We wanted to revisit the recent flap between the presidential campaigns of Republican Ted Cruz and Donald Trump employing various Jim Carrey movie themes, as FOX News reported last week:
Republican presidential rivals Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are attacking each other… with references to Jim Carrey films.
It started when Trump posted a send-up of the “Liar Liar” poster in Instagram, with Cruz’s head photoshopped on Carrey’s body.
Below the image, Trump asked, “Who should star in a reboot of Liar Liar – Hillary Clinton or Ted Cruz? Let me know.”
Not to be outdone, the Cruz campaign fired back with Jim Carrey meme of its own:
Don’t take a chance on this new release coming to ballot boxes in November 2016… #ChooseCruz pic.twitter.com/srvABnXjYE
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 17, 2016
In the end, Jim Carrey himself responded with some degree of exasperation:
HEY DUMMIES, LEAVE ME OUT OF IT! ;^P #Americonundrum pic.twitter.com/nI7Amohz5c
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) March 18, 2016
But nationally and locally, the memes just…work:
Locally, Republican U.S. Senate contender Jon Keyser received the “Liar Liar” treatment over his bogus “two ballots” allegations. With Keyser’s candidacy limping along in a crowded field, it’s possible this meme will get recycled for use with a November-bound candidate?
There was a time when politicians–at least the politicians themselves–shied away from outright accusations of “lying,” preferring to couch disagreements in more polite terms. These days, calling somebody a liar is no big deal, especially graded on the curve.
In 2016, brutal honesty is the order of the day. Fletcher Reede would understand.
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It helps that Ted Cruz and Jon Keyser are actually liars.
Or, Trump and Progress Now both play gutter politics?
There has never been another primary season in living memory in which trading crude personal insults daily, including on the size of gentialia and the appearance of one another's wives, and defending them by saying, as Trump often has, well he started it, the eternal cry of 4 year olds, has been the norm.
These are your party's front runners. Leaving aside whether or not Progress Now indulges in "gutter politics", Progress Now has no connection to any Dem candidate, does not speak for them. Your front runners are speaking for themselves when they say these things. That's 100% on them and on your party, 100% on the Republican voters who made them the front runners. There is no comparison to be made here. Period. As usual, you've got nothing and are left to defend the indefensible with nonsense.
My prediction: By the time of the GOP convention, Cruz and Trump will be competing to see who can belch louder and longer, or who can make armpit fart noises.
Moddy, you must be quite proud of your party and its leaders.
This is truly fucking pathetic…Republicans should be ashamed they let their party come to this.
Shame became an inconvenient emotion after they re-elected George the Younger, Duke.
I think it's fair to say that they designed their party to come to this.
The modern Republican mythos (as personified by the "establishment") has, probably since Eisenhower left office, been predicated on the ability of their politicians to portray government and those it most directly helps as being the enemies of individual prosperity. This, of course, started out as a "moderating force" on liberal expansion of the government into people's lives, but, as it must, this could only be accomplished from within the government itself. The inescapable problem, then, is that, if the government is the enemy, how can those Republicans serving in the government not be enemies, too? And, so, an ever increasing cycle of betrayal and ideological hardening has occurred as each wave in is purged in favor of those who will remain committed to the program. Ergo, we get nutcase v. nutcase as the top (R) candidates with a hard right hanger on who can portray himself as moderate only in comparison to the other two as a chaser.
In the end, Republicans have done exactly what they said they would. The problem is that their prescription was never going to have the results they claimed. Now all the true believers are left with two options: either it was all lies, or their suffering is the result of the failure of their representatives to adhere to the articles of their faith. Since the party has now long cultivated membership by those inclined to believe that apostasy is the cause of failure rather than a set of beliefs inconsistent with reality, you get one set of people looking for a world-breaking messiah and another set on supporting the one true Scotsman. Something's going to burn.
Speaking of which: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/28/hillary-clinton-honest-transparency-jill-abramson?CMP=share_btn_fb
Right on. Abramson doesn't write fluff.