Tuesday Open Thread [10.27.15]

NATIONAL—CBS/NY Times: Carson 26, Trump 22, Rubio 8, Bush 7, Fiorina 7, Cruz 4, Huckabee 4, Paul 4, Kasich 4

I think this is the first time Carson has taken the lead nationally. But….

NATIONAL—Morning Consult: Trump 35, Carson 20, Bush 8, Rubio 6, Huckabee 4, Cruz 3, Fiorina 3, Christie 3, Paul 3, Jindal 2, Kasich 2, Pataki 1, Santorum 1

However conflicted the National polls are, Carson owns Iowa now.

IOWA—Monmouth: Carson 32, Trump 18, Rubio 10, Cruz 10, Bush 8, Fiorina 5, Paul 3, Jindal 2, Huckabee 2, Kasich 2, Santorum 1, Christie 1
IOWA—Loras College: Carson 31, Trump 19, Rubio 10, Bush 7, Cruz 6, Jindal 5, Fiorina 2, Paul 2, Christie 2, Huckabee 1, Kasich 1, Santorum 1

The AP-GfK poll finds Donald Trump is viewed unfavorably by 72% of Hispanics in the United States, with only 11% viewing him favorably. No shit.

“Among Trump’s rivals, Bush, who speaks fluent Spanish and married a Mexican-born woman, is viewed most favorably by Hispanics, with 26% giving the former Florida governor a positive rating. Rubio, a Florida senator and Cuban-American, comes in second, with 23% viewing him favorably. Still, both Bush and Rubio are viewed unfavorably by more than one-third of Hispanics polled.”

Ronald Brownstein:

“Vice Pres­id­ent Joe Biden’s de­cision not to enter the Demo­crat­ic pres­id­en­tial race clears the path­way for Hil­lary Clin­ton to as­semble an im­pos­ing demo­graph­ic co­ali­tion in the nom­in­a­tion con­test. It also vastly in­tens­i­fies the pres­sure on Sen. Bernie Sanders, her chief re­main­ing rival, to make in­roads with voters of col­or…the vice pres­id­ent had the po­ten­tial to di­vide two of the con­stitu­en­cies she is re­ly­ing upon: eth­nic minor­it­ies, par­tic­u­larly Afric­an-Amer­ic­ans, and blue-col­lar white voters. Biden’s choice not to run im­proves Clin­ton’s chance of con­sol­id­at­ing most of those voters–and could make the math for Sanders much more dif­fi­cult than if those two con­stitu­en­cies were frag­ment­ing in a race with three ma­jor can­did­ates…Just as Biden’s de­par­ture in­creases the pres­sure on Sanders to court non­white voters, it also height­ens the need for Clin­ton to mo­bil­ize the di­verse con­stitu­en­cies that loom as her fire­wall in what now has more clearly be­come a two-per­son race.”

First Read on the impending budget deal: “The budget deal that Republican and Democratic leaders reached late last night — to boost military and domestic spending, to keep the government open, and to raise the debt limit — appears to be a potential win for both parties. Especially when it comes to the 2016 presidential election. Think about it: Republicans get to avoid the possibility of a government shutdown and debt default, either of which would have further damaged the party’s brand heading into next year’s general election. Democrats, meanwhile, get to lock in economic certainty and avoid a drop in consumer confidence like what happened after July 2011 (the debt-ceiling debacle) and Oct. 2013 (the two-week government shutdown).”

“The devil is still in the details, of course, but the deal seems to help BOTH parties as it relates to 2016. And guess what: The budget deal and debt-limit hike last until 2017, which means that the party that wins next year will have the upper hand in the next round of budget fights.”

So what are those details. Here is what we know:

The Hill says the deal is surprisingly balanced in its distribution of budget dollars:

It would raise those caps by a total of $112 billion in fiscal 2016 and 2017, according to a person briefed on the agreement.

Those funds would be divided equally between defense and nondefense spending, charting a compromise between Republican defense hawks pushing for more Pentagon spending and Democrats who wanted more spending on domestic programs as well.

Vox:

1. The White House and Congress have reportedly struck a deal to raise the debt ceiling and fund the government through March 2017 — making it the last piece of budget policy in Barack Obama’s presidency.
2. Spending will increase by $112 billion over two years. Next year, both defense and non-defense will get $25 billion more each, while the year after each will get $15 billion.
3. Additionally, $32 billion will go to the “overseas contingency budget,” a kind of war-related slush fund that the Pentagon gets to play with.
4. One of the main expenses: the deal would slow the rollout of scheduled hikes to Medicare premiums.
5. To pay for the additional spending, the deal would extend the sequester’s cuts to Medicare, sell off some of the country’s strategic petroleum reserve (even though oil prices are near rock bottom), do more telecommunications spectrum auctions, and change the crop insurance program which provides subsidies for farmers.
6. The deal will reportedly alter the Social Security Disability Insurance program, which was due for less targeted cuts next year unless Congress acted.
7. Conservatives in the House and Senate are already criticizing the deal.

Rick Klein: “It makes for a grand exit, if not a grand bargain. The budget deal now being finalized between congressional leaders and the White House serves as a parting gift from House Speaker John Boehner to his all-but-certain successor, Paul Ryan. It buys Ryan and Republicans in Congress budget peace for the balance of the Obama administration – the period during which they are guaranteed to have a Democratic president. Barring a rebellion that could would harm Ryan even before he assumes the speakership, Boehner will be leaving Ryan with the kind of maneuvering room he knows he will need to succeed in his new role. Tea party forces will hate Boehner even more, if that’s possible.”

“But if Ryan is able to take advantage of what Boehner is handing off to him, it’s enough to prompt a reassessment of the Boehner era. He led by lightly leading at times, with a restive group of congressmen who didn’t always want a leader. But under the circumstances, between this budget deal and a permanent doc fix, he was able to get some things done that he wasn’t supposed to be able to do. It’s rarely been pretty. But this would be quite an ending for a man who always said – and meant – he came to get things done.”

Vox shows us that we used to, before the evil tyrant Ronald Reagan came to power, have lots of tax brackets and tax rates, and, as a result, income inequality was kept in relative check.

[T]he US has historically taxed the very wealthy more than the somewhat wealthy — and way more than the middle class. In the 1960s, the tax brackets on the high end started to disappear, and during Ronald Reagan’s presidency we went down to just two brackets. That meant that many middle-class citizens were in the same tax bracket as millionaires.

Click through and play the interactive chart.

Charlie Cook on the GOP Benghazi Train Wreck: “Two of the worst sins in polit­ics are to be­come ob­sessed with pla­cat­ing your party’s base and to be­come con­sumed with hat­ing your op­pon­ent. This cer­tainly isn’t the first time a party has en­gaged in one or both self-de­struct­ive activ­it­ies, and it won’t be the last. The ques­tion is wheth­er the Re­pub­lic­an Party is squan­der­ing the power­ful time-for-a-change dy­nam­ic, which should be work­ing to its ad­vant­age this year, by com­ing across as a party that is un­worthy of be­ing en­trus­ted with all three branches of our fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.”

So Marco Rubio is the new better’s choice, because everyone assumes Bush is done, Kasich and Christie have done nothing, and thus Rubio, by default, is the only Establishment Choice left. And he is young, fresh and has a good story.

I don’t know. First, my estimate of Rubio’s smarts, politico or otherwise, is not that high. Second, I feel like he could fall apart like a cheap suit at any moment. I think Ted Cruz will tear him apart in later debates.

Byron York: “The first is likability. Carson’s personal favorability ratings with Republican voters are through the roof, easily the best in the field. Whoever attacks him would by definition have a lower favorability rating than Carson, and the fear is that such an attack would just drive the attacker’s rating lower and Carson’s higher.”

“The second is fairness. Carson hasn’t gone after his fellow candidates. Indeed, part of his appeal is that he has specifically eschewed Republican-on-Republican violence… So far, at least, Carson has particularly impressed those voters who want to see Republicans attack Democrats, and not each other.”

“The third reason is race, and it is by far the most complicated. Carson is the only black candidate in the contest. Republican voters admire his rise-from-poverty life story, and Carson represents a chance for the GOP to connect with black voters in a way the party hasn’t done in generations.”

William Daley, the former White House Chief of Staff during the President’s first term, former Secretary of Something during the Clinton Administration, says that GOP Dysfunction started with the GOP infected itself with Sarah Palin:

“You can choose from a litany of insurrections, government shutdowns and other self-inflicted wounds. But this year’s carnival-like GOP presidential primary makes one event, in retrospect, stand out as a crucial turning point on the road to upheaval: the 2008 embrace of then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be a heartbeat from the presidency.”

“Once McCain put Palin on the ticket, Republican ‘grown-ups,’ who presumably knew better, had to bite their tongues. But after the election, when they were free to speak their minds, they either remained quiet or abetted the dumbing-down of the party. They stood by as Donald Trump and others noisily pushed claims that Obama was born in Kenya. And they gladly rode the tea party tiger to sweeping victories in 2010 and 2014.”

“Now that tiger is devouring the GOP establishment.”

Politico on how Ted Cruz will eventually be your GOP nominee: “From the start, Cruz and his political brain trust have divided the 2016 primary into four clear lanes: a moderate-establishment lane, in which he would not compete; a tea party lane, which he needed to dominate; an evangelical lane, where he had strong potential but little initial traction; and a libertarian lane, which began as the turf of Rand Paul.”

Said Cruz: “The players that were expected to be formidable in those lanes have not got the traction they had hoped. The most encouraging thing I would say is that I think three of the lanes are collapsing into one, which is the evangelical lane, the conservative tea party lane, and the libertarian lane are all collapsing into the conservative lane and we’re seeing those lanes unify behind our campaign.”

Ted Cruz, your 2016 Republican nominee.