“Trump’s Got The GOP By The Balls”: Trump Has The Power To Elect Clinton, And Both He And Priebus Know It
Deflating as it is, the likely Donald Trump scenario is this: He burns hot for a little while longer; he says something really out there in the first debate that roils up the base but makes Reince Priebus and Karl Rove break out in canker sores; but by the time of the baseball playoffs maybe, his act gets old, and somebody else becomes the Herman Cain of October. Then, next year, the primaries will start, and he’ll have to get votes. He’s not going to be all that competitive in Iowa, so it’s New Hampshire where he’ll need to deliver something. And if he doesn’t, he’ll just go away.
That’s the pattern anyway. I seem to recall that at this point in 2011, Michele Bachmann had a pretty good head of steam going. So maybe we shouldn’t get too overheated about him.
But Trump is different from Bachmann, and even from fellow entrepreneur Cain, in one major respect: He doesn’t give a crap about the Republican Party. He cares about Trump. And don’t forget he has the power singlehandedly to make Hillary Clinton president. He knows it, and you better believe Priebus knows it, and it is this fact that establishes a power dynamic between Trump and the GOP in which Trump totally has the upper hand and can make mischief in the party for months.
How does he have the power to elect Clinton all by himself? By running as an independent. Two factors usually prevent candidates who lose nominations from running as independents. One, they lack the enormous amount of money needed to pursue that path (pay the lawyers to get them on 50 state ballots, etc.). Two, they have a sense of proportion and decency, and they figure that if primary voters rejected them, it’s time to go home.
Well, Trump has the dough and lacks the decency. In an interview this week with Byron York, he left the door open a crack to such a candidacy. And that would be all it would take. Given his fame and name recognition, he’d likely hit the polling threshold needed to qualify for the fall debates. And with that kind of exposure, he’d do well—enough. All he needs to get is 5 percent of the vote in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado, and the Republican, whoever it is, is sizzled. Another electoral landslide.
The question is would he, and the answer is who knows? To York, he expressed awareness of the obvious drawbacks, pointing to the spoiler role he says Ross Perot played in 1992: “I think every single vote that went to Ross Perot came from [George H.W.] Bush…Virtually every one of his 19 percentage points came from the Republicans. If Ross Perot didn’t run, you have never heard of Bill Clinton.” He is—shocker—wrong about this, but what matters for present purposes is that he believes it, so maybe that means he wouldn’t follow through.
But he is an unpredictable fellow. Suppose Priebus and the GOP piss him off in some way, and he thinks the hell with these losers. Suppose he decides—and don’t doubt the importance of this—that an independent run would be good for the Trump brand in the long run. And suppose he doesn’t actually mind so much the idea of Hillary Clinton being president. We already know he retains a soft spot for old Bill. And he donated to Hillary Clinton’s senatorial campaign.
All that’s speculative. But even in the here and now this dynamic has consequences. It means the GOP can’t afford to offend Trump. This is why Priebus’s spokesman characterized the chairman’s Wednesday evening phone chat with Trump as “very respectful.”
And it’s why the other candidates’ criticisms of him have been a little, ah, restrained. Politicians aren’t always real smart about any number of things, but one thing in my experience that they almost always have a very keen sense of is risk. Members of Congress, for example, generally know exactly what percentage of their electorate they’re going to sacrifice by casting X vote. Jeb Bush’s Trump criticisms are muted because he has a lot to lose by offending Trump and his supporters. Chris Christie, who’s little more than an asterisk in the polls, has less to lose, so he’s willing to be a bit more blunt. Same goes for Rick Perry.
We’ll see if Trump has developed that politician’s sense of risk. If he goes too far, one or certainly two more equivalents of “Mexican rapists,” it’ll be open season on him. He’s at a point of maximum leverage right now, and if he wants to stay there, he’s got to tuck it in about 10 or 15 percent and start employing the kind of racialized euphemisms that are not only tolerated but celebrated within the Republican Party—build the damn fence, no amnesty, Al Qaeda is storming the mainland through Obama’s porous border, etc. That way, he’ll hang around. And he’ll build enough of a following that the threat of a viable independent candidacy remains a real one. And that is Trump’s trump card. And it makes Reince Priebus a very nervous man.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Dail Beast, July 10, 2015
“Clowns, Stunts, And Acrobatics”: The ‘Traveling Circus’ The RNC Can’t Stop
Nearly two years ago, with his party still licking its wounds after a rough 2012 cycle, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus looked ahead to the 2016 presidential race and focused on a specific goal: far fewer debates.
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said Friday he was trying to stop the party’s primary process from transforming into a “traveling circus.”
“Quite frankly, I’m someone – I don’t think having our candidates running around in a traveling circus and doing 23 debates, slicing and dicing each other is in the best interests of our party,” Priebus said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
There’s little doubt that Priebus’ concerns were rooted in fact. The 2012 debates for the Republican presidential candidates were often entertaining, but they didn’t do any favors for the aspirants themselves. When the Republican National Committee sharply curtailed the total number of debates for the 2016 race – and prioritized events on Fox – it didn’t come as a surprise.
But as the Republicans’ presidential field takes shape, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the “traveling circus” is not wholly dependent on debates – a circus needs clowns, stunts, and acrobatics, and the likely 2016 candidates are already providing plenty of antics for our viewing pleasure.
* The entire party is facing a curious new litmus test about whether President Obama is a patriot and a Christian. It’s a test Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is failing badly.
* This comes on the heels of a vaccinations litmus test that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) failed – one of many key issues the senator doesn’t seem to understand.
* Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) is desperate to prove he’s his “own man” by hiring his brother’s and his father’s team of advisers, and advancing his ambitions with his brother’s and his father’s team of donors.
* New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) operation appears to be moving backwards – his vaccinations flub didn’t help – as his popularity falls quickly in his home state.
* Right-wing neurosurgeon Ben Carson (R) has positioned himself as a rare candidate who supports war crimes.
* The closer Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) gets to launching his campaign, the more some party officials plead with him not to run.
* Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) wants states to pursue nullification if the Supreme Court endorses marriage equality.
* Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) seems eager to say and/or do anything to get attention.
* A variety of GOP candidates have set up private meetings with Donald Trump.
The Greatest Show on Earth? Probably not, though it’s clear the “traveling circus” is well underway, and there’s very little Reince Priebus can do about it.
The problem isn’t the debates, per se. Rather, it’s the candidates themselves who run the risk of embarrassing themselves and their party. As the last few weeks have reminded us, they don’t need a debate platform to cause trouble.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 23, 2015
“Is This The Return Of Back Alley Abortions?”: The “Republican War On Women” Is A Fact, One That Voters Are Certainly Aware Of
Sometimes, women have sex. Sometimes, that sex is unprotected. Sometimes, women get pregnant. And sometimes, they chose to terminate their pregnancies by having abortions. In fact, one in three American women will have an abortion by the age of 45. These are all basic and undeniable facts of life, facts just like evolution and climate change and the economic benefits of raising the minimum wage that both universal truth and voter opinion plainly endorse. And then there’s the Republican Party, determined to face these facts in the same way it faces its inevitable substantive and demographic irrelevance — in other words, not at all.
According to a recent poll conducted by NARAL Pro-Choice America, almost 7 in 10 Americans “believe having an abortion is morally acceptable and should be legal” or are “personally against abortion” but “don’t believe government should prevent a woman from making that decision for herself.” Included in that number are fully 53 percent of Republicans who say they don’t support government limits on abortion.
The Republican Party has a major — and growing — problem not only wooing women voters but also male voters who support women’s reproductive freedom, let alone economic equality. And yet confronted with facts, including that Republicans in Texas are forcing the closure of the majority of the state’s abortion clinics, what does Reince Priebus, the head of the Republican Party, do? Distract from the facts.
On Meet The Press this past Sunday, Chuck Todd asked Priebus about last week’s ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court to allow Texas’ restrictive anti-abortion law to take immediate effect. Here’s their exchange via RH Reality Check’s Jodi Jacobson, who has characterized Priebus’ response as a downright lie:
TODD: A court upheld a new law in Texas. One of the things about the Republican Party is you don’t like a lot of regulation on businesses, except if the business is [an] abortion clinic. Eighty percent of these abortion clinics in Texas are going to be basically out of business because of this new law. Too much regulation, is that fair? Why regulate on the abortion issue now until maybe the law is—and maybe wait until you win a fight in the Supreme Court where you outlaw abortion altogether. Why restrict a business now in the state of Texas?
REINCE PRIEBUS: Well, you obviously have to talk to someone in Texas. But the fact of the matter is that we believe that any woman that’s faced with an unplanned pregnancy deserves compassion, respect, counseling, whatever it is that we can offer to be—
CHUCK TODD: But 80 percent of those clinics are gone. So that they have to drive 200 or 300 miles for that compassion?
REINCE PRIEBUS: No, look, listen, Chuck. The issue for us is only one thing. And that’s whether you ought to use taxpayer money to fund abortion. That’s the one issue that I think separates this conversation that we’re having.
Wait a second! The Texas law has absolutely nothing to do with taxpayer dollars — after all, Texas banned public support for reproductive health a long time ago. No, the Texas law merely places extremely onerous and unnecessary requirements on abortion providers for the sole purpose of forcing those providers to stop performing abortions. Which, by the way, is working — as a result of the Fifth Circuit ruling, seven or eight additional clinics in Texas will close, forcing women in many parts of the state to drive 300 miles or more to exercise their constitutional right to an abortion. The Texas policy, after all, is the manifestation of GOP-led attacks on abortion across the country, which have gone to such an extreme that 87 percent of counties in America do not have abortion providers and medical training on abortion care has been so undermined that, as The Daily Beast reported, a new online course is trying to fill the gap.
Maybe Priebus was confused. Republicans also oppose government funding for contraception — or even, in the case of Obamacare, government requiring private insurers to cover contraception — despite the obvious fact that affordable access to contraception lowers the rate of unintended pregnancies and thus the need for abortions. Then again, I give Priebus more credit than that — and assume that his words weren’t accidentally misspoken but deliberately misleading.
Again and again, as I have written, it seems to boil down to Republicans being offended that women — especially poor women — even want to have sex. How dare they! Soon they’ll be wanting equal pay. “You could argue that money is more important for men,” Republican congressional candidate Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin once said, explaining his opposition to equal pay laws. Birth control is for women who “cannot control their libido,” said former Arkansas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.
These attitudes, along with backwards policy stances, paint a picture of a GOP not only out of touch with women’s reproductive and economic freedom but downright opposed to it. Is it any wonder that women, especially young liberated women, are fleeing from a party that is so profoundly and anachronistically condescending to more than half of the population?
Rank-and-file conservatives by and large do not share these extreme anti-equality, anti-abortion, anti-women attitudes. But such views are becoming dangerously prevalent among Republican leaders and candidates — and being translated into policy at a record pace, with results so frightening that Republican leaders realize they can’t even be honest with voters about the effects. In other words, the “Republican War on Women” isn’t a politically convenient construction of the Democrats, it’s a fact — one that voters are certainly aware of.
By: Sally Kohn, The Daily Beast, October 7, 2014
“A Perpetual State Of Republican Rebranding”: Another Venture Into The Stale Agenda Of Vague And Discredited Ideas
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus delivered a speech at the George Washington University yesterday, tackling a familiar challenge.
Republicans will unveil a rebranding effort Thursday aimed at changing its image as a political party focused solely on obstructing President Barack Obama’s agenda to instead a champion of ideas and action. […]
Despite the predictions by nonpartisan political handicappers of GOP electoral success in November, there is an acknowledgment within the party that it needs to do a better job convincing voters that its objective is greater than just derailing Obama’s agenda.
We’ll get to the substance of Priebus’ pitch in a moment, but before we do, let’s not brush past the obvious too quickly: for the love of all that is good in the world, are Republicans really pursuing another “rebranding effort”?
Note the subtlety of the Associated Press’ report: “Priebus’ speech is not the party’s first rebranding effort this cycle.”
That’s true; it’s not. Shortly after the 2012 elections, in which Republicans struggled badly, Priebus’ launched a massive rebranding campaign, which his party promptly ignored. Indeed, for the most part, GOP lawmakers did pretty much the opposite of what the Republican National Committee had planned.
But that rebranding initiative, dubbed the “Growth and Opportunity Project,” was just the latest in a long series of related efforts. Remember the “Young Guns” rebranding campaign? How about the “Cut and Grow” rebranding campaign? And the “America Speaking Out” rebranding campaign?
My personal favorite was the “National Council for a New America” rebranding campaign, in which party leaders vowed to go outside the Beltway; they held one event in a D.C.-area pizza parlor; and the initiative evaporated soon after.
And yet, here’s Priebus trying once again. Not to put too fine a point on this, but when a major political party launches five rebranding initiatives in four years, it gives the impression of being hopelessly lost, lacking in leadership, direction, and purpose.
Of course, there’s also Priebus’ speech itself.
Pushing back against criticism that the GOP had become defined entirely by opposition to President Obama, Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus released a list of 11 “Principles for American Renewal” that he said would guide the GOP agenda should it gain control of government.
“People know what we’re against,” Priebus said in a speech at George Washington University. “I want to talk about the things that we’re for.”
In theory, that sounds delightful, but in practice, what Priebus wants is a stale agenda of vague and discredited ideas, many of which have been considered and rejected: a radically dangerous constitutional amendment on balanced budgets, a Republican-friendly version of health care reform that the party can’t identify, and school vouchers to help privatize America’s system of public education, among other things. There were 11 provisions in all, none of which were substantive or interesting.
Ed Kilgore concluded that Priebus’ new plan is “pretty perfunctory at best, and more than likely meant to be mentioned rather than read.” Mocking Priebus’ message, Kilgore added, “Hey, look, conservative critics, look, pundits, we got eleven—not just ten, but eleven – principles to show what we’ll do other than shriek about Obama and Benghazi! and the IRS and Secular Socialism every day! It goes up to eleven!”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 3, 2014
“The Dick Morris Award For Pre-Election Hype”: Pre-spinning Elections Is Even More Obnoxious Than Spinning The Results
I know I have zero influence over the rhetoric deployed by Reince Priebus, but still, I’d like to start a backlash against this particular formulation by the RNC chairman:
The way Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus sees it, 2014 won’t be an average election for the party out of power. It’ll be a “tsunami” wave election.
At a Christian Science Monitor Breakfast on Tuesday Priebus said Republicans would see massive gains in the 2014 election, especially in the Senate.
“I think we’re in for a tsunami election,” Preibus said. “Especially at the Senate level.”
“Wave elections” are big-trending events beyond normal electoral expectations. We have two recent examples in 2006 and 2010. “Tsunami” elections, if the term means anything at all, means really big wave elections. 1974 and 1994 are pretty good examples; 2010, at least at the state level, might qualify as well.
It will be normal, not a “wave,” for Republicans to make sizable gains in the Senate this November, if only because of inherently pro-Republican midterm turnout patterns, the tendency of the party holding the White House to lose seats in midterms (especially second-term midterms), and an insanely pro-Republican landscape of seats that happen to be up. If Republicans pick up eight or nine Senate seats, that might represent a “wave.” They’d have to exceed that significantly before we can talk about any sort of “tsunami.”
So cut out the crap, Reince. Pre-spinning elections is even more obnoxious than spinning the results, unless you are angling for the Dick Morris Award for pre-election hype.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, March 18, 2014
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 