20 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

1. Voting against your own self interests   http://www.ifyouonlynews.com/politics/ky-gop-voters-pissed-at-new-teabagger-gov-for-following-through-on-promise-to-kill-their-obamacare/

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   1. Wonder if Kentucky's Blackburns have learned anything and will vote differently in future elections. That is if they live long enough.

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   2. Gee, elections have consequences. Who'da thunk it.?

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      1. And clearly stated so no one has an excuse not to know what those consequences are at that.

         Really, really hard to drum up sympathy for low middle income to poor whites who hate Obama and everything Dem so much they'd apparently rather die than keep coverage they got thanks to that N word in the White House and his baby killing, job killing (?), Christmas destroying, gun snatching (I think they'll find their gun racks undisturbed) fellow travelers in Congress.  Oh and noun verb Benghazi. 

         Guess they'll just have to rely on praying their health issues away.

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2. Bob Dole, the man Newt Gingrich once called the "tax collector for the welfare state," has endorsed Jeb! (LNU)

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   1. Interesting since Dole and Pappa Bush are life long arch enemies who throughout their political careers sincerely hated each other's guts.

      Also interesting…. Rubio's choice to soften his immigration stand. Good for the general but can he get the GOP nomination with it? And if he can't and Jeb can't recover and Kasich is pretty much a commie by today's GOP standards, the undercard candidates have no realistic chance, Rand Paul, in the family tradition, never had a chance and Fiorina's fifteen minutes have come and gone that leaves Cruz, Trump and Carson who could star in Wacko, Wackier and Wackiest.

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      1. BC, I agree with you. Rubio is now in deep trouble with the Republican base. They went after him a couple of years ago when he championed immigration reform in the senate and he then beat a hasty retreat. His statement yesterday on NPR that if people who entered the country illegally or stayed past the time of their legal status come forward, he would give them a path to citizenship after they remained inside the U.S. for another decade and met certain requirements, plus he would give them a work permit. The Republican base will look at this as just another "amnesty" plan.

         If Carson's support begins to decline, it will most likely move to Cruz and if Trump's support flounders it will in all likelihood move toward Cruz also because Trump supporters like him, among other reasons, for his steadfast unbending support for a no amnesty policy.

         Yesterday, Senator Rubio may have lit the fuse that will blow-up his chance at the Republican nomination.

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         1. Okay C.H.B., Cruz v. Clinton. Who wins?

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3. Those pesky e-mails   http://www.politicususa.com/2015/11/12/clinton-attack-dog-chris-christie-accused-hiding-9428-emails-documents.html

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   1. What goes on between a man and his crullers in the privacy of his own home is no one else's business …

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   2. OK but:

      Christie’s legal team is inappropriately hiding thousands of documents related to the Bridgegate scandal, the two defense lawyers argued in briefs filed late Tuesday.

      See it's his legal team's fault. How could poor innocent Christie be expected to know what his legal team, aides and buddies are up to? I'm sure they only ask about each other's families and talk sports. As Dio's good friend moderatus would say …. grasping at straws! Guilt by association!! Noun verb Benghazi!!!

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   3. If this deflates the Clinton email nonsense once and for all (and it should) they haven't got much else to slime her with that isn't decades old. 

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4. Only Rs find this question unanswerable. For anyone with more sense than a piece of toast it's pretty obvious:

   Tuesday night's Republican debate was devoid of flashy moments. Nobody said anything particularly embarrassing. Nobody said anything particularly memorable. Even Donald Trump failed to stand out.

   But the debate did have one moment that may loom large when the voters cast ballots a year from now. It was a question to Carly Fiorina from moderator Gerard Baker, the editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal. Here's the critical part: 

   …in seven years under President Obama, the U.S. has added an average of 107,000 jobs a month. Under President Clinton, the economy added about 240,000 jobs a month. Under George W. Bush, it was only 13,000 a month. If you win the nomination, you'll probably be facing a Democrat named Clinton. How are you going to respond to the claim that Democratic presidents are better at creating jobs than Republicans?

   The question was arguably harsher than anything from the infamous CNBC debate that Republicans and their supporters found so offensive. And that’s because it called into question not just a single Republican argument, but a basic premise of the party's case for taking over the White House.

    

   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/republicans-debate-jobs_5642e734e4b08cda3486a9c6?utm_hp_ref=politics

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   1. PS They all refused to answer except by repeating the same old bromades discredited by all evidence.

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5. #QuidProKoch

   But the network's financial support for Ernst ― detailed here for the first time ― offers the first signs of a move into GOP primaries. The Kochs and their allies are investing in a pipeline to identify, cultivate and finance business-oriented candidates from the local school board all the way to the White House, and Koch operatives are already looking for opportunities to challenge GOP incumbents deemed insufficiently hard-line in their opposition to government spending and corporate subsidies.

   The ambitious effort, spearheaded partly by a for-profit consulting firm called Aegis Strategic that’s backed by the Koch network, is one of several ways in which the brothers and their allies are seeking to influence the types of candidates who carry the GOP banner. The network has taken on a vetting role in the GOP presidential primary, offering favored candidates access to its donors and activists. And some within the network have even advocated targeting from six to 12 GOP House members who have run afoul of the Koch orthodoxy on fiscal issues and who are facing 2016 primary challenges, sources told POLITICO.

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6. Best graph of the week…

   

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   1. They sure know their viewers.

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   2. See that tiny little NBC peacock in the lower left corner?  This is from a Saturday Night Live skit.  

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      1. Faux News used a very similar graph in the past, so they mocking the Faux, but not making stuff up like Faux News does.

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7. Apparently Trump and Carson are enough to get the grownups in the GOP seriously worrying about a possible HRC stumble should one of them actually get the nomination. They can't stand Cruz either.

   The apprehension among some party elites goes beyond electability, according to one Republican strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the worries.

   “We’re potentially careening down this road of nominating somebody who frankly isn’t fit to be president in terms of the basic ability and temperament to do the job,” this strategist said. “It’s not just that it could be somebody Hillary could destroy electorally, but what if Hillary hits a banana peel and this person becomes president?”

   https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/time-for-gop-panic-establishment-worried-carson-and-trump-might-win/2015/11/12/38ea88a6-895b-11e5-be8b-1ae2e4f50f76_story.html

   Don’t tell Dio’s good friend moderatus!

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