Is Sanders an Election-Year Disaster Waiting to Happen?

I write this post as I watch the Democrat presidential candidate debate on a night where Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders are neck and neck in New Hampshire polls after roughly tying in Iowa.  Meanwhile, Joe Biden's campaign appears in decline, if not free fall, and Elizabeth Warren seems to be stagnating.  Four more years of a Donald Trump presidency poses an existential threat to America's democracy, especially after the body blow Senate Republican's dealt to the U.S. Constitution and the concept of Congressional oversight and reining in of an out of control and immoral occupant of the White House.  Thus, it is critical to ponder what would happen if Sanders somehow becomes the Democrat nominee.  Some, like myself, see Sanders as a disaster in the making should he become the Democrat nominee.  Indeed, the fact that Trump and the GOP see Sanders as the preferred candidate because he will be easier to defeat and are taking steps to potentially skew the primary results in South Carolina to boost Sanders' position in the primary results.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the danger Sanders - and his cult like followers - poses to defeating Trump in November, 2020.  Here are highlights:

Let’s say Sanders comes out of July’s Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee as the party’s nominee. Will House and Senate Democrats in swing districts and red states view Sanders as standard-bearer with joy — or alarm?

Former senator Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.), a supporter of former vice president Joe Biden, has an answer: If Sanders is the Democratic nominee, he will have a “very difficult time” beating President Trump and will pose a “serious threat to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ability to retain control of the House,” Axios reported.

Dodd’s assessment was echoed by Ami Bera (Calif.), co-chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Frontline program, which raises funds to reelect Democratic House members. During an interview with BuzzFeed News this week, Bera said, “If Bernie Sanders is our nominee, it’ll make a lot of these Trump districts that we picked up extremely competitive and probably does put our House majority in jeopardy.”

The bleakest assessment came from Marshall Matz, a policy adviser for Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 presidential bid, who said that if Sanders is nominated, Democrats should expect the sort of landslide loss that McGovern suffered to President Richard M. Nixon. “He would not just lose but would lose badly,” Matz told the Stamford Advocate.

Other establishment Democrats also fear Trump will barnstorm battleground states that Democrats need to keep control of the House and regain the Senate, loudly branding Sanders a socialist — a label many voters find hard to swallow. Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who led Senate Democrats’ campaign arm in 2016, told the Associated Press, “I come from a state that’s pretty damn red. There is no doubt that having ‘socialist’ ahead of ‘Democrat’ is not a positive thing in the state of Montana.”

And Republicans, he cautioned, “are really good at making elections about who’s at the top of the ticket.”

Is Sanders an election-year disaster waiting to happen?

He makes no bones about who he is. “I am a socialist, and everyone knows that,” Sanders said in 1990 as a newly elected House member, in response to an ad seeking to tie him to Fidel Castro’s regime. But he said his brand of “democratic socialism has nothing to do with authoritarian socialism.” . . . Nothing short of a political revolution is needed, he proclaimed as he launched his 2016 presidential bid to “transform our country economically, politically, socially and environmentally.”

Millions of voters, based upon 2016 election results and current polling numbers, are ideologically aligned with Sanders. But for many of them, this affinity does not extend to the Democratic Party. A recent poll found that only 53 percent of Sanders voters will definitely support the eventual 2020 Democratic nominee if he doesn’t win.

[Y]es, establishment Democrats are worried, and for good reason. Democrats don’t have a lock on the House. The reputable Cook Political Report rates only 181 House seats as solidly Democratic, with 35 more rated as leaning Democratic. But 18 seats currently held by Democrats are seen as toss-ups. You need 218 total for a majority. That’s not a lot of wiggle room.

Over in the Senate, Cook rates six Republican-held Senate seats as toss-up or only leaning GOP (plus one Democratic seat as leaning Republican). Democrats need to net four seats to take the majority outright.

Vulnerable congressional Republicans — as well as Trump — are no doubt rooting for a Sanders Democratic victory. Some are even trying to make it happen. There are GOP leaders in South Carolina calling on Republican voters to cast their ballots for Sanders in South Carolina’s Feb. 29 open primary.

Onlooking D.C. Democrats know their local candidates will be fine regardless of the nominee.

Still, they should be concerned as well. If Democratic convention delegates pick the wrong. 

Can Anyone Save the GOP?

The answer to the question posed in the caption is probably no.  It's the conclusion I came to two decades ago when I left the Republican Party and the situation has become even more dire in the age of Trump with the party base now firmly controlled by evangelical Christian extremists and white supremacists and white nationalists. True, a group of former Republicans will be airing anti-Trump ads on Fox News - during two of Der Trumpenführer's favorite shows - and a few individuals are struggle to mount a primary challenge to Trump, one such individual being Bill Weld, a former Republican Massachusetts governor.  Given the toxic nature of the GOP base and the efforts of state parties in some states to block any challenge to Trump, Weld's effort is an extremely long shot as noted in a column in the New York Times. One can only wish Weld well and meanwhile hope Republican senators in Congress will belatedly put their oaths of office first (don't hold your breath).  Here are column highlights:

Bill Weld, the former Massachusetts governor and current long-shot — make that, loooooooong-shot — candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, is a keen student of New Hampshire politics. In an interview with me this week, he noted the following fact: Every time an incumbent president of either party faced a significant primary challenge in the Granite State, he failed in his bid for re-election.

It happened to George H.W. Bush in 1992 after Patrick Buchanan took 38 percent of the New Hampshire vote.

It happened to Jimmy Carter in 1980 after Teddy Kennedy took 39 percent.

It happened to Gerald Ford in 1976 after Ronald Reagan took 48 percent.

It happened to Lyndon Johnson in 1968 after Eugene McCarthy took 42 percent.

It happened to Harry Truman in 1952 when Estes Kefauver beat him outright, 55 percent to 44.

So, Weld reasons, why not try to make it happen to Donald J. Trump, too?

That’s the hopeful thought in what otherwise seems to be Weld’s hopeless bid to derail [Trump] a president whose support among Republicans was 89 percent last month, according to Gallup.

But he’s also wise enough to know that losing well can achieve great things, like bringing down a president who, he said, “regards the law as something to be evaded.” Can that be done between now and Feb. 11, the date of the New Hampshire primary? Weld rests his hopes on two things: New England Republicanism, which remains alive and well despite reports of its demise; and Trump’s trial in the Senate, whose result may not yet be a forgone conclusion. On the former, note that Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire all have G.O.P. governors, who, like Weld, are relative moderates compared to the rest of the party. On the latter, Weld knows a lot about the impeachment process, having worked on the House Judiciary Committee’s staff as a young lawyer in 1974 as it considered articles against Richard Nixon. Nixon, Weld recalled, “was essentially forced to withdraw from the presidency because he had been caught lying on television to the American people on one topic” — a foothill of a deception compared to Trump’s Karakoram range.

Weld also knows how quickly things can turn in the course of a trial. “Cases don’t look the same at the end as they do at the beginning,” he noted, recalling his prosecutions of public corruption in the 1980s as United States attorney for the District of Massachusetts, where he won 109 convictions in 111 corruption cases. He believes that if four Republican senators join Democrats in voting to call witnesses — Ohio’s Rob Portman could provide the decisive vote — then anything is possible.

Maybe that’s right, assuming devastating testimony from John Bolton, the former national security adviser; former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas; and who knows who (or what) else. Not that any kind of testimony is likely to sway the 67 senators needed for a conviction. But it’s not quite out of the question that it might, in the coming weeks, sway a large fraction of New Hampshire Republicans to vote against the president, thereby setting into motion forces that could bring him down. That’s the hope, at any rate. The odds against? I’d say 20 to 1 — which is to say, still worth a shot. If it fails, Weld said he would not run as an independent. Unlike in 2016, when he ran with Gary Johnson on the Libertarian ticket (and won 4.5 million votes) he has no interest in playing the spoiler to anyone in the race except Trump.

The larger question if it fails is what becomes of the G.O.P. Weld compared the party to the late-stage Whigs of the early 1850s, which were riven between the nativist Know Nothing faction and the antislavery wing that would become the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln. Fortunately, the good side won that time.

And this time? The best conservative case for rooting for a Democrat to win this fall — any Democrat, including Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren — is that it might be the only way to save the Republican Party from itself. That could happen if a critical mass of conservatives repudiates Trumpism or forms a new party on the Lincoln model. Weld calls it the Liberty Party.

Alternatively a Sanders or Warren victory could send the G.O.P. to even further extremes. . . . . Democrats who want to see Republicans recover their center need to protect their own. In the meantime, wish Bill Weld well in his Granite State carom shot.

Probably far to optimistic.  Moral, moderates left the GOP long ago with Trump having accelerated the exodus. That said, one can always hope for a miracle.

Poll: Buttigieg Busts Out in Iowa (and New Hampshire)

A future blog post will look at the issue of far left Democrats potentially causing Donald Trump to be re-elected because of their inability to push for more moderate proposals that can win the support of a majority of voters. It's a symptom of the out of control "purity" obsession of some far left Democrats who have lost sight on the need to win elections, even if the candidate best able to win doesn't meet all of the impossible - and impractical - purity tests.  Which brings me to the polls in New Hampshire and Iowa that both have Joe Biden in the lead even though he has yet to announce (and in my view, should not announce) and Pete Buttigieg in third position.  Of the far left candidates, only Bernie Sanders is in the top three.  The message to the far left should be that a far left agenda may not equate to winning the nomination.  A piece in Politico looks at the Iowa poll and possible takeaways.  Here are excerpts:

Former Vice President Joe Biden leads the 2020 Democratic presidential field in Iowa, according to a new poll released Thursday that also suggests Pete Buttigieg — a previously unknown, small-city mayor from Indiana — is gaining significant traction with likely caucus-goers.

The Monmouth University poll shows Biden, who hasn’t officially entered the race, is the first choice of roughly a quarter of likely caucusgoers, 27 percent. He’s followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) with 16 percent and Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., with 9 percent.

That places Buttigieg marginally ahead of a handful of candidates who entered the race with more established profiles: Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are at 7 percent, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) is at 6 percent, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is at 4 percent and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) is at 3 percent.

Buttigieg still lags most of the other major candidates in name recognition, the poll shows. Nearly a quarter of caucusgoers, 24 percent, say they haven’t heard of the mayor of the nation’s 301st-largest city, compared to 3 percent who haven’t heard of Warren, 7 percent who haven’t heard of O’Rourke, 10 percent for Harris and 11 percent for Booker. (Biden and Sanders have universal name-ID among Democrats.)

But Buttigieg has his fans: 45 percent of caucusgoers view him favorably, while 9 percent have an unfavorable opinion of him. The remaining 22 percent say they have heard of Buttigieg but don’t have an opinion of the 37-year-old candidate.

“Buttigieg’s current standing in the horse race is impressive given that nearly half of likely Democratic caucusgoers have yet to form an opinion of him,” said Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “He has one of the best positive to negative ratios in the field. He could move up if he is able to maintain that rating as he introduces himself to more voters.”

It’s the second early-state poll released Thursday showing Buttigieg surging into third place. A St. Anslem’s University poll in New Hampshire showed Buttigieg at 11 percent in that state’s first-in-the-nation primary.

[F]ully one-in-four caucusgoers, 26 percent, have an unfavorable opinion about Sanders, who finished a close second to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 caucuses, and 20 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Warren.

A POLITICO analysis finds that 14 candidates have qualified for the debate stage through polling, while Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has also said she has passed the donor threshold. If more than 20 candidates qualify through either method, a series of tiebreakers will determine the final lineup.

Wherever Buttigieg ends up, it has been remarkable to see an openly gay candidate do so well in these early stages of the nomination process.  Meanwhile, as a coming post will note, Buttigieg is making the Christofascists freak out and show their true ugly selves.

New Hampshire Senate Passes "Ex-Gay" Therapy Ban with GOP Support

Even as the Christofascists continue to wail over the Justice Department's directive to school divisions across the country concerning the rights of transgender student, the Bible thumpers suffered a defeat in New Hampshire where  the state Senate with Republican support passed a bill that bans the use of fraudulent "ex-gay" torture therapies on minors.  The "ex-gay" myth has been a favored tool of the Christofascists in making the false claim that sexual orientation is a "choice," thus eliminating any need for LGBT non-discrimination protections.  In addition, such bogus therapies have been a favored way for charlatans and shysters in "Christian ministries" to fleece the gullible of hard earned money.  The Concord Monitor looks at the action advancing the bill.  Here are highlights:

Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the state Senate reached an agreement late Thursday on a bill to ban gay conversion therapy on minors after a debate over religious freedom nearly derailed the effort.

“Who among us would want to be converted from the essence of who we are? I don’t think any of us would,” Republican Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley said during debate.

Gay conversion therapy is the practice of trying to change someone’s sexuality or gender identity. Both the Senate and House have now approved a bill barring licensed counselors from engaging in the practice with anyone under age 18. The chambers passed bills including slightly different language, which means they’ll need to reach agreement before sending the legislation to Gov. Maggie Hassan’s desk.

Hassan, a Democrat, praised the Senate’s passage of the bill, saying it sends an important message to young people that they can be who they are.

The final bill says people licensed to provide counseling services under state law, from nurses to marriage counselors, can’t engage in the practice. It also includes language saying the law cannot infringe on religious freedom, intended to ease concerns that the bill would prevent priests and other religious leaders from talking to teenagers about their sexuality.

Democratic Sen. David Pierce, who is gay, made several personal appeals to his colleagues to back the ban. Pierce said he realized he was gay at age 11 and struggled to accept it. Research shows gay and lesbian teenagers are more likely to commit suicide than their peers and the risk increases if they undergo conversion therapy, Pierce said.

“I worked my way through it, but there was no person sitting next to me telling me I was sick and needed to be cured,” he said.

The American Psychological Association and other major health organizations have discredited gay conversion therapy and states are beginning to pass bans on the practice for minors. California, New Jersey, Oregon, Illinois and Washington, D.C., ban the practice for minors and Vermont is likely to join them. But efforts in Hawaii and Colorado failed this year.

Trump Victory Speech Doubles Down on Extremist Nonsense

As noted in the last post, Donald Trump's victory speech - if one can even grace it with the term speech - was frightening and showed how little Trump offers in terms of actual policies and plans.  It's was all sound bites and pandering to the lunatic elements of the GOP base.  It was a pep rally of know nothing jingoism.  It is terrifying that almost a third of Republicans voted for the man.  A piece in Salon looks at the narcissism, demagoguery and insanity.  Here are highlights:

A triumphant Donald Trump entered the stage at his New Hampshire primary victory rally to the sounds of “Revolution” by the Beatles, positively bursting with joy that the universe had righted itself and his singular excellence, an excellence that is greater than the excellence of all excellent people who came before him (though he is grateful for all their hard work), has finally been recognized.

A lot of corners of the media are still reeling from the shock that a clown like Trump can win anything, much less a prominent Republican primary. The Huffington Post’s front page was bristling with outrage [see image above].

But the remarkable thing about Trump’s speech is it’s not actually that different from boilerplate Republican nonsense: Claiming that foreign policy is mostly about belligerence, demanding an end to Obamacare, accusing Democrats of wanting to give away free stuff, pandering to gun nuts, dark suggestions that Obama is lying about the economic turnaround, taking a swipe at Common Core, and implying that foreigners are sneaking over the Mexican border to kill us all with terrorism and heroin.

The main difference is that Trump is just more, well let’s say, boisterous about it.

“I’m going to be the greatest jobs president that God ever created,” he bellowed, before going on to declare that the media is lying about declining unemployment and that it could be as high as 42 percent. The gist of the claim— that Obama and the media are in cahoots to hide the truth about the economy, but your noble Republican candidate will fix it all — is no different from what other GOP candidates are saying. Trump’s just abandoned the pretense of making his arguments sound plausible at all. 

On the drug addiction issue that’s so prominent in New Hampshire, Trump promised to fix it all by blaming his favorite scapegoat, Mexico. “We’re going to end it at the southern border,” he declared, suggesting the epidemic is mostly due to “cheap” heroin. 

On guns, Trump reached for a common talking point among Republicans, which is that more guns will actually reduce gun violence. He used the Paris attacks, which happened in a city with strict gun control, as an example. Calling the terrorists who shot up the Bataclan “these animals,” he said, “If there were bullets going in the other direction, believe me, it would be a whole different story.”

If you want to know why Trump is doing so well with Republican voters, this is the answer. He’s not, despite mainstream media narratives suggesting otherwise, all that different from other Republicans. He just heaves bullshit with a bigger shovel.

Marco Rubio Self-Destructs

If Republicans come to their senses - admittedly a very big if - they ought to latch onto John Kasich, the lone truly semi-sane occupant of the GOP clown car.  Perhaps with his second place showing in New Hampshire and the hopeful demise of some of the lower placing GOP candidates Kasich can gather strength and move to challenge the know nothing lunacy of Donald Trump whose victory speech was little more than a string of sound bites bordering on gibberish.  The best news out of New Hampshire is the hopefully permanent self-destruction of Marco Rubio and less than top showing by the very scary Ted Cruz.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Rubio's welcomed collapse.  Here are excerpts:

Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Marco Rubio knows what he’s doing.

A week ago, the youthful senator from Florida was in great shape. His surprisingly strong finish in the Iowa caucuses left him with a clear chance to consolidate mainstream Republican support — and a path to the GOP presidential nomination.

But in just a few minutes Saturday night, Rubio undid everything he had worked for during the past year — really, the past five years. His singularly disastrous debate performance, in which he repeated irrelevant, canned phrases, caused would-be supporters to flee for Ohio Gov. John Kasich and other more stable candidates.

Typically, Iowa and New Hampshire serve as proving grounds for the candidates. Voters there scrutinize the contenders, who rise and fall in the polls as various candidates gain and lose the status of front-runner. But Trump’s celebrity short-circuited the process. With Trump dominating the coverage and the polls, Iowa and New Hampshire failed to fulfill their traditional vetting roles. 

Rubio was one who never got the scrutiny. And when he emerged, blinking, into the spotlight after Iowa, voters found an empty suit. Watching him campaign last week, I wrote: “Rubio’s strong Iowa finish has brought new attention — and overcapacity crowds — in New Hampshire. But the would-be supporters are greeted by a robot.”

He had seemed to be a good debater — but with 10 or more candidates crowding the stage in early debates, he didn’t have to go far beyond canned lines. On Saturday, exposed to withering attacks from rival Chris Christie, a former prosecutor, Rubio suffered what was perhaps the most memorable lapse at the presidential level since Edmund Muskie appeared to weep in the New Hampshire snow in 1972.

The reviews were savage, and then, on Monday night, RubioBot malfunctioned again.

Exit polls left little doubt that Rubio’s glitches ruined his prospects in New Hampshire. Two-thirds said the debates were important, and of the nearly half of GOP voters who made choices in the last few days, Kasich did far better than Rubio.

The results also left Republicans, once again, without a consensus alternative to Trump — and with dwindling hope of finding one. Had Rubio received scrutiny earlier, voters might have been able to find a candidate who didn’t wilt in the spotlight. But Iowa and New Hampshire didn’t serve their functions this time. Trump got in the way.

Trump, Sanders Projected Winners Of New Hampshire Primary

The New York Daily News (see above) sums up the New Hampshire GOP primary results as follows per Talking Point Memo:

The front page of the New York Daily News' Wednesday issue featured Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wearing clown makeup alongside a horde of "brain dead" zombies the newspaper suggested had voted for him in the New Hampshire primary.

Perhaps on the bright side, John Kasich - in my view, the only have sane GOP candidate - finished second on the GOP side and empty suit/pandering whore Marco Rubio seemingly will find homself in 5th place.  Here's more from Talking Points Memo on the GOP results: 

Trump's anti-Islamic and tough-on-Mexico rhetoric has had staying power and catapulted him ahead of a wildly divided establishment-lane race, where establishment candidates like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have each been betting a good showing in New Hampshire would let them break through.

The order of finish after Trump was expected to be tight and not known potentially for several hours.
Even after a disappointing second place finish in Iowa, Trump's win in New Hampshire puts him back in the the driver's seat as the race moves to South Carolina and then the Southern-focused Super Tuesday elections.

Many view Trump as a liability for the party with his off-the-cuff pontificating and policies to bar any Muslims from entering the country.

The major question for Trump is if he can keep up his lead as he heads into the South Carolina primary where Cruz is expected to resonate with evangelical voters like he did in Iowa. Cruz has also been spending quite a bit of time down south in anticipation of Super Tuesday.

As for the Democrat contest, Think Progress has these details:

Young people, independents, women, rural voters, and gun owners came out in droves to vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the New Hampshire presidential primary on Tuesday, driving the self-proclaimed Democratic socialist to a wide-margin victory over his opponent Hillary Clinton.

In fact, almost every demographic group — men, women, first-time voters, past voters, non-gun owners, middle-income people, low-income people — gave a majority of their support to Sanders, according to the New York Times. According to the Times, Sanders only lost to Clinton among voters 65 and older, and voters in families earning over $200,000 per year.

I remember being young and idealistic politically, but as much as Sanders holds positions that are attractive, the real issues are, (i) can he win in November, and (ii) if, elected, could he deliver what he has been promising?  I continue to feel in my gut that the answer to both questions is no.  If that is the case, why give the White House to the GOP? 

The Rise of the Unfit: Trump, Cruz and Rubio

Watching the New Hampshire primary results come in, I am again struck by how far the Republican Party has sunk into insanity.  Exit polls of Republicans - much to the probable delight of ISIS and Al Qaeda and their propagandists - support a bar of Muslims entering into the United States.  The racism is palpable. On the other side of the aisle, Bernie Sanders scored a victory, but to my mind the question that his supporters are ignoring is this: can he win in the general election in November?  With potentially two or more Supreme Court justice openings over the next four years, few things could be as devastating to the nation that a Republican in the White House making the appointments.  But back to the train wreck in the GOP clown car.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at the descent of the GOP into the realm of insanity and nihilism.  Much of the fault lies with the so-called Republican establishment which, in the process of chasing short term wins, created a monster.  The only off piece in the article is that Rubio has apparently taken 4th place in New Hampshire, not that he isn't unfit for the presidency. Here are excerpts:

[T]that death knell we are hearing is not just the mercy killing of walking footnotes like Carly Fiorina. It is for the GOP establishment and, more profoundly, for the very idea of what a president should be. 

The ruin of the established order -- big donors, lobbyists, and professionals -- has been a long time coming. For decades the establishment has resembled the once proud family who keeps selling off pieces of their estate so they can keep the house. In exchange for lower taxes and laissez-faire, the establishment subcontracted its electoral fortunes to an overlapping -- and increasingly hostile -- compendium of evangelicals, gun rights advocates, Tea Party fanatics, and less educated whites who feel that their security, and their country, are being snatched from their grasp. Now it is no longer enough to surround the mansion -- they want to burn it down.

The incongruous agent of their resentment has been the billionaire Donald Trump, followed by the self-styled bomb-thrower Ted Cruz. But in great measure what empowers them is the establishment's surrender to nihilistic rhetoric directed at Washington DC. A throng of voters willing to shut down the government is unlikely to nurture tender feelings for the grandees of the GOP. . . .

Trump has simply focused their free-floating hostility on a larger group of scapegoats -- Mexicans, Muslims, rich Republican donors and financiers . . . 

Like so many elites who discover that they are widely loathed, the establishment has responded with dithering and wishful thinking. The result is a vacuum that has consumed the very idea of leadership.

Abruptly, some in the party's elite began clutching Rubio like a human life raft, praying that he emerges from the scrum of New Hampshire as the alternative to Trump and Cruz. Beyond ratifying the impotence of the establishment, their desperation confirms the demise within the GOP of something far more important -- the very idea of what qualifies a person to assume the most complex and demanding office in a dangerous world.

In saner times, there was a general understanding of those elements which might commend a candidate. Sound judgment. A reasonable command of the issues. At least some relevant experience. A grasp of what the job demands which transcends canned speeches and talking points. A balanced temperament. A certain capacity for dignity and grace. At least a few real achievements, not least in the realm of politics. . . . . some combination of intellectual integrity and emotional health that keeps self regard from spinning into sociopathy turbocharged by power: lying without shame, governing without some genuine regard for the governed, a narcissism so deep that it obliterates all else. 

In the recent history of the GOP, there were harbingers that these standards were eroding -- that, among a portion of the electorate, all that mattered was anger and disdain for government.

Of the three most likely Republican nominees, none is remotely qualified to be president. Indeed, their unfitness is so patent as to inspire fear. 

The challenge with Donald Trump is where to start. Even Ted Cruz pretends that his campaign is about other people. Trump doesn't even get that you're supposed to fake it. His candidacy is, indeed, all about him, . . . Imagine year upon year of crudity, petulance, self-preening and puerile bluster. Imagine Americans' sickening realization that they are trapped in a dysfunctional relationship with a boorish narcissist who has no idea of how to protect their interests, and whose only interest is himself. Imagine the face of America in the world as the face of Donald Trump.

That's for openers. Trump understands nothing that a president needs to understand. His nationalistic promise to "make America great again" is hucksterism devoid of substance.

[I]t says a lot about Ted Cruz that his colleagues would prefer to jump into the abyss with Trump. Indeed, one of the striking features of the GOP debates is his fellow senators' visceral loathing for their peer. 

If Trump is Huey Long without a program, Cruz is Elmer Gantry without the charm -- oleaginous, transcendently phony, relentlessly manipulative, and intellectually dishonest to the point of demagoguery. His triumph in Iowa was buoyed by dirty tricks  . . . . He is the dank Prince of darkness, playing on the resentments of evangelicals and others who feel marginalized -- without offering them, or anyone else, an uplifting vision of the future.

Marco Rubio. . . . Here one struggles to capture the depths of his shallowness, a task akin to grasping at vapor. For it is grim testament to Trump and Cruz that they can frighten grown-ups into proposing Rubio as presidential hardwood.

In debate and on the stump, Rubio increasingly tries to compete with Trump and Cruz through hyperbolic excess directed at Obama. With a slightly unhinged zeal, he claims that Obama is so "completely overwhelmed" that he has "deliberately weakened America." Like his indictment of the president as an enemy of the Constitution and the free enterprise system, this over-the-top rhetoric is shamelessly stolen from the hysterical alternate reality of talk radio.

But the effect Rubio achieves is not that of a prospective commander-in-chief, but that of a callow aspirant who is over caffeinated, shrill, and willing to say anything -- a man wholly lacking in balance or intellectual ballast. One thinks not of a leader, but of an overambitious sales guy looking for a promotion he doesn't deserve -- say, perhaps, to district manager.

"Marcobot" Struggles to Find His Footing

Things seemingly have been going to Hell in a hand basket for Marco Rubio over the last week.  Rubio started out the past week cocky after a 3rd place finish in Iowa. Perhaps it was a case of pride going before fall.  For icing on the cake, Northern Virginia lunatic and gad fly Eugene Delgaudio is (pictured above) now assailing Rubio accusing him of being part of the "Homosexual Lobby" in light of Rubio's  support from pro-gay billionaire Paul Singer.  A piece in Politico looks at Rubio's possibly tettering campaign.  Here are excerpts:

He was supposed to be giving Donald Trump a run for his money. Instead, Marco Rubio could be on the verge of blowing it.

With just hours before New Hampshire begins voting, Rubio looked dead on his feet, delivering the “low-energy” performance Trump has so effectively attached to Jeb Bush. 

We face a critical moment,” Rubio told a group of more than two-dozen BAE employees. “I tell anyone who will listen, 2016 will be a turning point for America.”

New Hampshire could be a turning point in his candidacy, as well.

Rubio was expected to finish second here, propelled by a strong third-place showing in Iowa. His biggest goal — trounce Jeb Bush and force some of the establishment lane candidates to drop out in order to consolidate support and poach donors from other camps.

But after a week of getting repeatedly beaten up — first by his Republican opponents for giving a canned stump speech and not engaging with the press, and then for his dismal debate performance Saturday — it’s unclear he’ll be able to best Sen. Ted Cruz or the cadre of governors like John Kasich, who have spent significant time campaigning here.

And the donors who had been looking favorably at Rubio's camp have become less enthusiastic after his debate performance Saturday, when he froze up and awkwardly repeated one of his talking points on President Barack Obama's agenda to change the country.

Excuse me if I refrain from getting out a tiny violin for Marco.

GOP Debate: Marco Rubio Was a Disaster

I will confess that I did not watch the Republican debate last night.  Instead the husband and I co-hosted a Mardi Gras themed party at our home as a post-wedding couple that were adore.  Suffice it to say that I feel as wrung out as I used to feel after Mardi Gras festivities in Mobile, Alabama - the home of America's first and longest running Mardi Gras celebration - years ago.  By all accounts, I missed an epic take down of Marco Rubio by Chris Christie.  I view Rubio in someways as dangerous as Ted Cruz when it comes to his extremism and frightening references to religion.  There is a great run down of the Rubio/Christie exchange at Slate.  Here are some highlights:

Sen. Marco Rubio is a gifted politician and talented communicator. But he’s faced a repeated attack in his six years on the national stage—that his smooth charisma conceals a man of little substance. That, on a fundamental level, he’s not ready for the Oval Office. And on Saturday night, Rubio gave substance to the charge in a remarkable exchange with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at the eighth Republican presidential debate.

It began with a question. The moderators asked Rubio to list accomplishments in his record that have prepared him for the presidency. Rubio cited work on foreign policy and issues such as veterans affairs before moving to well-worn rhetoric meant to counter these experience questions by tweaking a popular conservative notion about Barack Obama. “Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing,” he said. “He knows exactly what he’s doing. 
Barack Obama is undertaking a systematic effort to change this country, to make America more like the rest of the world.”

And in this implicit analogy, Rubio is the Republican Barack Obama who will make a “systematic effort” to make America unique again. “When I’m president of the United States,” he continued, “we are going to re-embrace all the things that made America the greatest nation in the world, and we are going to leave our children with what they deserve: the single greatest nation in the history of the world.”

It’s a good line, designed for applause. But this time, Rubio had pushback, in the form of Christie.

Behind in national polls and struggling for air in a crowded field, Christie has focused on his experience—as an executive—to make the case to New Hampshire voters and Republicans nationwide. And against Rubio’s disdain for experience, he scoffed. “You have not been involved in a consequential decision where you had to be held accountable,” Christie said. “You just simply haven’t. And the fact is—when you talk about the Hezbollah sanctions act that you list as one of your accomplishments, you weren’t even there to vote for it. That’s not leadership. That’s truancy.” He finished with a swipe. “I like Marco Rubio, and he’s a smart person and a good guy, but he simply does not have the experience to be president of the United States.”

In this debate, the candidates could respond to one another, and Rubio countered with a swipe at Christie’s record on fiscal management, accusing the governor of worsening New Jersey’s debt problem. And then he did something strange. He slipped back into his line about Obama.

“But I would add this,” Rubio said. “Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is trying to change this country. He wants America to become more like the rest of the world,” ending in the same place he had finished just a few minutes earlier.

Immediately, Christie pounced, locking eyes with the camera as he slammed Rubio for the strange repetition.

“You see, everybody, I want the people at home to think about this—this is what Washington, D.C., does,” said Christie. “The drive-by shot at the beginning with incorrect and incomplete information, and then the memorized 25-second speech that is exactly what his advisers gave him.” He continued, moving from a body slam to a pile drive. “See, Marco, the thing is this: When you’re president of the United States, when you are a governor of a state, the memorized 30-second speech where you talk about how great America is doesn’t solve one problem for one person. They expect you to plow the snow. They expect you to get the schools open. And when the worst natural disaster in your state’s history hits you, they expect you to rebuild their state, which is what I’ve done. None of that stuff happens on the floor of the United State Senate.”

Rubio tried to respond. He tried to jab Christie for his absence from New Jersey from the storm. But his hits wouldn’t land. He was too flustered.

At this point, Rubio could have ended the exchange with silence. Instead, he went back to his talking points. He repeated himself about Obama.

Christie cut him off. “There it is! There it is. The memorized 25-second speech. There it is, everybody.” The fight was over. Rubio was shook. Later in the night, Rubio would fall into that rhetoric again, unable to break from his stump speech.

Eventually, aided with questions on foreign policy, Rubio recovered. But even with a strong finish, it’s hard to say he ended in a good place. Rubio didn’t just embarrass himself; he undermined the core argument for his campaign—that we overrate experience and underrate vision and resolve. And worse, it was on video: a short clip to show on news networks or cut into a negative advertisement. “Rubio’s repeat” will have a long life on daytime cable and late night comedy, an awkward, brutal, cringeworthy display of political failure.

Rubio needed a win on Saturday. He needed to show Republicans that Iowa wasn’t a fluke, that he could consolidate support and charge ahead of Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz. Instead, at best, he gave a mixed performance, with good answers overshadowed by one of the most uncomfortable moments of the entire Republican debate season.

It’s far too much to say that it will cost him the nomination. But it could push him down the ladder in New Hampshire and create renewed chaos in the nomination fight, as candidates such as Jeb Bush, Christie, and Gov. John Kasich rise, and Trump—largely unscathed—holds his spot on top.