Thursday Open Thread [4.2.15]

Rick Klein: “Ex-presidents aren’t created equal. Or, at least, they’re not equal by the time history gets to judge. George W. Bush fans are likely to be Jeb Bush fans, just as Bill Clinton fans overwhelmingly favor Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to the new ABC News/Washington Post poll. But Hillary has a deeper pool to draw from than W.: Bill Clinton has a 73 percent approval rate, while George W. Bush’s is at 47 percent.”

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY–Washington Post-ABC News: Bush 20, Cruz 13, Walker 12, Paul 9, Huckabee 8, Carson 7, Rubio 7, Christie 6, Perry 2, Santorum 2, Fiorina 1, Graham 1, Jindal 1, Kasich 1

CRUZMENTUM!!!!

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–Washington Post-ABC News: Clinton 54, Bush 40; Clinton 58, Cruz 37; Clinton 55, Walker 38; Clinton 55, Rubio 38

Those are 49 state numbers right there.

Jeb Bush is flip flopping, revealing the mushy moderate that he is. Bush “appeared to modify his public comments about Indiana’s ‘religious freedom’ law on Wednesday in a closed-door Silicon Valley fund-raiser, telling a small group of potential supporters that a ‘consensus-oriented’ approach would have been better at the outset.”

“Mr. Bush’s comments were strikingly different in tone and in scope from what he said on Monday night in an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. In that interview he praised Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana for doing the ‘right thing’ and said that the new law was similar to one in Florida and to a law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993.”

That is a lie. It is a vastly different law, and every time you hear a conservative say that, you need to punch them directly in the face.

First Read: “The problem for Bush is that all of this only feeds the narrative that conservatives can’t trust him on these types of issues — compared with the rest of the GOP field. It also cuts against the identity he has created for himself — as someone who prefers running a general-election campaign instead of a race to please the base. It’s a tricky place to be in, because it ultimately ends up pleasing no one.”

New York Times: “The Republican Party is in the middle of an argument with itself. State laws seen as discriminatory against gay couples have laid bare and intensified longtime divisions in the party between social conservatives opposed to gay rights and the pro-business wing of the party that sees economic peril in the fight.”

Excellent. Pass the popcorn.

MORE CRUZMENTUM!!!!

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY–Public Policy Polling: Walker 20, Bush 17, Cruz 16, Carson 10, Paul 10, Rubio 6, Huckabee 6, Christie 4, Perry 3

Why Cruzmentum? Because he is the favorite of the Talk Radio Crazies. Politico:

“Tens of millions of listeners — and potential GOP primary voters — tune in each week to the biggest right-wing radio hosts, who hold forth on the merits and demerits of the various 2016 Republican hopefuls as keenly as they spit invective about Barack Obama and the Democrats. Many of them are big fans of the Texas senator, if not outright supporters. Most are holding their cards close, refusing to hug any candidate too tightly, be it in the spirit of equanimity or out of fear of alienating some listeners.”

“But nearly all the kings and queens of the conservative airwaves express admiration for a man almost universally despised by his Senate colleagues and dismissed by the mainstream media: Cruz. And they are equally clear about who they do not like: Mushy ‘progressives’ like Jeb Bush and Chris Christie.”

Mike Huckabee called for “the imposition of term limits on U.S. Supreme Court justices, saying that the nation’s founders never intended to create lifetime, irrevocable posts,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

Said Huckabee: “Nobody should be in an unelected position for life. If the president who appoints them can only serve eight years, the person they appoint should never serve 40. That has never made sense to me; it defies that sense of public service.”

Sigh. We can argue about whether it is a good thing for Justices to serve for life. But we cannot argue about what the Founders wanted. They wanted the Justices to serve for life.

Section 1 of Article III of the Constitution of the United States, which was written by the Founders and reflects their intentions and desires by obvious fucking fact, provides that judges “shall hold their Offices during good Behavior.” That means that they shall serve for life until they fuck up and need to be impeached, or until they resign or retire voluntarily. That is contrary to what Mike Huckabee says, and therefore Mike Huckabee is either lying or he is an idiot. Probably both.