Monday Open Thread [9.28.2015]
PRESIDENT–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY—NBC News/Wall Street Journal: Trump 21, Carson 20, Fiorina 11, Rubio 11, Bush 7, Cruz 5, Kasich 6, Christie 3, Huckabee 2, Paul 3, Santorum 1, Pataki 0, Jindal 1, Graham 0
The Trump Era is over.
PRESIDENT–PRESIDENT–DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY—NBC News/Wall Street Journal: Clinton 42, Sanders 35, Biden 17, Webb 1, O’Malley 0, Chafee 0
NORTH CAROLINA–PRESIDENT–DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY—Elon University: Clinton 53, Sanders 23, Biden, Webb 2, O’Malley 0, Chafee 1, Lessig 1
NORTH CAROLINA–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY—Elon University: Trump 22, Carson 21, Fiorina 10, Bush 7, Rubio 7, Cruz 6, Huckabee 4, Paul 2, Christie 2, Kasich 2, Santorum 1, Jindal 0, Graham 0
The Trump Era is over.
LOUISIANA–GOVERNOR–JUNGLE PRIMARY–Baton Rouge Advocte/WWL-TV: Sen. David Vitter (R) 24, Jon Bel Edwards (D) 24, Scott Angelle (R) 15, Jay Dardenne (R) 14.
Jeb Bush “is entering a critical phase of his Republican presidential campaign, with top donors warning that the former Florida governor needs to demonstrate growth in the polls over the next month or face serious defections among supporters,” the Washington Post reports.
“The warnings, expressed by numerous senior GOP fundraisers in recent days, come as Bush and an allied super PAC are in the early stages of an aggressive television ad campaign that they believe will help erase doubts about his viability. But Bush continues to battle against a steady decline in the polls, sinking to fifth place at just 7 percent in a national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday and similarly languishing in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire.”
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), “who is quietly locking down support to be the next House speaker, is privately assuring Republicans he’ll take a tougher stand against the White House — and also the Senate GOP leadership,” CNN reports.
“He’s hearing from members angry that the GOP Congress has not advanced the conservative cause more forcefully, and he’s responding with a clear message: He is willing to take a more confrontational stand with the White House and the Senate to achieve the results the party has sought to enact.”
Wall Street Journal: “The most militant House Republicans are expected to be emboldened by Mr. Boehner’s departure, and even less likely to agree to a compromise with Democrats in setting spending levels for the rest of fiscal year 2016.”
Good. Good. Let your hate flow through you.
A new Quinnipiac poll finds 69% of Americans oppose shutting down the government over funding for Planned Parenthood. Just 23% support closing the government over the dispute. Even among Republicans, 56% oppose a shutdown due to Planned Parenthood.
“If Ted Cruz is ever going to break through in the Republican presidential primary, the time is now,” Politico reports.
“Cruz’s supporters see the showdown in Congress over Planned Parenthood and the budget — which kicks into high gear this week and could stretch into the winter, on the cusp of voting in early states — as a critical opening for the first-term lawmaker. With the spotlight focused on Congress, they say, it will allow Cruz to make a sustained case to tea party and evangelical voters that he’s the one candidate doing battle in the trenches for their causes, just as many of them are picking a horse in the race. The goal, he and allies stop just short of saying, is to expose his chief competitors for the outsider mantle as pretenders by comparison.”
Sorry, conservatives. John Boehner’s scalp won’t cure what ails you.
There are two bigger problems. First, that contingent doesn’t have the votes to elect someone else. It didn’t at the outset of the 113th Congress, when Boehner faced unusual but still limited opposition in his reelection bid as speaker. It didn’t at the beginning of this Congress either, when 25 members voted against him — just 10 percent of the caucus. More recently, about 30-35 members have joined in the effort to oust Boehner — enough to hold up the budget process, but not to be the driving force in the election of a speaker.
There still almost certainly aren’t enough votes to pick an outsider to replace Boehner, meaning that the problem might fade a bit, but it’s unlikely to go away. As our Chris Cillizza noted, a party that wants to elect Donald Trump isn’t going to be thrilled at electing Kevin McCarthy.
And second: The problem was never really Boehner. As New York’s Jonathan Chait points out and that first Fox poll result shows, the frustration is that House Republicans can’t beat Obama. The conservative caucus wants to defund Obamacare, for example, which has nothing to do with Boehner or McConnell’s ability to move their base. The compromises on Obamacare have been between reality and fantasy.
What will happen next is quite interesting. First, the House needs to elect a new Speaker. This will be the first time in over a quarter century that the House will choose a new chief mid-Congress. Many believe House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is the favorite to succeed to the speakership. However, the wrangling for Congress’ top job may not be the biggest story—or even the biggest fight.
The House majority leadership is sizable: beneath the Speaker serves the Majority Leader; Majority Whip; Republican Conference Chair, Vice-Chair, and Secretary; and Policy Committee Chair. This excludes the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Deputy Whips, committee chairs, and a host of others in formal and informal roles that help lead the GOP’s 247 members.
An ideal, orderly next step would be for everyone to move up one rung in the leadership ladder, and select a new member to the most junior member of leadership. The ideal and the real, however, rarely line up. Leadership fights are bruising and territorial. Those challenges are exacerbated by a party that is fractured and divisive. Conservative members of the House GOP who helped oust Boehner will battle mainstream Republicans and (especially) Boehner loyalists. The result: tremendous challenges in restructuring the leadership in a smooth fashion.
Did you guys see Donald Trump’s interview on 60 Minutes. I didn’t. But Margaret Hartmann did:
He said that under his tax plan, which he’s expected to release on Monday, he’ll raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans while the poorest will pay nothing in income tax.
That’s good. But the devil is in the details and we allegedly will see those today.
He’ll repeal Obamacare and replace it with a plan that will “cover everybody” and “the government’s gonna pay for it,” which as Forbes notes, sounds a lot like Obamacare.
Actually, it sounds like Single Payer, not Obamacare.
And he said the U.S. should let ISIS defeat Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s forces, then swoop in and kill the terrorists once they control the entire nation.
That’s horrific.
So do Trump supporters know or care that he intends to walk away from NAFTA and make a preemptive strike on North Korea?
Walking away from NAFTA. Impossible, but probably good in long term.
Preemptively starting a war with North Korea? So long as you’re good with losing Toyko, Seoul, Seattle and San Francisco to nuclear hell fire, sure.
Dana Milbank gets the final word on His Orangeness.
That the Catholic speaker made his announcement just after his audience with the pope is no accident. Though Boehner said Francis didn’t lead him to his decision (he had planned to leave at year-end anyway, he said), the speaker made the association himself in a news conference Friday afternoon. …
The connection of the two events is fitting on another level. Francis’s speech to Congress, though touching on climate change, immigration, poverty and war, was really about the obligation of leaders to work together for the common good and to resist polarization. “A good political leader is one who, with the interests of all in mind, seizes the moment in a spirit of openness and pragmatism,” the pontiff said.
This is the kind of leader Boehner, who I’ve followed since I first covered Congress 20 years ago, aspired to be. This is the kind of leader Boehner was on a good day. But for most of his speakership, he could not be that leader, because his caucus constantly tugged him toward extremism and implacability. He kept his title, but he lost any ability to lead. Finally, he had enough.
Trump’s tax plan will doom him more than anything else. It had a few nuggets of common sense. The media much prefer Jeb!’s failed rerun tax plan.
(Hey, I’m tired of “Jeb!” I think I will call him Rerun from now on.)
So here’s an interesting idea to ponder re the historical teachings of Jesus vis-à-vis current American political Christianity.
I caught a little TV news item about the Pontiff’s visit to a school in Harlem, NYC last Friday. A couple kids brought Padre Bergoglio over to a big touch-screen in the classroom to demostrate something or other. His Holiness had a hard time grasping the concept of tap-&-drag.
Afterwards there’s an interview with one of the boys, aged like 13. He says the Pope doesn’t really know about computers, but he knows how to be your friend.
Let that absorb into your head.
Hmmm… The end of the Trump Bump draws nigh as Carson The Ill Considered comes within a single point. Jindal almost gone but half a dozen others still in denial. The billionaires try to find a reason to shower El Jeberino with millions and fail. Meantime insanity and strife will reign in the house, even more so than usual, as several dozen nutters now proclaim eternal victory and prepare to assume the throne. Gonna be good. Idiotic, but good.
Also, I noticed a Kowalko remark shut down the comment section of another post. That’s like two this month. Any editorial comment on that situation? Comments are so rarely closed.
Comments close automatically some period after the post goes live. I’m not sure about the duration.
Trump’s tax plan is of course as cuckoo as all Republican tax plans, but his offers the tantalizing possibility of finally focusing the Republican base’s populist anger on Wall Street where it belonged all along. The other Repub candidates ought to think twice before dismissing it.
Thanks, Jason…
Dorian,
Which Posts are you talking about that Kowalko shut down? Cassandra’s guest post featuring Alberta Crowley in “crossroads tells its own story” is simply B.S that Kowalko finally responded to in a scathing and non-productive fashion.
I posted afterwards with some significant facts for the record which I will be documenting for Matt Denn in short order.
As far as Crossroads is concerned, only Barbieri, Landgraf and therefore probably Markell, are more dangerous in that they condone the policies that allow these Jackals to prey on the weakest in our community.
Except for some of ElSom’s posts which gave me insight into the damage-control activities of our legislature prior to their July 4th 2014 abolishing of the agency, the lack of oversight by Landgraf and Markell of the OCME resulting in 3+ years of narcotics evidence thefts going on right under the nose of the veteran state employee who they shielded from investigation the entire time, I have not followed DE politics until recently.
I have been pursuing federal charges against Landgraf and possibly Markell for their endangering of public health in this ongoing instance, but because of family circumstances, I have been forced to proceed slowly. Unfortunately I doubt that their crimes relevant to this breeching of public trust will come to light in time for them to be shamed as they should be, while in public office.
But in what has thankfully become a public spectacle whereby they appointed pseudo-substance-and-addiction specialist Barbieri to a position where he would be responsible for “shaping policy” for the mentally ill and substance addicted in this state, their plan which given Barbieri’s record can be nothing but a thinly-veiled eugenics scheme of final consequences, will soon be confirmed as such by the federal government. (and by mortality data readily available from the CDC but which is suppressed in the case of adolescent and young adults due to the small population of our state,)
In this instance and given facts disclosed by the media and by families who have had dealings with Barbieri’s Crossroads like myself, I would think there is strong evidence of Markell and Landgraf’s intent to “endanger the welfare of minors” specifically minors of disadvantaged populations, who as it turns out, would be less likely to vote even if they survive their impoverished heroin and gun-littered existence.
As I have said on Delonline and on DL posts recently, I plan to inform Matt Denn of my experiences at Crossroads and that an investigation should be made into DHSS for intentional endangerment of minors through their appointment of Barbieri and their endorsement of “lack of necessary continuum of care” for adolescent substance-addiction treatment in the state of Delaware.
Gotta lover the comic, DD. What about Hillary’s lies?? They all Lie!
Well, I generally find that routine bald-faced lying falls more in the GOP domain. I’m loving Hillary now.
And whike Carney may be a corporate lacky, he’s unlikely to make the mistakes that this Governor and his administration have made, thank God. Just a bunch of simple, incompetent fools.
>And whike Carney may be a corporate lacky, he’s unlikely to make the mistakes that this Governor and his administration have made, thank God.
Why on earth would you believe that?
Carney is a Carper/Minner lackey. He’d be WORSE than Corporate Jack.
The current administration applies for federal monies without regard to their correct application and in so doing, wastes much of what they take in. Corporate lackies are bad enough, but this current administration are a bunch of crooks to boot.
With Carney’s experience, I think he will at least be more likely to follow the “instructions” attached to federal monies thereby improving much of the effectiveness thereof.