Thursday Open Thread [1.7.2016]

CALIFORNIA—Field: Clinton 46, Sanders 35, O’Malley 1
NEW HAMPSHIRE—PPP: Clinton 47, Sanders 44, O’Malley 3
NEW HAMPSHIRE—PPP: Trump 29, Rubio 15, Christie 11, Kasich 11, Cruz 10, Bush 10, Carson 4, Fiorina 4, Paul 3, Huckabee 1, Santorum 1

“You know, there is a loophole here. We should address that.” — Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2013, on the gun show loophole.

“There is no loophole… This is a distraction.” — Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), quoted by the AP today.

Rick Klein says Trump and Cruz may already be finalists: “Are two of the GOP finalist slots already chalked? That’s how it looks like the candidates are thinking about it, with Donald Trump and Ted Cruz the clear frontrunners, in Iowa and nationally, yet barely taking incoming from those farther down in the polls. While Trump questions Cruz’s eligibility for the presidency, the real fight among their rivals is … among their rivals. Jeb Bush is attacking Chris Christie, who is swinging back at Bush and also tangling with Marco Rubio, who is targeting Christie himself, and so on.”

“It suggests that the battle that matters most will not be in Iowa but in New Hampshire, where the chance remains for an establishment candidate to break out of the pack. If that’s how it happens, it means that person is probably dealing with both Trump and Cruz, and almost certainly others. But add this to the list of oddities: In this uncertain year, it appears increasingly certain that two of the last men standing have already been determined.”

Rick Tyler, a senior adviser to Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, tells Greg Sargent why they won’t attack Donald Trump even when egged on.

Said Tyler: “We recognized that Trump changed all the rules. Attacking back clearly doesn’t work with him. He’s a celebrity. It’s like attacking your favorite morning host. It would be like going out and attacking your favorite pop star. Fans would hate that.”

“The long-term calculation is two-fold: if it is correct that Trump’s support is rooted more in celebrity than in anything else, attacking him is futile and his support may prove fleeting on its own, meaning there’s little need to make a bid for it by going after him personally and directly.”

Rebecca Leber on why Obama’s executive gun control actions were limited:

Obama may have fallen short of his foes’ worst fears, but that’s because he’s staying well within his legal limits. The president’s executive authority is far more constrained when it comes to guns than in the areas that have seen more radical change (the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, has wide leeway from Congress to regulate harmful pollutants). The next Democratic president will face the same restrictions.

Adam Winkler, a professor in American constitutional law at the UCLA and author of Gunfight, told me that “the law is more clearly written” on guns than on other issues—leaving chief executives and federal agencies less discretion and room to interpret existing law.

“The president can tinker at the edges and at the margins,” Winkler says, but not much more. “Obama’s action on immigration wasn’t that complicated; they were just broad because they affected a large number of people. He has discretion on who to prosecute. With regards to the gun situation, his hands are tied.” The gun-show loophole, for instance, is written into federal law in the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1994.

“Well, I actually think he was sincere. I’ll probably go down 5 points in the polls by saying that.” — Donald Trump, quoted by Politico, on whether President Obama’s tears were genuine in announcing executive action on gun control.

On Monday night, Bill O’Reilly asked the billionaire mogul turned GOP front-runner, “If you’re elected president, and you don’t like the [Iranian nuclear] deal, are you gonna bomb their nuclear facilities?”

“Bill, I’m gonna do what’s right,” Trump said. “I want to be unpredictable.”

This response was itself fairly predictable, and O’Reilly had a follow-up prepared: “Don’t the voters have a right to know how far you’re gonna go?”

“No, they don’t,” Trump replied. “The voters want unpredictability.”

No we don’t. And no, they don’t.

“I regret it every day, but it was the right decision for my family and for me.”

— Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by NBC Connecticut, on not running for president.

E. J. Dionne, Jr. explains why “The gun lobby’s con game will come to an end..” As Dionne writes, “… Something important happened in the East Room when Obama offered a series of constrained but useful steps toward limiting the carnage on our streets, in our schools and houses of worship and movie theaters. He made clear that the era of cowering before the gun lobby and apologizing, trimming, hedging and equivocating is over…Bullies are intimidating until someone calls their bluff. By ruling out any reasonable steps toward containing the killing in our nation and by offering ever more preposterous arguments, the gun worshipers are setting themselves up for wholesale defeat. It will take time. But it will happen.”

Greg Sargent uses this chart to show us why President Obama and the Democrats are pushing gun safety so hard.