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.

Ben Carson Lunacy and Lying on Display

Ben Carson: granaries built by a fictional person

Thankfully, Ben Carson seems to be getting some much needed scrutiny that (i) shows that the man is crazy in my view, and (ii) very challenged when it comes to truth and veracity.  The latter, of course, should be no surprise given Carson's religiosity and purported conservative Christian faith since in my experience, literally no one lies more than the "godly folk."  Between Carson's belief that Egypt's pyramids were built as granaries by Joseph, a mythical figure in the Bible, to his lie that he was offered a scholarship to West Point,  Carson clearly lives in an alternate reality - which may be why he is so popular with the equally delusional Teabagistan crowd.  First, the Washington Post looks at Carson's beliefs about the pyramids:

On Wednesday, a 17-year-old video surfaced of Ben Carson claiming that the Old Testament figure Joseph built the Egyptian pyramids to store food.

“My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,” Carson said in a 1998 commencement speech at Andrews University, unearthed by BuzzFeed. “Now all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big — when you stop and think about it, and I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time — to store that much grain.”

Social media quickly overflowed with scorn. Critics — and not just archaeologists — pointed to well-documented evidence that the structures were built as tombs, not granaries. Photos of pyramid burial vaults circulated on Twitter. Soon, Carson’s comments had become a meme with references to the food pyramid and “Stargate.”

He has made a string of incendiary comments in recent years. . . . . But to claim that the pyramids, which American kids learn about in grade school, were not tombs for pharaohs but grain silos built by a biblical hero appeared to rise to another level. To some critics, it was akin to Dan Quayle’s infamous “potatoe” gaffe. And when Carson confirmed to CBS Wednesday night that he still believes Joseph built the pyramids as granaries, the video began to assume Mitt Romney “47 percent” proportions as the moment when Carson’s flaws as a candidate suddenly crystallized into a single quote.

“It’s amazing how one can be a neurosurgeon and a dimwit at the same time,” one person tweeted, echoing a common refrain.

Not surprisingly, most scholars and Egyptologist say that there is no historical proof that Joseph ever existed - just like the fictional Adam and Eve.  Indeed, the Joseph story in Genesis is noted as:

The reworked legends and folklore were probably inserted into the developing textual tradition of the Bible between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE. Most scholars place its composition in a genre that flourished in the Persian period of the Exile. 

Do we really want the president of the nation to be someone who bases his beliefs on legends and folklore?   But it gets worse.  Carson seems to have a documented history of lying to embellish his storyline.  True, much of the GOP base is too stupid to question tales that play to their own beliefs and prejudices, but did Carson expect the media to blindly believe his tall tales?  Vanity Fair looks at the West Point lie.  Here are excerpts:

Friday, November 6 might well be remembered as the end of Ben Carson mania. That’s because several key points in his inspirational, rags-to-riches life story were revealed to have been exaggerated, if not fabricated outright.

The collapse actually began on Thursday, when CNN published evidence they believe refutes his claim that he was an angry child: in his best-selling memoir, Gifted Hands, Carson, who had an impoverished childhood in Detroit, claimed that he had a “pathological temper” that led to several stunning incidents, such as attacking his mother with a hammer and attempting to stab a friend when he was in the ninth grade.

[D]uring press conferences and an appearance on The Kelly File later that day, he adamantly refused to admit that he fabricated his personal history, blaming the media for trying to take him down: “Do you think I’m a pathological liar like CNN does? Or do you think I’m an honest person?”

The day after he raised the question, Politico charged that he had lied about having dinner with the famous general William Westmoreland after a Memorial Day parade in 1969, and also erroneously recounted having received an offer of admission and full scholarship to West Point shortly afterwards. He would later claim that he didn't want to go into the military, preferring a life in medicine instead.

The prestigious military academy told Politico that they did not find any records of Carson, who was an R.O.T.C. student, having been admitted. The academy didn’t even find anything indicating that he’d applied or began the application process. As for the full scholarship? All West Point students receive full rides.

It is also highly unlikely that he’d even met Westmoreland in the manner Carson had implied. Per Politico: “The general did not visit Detroit around Memorial Day in 1969 or have dinner with Carson. In fact, the general’s records suggest he was in Washington that day and played tennis at 6:45 P.M.”

New Republic associate editor Adam Peck found that Carson had repeated the West Point claim on Facebook as recently as August 13. . . . 

My Republican ancestors must be spinning in their graves if they can see what a insane asylum the GOP has become.  Once upon a time, no one as unhinged would get to be a serious candidate in the Party much less a front runner.  

The Republican War on Muslims

Increasingly, the Republican Party is defined by who it wages war against.  The GOP has continued a war on gays, a war on women, a war on the poor, a war on labor union members, a war on Hispanics, and now it has made official its war on Muslims.  Virtually anyone who is not a white, knuckle dragging far right Christian is now the enemy.  As one reader noted, it used to be that such bigotry was at least signaled in coded dog whistle messages.  Not any more, the bigotry and demands for special rights to discriminate are displayed openly and worn as a badge of distinction.   The irony is that this now open war on Muslims was made official by Ben Carson, a black who candidly doesn't have a chance in hell of winning the GOP nomination because to most of the GOP base a black president is anathema to their demands for perpetual white privilege. The New York Times lays into the Republican Party in a main editorial today.  Here are excerpts:

The Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson is drawing criticism over the bigoted comments he has been making recently about Muslims. It is well deserved, and is not a matter of “P.C. culture,” as Mr. Carson has claimed. Nor does Mr. Carson represent some minor fringe element in the Republican Party.

This latest sordid mess to arise from the G.O.P. nomination contest touches on bedrock American values, constitutional principles and American history. It reflects a pernicious habit among the leaders of the Republican Party to play with fire by pandering to an angry, disaffected and heavily white base by demonizing selected minorities. Muslims are just the current target.

Mr. Carson declared Sunday on ”Meet the Press” that Muslims are unfit to run for president because a president’s faith should be “consistent with the Constitution.” Later, he told the newspaper The Hill that Islamic Shariah law isn’t consistent with the Constitution because “Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of your public life and what you do as a public official, and that’s inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution.”

Leave aside for a moment the unintentionally funny spectacle of a member of the current Republican Party declaring that religion should be kept out of public life, and that Mr. Carson, as an African-American, is a member of a much belittled minority. The freedom of religion embedded in the First Amendment rules out the very idea of a religious test for public office, as John F. Kennedy so eloquently argued and then proved by becoming the first Catholic president.

Mr. Carson is hardly alone in his demagogy. Donald Trump has accused President Obama of being foreign born, and is continuing to stoke suspicions that Mr. Obama is a Muslim — a myth that a disturbing number of Republicans believe.

The phenomenon isn’t new. Running for president in 2008, Senator John McCain was praised when a voter called Mr. Obama an Arab and Mr. McCain replied by calling him a “decent family man, citizen,” but he didn’t rebut the lie. Former President Bush sometimes said the right things, but instituted a system of detention, torture and trial that applies only to Muslims.

Anti-Muslim sentiment is playing out in the refugee crisis caused by hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Muslims, fleeing wars in the Middle East. The United States recently agreed to take an additional 30,000 refugees per year by 2017, but some conservatives are objecting, claiming they will provide a recruiting pool for radicals.

Closing the country’s doors to Muslims would buy into Mr. Carson and Mr. Trump’s vilification and dishonor the thousands of Muslims who have joined Irish, Italians, Germans, French, Jews, Russians, Latinos, Africans and many others in becoming honorable citizens and perhaps, one day, president.

Conflict in Teabaghistan: David Koch Backs Marriage Equality

One can only assume that there must be exploding heads across Teabaghistan as the "godly folk" come to the realization that one of their puppet masters, David Koch, one of the insidious Koch brothers, supports gay marriage and has joined in an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court asking the Court to strike down state marriage bans nationwide.  If the cretins in the "family values" crowd figure out that their theocratic agenda has been betrayed - a big if, admittedly, given the general stupidity of the Christofascists/Tea Party - the spittle will be spraying in veritable sheets like windblown sea foam.    A piece in the Washington Free Beacon looks at Koch's participation in the amicus brief.  Here are highlights:

Libertarian avid Koch is backing a federal challenge to same sex marriage bans, signing on to a Supreme Court brief urging the court to overturn state-level prohibitions on the practice.

He will join hundreds of other prominent right-of-center thinkers, activists, and public figures in asking the Supreme Court to prohibit states from outlawing the practice under the 14th Amendment.
Koch, the vice president of Koch Industries and the world’s sixth wealthiest person, is a deep-pocketed donor to Republican and conservative groups.

Koch Industries general counsel Mark Holden confirmed on Tuesday that Koch will sign his name to the brief. Holden said he did so in his personal capacity.

“I believe in gay marriage,” he told Politico in 2012. A former vice presidential candidate on the Libertarian Party ticket, Koch is in line with that movement’s thinking on the issue, despite his support for a party that frequently opposes gay marriage.

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin on Tuesday reported some of the brief’s other signatories, and on the argument they’re presenting:

The brief’s signatories include former Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman, conservative pundits S.E. Cupp and Alex Castellanos, former White House chief of staff Ken Duberstein, former Mitt Romney senior advisers Beth Myers and Carl Forti, conservative economists Doug Holtz-Eakin (formerly director of the Congressional Budget Office) and Greg Mankiw (formerly on the Council of Economic Advisers), former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), former homeland security adviser Fran Townsend and former Massachusetts state Senate minority leader Richard Tisei.
In the brief, the signatories argue that they “have concluded that marriage is strengthened, and its value to society and to individual families and couples is promoted, by providing access to civil marriage for all American couples—heterosexual or gay or lesbian alike. In particular, civil marriage provides stability for the children of same-sex couples, the value of which cannot be overestimated. In light of these conclusions, amici believe that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits States from denying same-sex couples the legal rights and responsibilities that flow from the institution of civil marriage.”

One can only assume that Tony Perkins, Bryan Fischer, Maggie Gallagher and the Catholic bishops are writhing in convulsion with spittle driveling from their mouths at this development.  It will be interesting to see if Koch's signing on to the brief diminishes the acceptance of the Koch brothers' ploys to use religious extremism and racism in the GOP base/Tea Party.