Delaware Liberal

For Republicans who have said, "It isn't a clown car, these are serious candidates." When Donald Trump emerges from the door, it is a clown car. Case closed. The good news...? Nobody picked him, so for our purposes, he doesn't exists. Oh yeah... also Jeb! announced yesterday. He actually has a shot at the nomination as the GOP typically goes through a lot of hyperventilating and spastic gyrations then picks with the guy the big money tells them to pick. (See: Romney, McCain, & Dole)

This, from The National Review in 2014, is fairly amusing given how things played out:

Sam Brownback might not be a household name yet, but Grover Norquist says that’s going to change in 2015. The Kansas governor, who ran a short presidential bid in 2008 and served in the Senate for a decade and a half, has a big fan in the Americans for Tax Reform head. Norquist tells National Review Online that Brownback is strategically positioned for a 2016 presidential bid, and that he’ll be a competitive candidate.

Philip Klein: “When Republicans lost two elections to Obama, it was easy to explain away as a special phenomenon. In 2008, Obama was a rock star running against a boring old senator who represented an incumbent party that had presided over an unpopular war and financial crash. In 2012, he ran for re-election against a weak candidate who had trouble winning over his own party. But in 2016, Republicans have the ability to nominate a formidable candidate to put up against a Democrat with lots of baggage. If they blow it, then it may be time to throw in the towel.”

National Journal:

House progressives may have just had their tea-party moment. They went toe-to-toe Friday with their own president, the business community, and moderates of all stripes—and they won big. In overwhelming numbers, Democrats torpedoed a bill that would have moved President Obama closer to the landmark trade deal he's been seeking. And they did so hours after he visited Capitol Hill to make a personal appeal to their caucus. "It's more than 2-to-1," said a giddy Rep. Alan Grayson, watching the vote. "That's incredible. Nobody expected that." The trade drama was only the latest skirmish in a broader intraparty war, with organized labor and economic populists such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren on one side, and a dwindling corps of business- and Wall Street-friendly Democrats on the other. Increasingly, the political momentum and passion within the party is moving toward the first group.

They don't get that they've won. Guns are America. America is guns. "Bang, bang!... Ye haw, motherfuckers!!" That you can't take your gun to a zoo, amusement park, or state house is a little thing. Let it go.

A judge on Friday granted the St. Louis Zoo a restraining order against a gun rights activist planning a march at the zoo on Saturday, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Jeffry Smith, who organized an open carry march in downtown St. Louis last year, said he planned on carrying firearms into the zoo on Saturday in order to protest the zoo's policy banning weapons.

Booman on why there are so many GOP presidential candidates:

The most obvious is that the Bush/Cheney years were such an unmitigated fiasco that they left a black hole in their wake from which no leadership could emerge. Anyone with any experience was discredited. The more of an expert you wanted to be on the economy or foreign policy, the more of a dunce you looked like to all sentient human beings. In any case, there was no heir apparent and McCain and Romney fell flat on their faces. What we got instead of leadership was a collective primal cry of pain and blame shifting that manifested itself in the modern Know-Nothing Tea Party Movement and Mitch McConnell’s strategy of maximal nihilistic opposition. But this only explains the reason that no one could emerge with any credibility. That the Republican Establishment is back with another Bush tells you just how empty the legitimate well of talent had become.

His nascent campaign for Governor may hinge on how he votes on Fast Track and the Trans Pacific Partnership, and counting on an anti-Gordon sentiment will not be enough to overcome going against the Unions and the American worker. From the New York Times:

“With a final House showdown coming on Friday on President Obama’s push for accelerated power to pursue a sweeping trade agreement, the vote brokering has begun — and it is all tilting to the right. The legislative changes clearly show the fate of the president’s expanded trade-negotiating power rests with Republicans, not Democrats, even more so because Republicans have blocked provisions favored by pro-trade Democrats.”

This is your cover, Mr. Carney. The Republicans added non germane right wing toxic pill amendments, so you had to vote no. That is what you tell your business cronies. And there is hope since Carney was not among the 8 traitorous Democrats who kept the bill alive yesterday in a rule vote.