Call it a special Patriots Day edition of the Weekly Joke Revue, or call it just another day in our increasingly absurd excuse for political discourse. Whatever it is, it’s pretty funny.
Today’s topic: the presidential race. We on the left all owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Donald Trump, who, along with fellow traveler Michele “shot heard ’round the world” Bachmann, is so ridiculous that he raises serious questions as to whether he is actually a Democratic Party plant whose mission is to turn the Republican presidential primaries into a national joke. Here’s today’s New York Post with the latest:
Yes, according to Trump, it’s all about the size of the candidate’s penis bank account.
Donald Trump yesterday fired the opening salvo in a macho battle of bank accounts with rival presidential contender Mitt Romney, dismissing the former Massachusetts governor as a “small business” person and saying his own assets are “much, much” larger than his opponent’s….
“I’m a much bigger businessman and have a much, much bigger net worth. I mean my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney,” Trump told CNN’s Candy Crowley yesterday…. “Well, Mitt Romney is a basically small-business guy, if you really think about it. He was a hedge fund. He was a funds guy. He walked away with some money from a very good company that he didn’t create. He worked there. He didn’t create it,” Trump said.
Interestingly, the humor around Trump’s “candidacy” is not lost on conservatives:
“Donald Trump for President? You’ve got to be joking,” Club [for Growth] president Chris [“Count” -ed.] Chocola said in a statement sent to reporters Monday morning.
Also participating in the GOP presidential follies is ex-MN Governor Tim Pawlenty, who stopped by a sparsely-attended Tax Day TEA Party rally on Boston Common last Friday to yak about cutting spending. Apparently, he was a major draw.
When asked if he was in attendance to see Pawlenty, one man paused for a few seconds, and then asked, “Who?”
LOL. I am constrained to add that listening to Tim Pawlenty talk about fiscal responsibility is sadly hilarious. Let’s recall this assessment from a local newspaper a little over a year ago, on the occasion of his impending departure from the MN Governor’s office:
The Republican governor will give his last State of the State address at 11 a.m. Thursday. For many outgoing governors, it’s a time to burnish their legacies, reminisce about challenges overcome and put a hopeful spin on what they leave behind. But Pawlenty will step into the Minnesota House of Representatives chamber at a deeply uncertain time for the state.
A governor who prides himself on being a shrewd fiscal steward faces a $1.2 billion shortfall, even after draining state reserves, borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars from other state funds and deploying more one-time fixes than any state except Alaska.
Now Moody’s Investors Service, one of the nation’s premier credit-rating agencies, has a message for the governor and the state: What you’ve been doing won’t work much longer. Stop putting off the hard choices or trouble will ensue.
Moody’s cited the state’s reliance on one-time solutions and empty reserves in its decision, days before Pawlenty’s speech, to downgrade the state’s outlook to negative. It left Minnesota’s top bond rating unchanged, but the warning was unmistakable and will be noted by legislators as they attempt to wrestle yet another mega-deficit to the ground. As recently as 2007, the state had a $1 billion cushion.
Compare that record to that of, say, Deval Patrick, who throughout the fiscal crisis kept the outlook on MA’s bonds “stable” from all the rating agencies, and recently received the good news of an upgrade to “positive outlook” from Standard & Poor’s (reg. req’d).
What do you think? Does Romney get the nod by default, for being the only one who isn’t completely ridiculous? Or does crazy come to the 2012 general election?
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p>I’ve thought for quite some time that it will be Romney for precisely this reason. The rest of the GOP field is a joke, apart from someone like Mitch Daniels who may not even run.
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p>The main push-back against Romney comes from people who point out that he could have big problems because of his prodigious flip-flopping, his Mormonism, or (of course) RomneyCare. These are all valid points, but they won’t matter to Republicans when they realize he’s the only one of this sad-looking group who can actually beat Obama.
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p>That will be true even for right-wingers who incessantly made fun of Kerry for his “flip-flops” back in 2004, who think Mormonism is a Satanist cult, and who believe that ObamaCare (and, by extension, RomneyCare) is more socialist than the Bolshevik Revolution. Conservatives by and large are motivated by beating Democrats, not by issue consistency. It’s the same reason why the Tea Party was nowhere to be seen when the Clinton Surplus turned into the Bush Deficit and George W. used the country’s bank account as a multi-trillion dollar credit card to fund wars and a breathlessly inefficient prescription drug program.
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p>So, yeah, at the end of the day, it’ll be Romney.
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p>Which is why I think there is still room for an alternative. Barbour is identical to Romney on the issues as a (very slight) moderate to conservative Republican Governor with a decent track record and appeal to the three rungs of the Reagan coalition (hawks, libertarians, theocons). Similarly Daniels or Christie if they got in could do that.
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p>Also Huntsman’s fiscal record and social moderation make him a very viable general election candidate and if he can get some friends in the Tea Party (Mike Lee, a fellow Utahan, recently said he’d pass their test at a Fed.Soc. event at Harvard Law) to back him then he might pass the smell test. Remember when McCain’s social moderation and ‘maverick’ status turned him off to the base and remembered how a divided conservative opposition paved the way for him to win (especially after Rudy fell flat on his face)? The same could ring true for Huntsman. With a winner take all primary, the RNC has a lot of influence in determining the nominee. They stopped Reagan in 1976, Robertson in 88′, Buchannan in 1992 and 1996, and McCain in 2000. Who better to get the RNC nod then than its former chairman Barbour or Huntsman for a shot at electability? Look at Obama’s numbers, he is now hovering around 40 %, the RNC is desperate for an electable candidate. The Trump and Palin leads now are about as viable as the Dean lead back in 2003, once the base calms down they wake up and vote for someone sensible. That said Romney is the clear frontrunner and its his to lose, Huntsman should have waited till 2016, and Barbour’s race issues have yet to be deflated. Its definitely a weak field if those three are the saviours. Hunstman is the only one I worry about.
I think the only one that could (and probably should) get in and make a difference is Daniels. He fits the “maverick” mold better than the others in that he is able to appeal to the Right first and then pivot to a general electorate, represents a Midwestern state, and has been governor for a decent stretch of time now.
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p>Barbour has no chance at all. Indeed, anyone from Mississippi, especially someone with Barbour’s past and his Boss Hogg looks, probably has no chance. Huntsman has little chance because he actually worked for Obama, which automatically makes him toxic with the Republican base. Christie is an interesting name and could generate a lot of appeal, but he’s more likely to wait given that he hasn’t been in office very long. If he got in (and Daniels didn’t), there could be an opening for him, though.
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p>Also, you mention the winner-take-all primary, but note that many Republican primary contests will be under proportional allocations this year. I believe all GOP primaries before April 1st are now required to allocate delegates proportionally.
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p>This makes a big difference, and probably helps Romney even more.
no white fat heavily accented Republican governor from Mississippi will ever be viewed as “a (very slight) moderate to conservative” any time soon.
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p>And no, I don’t agree that Mr. Barbour is anywhere near moderate.
Nate Silver points out that polling started off with the Palin-Bachmann-Trump candidates getting more support than the Romney-Barbour-Pawlenty candidates. That disparity has only increased, with the loony bin widening its aggregate over the church deacons.
at this point in the race…
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p>The only people who have a real opinion right now are the political wonks and the “extreme” fringe. Most people will not decide who they like until much closer to election day.
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p>That is why the “Palin-Bachmann-Trump” candidates poll well now… 80% of the people out there don’t have a clue who they will vote for, but the 20% fringe want the fringe candidates.
…because he does best against Obama in polls I’ve seen, and the GOP has a knack for ultimately settling on the person whose “turn” it seems to be. There’s always noise from the fringe right about pure candidates running, but the last few nominees – McCain, Bush, Dole, Bush – have been reasonably electable and within the GOP mainstream.
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p>As for Donald Trump, he’s latched on to birtherism because it gets attention, and ultimately it’s all about him. Also, if anyone questions Obama’s birth from the rostrum of next year’s GOP convention it will end up being a repeat of 1992 for them.
trump is a joke in it only for the attention. he’ll get a few fringe folks to go with him. my concern would be that he loses the primary and runs as an independent, playing the role of perot the spoiler. i dont see any clear-cut GOP nominee at this point.
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p>re: the pawlenty citation – lets clip a different recent story…
“Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s cut its outlook on the US’ rating outlook to negative, from stable, citing a lack of decisive action to rein in its growing budget deficit.”
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p>so bad for pawlenty means bad for obama too right?
The S&P action is based on S&P’s concern about political gridlock resulting in a problem with the debt limit. Very different situation, since the debt limit depends on legislative action.
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p>Thanks for playing, though.
… are not worried about the debt so much as the lack of growth. They’ve actually indicated that the GOP budget gives a lot to worry about because of it’s effect on growth. Remember, growth is the single best way to get out of debt. The current problem here is that the ‘tax-cuts-cure-all-ills’ crowd is still convinced of their way to get growth, all data to the contrary notwithstanding.