Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital
*Makes a mental note to do exactly that*Lagmonster wrote:I'm just going to write here that my informal circle of interested colleagues has it as most likely being Bush 3.0 vs. Clinton 2.0, regardless of the constant gasps that this will be an "interesting campaign" full of "unexpected twists and turns".
If I'm right, I look prescient. If I'm wrong, chances are nobody will go back to this thread to rub it in my face.
To be exact number 4 has been the free spot jumping between several different options. It's the only place that is seen as different between states and polls so it's the "everybody else" spot. Sooner or later once 3-5 more drop out we will get our true 4th placer.jwl wrote:According to national polls Ted Cruz is #4, but not by a lot. In different polls, fourth place jumps between him, Marco Rubio and Mike Huckabee.The Romulan Republic wrote:Top four being who at this point? Trump and Carson I know. I'm guessing number three is Jeb. Who's number four?
And now Erik Erkison over at FoxNew York Magazine wrote: At Second Presidential Debate, Republicans Try to Out-Crazy Trump, and Succeed
From left: Trump, Bush, and Walker. Photo: Justin Sullivan/2015 Getty Images
One of the weird and troublesome things about political debates is the disconnect between the qualities of showmanship that the format requires, and what such talents reveal about how a candidate would govern. Take Scott Walker. There is surely no better combination of ideological boldness and political calculation available in the race. As Wisconsin governor, he has learned the possibilities of using power to destroy the opposition’s political and economic base, acting as swiftly and shrewdly as possible. Yet on the debate stage, he comes across as mild, even weak. He is not terrible as a debater. Walker’s problem is that the rest of the candidates, with the exception of Jeb Bush, are extremely telegenic, able to condense their beliefs into emphatic soundbites.
Bush, like Walker, is not especially bad onstage. He has the misfortune to go against the perfect Jeb Bush–slayer in Donald Trump. Despite going into the debate with the obvious intention of projecting vigor and dominance, Jeb Bush simply allowed Trump to roll over him. He demanded an apology to his wife, and when Trump refused, Bush gave up. I asked him, he said no. What are you going to do? At one point he shrugged in resignation.
Trump remains a fascinating mix of bluster, ignorance, misogyny — defining Bush’s wife and Carly Fiorina by their appearances — and occasional bouts of common sense. Trump touted his opposition to the Iraq War and the failure of Walker’s fiscal policies in Wisconsin, and defended progressive taxation against Ben Carson’s insistence that taxing the rich at a higher rate amounts to “socialism.” He mentioned that prospective Iranian nuclear weapons had obsessed his rivals, while the far more insane North Korean regime already had nukes. (He did not mention the cause of the discrepancy, which is that North Korea nuclearized under George W. Bush.)
The Bush administration proved the most fruitful basis for Jeb to press his larger claim that Trump had defied party orthodoxy. Bush garnered his strongest applause by insisting his brother had “kept us safe,” a triumph he — and fellow Republicans — agreed Obama had squandered. The fact that the most deadly terrorist attack in American history had occurred on Bush’s watch, and not on Obama’s, in no way intruded upon this certainty.
The debate revealed a party wedded to the tenets of Bushism — rabid, debt-financed, regressive tax-cutting, reflexive hostility to regulation, and a pervasive anti-intellectualism. Trump at one point implicitly defended his lack of foreign-policy knowledge on the grounds that the current administration had many knowledgeable people (true) and the world was on fire (questionable). This open attack on brainpower would have been astonishing, except that Marco Rubio repeated it himself, declaring, “Radical terrorism cannot be solved by intellect.”
The most revealing pair of exchanges came at the end. First, Jake Tapper asked Rubio about former Reagan secretary of State George Shultz’s argument that it would be prudent to take out an insurance policy against the effects of carbon emissions in case scientists are right. The question was designed to cut off every possible escape route. Tapper did not ask Rubio to accept climate science, merely the possibility that it might not be wrong. Nor did he ask him to endorse a specific program. Rubio swatted away the premise of the question, insisting, “We’re not going to destroy our economy.” It was telling that Rubio defined literally any policy response to the theory of anthropogenic global warming as economy-destroying.
Tapper then asked Trump about his statements linking vaccine use to autism, a dangerous conspiracy theory that has been conclusively debunked. Trump cited anecdotal evidence to support his crackpot beliefs. Worse, the two doctors on the stage, Ben Carson and Rand Paul, had chances to correct Trump, and both instead gave him tepid support. It is depressing that a presidential field with two doctors cannot even produce sensible views on medicine, let alone anything else. The party’s decades-long flight from empiricism and reason shows no sign of abating. Alas, from Trump to Rubio to Carly Fiorina, it is filled with talented demagogues well suited to pitch America on nonsense.
So never mind the crazy things that were said Carly is the new hotness lets change the narrative it's 2012 all over again except.... again I don't think it will work the way they think it will. I believe Trump will hold mostly steady while Carly and Ben Carson gain points on everyone else.Fox News wrote:
It was really amazing. The question had to be asked. Just last week, Donald Trump said of Carly Fiorina, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”
The debate moderator had to ask about it. But in doing so, they first let Donald Trump attack Jeb Bush.Bush had said he would cut money for women’s health care. Bush then said he misspoke. Donald Trump made Bush own it. He hammered Bush whose response was flat footed. He refused to concede that Bush misspoke.
Carly Fiorina turned the tables on Trump. She said millions of American women knew what Donald Trump meant. It forced Trump, perhaps for the first time, to walk back his remark and declare that Fiorina had a lovely face. Fiorina was the only person on the stage that Trump seemed fearful of.
Toward the end of the debate, Fiorina recounted the death of her child due to drug addiction. She connected with the audience. Earlier, she clearly became emotional talking about the Planned Parenthood videos, challenging Democrats to watch them.
Time and time again, Carly Fiorina showed she could hold up against the rest. It was a very real introduction to the nation as a legitimate contender. She showed herself strong on defense; she had a command of the issues; and she was willing to take the fight to Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump could not play off the crowd’s energy on Wednesday night. The crowd was very subdued. They also were not, for the most part, his fans going into the debate. It worked against Trump. He repeatedly tried to land blows and with only a handful of exceptions, they fell flat. Trying to accuse George W. Bush of making the nation less safe also hurt him and it gave Chris Christie a way to use his resume.
But time and time again, Carly Fiorina showed she could hold up against the rest. It was a very real introduction to the nation as a legitimate contender. She showed herself strong on defense; she had a command of the issues; and she was willing to take the fight to Hillary Clinton. “It was an activity, not an accomplishment,” she said of Hillary flying on airplanes. It was a strong blow by a candidate most people had never seen.
The big question now is not whether Carly Fiorina’s polling goes up, but from whom does she take votes? My guess is, among others, Ben Carson, who does great as a lecturer, but not as a debater. He was very soft spoken and not very engaged.
The Republican Primary just got a lot more interesting.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/artic ... he-numbersGandalf wrote:Why don't they just rename the debate "The Donald Trump Show" and be done with it?
And good riddance to the asshat's campaign.Scott Walker has dropped out of the Republican race for the U.S.presidency.
The Wisconsin governor made the announcement at a news conference on Monday evening in Madison.
Scott Walker: Canada-U.S. border wall worth considering
U.S. border wall floated by Scott Walker would be logistical nightmare
One of the last Republicans to enter the race, Walker will join former Texas Gov. Rick Perry as one of the first to leave it. He will return to his job in Wisconsin as governor, where his term runs through 2018.
Walker, 47, tried to appeal to religious conservatives, tea party conservatives and the more traditional Republican base. He tried to cast himself as an unintimidated conservative fighter who had a record of victories in a state that hasn't voted in a Republican for president since 1984.
He called himself "aggressively normal" and campaigned on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and made a splash in January with a well-received speech before religious conservatives in Iowa.
But Walker's fall was dramatic.
He was unable to adjust to the popularity of Donald Trump or break out in either of the Republican Party's first two debates, and repeatedly had trouble clearly stating his position on several issues.
He took days to clarify whether he supported ending birthright citizenship and he initially showed interest in building a wall between the U.S. and Canada, only to later laugh it off as ridiculous. Walker also declared he wasn't a career politician, despite having held public office for 22 straight years.
If it's to keep Ted Cruz from coming back, we support it.Raw Shark wrote:On the other hand, this is the first I've heard of a U.S.-Canada wall. A U.S.-Canada wall? Why? To protect Canada? Canada is safer than this shit-show, that's for damn sure. I can see hyper-conservative tax-o-phobes responding to that with, "Go fuck yourself."
There goes 80% of their programming lineup.Elheru Aran wrote:And in an amusing turn of affairs, Donald Trump has now decided he's not going to do any more Fox News shows. Fascinating.
Wow that just... Wow good times Jeb, you start out correctly noting that Republicans at best get 8% of the African America vote and then slideright into Black people love handouts which we won't give them we will uplift them...Salon wrote: Friday, Sep 25, 2015 10:11 AM EST
Jeb goes full Mitt Romney: Man of inherited wealth and power says African-Americans want “free stuff”
The "outreach" candidate takes a page from Mitt Romney to insult black voters in one of the worst possible ways
Ah Jeb. You just can’t help yourself.
Again, on another historic day when Pope Francis quoted Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in a speech to Congress, the Catholic convert likewise tried to reach and empathize with African Americans. Only this is how he did it.
At a campaign stop in Mount Pleasant, S.C., a voter noted the event was all-white, and asked Bush how Republicans can appeal to African Americans. At first Bush seemed like the compassionate conservative he’s supposed to be. He touted the African Americans on his leadership team staff, discussed his outreach to black ministers, pivoted to the issue of Latino voters, and offered a feisty defense of speaking Spanish on the campaign trail:
If someone asks me a question in Spanish just for the record, don’t take offense that I answer it in Spanish. It’s not an offense to you, it’s respect for others. You campaign in a way that draws people to your cause. That’s what you do.
So far, so good. Then Bush totally blew it. Turning back to the issue of black voters, he said:
Think about it this way, Republicans get 4-7 percent of the African-American vote…If you double that, you win elections in Ohio, Virginia. And we should make that case, because our message is one of hope and aspiration. It isn’t one of division, “get in line, we’ll take care of you with free stuff.” Our message is uplifting, that says, “You can achieve earned success. We’re on your side.”
“We’re on your side,” black voters, though we’re not sure you’ve really achieved “earned success.” You’ve been relying a little too much on “free stuff” from Democrats, but we’re here to change that. The level of condescension and negative stereotyping in Bush’s statement is stunning, but not surprising.
After all, Mitt Romney said essentially the same thing – directly to the NAACP, in July of 2012. “Your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this: If they want more stuff from government, tell them to go vote for the other guy — more free stuff. But don’t forget nothing is really free.”
Mr. 47 percent didn’t learn from the outrage over his remarks, either. In an election post-mortem, Romney blamed his loss on President Obama giving “gifts” to blacks, women and students in the electorate.
Bush was supposed to be the candidate who renounced that approach to blacks and Latinos. But he’s looking more like Romney all the time, with tone-deaf comments that betray his life of privilege.
On Wednesday, Pope Francis referred to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous remark about the U.S. defaulting on its “promissory note” of freedom and equality for African Americans. The next day, Bush insulted black voters by saying that they’ve been lured to the Democratic Party merely by the promise of “free things.” But Bush differs from Romney in one significant way: At this rate, he’s not likely to be able to insult black voters in the 2016 general election, because he’s not likely to win the GOP nomination.
Wow... Allie you have three hours between when the post went up to when you emailed your response and that's the best you can do... they fear his positive message?Salon wrote:
Update: Bush campaign communications staffer Allie Brandenberger emailed this comment after this post went up: “The Democrats are creating attacks where they don’t exist because they know their policies have failed the tens of millions stuck in poverty and they fear Jeb’s positive message of expanding opportunity for everyone.” She sent along this Bush speech to the National Urban League.
