New York’s senior senator, Chuck Schumer, has cast his lot with Republican presidential candidates, other hardliners and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in declaring his opposition to the nuclear agreement that President Obama and five other world leaders negotiated with Iran. Given Mr. Schumer’s wrong-headed and irresponsible decision, Democrats may want to reconsider whether he is the best candidate to be their next leader in the Senate, a job he desperately wants.
May want to reconsider? Like with Senator Coons, Schumer should now be a backbencher, stripped of all committee assignments and leadership positions. The leadership election in January 2017 should not even have Chuck on the ballot.
I love this gif, courtesy of @darth:
New York Times: “Republican Party leaders, whose presidential nominees have not won a majority of female voters since 1988, are setting their sights on making electoral gains among women in the 2016 presidential race and trying to close the gender gap in swing states like Florida and Colorado. But the remarks and tone about women at Thursday’s debate — and the sight of 10 male candidates owning the stage — may have only damaged the party’s standing among female voters in the 2016 general election, according to pollsters and some Republican leaders.”
“Democrats were gleeful at the tone of the debate, already imagining future campaign advertisements featuring debate cutaways with Mr. Rubio saying that future Americans will ‘call us barbarians for murdering millions of babies.’”
And that’s just with policy positions with Rubio and Walker and Huckabee. With Mr. Trump, an open hostile display of the GOP’s guttural misogyny is on full display. Donald Trump took his attacks on Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly “to the next level on Friday night, apparently insinuating that the moderator had been menstruating when she questioned him during Thursday’s first Republican debate,” Politico reports.
Said Trump: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her — wherever.”
“Unlike undocumented immigrants, John McCain or Rosie O’Donnell, the Fox News anchor enjoys a huge following among the network’s viewers, who happen to make up the core of the Republican primary electorate. So picking a fight with Kelly — as Trump did when he chided her during a tough debate question about insults he’s lobbed at women, dissed her in the spin room, and tweeted his complaints about her — carries risks that Trump’s other feuds do not.”
Now, this would be an opportunity for the GOP to get support from women by defending Kelly and attacking Trump. But they are fearful of the voters who back Trump.
The Washington Post notes that “in the most wide-open Republican presidential field in memory, most of the contenders continued a rush to the right this week in the hope of capturing the attention of the GOP base. The strategy is clearly aimed at primary contests in states such as Iowa and South Carolina, which are dominated by large blocs of evangelicals and other conservative voters.”
“But it could also cause the eventual nominee problems in a general election with a more moderate electorate. On social issues ranging from abortion to same-sex marriage, much of the Republican field has now taken positions that are at odds with mainstream American opinion.”
A new Gravis Marketing poll finds more Republicans thought Ben Carson did the best at the first GOP debate this week with 22% saying he won, followed by Donald Trump at 19%, Marco Rubio at 13%, Jeb Bush at 10%, Mike Huckabee at 9%, John Kasich at 8%, Ted Cruz at 7%, Scott Walker at 7%, Rand Paul at 3% and Chris Christie at 2%.
Wow. The most electable man of the group, Kasich, finishes behind the guy that wants to send federal troops around the country to stop constitutional medical procedures.