Jeb Bush – The Tortoise Is Chasing The Man With The Dead Animal’s Bleached Hair On His Head! Methinks Thou Doth Exclaim Too Much!

Jeb Bush is blaming Iraq’s chaos, ISIS and the total broken Middle-East that his Brother George W Bush caused, on President Obama and Hillary Clinton.

 

Right now Jeb is in trouble because of the man with the Dead Animal’s Bleached Hair On His Head. Jeb is chasing the “Hair” day and night and he is manufacturing untruths that are putting him in even worse of a situation because, people are not stupid as the Bush’s think they are.

[NYT] “In politics, the smallest things often turn out to be the most telling ones, and so it is with the man who was supposed to be the Republican front-runner, who once inspired such rapture among party elders and whose entrance into the presidential race they yearned and clamored for.

 

They not only got their wish, they got it with punctuation: Jeb! That’s Jeb Bush’s logo, and the exclamation point is the tell. None of the other Republican presidential candidates has anything like it. None of the Democrats either. It’s a declaration of passion that only someone worried about a deficit of it would issue. Methinks thou doth exclaim too much.

 

Before Bush announced his candidacy, talk of his vulnerabilities focused largely on certain positions — his defense of Common Core educational standards, his advocacy for immigration reform — that were anathema to many voters in the Republican primaries. He was sure to catch flak.

 

But catching fire is his bigger problem. He can’t do it. In a bloated field of bellicose candidates, he’s a whisper, a blur, starved of momentum, bereft of urgency and apt to make news because he stumbles, not because he soars. Can he soar? Or even sprint?

 

“I’m the tortoise in the race,” he told a group of voters in Florida not long ago. “But I’m a joyful tortoise.”

 

And Donald Trump’s a demented peacock and I’m a crotchety hippo. Reverse anthropomorphism is a fun game, but if you’re playing it in the service of selling yourself, best not to summon a sluggish creature with a muted affect and an impenetrable shell.

 

Republicans should have seen this turtle coming. In some sense they did. Bush’s fans and backers praised him as a thoughtful “policy wonk” and conceded that he wasn’t any dynamo at the lectern or on the trail.

 

But they downgraded the importance of dynamism, maybe because they didn’t expect so much competition, including Trump. (It’s “the race between the tortoise and the bad hair,” cracked Jay Leno last week.) They couldn’t envision the way in which 16 rivals would rob Bush of clear distinction and definition.

 

Sure, he speaks Spanish and has a Mexican-born wife, but Marco Rubio also speaks Spanish and has two Cuban-born parents. Sure, he was twice elected governor of a state that’s not reliably red, but so were Scott Walker, Chris Christie and John Kasich.

 

He’s not the most eloquent or the most inspiring, so his backers began to pitch him as the most adult. But at that first debate, Kasich stole even that superlative from him.

 

What’s left? He’s raised the most money, some of which he’ll use for television ads much sooner than anyone had anticipated. He’ll try to buy the oomph that he can’t organically generate.

 

Oomph is what that big speech last week — in which he blamed Hillary Clinton for the rise of the Islamic State — was largely about. He was flexing his audacity and independence, showing that his surname wouldn’t cow him from going after a Democratic rival on any matter, including Iraq. It took gall to edit his older brother out of the diatribe. It took guts to go with a diatribe in the first place.

 

Did it help? Polls suggest not. A CNN/ORC survey that was released on Tuesday showed that he doesn’t fare nearly as well as Trump when Republican voters are asked whom they trust most on the economy, on immigration and on battling Islamic extremists.

He runs afoul of the moment. Voters right now are more enamored of outsiders than usual, as the traction of not just Trump but also two other Republican candidates who have never held elective office — Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina — demonstrates.

 

Voters have had enough of protocol and pieties. Thus Trump thrives in a party that he constantly browbeats and shows no real loyalty toward, while Bernie Sanders flourishes among Democrats though he has repeatedly railed against them and doesn’t technically identify as one.

 

For some alienated voters, supporting either of these two insurgents is the same as raising a middle finger to establishment politicians and to politics as usual, and tactful, tasteful Bush can never be a middle finger. More like a pinkie.

 

he pinkie may prevail. In the Bush camp there’s a theory, or perhaps an anxiety-quelling fantasy, that the Trump mania and the related craziness will benefit Bush, who can methodically build support and incrementally lengthen his stride while the glare and heat are on others.

 

Trump burns out, the field eventually winnows, and Bush is saved by a superlative after all. He’s the most durable candidate.

 

It’s a plausible scenario. But it’s hardly a joyful one. And there’s only one way to punctuate it — with a question mark.”

 

Twitter @sheriffali

 

http://nyti.ms/1E2H3Eb

 

 

Apparently The Republican God Is Fine With Child Molestation And Incest, But Seems To Be Really Ticked Off At Gays, Contraception, Minorities, The 50% White President And Immigrants.

[NYT] Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, the Republican from Arkansas who is running for president, has come to the defense of the former director of the conservative Family Research Council’s lobbying group who resigned this week amid allegations that he had molested children.

 

Josh Duggar, a conservative activist whose family has been chronicled in the reality television show “19 Kids and Counting” stepped down from his job at FRC Action on Thursday after In Touch Weekly revealed a 2006 police report that showed him at the center of a police investigation. Mr. Duggar, who worked on Mr. Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign, wrote in a post on Facebook that the allegations were true and that he regretted his actions.

 

“Twelve years ago, as a young teenager I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry and deeply regret,” Mr. Duggar said.

 

On Friday, Mr. Huckabee expressed his support for the Duggar family, which hails from Arkansas, and said that Mr. Duggar deserved a second chance.

 

“Josh’s actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, ‘inexcusable,’ but that doesn’t mean ‘unforgivable’,” Mr. Huckabee said in a statement that scolded anyone who took pleasure in the revelations. “Those who have enjoyed revealing this long ago sins in order to discredit the Duggar family have actually revealed their own insensitive blood thirst.”

 

Mr. Huckabee’s defense of Mr. Duggar could come back to haunt him as his second White House bid gathers pace. A former Baptist pastor, he has faced criticism in the past for granting clemency to prisoners as governor of Arkansas.

 

Mr. Duggar, who also worked on former Senator Rick Santorum’s 2012 presidential campaign, has been active in conservative politics for many years. His Twitter feed shows pictures of himself with Mr. Huckabee and as well as poses with Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and former Gov. Jeb Bush.

 

 

Twitter @sheriffali

 

 

Now they’re trying to steal 2016: The demented GOP schemes to rewire the Electoral College and elect a Tea Party president!

Republicans know they can’t win the popular vote. You won’t believe sick schemes they’ve launched to get around it.

 

Republicans have only won the popular vote for president once in the last 25 years, a steep decline in their fortunes from the period from 1972 to 1988, when they won the popular vote every time but one–1976, the aftermath of Watergate. Add to that massive policy failures and demographic trends against them, and the motivations to cheat are overwhelming.

 

Voter suppression seemed promising at first—and it’s helpful in many downticket races—but it’s not going to be enough to secure the White House. So they’ve been working on another idea as well—make the popular vote totally irrelevant by leaving red states just as they are, with statewide winners getting all the electoral votes, while making electoral votes more or less proportional in as many blue states as possible—many of which the GOP controls at the state level. If they can rewrite the rules fast enough, they could even win in 2016, with no more votes than Mitt Romney received.

 

Republicans have been fiddling with various Electoral College schemes since at least 2011 (in Michigan and Pennsylvania), with an upsurge of interest in early 2013, following Romney’s disappointing loss. “How Romney Could Have Won: A changed system would mean changed results” was the title of a January 2013 National Review story, capturing the mood at the time. Romney needn’t have won a single additional popular vote, you see. Just divvy up Electoral College votes by congressional district, and voilà! President, President Romney, Mr. 47 Percent! “[F]or those frustrated over 2012’s results,” the story concluded, “it might be worth thinking about whether it’s time to overhaul the system itself.”

 

 

 The buzz faded rather quickly, but now, post-midterm elections, it seems to be staging a modest comeback—and the GOP’s sheer desperation means it would be foolish to ignore this ongoing threat to our democracy. Renewed talk of rewrite schemes actually began even before the midterm election, according to a late-October story by Michigan political columnist Susan J. Demas, and a watered-down scheme emerged after the election, she reported, which would give most of the electoral votes to the statewide winner, but give some to the loser as well. “It’s like a participation trophy in pre-school tee-ball,” Demas wrote, “only Michigan is trying to build up the self-esteem of Republican wannabe leaders of the free world.” [Salon<dot>com]

 

Twitter @sheriffali