I'm almost tempted to feel sorry for the Establishment wing of the Republican Party-- what I used to always refer to as the Greed and Selfishness wing-- and the cruel comeuppance they're getting from the Hatred and Bigotry wing. They should never have made the deal with the devil to bring that crap into their party. After Nixon's Southern Strategy there really was no other possible outcome. The Greed and Selfishness wing is being obliterated and kicked out of their own crumbling party. Of course the Establishment Democrats have moved so far right, the the Greed and Selfishness Republicans will eventually feel right at home there.Still, it's sad-- like, single tear sad-- to see hopeful Greed and Selfishness guys being drive to despair by certifiably insane sociopaths like Trump, Carson and Cruz. My hear almost went out to Jeb this weekend when he told a teeny weeny gathering of supporters that he's fed up with the nihilists and self-serving lunatics who have taken over the congressional party and are dominating the presidential nomination process. "If," referring to the classic example of Émile Durkheim's anomie currently playing out in the House, "this election is about how we’re going to fight to get nothing done, then I don’t want anything, I don’t want any part of it. I don’t want to be elected president to sit around and see gridlock just become so dominant that people literally are in decline in their lives. That is not my motivation. I’ve got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around, be miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them. That is a joke. Elect Trump if you want that."And they do want that-- and they may elect nominate Trump. Today there were lots of Twitter titters when Trump thanked respectable journalist Sahil Kapur for a Bloomberg story he penned, Why Donald Trump Could Win the Republican Nomination. Kapur writes that it isn't the far right that's keeping Trump's polling numbers sky-high; it's those who are fed up with the party establishment. "In ways large and small, with policy and with personality, billionaire Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is forcing his party's establishment to confront the vast divide between party leaders and the voters who, according to nearly every poll for months, have wanted him to carry their torch to the White House... Trump is offering Republicans something no other candidate can: An insider's knowledge of the elite combined with a mischievous determination to upend it and an unorthodox set of policy prescriptions-- running the gamut from immigration to campaign finance to Social Security-- that aim to achieve that goal. In this year's contest for the Republican nomination, that platform has proven to have staying power... For months he has characterized his Republican rivals as puppets of the wealthy donors they depend on, zeroing in first on Jeb Bush, who is supported by a super-PAC that had nearly $100 million cash on hand as of its most recent filing with the FEC... Trump also breaks with Republican elites who support free trade and want to cut Social Security and Medicare. Nearly all Republican candidates from Bush to Senator Marco Rubio are campaigning on cutting entitlements and many want to ink the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord. But Trump is joining forces with some on the left by campaigning to protect the retirement programs and assailing President Barack Obama's trade pact as a “disaster.” Nearly 80 percent of Republicans want to preserve Social Security and Medicare, according to a Reuters poll earlier this year."So maybe Jeb needs to rethink his glum attitude and get a grip on why voters in his own party despise him and, despite all the barrels of cash, refuse to back him. And Lindsey Graham, who is sitting at a ZERO percent backing after months and months of campaigning and after a long career in the House and Senate and endless face-time on the Sunday gabfests, might be a bit more introspective about his predicament. He joked around with the Morning Joe crew the other day about how he could possibly be losing to the sociopaths running for the Republican nomination. "The number two guy [Carson] tried to kill somebody at 14 and the number one guy [Trump] is high energy and crazy as hell. How am I losing to these guys?" Well... people like authenticity and there's nothing authentic about a tired old closet queen from South Carolina.Two relatively popular multi-term governors from big states-- popular at least with Republicans-- Rick Perry (R-TX) and Scott Walker (R-WI) have already been driven out of the race. Both were extremely well-funded but neither could figure out how to go up against Trump. (The same goes for New Jersey slob Chris Christie except he hasn't realized it yet.) Next on the chopping block will be John Kasich, a perfectly typical example of a serious Greed and Selfishness wing Republican who should be a real contender. Instead last week's ABC/Washington Post poll shows him languishing among Republican primary voters nationally at 2% in 10th place. His standing in the CNN/ORC polls last week in South Carolina and Nevada were even more dismal, 1% in South Carolina, tied with Rick Santorum for 11th place, and 1% in Nevada, tied for 9th place with Christie, Gilmore and Pataki (albeit still ahead of Graham, Jindal and Santorum, each at ZERO). And Kasich is fed up:
"Do you know how crazy this election is?" he shouted during a pre-debate rally in Ohio on Tuesday. "Let me tell you something. I've about had it with these people. Let me tell you why. We got one candidate that says we ought to abolish Medicaid and Medicare. You ever heard anything so crazy as that, telling our people in this country who are seniors or about to be seniors that we're going to abolish Medicaid or Medicare," Kasich continued, referencing Ben Carson who has changed his opinion on the matter seemingly overnight."We got one guy that says we ought to take 10 or 11 million people and pick them up, where the-- I don't know where, we're going to go in their homes, their apartments. We're going to pick them up and we're going to take them to the border and scream at them to get out of our country," Kasich said in an obvious dig at frontrunner Donald Trump. "Well that's just crazy. That is just crazy.""We got one candidate that claimed, one candidate that actually said that the reason why we signed an agreement with Ford to bring jobs back from Mexico is because he's been yelling for the last week ok," Kasich said again referencing Trump to uproarious laughter. "That was like something out of a Back to the Future movie."
I guess he'd feel better to be losing to Jeb Bush. Or Marco Rubio? But if he felt bad about this week's front runner wanting to abolish Medicare, wait 'til he reads about him tacitly admitting that he has no clue what the hell the debt ceiling is-- just that he's against it. Carson said if he were elected president he would refuse to sign any budget deal that raised the debt ceiling. I guess he thinks the debt ceiling is about future spending because if he doesn't think that, he's advocating the federal government declaring bankruptcy on money already borrowed and spent.
