Monday Open Thread [8.17.15]

Mike Huckabee would force a 10 year old rape victim to have her baby, because he is a sick bastard. The Huffington Post:/a>

Said Huckabee: “Let nobody be misled, a 10-year-old girl being raped is horrible, but does it solve a problem by taking the life of an innocent child? When I think about one horror, I also think about the possibilities that exist and I just don’t want to think that somehow we discounted a human life … Let’s not compound the tragedy by taking yet another life.”

New York Times: “Publicly, Mr. Obama betrays little urgency about his future. Privately, he is preparing for his postpresidency with the same fierce discipline and fund-raising ambition that characterized the 2008 campaign that got him to the White House.”

“The long-running dinner this past February is part of a methodical effort taking place inside and outside the White House as the president, first lady and a cadre of top aides map out a postpresidential infrastructure and endowment they estimate could cost as much as $1 billion. The president’s aides did not ask any of the guests for library contributions after the dinner, but a number of those at the table could be donors in the future.”

I’ve been saying that Trump cannot possibly win because, on policy, he is not offering the red meat, and when he does, or has in the past, aside from immigration, he does not adhere to the conservative purity test. Melina Henneberger says that may not matter right now. She notes that “very little of what the conservatives in the [Iowa] hall were going wild over could be characterized as conservative, and most of it wasn’t political at all: The 54-minute address included zero mentions of taxes, the deficit, profligate spending, abortion, or any social issue, unless you count his inscrutable promise to ‘help on women’s health issues more than anybody, including on the Democratic side, you watch.’”

“And he also says not only that we should never have gone into Iraq, but that we were better off with Saddam Hussein in charge there… No, this is not an unheard-of view, but it is one that has generally been heard only from Democrats. Yet when the Republican front-runner says these things now—that we have nothing whatsoever to show for all the blood spilled there—many heads nod.”

Rick Klein: “A new Fox News poll – the first major post-debate poll – shows Trump comfortably out front in the GOP race for president, securing a quarter of votes in the primary. The next two candidates nearly match him if you combine their numbers: Ben Carson with 12 percent, and Ted Cruz with 10. You want to know why Trump’s message is resonating? That’s nearly half the primary electorate split between those three men, backing two candidates who’ve never run for office, and a third who’s defined his time in the Senate by attempts to buck the institution and its leaders.”

“Jeb Bush is in danger of becoming a second-tier candidate, if he stays in the single digits for long before his super PAC starts unloading. Scott Walker and Mike Huckabee are right behind them, following by Carly Fiorina (another political outsider), a surging John Kasich, and Marco Rubio. Chris Christie and Rand Paul may have to continue their debate fight off stage in the hopes of becoming the last candidate to make the Top 10 at next month’s debate. August is far from February – but a campaign is finding a rhythm that Trump is banging out just about by himself at the moment.”

Jeb Bush and Scott Walker are second tier candidates. John Kasich is not surging. Neither is Carly Fiorina. If they were, they would be in the double digits with Carson and Cruz.

Here is that Fox News poll we were talking about:

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY—Fox News: Trump 25, Carson 12, Cruz 10, Bush 9, Huckabee 6, Walker 6, Fiorina 5, Kasich 4, Rubio 4, Christie 3, Paul 3

Molly Ball, in the same vein of Henneberger’s post above, asks “What on earth do Republican voters want?”

“The candidates, at this stage, are as clueless as the pundits, and the pundits have no idea. They certainly never foresaw Donald Trump, this election season’s flesh-colored gap in the space-time continuum. Trump has inspired horrified bouts of introspection within the GOP, as shocked party stalwarts try to figure out where the tycoon’s momentum is coming from—and how it can be stopped.”

I think they just want to scream.