Wednesday Open Thread [5.6.15]

Michael Brendan Dougherty at The Week who analyzes the GOP’s multitude of candidates:

A brain surgeon with no particular feel for politics. A business executive who lost the only election she ever entered. And the most famous graduate of Ouachita Bible College, who made a stop in the Arkansas’ governor’s house before becoming a talk-show host. Just throw Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, and Mike Huckabee on the pile.

It’s already a big pile: Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio are official. Jeb Bush is officially unofficial, just as Rick Santorum, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, and George Pataki are. Lindsey Graham and John Kasich are unofficially unofficial. But they are thinking about it! A few of these would-be candidates are sure to find the likelihood of embarrassment too great, and will stop before they officially start. But I’m betting that the first debates will include 10 or more candidates. […]

There is broad agreement among elite Republicans that the sheer number of serious and unserious candidates may hurt the party. It crams the debate stage, elicits shallow questions, and reduces the nationally televised answers to the tiniest sound-bites or hand-raises. It’s bad for the party, and the country. It’s also a can’t-lose deal for any would-be candidate willing to endure flights to Des Moines and house parties in Nashua.

“The fact is that the Republican Party has long since become a bizarre only-in-America hybrid of fat cats and rednecks.” – Damon Linker.

Jay Bookman at The Atlanta Journal Constitution:

When Pamela Geller** and her allies organized an “art show” in Texas around the concept of anti-Mohammed cartoons, offering a $10,000 prize, they were hoping to provoke a reaction. They got it. […] But let’s be honest. The nut cases at either end of the spectrum are each other’s best allies, prodding and provoking each other in hopes of creating a maelstrom that sucks everybody else into their war. Because then they win. The more anger, fear and other thought-throttling emotions they can stir, the more recruits they will find for their own cause. And if it also generates recruits for the other side, that’s fine too. Because that too moves us closer to the religious war that they itch to foment.

Matt Lewis: “The first is that he spent the last several years as a Fox News host. Now, let’s be honest: It’s unlikely that many people reading this have ever watched Huckabee’s Saturday night show—except to see if he was going to announce for president… But millions of Americans did watch his show—and guess what? Many of these same Americans will vote in Republican primaries. I think we probably underestimate the impact of hosting a weekly show on Fox News.”

“Lastly, though, I think there is a huge underserved constituency in the GOP—and that constituency is what might best be termed populist conservatives. These folks tend to be white and working-class and who feel they’ve been left behind in America. They are culturally conservative—but they also want to keep government out of their Medicare.”

Sarah Palin says President Obama is flirting with the Devil. These dipshit Republicans need to get their stories straight. Is he the actual direct AntiChrist? The Devil himself? Or is he just flirting with the Devil? Which is it?

I thought Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would have some difficulty in the DEMOCRATIC Primary given that he is not a Democrat, no matter the fact that he has “long […] been close to the Democratic Party[,] [winning] the endorsements of top national Democrats in some of his elections[,] [and caucusing] with the Democrats in the Senate.” WMUR is now reporting that state law requires candidates in a party primary actually be party registrants.

Become a Democrat, Bernie. You know you want to.

So how does the public feel about unions? The latest Pew Research Center has some answers: 45% say the decline in union membership has been mostly a bad thing, while 43% see it as mostly a good thing…However, the effects of the decline in union membership on working people is seen in more negative terms: 52% say the reduction in union representation has been mostly bad for working people, compared with fewer (40%) who say it has been mostly good. The balance of opinion on this question is about the same as it was in a 1994 NBC/Wall Street Journal survey that asked about the previous 20 years…48% hold a favorable view of unions, while somewhat fewer (39%) say they have an unfavorable view. Opinions of unions have recovered from lows reached in 2010 and 2011.”

Des Moines Register: “The GOP caucuses have never seen more than nine contestants; that high-water mark was in 1996. The field is usually six to eight. The lowest winning percentage was Rick Santorum’s 24.6 percent in 2012, when there were essentially six competitors. The winning percentage could be less than 20 percent in 2016, given the enormity of the field.”

“The GOP menu could include eight governors, including five current (New Jersey’s Chris Christie, Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, Ohio’s John Kasich, Michigan’s Rick Snyder and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker) and three former (Florida’s Jeb Bush, Arkansas’ Huckabee and Texas’ Rick Perry), five U.S. senators, including four current (South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, who is serving his third term; and three first-term senators, Texas’ Ted Cruz, Kentucky’s Rand Paul and Florida’s Marco Rubio) and one former, Santorum of Pennsylvania, plus three non-politicians (Carson, Fiorina and real estate entrepreneur Donald Trump). That’s a lineup of 16. There could easily be more…”