Sunday Open Thread [8.23.15]

A day after former President Jimmy Carter said his cancer had spread, Sen. Ted Cruz lit into him, MSNBC reports. In June, Cruz attacked and joked about Joe Biden after the death of Biden’s son, Beau. Once is coincidence. Twice is a pattern. It should be clear that Ted Cruz is just an asshole.

[T]wo yahoos from Southie in my hometown of Boston severely beat up a Hispanic homeless guy earlier this week. While being arrested, one of the brothers reportedly told police that “Donald Trump was right, all of these illegals need to be deported.” When reporters confronted Trump, he hadn’t yet heard about the incident. At first, he said, “That would be a shame.” But right after, he went on: “I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country. They want this country to be great again. But they are very passionate. I will say that.”

This is the moment when Donald Trump officially stopped being funny.

I wrote yesterday about the prospect of carrying out the Donald’s Final Solution for immigration would involve both martial law, military in the streets of all neighborhoods, and armed militias doing their own rounding up. And what happened in Boston is just the first taste of it. And the Donald’s first reaction was to defend them and to be proud of their passion on his behalf.

Donald Trump is a fascist. He is evil. Not “funny-hahaha-oh-he’s-just-a-bombastic-buffoon” evil. No, he is Hitler-level. And he has proven what I have said for years, that within the base of the Republican are brownshirts just waiting to break out. Read the whole Rolling Stone article.

Norm Ornstein used to be considered the canary in the coalmine of Washington conventional wisdom. So his latest on the conservative freakout may be worth reading:

Almost all the commentary from the political-pundit class has insisted that history will repeat itself. That the Trump phenomenon is just like the Herman Cain phenomenon four years ago, or many others before it; that early enthusiasm for a candidate, like the early surge of support for Rudy Giuliani in 2008, is no predictor of long-term success; and that the usual winnowing-out process for candidates will be repeated this time, if on a slightly different timetable, given 17 GOP candidates. […]

[I]s anything really different this time? I think so. First, because of the amplification of rage against the machine by social media, and the fact that Barack Obama has grown stronger and more assertive in his second term while Republican congressional leaders have become more impotent. The unhappiness with the establishment and the desire to stiff them is much stronger. Second, the views of rank-and-file Republicans on defining issues like immigration have become more consistently extreme—a majority now agree with virtually every element of Trump’s program, including expelling all illegal immigrants.

Third, unlike in 2012, when Mitt Romney was the clear frontrunner and the only serious establishment presidential candidate, and all the pretenders were focused on destroying each other to emerge as his sole rival, this time there are multiple establishment candidates with no frontrunner, including Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, and Chris Christie. And each has independent financing, with enough backing from wealthy patrons to stay in the race for a long time, splitting the establishment-oriented vote. The financing, of course, raises point four: We are in a brave new world of campaign finance, where no one candidate can swamp the others by dominating the money race. When establishment nemesis Ted Cruz announced his campaign, he had $38 million in “independent” funds within a week, $36 million of it from four donors. There is likely more where that came from. Some candidates may not find any sugar daddies, or may find that their billionaires are fickle at the first sign of weakness. But far more candidates than usual will have the financial wherewithal to stick around—and the more candidates stick around, the less likely that any single one will pull into a commanding lead or sweep a series of primaries, and thus the more reason to stick around.

Fifth, the desire for an insurgent, non-establishment figure is deeper and broader than in the past. Consider that in the first major poll taken after the GOP debate, three insurgents topped the list, totaling 47 percent, with Donald Trump leading the way, followed by Ted Cruz and Ben Carson. And, as Trump and the insurgents have shown depth and breadth of support, desperate wannabes like Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal have become ever more shrill to try to compete.

Sixth, Donald Trump, a far more savvy candidate than, say, Herman Cain, has benefited from the anger in the conservative and Republican base electorate by running a pugnacious, in-your-face, I-am not-anything-like-these-other-clowns race, with his signature position being his extreme, nativist stance on immigration. His adherents have cared little about his positions on other issues; after all, Romney, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, et al. promised them everything and produced nothing. So Ann Coulter, a Trump cheerleader, commented that she would be fine with Trump “perform[ing] abortions in the White House,” given his immigration stance, while other supporters have ignored any dissonance between Trump’s views and their own. Trump has also been the beneficiary of an almost-worshipful press thrilled with his perpetual-motion quote machine, which covers every press conference or town hall, often live on television, and rarely challenges his comments, feasting on every outrageous statement or attack against another candidate or critic. And the blanket press coverage has meant that Trump has not had to spend a dime of his fortune on political ads.

From here on out, the conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump is the frontrunner in the GOP primary and he can win it. If Republicans don’t want to lose their party forever, they better do something, and fast. Stop being cowards and take him out.

Another good but long read on the GOP Clown Car Race is from Matt Taibbi, also in the Rolling Stone.

David Atkins doesn’t think Vice President Biden has anything to lose by running:

But from another perspective, it’s not as if Biden has much to lose by running, either. Having served two terms as Vice President after a career in the Senate, taking up a cabinet position like John Kerry has done might be in the cards for him, but Biden seems too simultaneously ambitious and affable for that. He has also seen his share of family grief and tragedy–more than most have in a lifetime. Retirement probably doesn’t seem like an attractive option. Most importantly, there are reports that his son Beau Biden reportedly wanted his father to run for President again, and attempting to fulfill his son’s wish would have to be an impulse too strong to deny absent a very good reason.

And that good reason doesn’t seem to exist. A Biden run wouldn’t necessarily hurt the Democratic Party’s fortunes. If the Clinton campaign is strong enough to withstand the challenge then Biden will have given it his all without regrets; if it isn’t strong enough, then that will be all the proof the Biden camp will have needed that Clinton wasn’t the best general election candidate. The biggest reason for Biden not to run is that the Clinton team might hold it against him afterward should she win office. But then again, so what? Would Joe Biden rather run his own foundation, or serve as a potential Clinton cabinet member in exchange for quashing his dreams? I can’t imagine avoiding punishment from camp Clinton is worth the price of a lifetime of regrets.

President Obama “may have finally shed his summer curse — just in time for a daunting fall,” the AP reports.

“After a string of sunny seasons gripped by controversy, crises and plummeting popularity, the summer of 2015 has been among the most productive stretches of Obama’s presidency. Late June victories in the Supreme Court on health care and gay marriage, and a win for his trade agenda on Capitol Hill, were followed by the landmark Iran nuclear deal in July and the raising of the U.S. flag over a new embassy in Cuba in August.”

The summer is not over yet, AP.