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Fritz Coldcockin
Nov 7, 2005

pangstrom posted:

Palin in an Anglerfish

Ted Cruz could have been Blobfish

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Captain_Maclaine
Sep 30, 2001

Every moment that I'm alive, I pray for death!

Alter Ego posted:

Ted Cruz could have been Blobfish

The Lowest Common Denominator in Jokes Department insists that be reserved for Chris Christie.

Fritz Coldcockin
Nov 7, 2005
Christie's already Pufferfish. He got a name. You can't have two names, duh :colbert:

Captain_Maclaine
Sep 30, 2001

Every moment that I'm alive, I pray for death!

Alter Ego posted:

Christie's already Pufferfish. He got a name. You can't have two names, duh :colbert:

Whoops, missed that. Guess I got too caught up in fish tales.

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

Fishconsin is the lowest effort codename. Might as well have gone with "Ahfuckitfish".

Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

hobbesmaster posted:

Fishconsin is the lowest effort codename. Might as well have gone with "Ahfuckitfish".

Ahfuckitfish was McCaine's.

Joementum
May 23, 2004

jesus christ

hobbesmaster posted:

Fishconsin is the lowest effort codename. Might as well have gone with "Ahfuckitfish".

And it's not as if there's any lack of Paul Ryan fish material.





It's almost as if the Romney campaign was full of unimaginative hacks....

Urban Space Cowboy
Feb 15, 2009

All these Coyote avatars...they make me nervous...like somebody's pulling a prank on the entire forum! :tinfoil:

gently caress You And Diebold posted:

Which book is this? Guessing double down but is "Obamans" really the language they use?
I don't know what book it is, but "Obamans" is the term Halperin and Heilemann use throughout Game Change, so it's reasonable they'd use it again. On the subject, I guess they had me spoiled with all the behind-the-scenes gossipy bits in Game Change, 'cause I found Collision 2012 underwhelming and disappointing. Balz retreads too much publicly-known material (as Orange_Lazarus commented on) and has too much "I interviewed so-and-so about blah, and he said..." type phrasing drawing attention to his own presence. Yeah Dan, it's nice that you scored interviews with Gingrich and Christie, but nobody cares what you have to say in 'em. You don't want to look like a political starfucker who cares more about access than accuracy, do you?

Sephiroth_IRA
Mar 31, 2010
All republicans are flounder.

ReindeerF
Apr 20, 2002

Rubber Dinghy Rapids Bro

Deteriorata posted:

The article seems to suggest it was Daley's idea, at least, without input from Obama. It may have been something Daley would have suggested to Obama had the numbers worked, but was quietly dropped when it didn't.
Daley, of course, is the genius from Al Gore's 2000 bid, among other things. He walked into the Chicago job, but like Shrum and a lot of other hacks in the Democratic political machine, he should never be listened to, ever, about national political strategy.

Brigadier Sockface
Apr 1, 2007
Oh my, and who ended up getting replaced after all?

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually
Fun article in the NYT about the growing (and bitter) rivalry between two of the GOP's fresher faces expected to compete in 2016

quote:

Republican Rivalry Simmers as Paths and Styles Diverge
By JONATHAN MARTIN
Published: November 1, 2013

DES MOINES — Senator Ted Cruz calls his colleague Rand Paul a “good friend.” The two men are the stars of the Tea Party movement, propelled to Washington by activist fervor and allied in their effort to restrain the reach of the federal government.

But when Mr. Cruz went to New York City to meet with donors this summer, he privately offered a different view of Mr. Paul: The Kentucky senator can never be elected president, he told them, because he can never fully detach himself from the strident libertarianism of his father, former Representative Ron Paul of Texas.

Word of Mr. Cruz’s remarks reached Mr. Paul’s inner circle, touching off anger and resentment.

And the incident further inflamed a rivalry that has been quietly building as the Republican Party tries to grapple with the force and power of its Tea Party wing. Both Mr. Cruz and Mr. Paul harbor presidential ambitions and view themselves as representing a new, more energized movement of Republican activists. But they are pursuing distinctly different paths as they try to rise, diverging not just in style but in their approach to intraparty politics.

Mr. Cruz and his aides believe he is uniquely suited to galvanize conservatives, pointing to his leadership of the effort to cut off funding for the Affordable Care Act — confrontational, pugnacious, disdainful of President Obama. Mr. Cruz, 42 — a Texan, a born-again Baptist and son of an evangelical preacher — also connects naturally with Christian conservatives, many of whom have become foot soldiers in the Tea Party and view Mr. Paul as too unorthodox on social issues.

Mr. Paul’s inner circle privately derides Mr. Cruz as “the chief of the wacko birds,” echoing a phrase from Senator John McCain of Arizona. And, while allowing Mr. Cruz to lead the charge on Obamacare, the Kentucky senator has quietly been reaching out to more establishment forces within the Republican Party, trying to prove to big donors and mainline Republican organizations that he is more than a Tea Party figure or a rerun of his father’s failed candidacies.

In September, Mr. Paul mingled with New York financial titans at the Central Park West penthouse of Woody Johnson, the Jets owner and Johnson & Johnson heir, who hosted a Republican National Committee fund-raiser with a group of potential 2016 Republican contenders.

A few weeks later, at the Four Seasons in Washington, Mr. Paul appeared at a closed-door American Crossroads foreign policy panel and then posed for pictures with donors to the “super PAC,” which was co-founded by Karl Rove, a despised figure among some Tea Party activists.

And while Mr. Paul first won office by taking on the anointed Senate candidate of Kentucky’s senior senator, Mitch McConnell, Mr. Paul is now helping Mr. McConnell’s re-election effort and joined him and other establishment Republicans at a lobbyist-filled fund-raising retreat for the National Republican Senatorial Committee last month in Sea Island, Ga.

The divergent strategies undertaken by Mr. Cruz and Mr. Paul not only put them on a collision course should they both pursue presidential candidacies. They also could help determine whether the Tea Party — right now a muscular and rebellious force within the Republican Party — remains at war with the establishment or is eventually more smoothly integrated into the party apparatus.

Mr. Paul and those close to him are confident that his die-hard libertarian-leaning supporters will not desert him, and that gives him freedom to build bridges beyond that base.

“He’s becoming a translator between the grass-roots conservatives and the establishment,” said Trygve Olson, a consultant who bridges the two wings. He then added an implicit dig at other Republicans: “He’s actually demonstrating leadership.”

Transcending the two worlds can be tricky: While Mr. Paul voted with Mr. Cruz on the effort to defund the health care law — pre-empting future primary attacks from the right — he also said publicly over the summer that he thought shutting the government down was “a dumb idea.” Privately, he complained during the shutdown that the effort was futile and was damaging the party.

Still, he is clearly the beneficiary of the comparison with Mr. Cruz: Establishment Republicans are lining up to heap praise on Mr. Paul, using words like “grown” and “matured” to describe him and the role he played during the shutdown.

“This ordeal showed a side of Rand that I though was politically very smart in terms of his tone and trying to distance himself from a strategy that clearly didn’t play well for us,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said in an interview.

The standoff over health care and the shutdown also highlighted the personal differences between the two men and how they are viewed within the Senate: Mr. Paul is more easygoing and speaks casually as he makes his points with fellow senators. Mr. Cruz, his colleagues complain, often seems like he is lecturing them — or, as one put it, “still on Hannity’s show.” While Mr. Paul was overheard on a hot mike plotting strategy with Mr. McConnell, Mr. Cruz was receiving tongue-lashings from his Republican colleagues at private senators-only luncheons. Mr. Paul mixes with a range of senators at the weekly Republican luncheons; Mr. Cruz tends to stick close to his fellow hard-liner Senator Mike Lee of Utah.

And the language at the top of the article - energize, galvanize - shows that the operating belief in the GOP is that they think the path to victory in 2016 involves firing up a lethargic (but vast) base and not changing things to appeal to new groups of voters or peel off members of the Democratic coalition. No, they've lost the popular vote in five of the last six elections because they just weren't convincingly conservative enough.

Nowhere is the competition between the men more obvious than in the crucial state of Iowa, where Mr. Paul was the most sought-after speaker in the state earlier this year in the aftermath of his filibuster over the use of drone strikes, but where Mr. Cruz is now surging after his starring role in the shutdown battle. He was the headline speaker at the Iowa Republican Party dinner late last month.

“Both of them are appealing to the same base, but there is no doubt that Cruz is the one who now has got a full head of steam,” said Bob Vander Plaats, who leads an Iowa Christian conservative group.

Supporters of Mr. Paul are better organized, however, and building on Ron Paul’s campaign, they have essentially taken over the levers of the Iowa Republican Party, earning the nickname “Paulistinians” in the state’s Republican circles. They tend to be libertarian-leaning and as passionate about limiting American interventionism overseas as they are about domestic affairs.

But Mr. Paul is also determined to appeal among social conservatives now drawn to Mr. Cruz.

Both appeared at a gathering of pastors in Des Moines this summer and spoke at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter summit meeting last month in Washington. The day before that meeting, they addressed a private meeting of a few dozen of the country’s leading Christian conservatives. Attendees said that Mr. Cruz, who was joined at the closed-door meeting by his pastor father, had the more compelling presence, but that Mr. Paul’s wife, Kelley, impressed the group by “talking in our kind of language,” as one participant put it.

Mr. Paul clearly has more to prove than Mr. Cruz among evangelicals, who remember his father’s libertarianism and are suspicious of his positions, like his support for reducing sentences on drug users and allowing the states to decide whether to legalize same-sex marriage.

“I’d want clarification on those issues because it is a concern,” said Tamara Scott, the Iowa national Republican committeewoman, who has spent time with both men.

Mr. Paul and his advisers are acutely aware of such unease and are taking steps to address it. Most telling, perhaps was an exchange involving Mr. Paul, who was raised an Episcopalian, at the end of a pastors’ luncheon in May in Cedar Rapids.

“One of the pastors said to Rand, ‘We’ve beat all around this, I don’t want to beat all around this anymore, let’s be real specific: Would you define yourself as born again?’ ” recalled David Lane, a Christian conservative organizer. “He said, ‘I’m born again.’ ”
Ooooh, this should be fun. Both of them will spend the next two years trying to top each other with dumb stunts (filibusters, shutdowns, calls for impeachement, etc.) to show that they are True Blue Real Deal Fightin' Conservative and the other guy is a squish. Rand Paul having to prove his evangelical bona fides will be source of much laughs, too (will he speak in tongues? handle snakes? tell a story about a time he drove out demons with his prayers?)

Stretch Marx
Apr 29, 2008

I'm ok with this.

Joementum posted:

And it's not as if there's any lack of Paul Ryan fish material.




Wasn't aware that Ryan was into bass to mouth.

ReindeerF
Apr 20, 2002

Rubber Dinghy Rapids Bro

FMguru posted:

Ooooh, this should be fun. Both of them will spend the next two years trying to top each other with dumb stunts (filibusters, shutdowns, calls for impeachement, etc.) to show that they are True Blue Real Deal Fightin' Conservative and the other guy is a squish. Rand Paul having to prove his evangelical bona fides will be source of much laughs, too (will he speak in tongues? handle snakes? tell a story about a time he drove out demons with his prayers?)
Paul should send flowers to Cruz every drat day. He's such a huge gift to Paul just by being himself and incidentally running cover for Paul, who, otherwise, would look much nuttier than he does and would be the focus of all the, "Is he crazy!?" stories that Cruz is soaking up.

HUGE PUBES A PLUS
Apr 30, 2005

Alter Ego posted:

Christie's already Pufferfish. He got a name. You can't have two names, duh :colbert:

After today Christie will also be known as the guy who shouts at teachers when they ask him a legitimate question. This NJ teacher asked him why he called New Jersey public schools 'failure factories' when public schools in that state have consistently ranked in the top ten in the nation for years. Christie wagged his finger at her and shouted, "What do you people want? Just do your jobs!"

HUGE PUBES A PLUS fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Nov 3, 2013

Horseshoe theory
Mar 7, 2005

Highspeeddub posted:

After today Christie will also be known as the guy who shouts at teachers when they ask him a legitimate question.

Wasn't he already known as the guy who screams and curses at people 99% of the time?

Joementum
May 23, 2004

jesus christ

ThirdPartyView posted:

Wasn't he already known as the guy who screams and curses at people 99% of the time?

Teachers especially. It's kind of his "thing". They also always happen to be women.

ufarn
May 30, 2009

Joementum posted:

Teachers especially. It's kind of his "thing". They also always happen to be women.
You know there has to be a "Christie yelling at people" Tumblr out there.

Lycus
Aug 5, 2008

Half the posters in this forum have been made up. This website is a goddamn ghost town.
It boggles me that people actually like that in a governor.

Highspeeddub posted:

After today Christie will also be known as the guy who shouts at teachers when they ask him a legitimate question. This NJ teacher asked him why he called New Jersey public schools 'failure factories' when public schools in that state have consistently ranked in the top ten in the nation for years. Christie wagged his finger at her and shouted, "What do you people want? Just do your jobs!"


I can't stop looking at that woman next to him and her malevolent smile.

Horseshoe theory
Mar 7, 2005

Lycus posted:

I can't stop looking at that woman next to him and her malevolent smile.

That's his wife, Mary Pat Foster Christie.

StarMagician
Jan 2, 2013

Query: Are you saying that one coon calling for the hanging of another coon is racist?

Check and mate D&D.

Highspeeddub posted:

After today Christie will also be known as the guy who shouts at teachers when they ask him a legitimate question. This NJ teacher asked him why he called New Jersey public schools 'failure factories' when public schools in that state have consistently ranked in the top ten in the nation for years. Christie wagged his finger at her and shouted, "What do you people want? Just do your jobs!"



Aside: I'm glad someone finally installed a mobile interface that was worse than iOS 7.

Cease to Hope
Dec 12, 2011

Highspeeddub posted:

After today Christie will also be known as the guy who shouts at teachers when they ask him a legitimate question. This NJ teacher asked him

I am pretty sure what you did to that segue is banned by international treaties.

Chef Boyardeez Nuts
Sep 9, 2011

The more you kick against the pricks, the more you suffer.
At least 2 Democratic VP potentials have the ability to royally wreck GOP poo poo. Castro putting Texas into play is one of them. The other is Brian Sweitzer, he of the veto branding iron, locking down the west. He is such a showman that Hillary could win the general without crossing the Mississippi.

Joementum
May 23, 2004

jesus christ
Vice Presidential candidates don't meaningfully affect polling or election results, including in their home states.

quote:

Vice-presidential picks have had at most a small influence on modern presidential elections. They have not provided a consistent boost to the ticket in pre-election polling—and Ryan’s pick did not give Romney one. They also have provided, at best, a very modest boost to the ticket on Election Day, both overall and in their home states. Political science studies have confirmed this over the years. The question was not whether Ryan himself would matter but how his selection might have affected broader aspects of messaging and strategy — both Romney’s and Obama’s — and thereby shifted the dynamics of the race.

Also too, Schweitzer was scared out of even running for Senate in his home state because of some shady PAC deals. He's basically waiting to get an appointment to Interior in a future administration at this point.

ufarn
May 30, 2009
Thanks for not using the word "game-samers".

Lee Harvey Oswald
Mar 17, 2007

by exmarx

Highspeeddub posted:

After today Christie will also be known as the guy who shouts at teachers when they ask him a legitimate question. This NJ teacher asked him why he called New Jersey public schools 'failure factories' when public schools in that state have consistently ranked in the top ten in the nation for years. Christie wagged his finger at her and shouted, "What do you people want? Just do your jobs!"



That will help with the Republican base, as Republicans have an arbitrary hatred (because they're rear end in a top hat bullies) of public school teachers.

exquisite tea
Apr 21, 2007

Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."


The last vice presidential pick who helped carry an otherwise unusual state for the party was Al Gore in 1992/6, and even then Clinton likely would have won in TN anyway. I get the feeling that if VP nominations mattered so much, we'd see picks in battleground states every election. Instead most in the past 30 years have come from safely blue/red states and have been mostly about image and/or broadening a candidate's appeal.

Patter Song
Mar 26, 2010

Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.
Fun Shoe
Julian Castro does not put Texas in play in 2016, that's just not how it works. Few people outside of Bexar County particularly care who the mayor of San Antonio is, and marginally-increased Democratic voter turnout in San Antonio isn't going to push the needle in Texas anytime soon.

People seriously overestimate Battleground Texas and the situation on the ground there. Texas is changing, but not fast enough to give Hillary Clinton or whomever more than ~44-45% of the vote in 2016.

Zwabu
Aug 7, 2006

Patter Song posted:

Julian Castro does not put Texas in play in 2016, that's just not how it works. Few people outside of Bexar County particularly care who the mayor of San Antonio is, and marginally-increased Democratic voter turnout in San Antonio isn't going to push the needle in Texas anytime soon.

People seriously overestimate Battleground Texas and the situation on the ground there. Texas is changing, but not fast enough to give Hillary Clinton or whomever more than ~44-45% of the vote in 2016.

Yeah, I think there has to be some massive "get Hispanic voters registered and caring about voting" event in Texas as a necessary intermediate step to converting demographic potential into electoral potential, and it hasn't happened yet. Whether a really good campaign for Senate or Governor by an appealing candidate like one of the Castro brothers could catalyze this remains to be seen.

So for now, Texas demographics is the "sleeping Democratic giant" like all the factories and industry making cars and sheet metal in America Yamamoto saw when he visited the country pre WWII.

Joementum
May 23, 2004

jesus christ
Newt Gingrich thinks that Chris Christie is too fat and too egotistical.

quote:

A presidential candidate himself in 2012, Gingrich also said the cautious Mitt Romney would have never selected New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for his running mate. He called Christie a “wild prosecutor with a huge body and a huge ego,” and said the governor would have overshadowed Romney on the campaign trail.

"Romney would have shrunk, and Christie would have blossomed," Gingrich said.

TheBalor
Jun 18, 2001
I think Chris Christie might have a hard time playing the adult in the room with the lineup we've got brewing. Cruz pushes the crazy train so far right he makes his colleagues look sane. Add in a few more troglodytes like Santorum and Perry, and you'll see us settle on "serious about the budget/civil liberties" candidates Paul and/or Rand. Chris Christie will be consigned to 2016's Huntsman.

kitten emergency
Jan 13, 2008

get meow this wack-ass crystal prison
Don't sell Christie short, he can be both of the adults in the room at the same time by volume.

Winkie01
Nov 28, 2004

Highspeeddub posted:

After today Christie will also be known as the guy who shouts at teachers when they ask him a legitimate question. This NJ teacher asked him why he called New Jersey public schools 'failure factories' when public schools in that state have consistently ranked in the top ten in the nation for years. Christie wagged his finger at her and shouted, "What do you people want? Just do your jobs!"



This is why Christie will never be President.

oldfan
Jul 22, 2007

"Mathewson pitched against Cincinnati yesterday. Another way of putting it is that Cincinnati lost a game of baseball."

TheBalor posted:

Chris Christie will be consigned to 2016's Huntsman.

Let's not go overboard here. Christie's going to have top tier money and full name recognition, and if Huntsman ever got to that point he would have been a serious player.

TheBalor
Jun 18, 2001

jeffersonlives posted:

Let's not go overboard here. Christie's going to have top tier money and full name recognition, and if Huntsman ever got to that point he would have been a serious player.

Fair enough, and no election is exactly a repeat of another. Still, I do feel that if the expected gain materialize in the house and senate, the base will see it as a vindication of their attacks on all untrue scotsmen. They're not going to be in the mood to be told that they need to let someone like Christie take the ball home.

Joementum
May 23, 2004

jesus christ

TheBalor posted:

They're not going to be in the mood to be told that they need to let someone like Christie take the ball home.

Much like 2012, and 2008, and 2000, and 1988/92. The base can whine all they like, but when Christie dumps $20m onto the Iowa airwaves we'll see how they fare.

And Christie is actually a somewhat base-friendlier candidate than Romney, McCain, and the Bushes were.

oldfan
Jul 22, 2007

"Mathewson pitched against Cincinnati yesterday. Another way of putting it is that Cincinnati lost a game of baseball."

TheBalor posted:

Fair enough, and no election is exactly a repeat of another. Still, I do feel that if the expected gain materialize in the house and senate, the base will see it as a vindication of their attacks on all untrue scotsmen. They're not going to be in the mood to be told that they need to let someone like Christie take the ball home.

They're not going to be in the mood no matter what happens, but it's been a very long time since the Republican base actually got the guy they wanted in a presidential primary, and it isn't like they haven't tried.

richardfun
Aug 10, 2008

Twenty years? It's no wonder I'm so hungry. Do you have anything to eat?

Please oh wise mr. Gingrich, tell us more of these men with bloated ego's and ditto bodies. :allears:

redscare
Aug 14, 2003
The VP may not bring you votes, but they can certainly drive them away. Exhibit A: Sarah Palin.

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FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

Joementum posted:

Much like 2012, and 2008, and 2000, and 1988/92. The base can whine all they like, but when Christie dumps $20m onto the Iowa airwaves we'll see how they fare.

And Christie is actually a somewhat base-friendlier candidate than Romney, McCain, and the Bushes were.
The Republican base has a long history of grumbling, complaining, and then dutifully holding their noses and voting for their guy. What's that saying, Democrats fall in love while Republicans fall in line? But the base has gotten increasingly restive over the last several cycles - they've refused to back the establishment candidate in a number of Senate primaries and have thrown away five winnable Senate seats, and it took forever for Romney to nail down the nomination in 2012 as the base kept cycling through joke candidates hoping to find their Anybody But Romney. Romney eventually triumphed, but it took all of the party establishment's resources to do it, and the long race did a lot of damage to him in the general.

The rise of the Tea Party, as much as it was a 100% astroturfed rebranding of the GOP base cosplaying as recently-energized common sense independents, poses a threat because it's convinced a number of Republican base voters to identify themselves as free-thinkin' independents who aren't beholden to the corrupt and compromised GOP.

The base could move in all kinds of weird directions in 2016, and that's a particular problem for the GOP because their viable electoral window just keeps getting narrower and narrower. Pretty much everything has to break right for them to win a Presidential election in the current demographic environment, and an erratic base in the last thing they need.

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