutt McCubbins

Nuts polled his fans on his Facebook page on August 13, 2015, asking whether he should reach out to fellow joke presidential hopeful, Kentucky feline Limberbutt McCubbins, for a possible Nuts/McCubbins ticket. Nuts has acknowledged McCubbins as an inspiration for his presidential run.

Something cracked when I read the phrase "Kentucky feline." A reporter would list a candidate as a Kentucky senator or Kentucky governor, but to refer to a joke candidate was a Kentucky feline is pure brilliance.  That sentence is not only informing us about a joke candidate, but taking down the practice of 'objective reporting' at the same time. If only that was close to enough to tip the scales in favor of sanity. At this point in this presidential campaign, sanity is the clear loser.

v

Image: memegenerator.net

Extras. What is Deez Nuts originally? Maybe a hip-hop term, maybe not. Fucked if I can tell, and not worth my time to figure out. Finally, one more tidbit for posterity:

 Image: kingbach.tv

Update on voter fraud

Prior to the November 2014 election, I collected several articles on voter fraud, a topic I've discussed before. The usual spiel on voter fraud is 1) it's committed by the Democrats regularly (and is the only reason they win, according to some), 2) let's laugh at the zany claims made by those zany conservative hicks.

I don't want to do a piece that falls into either of these categories, but what's left? How about a sober evaluation of the claims? Here's what I found:

Local investigation in Florida of non-citizens voting. This seems like a level-headed initial investigation into real (not imagined) fraudulent voting by non-citizens. However, it leaves unanswered how these non-citizens ended up on the voter roles. Were they registered by default or by honest error when they obtained or renewed a driver's license? Were they registered in a voter drive by unscrupulous operators? Is the mistake and/or fraud different in many of the cases? We don't have those answers, and the non-citizens aren't shining much light on how this happened. The reporters aren't doing a good job either because they cite 100 possible cases, but not how wide an area they came from? Is it just one county, all of Florida, or what? Perhaps this isn't so much a real investigation as a bait for a particular segment of the audience.

Non-citizens voting in Virginia. This is skirmish in the voter fraud war. The Electoral Board did some research using juror records, and found approx. 300 possible non-citizens who were on the voter roles. They forwarded the information to the local prosecutor, but got no response.

Here are some others:

• Iowa cases, 200 not 3.5K.
• Non-citizens voting far fewer than the margin of victory in Ohio.
• No non-citizens voting in Boulder. Another similar case of GOPers trying to root out voter fraud. The local DA's response: "We don't need state officials sending us on wild goose chases for political reasons."
• Isolated fraud incident in Colorado.

Do these cases change anything? No. The typical charges of 'massive voter fraud' originate with conservative talk radio demagogues, and these guys don't care about truth, evidence, or investigations. So we'll continue to hear these claims of voter fraud, and they'll be unchanged by the reality of minimal numbers. The only reason I bother to note this information is in preparation to refute the argument. Not that I'll convince any true believers, but sometimes I just want to get some truth out there.

Voter fraud! (assumed)

Image: norcalblogs.com

Update 3/4/17. Here's a report from Ohio on one type of voter fraud--non-citizen voting. In 2017, that would be a staggering 82 of them. I guess the million of non-citizens voting for Clinton came from other states.

Short: Massive voter fraud in Iowa

Of course not!

There are places with organized voter fraud, mostly through the bundling of absentee ballots, but not in Iowa. But too many conservatives are invested in theories of voter fraud to explain election results they disagree with. So it must be investigated, even in upstanding Iowa. Read about the horrifying cases, including [gasp] the mother who forged her daughter's signature... and then turned herself in.

Image: madison.com

Short: Iowa pre-pre-preview

There was a conservative dinner in Iowa that garnered some major guests. Mike Lee seems to learned from experience that he can't bring down Obamacare in the current configuration of government. So, instead of doubling down on that failed strategy, he's working on new ideas. They seem fuzzy to me right now, but at least he's in the correct sphere--one that looks at reality rather than denying it. He's also thinking strategically:

"The senator from Utah noted that there is a gaping hole in the middle of the Republican Party today, and offered a solution on how to fill it."

I'm so glad to hear someone say this. Mike Lee is going to be worth watching. I hope he had bridge that gaping hole.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is basically a cheerleader with no brain for policy. Rah, rah! I've got no tolerance for an empty-headed politician, so I wish Palin was over already. She's an idiot, and she's steadfastly remaining one. Enough already!

Come on, you're not serious.

Image: dailymail.co.uk

Hat tip to Bob Costa. The only twitter I follow.

Leader of the opposition

Ed Morrissey of HotAir writes a couple of interesting columns on who will be the de facto leader of the Republicans. He correctly points out that Boehner and McConnell will be too busy and too tainted with deal-making, so he offers these names:

1. Rand Paul
2. Bobby Jindal
3. Rick Perry
4. Marco Rubio
5. Chris Christie

These are mostly good picks in that they're likely to be visible leaders, if not the leader. (It makes me wonder who was the leader from 2009 to 2011 when the primaries started. Critics say it was Rush Limbaugh, and maybe it was. Luckily not anymore.)

Rand Paul is certainly going to be the leader of the small-government libertarian pack. He has stayed almost constantly true to those principles. However, the libertarians aren't the dominant force in the GOP, so he couldn't be the dominant leader. His small-military views just aren't popular with most of the GOP, and they can't overlook that.

Bobby Jindal bucked a fair amount of the 2012 losing rhetoric, so it seemed that he was trying to make a name for himself as an intelligent reformer of the GOP. As a moderate, I like that, but I don't know if enough Republicans feel that way. Certainly the noisy ones don't. Nonetheless, he deserves to be on this list right now, but he could easily fall off by going too far or not far enough.

Rick Perry doesn't deserve to be on this list. He was a laughable candidate in 2011. Maybe the pain meds have worn off, but you can't fix stupid. He gives every indication of having been briefed on all of his opinions, rather than mulling them over and developing his own ideas. I think he's someone's marionette. If he can become a national leader, then I don't know anything about American politics.

Marco Rubio is certainly running for leader and running for president. However, Romney's campaign showed the weakness of choosing someone who is constantly running for office instead of being engaged in actual governing and problem-solving. Rubio is flash but no substance at this point. I don't think the GOP will go for a lightweight again.

Chris Christie has lately been reviled among many Republicans, so it's hard to imagine him rising above that to be a spokesman and leader of a large enough slice of the GOP. He's certainly got the verbal talent and a can-do record, but too many Republicans hate him right now, and that's not going to be easy to change.

Something missing from this list is the conservative-pragmatic governor archetype. I'm thinking Mitch Daniels, Scott Walker, John Kasich, and Rick Snyder. They've all dealt (cleaned up/reformed) at the state level with the kinds of problems the federal government faces--how to trim spending and reduce benefits for government workers without massive service cuts. Also important, they haven't tainted themselves with culture war rhetoric on abortion and contraception as Virginia governor Bob McDonnell has.

These governors are the solid, working leaders in each of their states, but who speaks for them nationally? If they did have a national champion, that would be a formidable leader. I'm going to be curious to see how this develops. The next few months will be worth watching.

 

Image: qctimes.com

Extra. Will we have new leaders in punditry? It's less important, but it would be such a relief.

Update 6/21/13. According to this column, Jindal has trotted out the typical GOP fallback position of bashing liberals. It looks like Jindal will put on any stance when it is expedient, including clear-eyed reformer. Too bad it was just an act.

Short: Midwestern good sense and our deficit

I'm not the only one who likes to look at how we got to where we are. This sensible, very short and humble editorial looks at the Bush tax cuts. With one timely quote and one poignant contrast, the author captures a moment when we made a big mistake. Take a minute to read it.

Update 9/23/14. The original link was busted. In case that happens again. I'll quote from the editorial.

How did we get into the mess of having deficits of $1.5 trillion?

Norm Orenstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institutes, reminds people he and others said at the time that the cuts in capital gains taxes were going to be a huge drain on federal revenues... This was in and around 2000-2002. Says Orenstein: 'Guess what, it was a huge drain on federal revenues.' [Note: it should say 'Norm Ornstein.']

But we continued to cut taxes...

Here's the poignant contrast:

Another surprise: the report reminded people that Allen Greenspan was saying paying down all our debt would have negative economic implications, would hurt growth.

Who should we have followed--Ornstein or Greenspan? Oh, the regret!