Wednesday Morning Temporary Open Thread
Maybe we have something to chat about other than Chipman Flowers?
GOP media shot caller says that today is a sad day for conservtives: “McAuliffe, De Blasio and Christie: Triple feature in a Republican’s nightmare. Hug a conservative today.”
I’m not so sure. Christie is a conservative with the ability to trick the media into thinking that he is not a conservative – eg THE WORST KIND!
McAuliffe’s narrower than expected 3% point win only wounded conservatism in Virginia, so that zombie will be shambling around doing some damage (Cuni would have won if only he was MORE conservative!) , and New York is liberal, so it should have a liberal governor.
McAuliffe is yet another Clinton Corporate Clone. Lack of enthusiasm for McAuliffe, IMHO, is why the race was so close. I share that lack of enthusiasm. I could see myself dragging my carcass to the polls to keep Cuccinelli out of office, but I wouldn’t delude myself into thinking that he’d be any different than I expect him to be.
Come to think of it, sums up my feelings about an HRC run.
My standards have been so debased that I’d be thrilled to have another Clinton Corporate Clone in the White House because it would keep a George W Bush clone from picking the next Supreme Court justice.
“Christie is a conservative with the ability to trick the media into thinking that he is not a conservative ”
Well, he apparently did not just trick the media since he received
60.5% of the vote,
55% of women
48% of the Hispanics
20% of the Blacks
32% of the Democrats
31% of the Liberals
and 66% of the Independents
I’m not sure what that says about the electorate in NJ, but 32% of the Democrats and 31% of the Liberals apparently see something in Christie you don’t. Alternatively, I suppose you could explain it by saying the Democrats and the Liberals in NJ aren’t real Democrats or real Liberals, or they are unduly influenced by the media and can’t think for themselves.
I think you are onto something. I’d add that he gets more than a few, “I don’t like his politics, but I trust the guy” votes.
People vote for authenticity across party lines. In Fatty’s case it is the most RANK style of fake and blustery authenticity, but it works for him.
I’d say he is the hands down favorite to take the GOP nomination now.
Sincerity – if you can fake that you’ve got it made.
I want to know – with 47 million Americans on food stamps, and similar numbers on other safety net benefits, why do Republicans keep getting votes? you can’t even expect Democrats to protect the safety net anymore.
And it’s not like Americans suddenly became lazy. Their jobs were cut out from under them by 12 years of Republican econoimic misfule that has yet to be reversed.
I am wondering why McAuliffe’s win was such a squeaker, given his immensely greater spending, Cuccinelli’s self wounding and corruption. The messaging to me looked like lame DNC safe stuff. Hope so called strategists are assessing hard because this does not bode well IMO for 2016 if we are relying on Terry to deliver Virginia, let alone 2014.
Puck asked:
Perhaps the Republicans are getting votes from the people not on food stamps?
Or, perhaps, with Barack Obama having been President for the last 4¾ years, some people are thinking that the Democrats’ policies are the ones which haven’t been working.
There was heavy turnout in VA so it looks like McAuliffe benefited from straight pary line voting. Neither candidate apparently attracted much crossover voting, but somehow Christie did.
Christie’s bluster doesn’t seem to translate well to national issues, but you never know what irrational emotional attractions will drive voters.
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Christie has his schtick and the Rudy Giulliani factor going for him right now. What he doesn’t have is the Conservative base – which will be his Primary problem. Can he win outside of NJ? Can he win Iowa, South Carolina, etc.? Right now he’s riding high on his tough talking BS, without much scrutiny. And his popularity relies a lot on the way he smacks people (lately the GOP base) down. Can that schtick work in a Republican primary?
I haven’t read the Romney book, but supposedly there were reasons Romney didn’t pick Christie after vetting him. Not sure what those reasons were.
Here’s what I do know… No one seems to know much about Christie beyond his bluster. Right now all he’s winning is a “personality” contest.
Also, I don’t know how strong Christie’s opponent was in NJ – apparently not vry. HRC is a different matter. If it’s HRC vs. Christie, he will be up against the buzzsaw of the Clinton campaign machine. Christie doesn’t have a machine.
Christie will also be savaged by well-heeled GOP primary candidates. Remember what Newt did to Mitt? It turned out though that being a vulture capitalist was not a negative for Republicans, but it resonated among Dems.
Pandora, I saw the term “political landmine” used to describe what the Romney team turned up in their vetting. But apparently it was the information Team Crisco DIDNT share with Romney that scared them the most. Hopefully his failed presidential run will also end his political career.
“Right now all he’s winning is a “personality” contest.”
That’s what worries me. Reagan and Bush proved that voters can be idiots.
I don’t think Christie’s win in NJ translates to anything more than that. As Pandora pointed out, the far right base isn’t having any of Christie. My personal opinion is that the basis of Christie’s popularity is his willingness to smack anyone and everyone down. Honestly, I believe there is significant disillusionment with most of the institutions, such as the federal government, Congress, unions (including NEA), et al.
What I think Christie keys into are those feelings that things are broken and those institutions who are responsible for those things have failed and spend the vast majority of their time and effort pointing fingers. If someone did a study, I would not be surprised if a correlation was not found between those feelings and his popularity.
Much of Christie may be bluster and photo-op (Obama hug), but people admire someone who acts with conviction and authority seemingly without regard to correctness. As I said, I don’t think that translates very well nationally, especially if one has to get through the evangelical gauntlet.
Dave wrote:
Just like they weren’t having any of Mitt Romney, but he still won the nomination through the primary process.
Mr Romney’s advantage, and it will be Governor Christie’s advantage as well, is that he was a governor, and that meant he had actually run something before.
Mr 330 wrote:
How odd; that’s just what we say about Mr Obama.
I also agree Christie will never will make it as the national nominee. You have to be right of crazy to get that coveted position.
Romney won the primary with a ton of money. That will be Christie’s biggest obstacle.
You guys give the GOP too little credit. They will get over Christie being “not a real conservative” when they see that he only has to flip 4 states Romney lost in order to win; New Jersey, New Hampshire, Maine, Virgina and Florida.
Clinton beats Christie in New Jersey presidential polling. The races in VA and NJ both have their own peculiarities neither one mean very much.
Well, you never can tell; the early assumed candidates are primarily congressmen, and legislators don’t build up records of actually running things; only three senators and one representative have ever been elected President.
Legislators almost never have more than one signature piece of legislation with their names attached, and most don’t even have one; that’s a bit of rough sledding for someone attempting to tout his record. That gives governors a real advantage; they get to say “I balanced a budget” and “I reduced crime” and “I got this done.” It’s a bit simplistic, but the executive always gets the credit . . . or the blame.
And no, I’m not jumping on the Christie bandwagon at this point.
Mr 330 wrote:
And this is why we don’t trust liberal economics: y’all can’t even count! New Jersey, New Hampshire, Maine, Virgina and Florida total five states! 🙂
As far as Virginia goes, Cuccinelli wasn’t conservative enough. If the GOP had only run a “real” conservative the outcome would have been different. 🙂
Half of being President is foreign policy, and nobody knows how important that might be in 2016. What’s Christie got?
Yep, GOP Governors have the advantage… Rick Perry did oh so well, and Romney ran away from his record.
Puck wrote:
Foreign policy has only rarely been important electorally, and in most of the cases where it has been, it has been a negative for an incumbent or outgoing President’s party. President Carter was presiding over a horrible economy, and he’d probably have lost anyway, but the Iranian hostage crisis and his impotent reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan really did him in. Vice President Humphrey lost in 1968, primarily due to the Vietnam War. President Nixon won re-election, in significant part because he had the Vietnam War almost over by the 1972 election.
On the other hand, the elder President Bush had a 90% job approval rating following the first Persian Gulf War, and he still lost to Bill Clinton. Two Democratic Presidents, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, capitalized on foreign policy by noting that they’d kept us out of war . . . and then war came after they had been re-elected. (We were attacked in 1941, which wasn’t President Roosevelt’s fault, but it was President Wilson’s choice to enter World War I.)
Most non-incumbent candidates have no foreign policy record at all (the elder George Bush was a notable exception), but Hillary Clinton, if she runs — and I’ve said before that I don’t believe she will — does have a foreign policy record, but it isn’t a good one. It was mostly very bland, but punctuated at the end by the Benghazi killings, and that isn’t a positive for her.
The Beirut embassy bombing didn’t seem to hurt Reagan’s electoral chances, nor did his impotent resonse. Maybe because his opponents didn’t form a frothing-at-the-mouth blame squad.
We are all in this together. Or, rather, when a Republican is in the White House we are all in this together.
I didn’t follow the Virginia race too closely, but from what I was reading last night, frustrations related to the rollout of the ACA may have contributed to the narrowness of McAuliffe’s victory. Cuccinelli tapped into the website problems and the “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan” fiasco to get some folks to the polls.
Yeah. Good thing Coochy was a total nut who couldn’t keep his insanity on the down low.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/02/opinion/delaware-den-of-thieves.html
“It’s no surprise that officials in Dover and Wilmington want to protect their state’s status as a corporate registry, but if that means facilitating criminal activity, their stance is a form of willful blindness. America must require uniform corporate-registration practices if it is to persuade other nations to cooperate in the fight against financial crimes. “
You know what’s weird about the Virginia race when you (meaning me) think(s) about it? Cuccinelli is the only R that the D’s could have beaten, and McAuliffe was pretty much the only D who could have come close to losing to him.
Man, the voters had a sucky choice.
Idealist: We talked about this yesterday on Al’s show. This is the dirty (not-so) secret that every Delawarean should know about.
Of course, when a quarter of your revenue is generated by this arguably-criminal enterprise, virtually all connected officials will strive to protect it.
It’s a reason why we are provided bland stewards of this corruption (Carney, Carper) and their handlers (Ed Freel, Jeff Bullock) to maintain the status quo.
BREAKING NEWS:
R NJ Congressman (and former o-lineman) Jon Runyan will not run for reelection:
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/capitolinq/Runyan-will-not-run-again.html
Looking more and more like a D pickup.
El S wrote:
What, I wonder, would happen to the candidates who ran on a platform of “normalizing” Delaware’s incorporation laws, along with the imposition of a 6% sales tax to replace the revenues which would be lost?
OK, no, I don’t really wonder about that at all. We all know what the result would be.
I think it would be a mistake to underestimate Christies’ potential on the national level. In New Jersey he demonstrated that he can get things done by building a powerful coalition among disparate groups, as Dave noted above. On the national level, he will have a record to run on, a record that none of his TEA Party opponents from Congress have. Moreover, Republicans in recent years tend to nominate less extreme candidates, a pattern in which Christie would fit. Finally, I suspect that the TEA Party has peaked. Note the outcome of the Alabama special primary election in which the TEA Party candidate lost, as a possible indicator. Note also that Cruz is retreating, Rand Paul has his plagiarism albatross, and Rubio was willing to buck them with his position on immigration. I see Christie’s star rising nationally as a coalition candidate who could be nominated to run in 2016. After all is said and done, Republicans like to win, therefore could well be Machiavellian enough to go with Christie, who no doubt is a conservative.
No politician is going to run on the platform of tagging state residents with an extra $600 million or so in taxes.
“imposition of a 6% sales tax to replace the revenues which would be lost?”
Of course the imposition of a sales tax would have no effect on business and employment. Shoppers would continue to travel to Delaware to shop because it so much better than shopping around the corner in their home state.
Yep, that’s the Hobson’s Choice we face. Which also means no choice.
@Perry I agree 100%. Also, add in that he will get ABC’s (anybody but Clinton) voters throughout the primary process because it has dawned (will have dawned) on the party regulars that the teabags are non-starters.
FYI – 286 out of 2.2 million votes separate the candidates in this race. . . . after 40,000 voters were purged from the rolls.
Virginia Attorney General
Mark Herring and Mark Obenshain, both state senators, are competing in what is expected to be the closest of Virginia’s three statewide races.
Mark Obenshain 1,099,422 50.0%
Mark Herring 1,099,136 50.0%
Debby Wasserman Schultz said the President did not mis lead Americans regarding the affordable care act.
Boy, I am glad we got that settled, I thought the President lied to us. I am now glad to know that he did not, Thanks Debby for that clarification.
Yes. Obamacare. I, for one, am glad that the wingnut’s takeaway from the VA race is that Obamacare was the one thing that prevented Terry McAuliffe from winning.
That the teabags have convinced themselves that Coochy’s winning anti-women stance is the way forward is comforting.
MacAuliffe sucks, no other explanation needed for why the race was close. A lot of nose holding in Virginia last night. If VA GOP had nominated Bolling, he would have won. N
I listened to the speeches last night:
Cuccinelli — Absolutely terrible. Trite, stupid, blame spreading, crappy slogans, meaningless threats and drivel,… How can anyone like this guy?
MacAuliffe — Terrible too. Exceedingly boring. Who wrote that stuff? Is this what the good people of VA will be looking forward to?
Buono – Simply terrible. Way to go blaming your fellow Democrats. Did she take a page from the Tea Party manual?
Christie — Great speech. Interesting, energetic, fun, and impolitic at times. It’s no wonder he’s done so well. It was the only one worth listening to.
The Christie speech was a presidential campaign speech, not really directed to the people of New Jersey. It was energetic. It seems like it will be his stump speech.
Virginia Governor election. Lousy republican candidate. Eastern Left leaning state. Massively out spent by competition. Votes taken away by third party candidate. Yet the Republican almost pulls out a victory because of Obama Care.
Rut-roh.
On a related note, when the white house held an emergency meeting today with all the democrat senators coming up for election, One polling source said 9 out of 10 of the senators told the president they had to change their shorts several times last night and today.
Rusty, Where do you come up with this crap. By the you are tarnishing honest salespeople by being the stereotypical lying salesman.
@RD “… had to change their shorts several times last night and today.”
Uhhh. What planet are you on? It was blatantly obvious early on (by 8:30PM) that MacAuliffe would win by 2-4 points.
…or were you perhaps watching Fox News?? (aka Faux Snooze)
While I think Christie was going to win, it’s important to remember that Christie spent a LOT of money to hold a special election for Cory Booker. Remind me again why he did that? Why did Christie spend all that money on a special election held weeks before the general election?
Christie is a big spender, but so was Saint Ronny. Christie is going to demolish Rand Paul in one sitting the same way he demolishes the left side of the menu at a Dennys.
Ah… but I was referring to tax payer money for Booker’s special election. Christie did not want to run in an election with his and Booker’s name on the ballot.
Oh Yeah. It would have muddies the results and Christie wanted a big headline to take to Iowa.
Mr 330 wrote:
Not anymore; after his gastric banding, he can’t eat very much at all.
Of course, I find it . . . interesting . . . that my good friends on the left, the very diligently multiculturalist, non-discriminatory types, would make fun of someone’s weight.