Seemingly no one wants to speak at the Cleveland convention that will elect Donald Trump as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate:
New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, a rising star who helped to write the GOP platform at the 2012 convention, “will be in her district working for her constituents and not attending the convention,” said a spokesman. Oklahoma Rep. Steve Russell, a former Army lieutenant colonel who helped capture Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, “has no plans to be a speaker at the convention,” said his office. North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson, who’s frequently talked about as a potential future statewide candidate, “won’t be at the convention.” Mia Love, the charismatic Utah rep seen by many as the GOP’s future, is skipping Cleveland for a trip to Israel. “I don’t see any upsides to it,” Love told a reporter on Friday. “I don’t see how this benefits the state.”
Reporters at Politico reached out to “more than 50 prominent governors, senators and House members to gauge their interest in speaking” there and found almost no takers. So, I took a look at the list of speakers at the 2012 Republican National Convention, and guess what I found?
Pretty much anyone who was anyone had a speaking slot there, from Speaker John Boehner, to House members like Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Marsha Blackburn, to up-and-comers like Mia Love, to senators across the ideological spectrum, to pretty much every major Republican governor in the country.
Romney made sure that Latino governors Susana Martinez of New Mexico and Brian Sandoval of Nevada were given primetime slots. Govs. Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Mary Fallin, Bob McDonnell, and John Kasich all made appearances, most of them prominent.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire spoke four years ago, but this time around she’s not even going to attend the convention.
The convention is being held in Ohio, and that’s awkward.
Ohio Sen. Rob Portman will attend the convention and host several events in Cleveland over the course of the week. But a spokesman, Kevin Smith, said “no announcements” had yet been made on whether he would speak. A spokesman for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Trump primary rival who has pointedly refused to endorse the presumptive nominee, declined to comment on whether he wanted to deliver a speech.
I don’t want to be a “nasty, nasty guy,” but it’s pretty evident that Trump is toxic.
Even the GOP leaders in charge of maintaining the party’s congressional majorities — Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker and Oregon Rep. Greg Walden — wouldn’t say whether they’d take the podium…
…“Everyone has to make their own choice, but at this point, 70 percent of the American public doesn’t like Donald Trump. That’s as toxic as we’ve seen in American politics,” said Stuart Stevens, a longtime Republican strategist who helped to craft the party’s 2012 convention. “Normally, people want to speak at national conventions. It launched Barack Obama’s political career.”
Just to give an idea of the scope of the problem, in primetime of the first night of the 2012 convention, there were 18 separate speakers and a video. I don’t know how Trump is going to replicate their firepower.
The GOP should grow a pair and cancel it. Just send out a notice do to lack of interest we have decided to cancel this uninformative event.
that was a good one.
Do hurricanes come to Ohio? (I know the answer to that). But it worked for at least a day once.
Actually, wind storms from hurricanes made it up there and caused a lot of damage a few years back.
And all the “firepower” got them exactly what in 2012? If the ticket is a loser, why bother showing up and metaphorically look like Eastwood talking to a chair?
What’s been the primary objective of the Trump campaign so far? Ratings. Would be surprised if that’s not his objective for the convention. Like what Palin did for a VP debate and Trump did for GOP debates, Trump will do for the RNC convention even if the stage has look like a Busby Berkley production.
“even if the stage has look like a Busby Berkley production. “
I’d watch that! Better than listening to droning politicians competing in the lies-per-minute contest.
Should have said a “cheapskate and tacky version” of a Busby Berkley production.
I’m looking forward to the “Drinking Game Rules” for those who want to watch the show.
Make it M&Ms. Alcohol and a healthy liver are too valuable to squander on such a low-rent spectacle.
Ben & Jerry’s!
One M&M (plain milk chocolate) = 3 calories
One spoon of B&J = 34 calories. (Onc of those itty bitty dessert spoons would be a third of that.
Symbolically would be nice, but also a reason to shed tears.
I have drink recipes and drinking game rules for The Donald already. They’ll work for his speeches just as well as for debates.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2015/08/drinks-and-drinking-games-for-donald.html
These speakers, I assume, get some kind of stipend or honorarium for their speech? If so, I will take the hit for the team. Yes, I will volunteer to speak at the Trumporonation.
I have no idea what I’ll say, but I’m sure I can come up with something appropriately preposterous and offensive.
You can always talk to an empty chair. Pretend a Mexican is sitting there.
.
LOL!
No puedo hablar español , así como lo hacía antes , pero tengo bastante que insultar y burlarse a los miembros del partido Republicano, y su candidato, la batata vulgar.
So, basically, Gary Busey.
Plenty of RWNJs will volunteer too speak.
Most people just won’t recognize them or their names.
A few exceptions: Palin, Christie, Ben Carson.
Maybe he can get the family out there: Ivanka, Marla, Melania.
They will fill up the slots and the event will proceed.
Have not watched a live convention since . . . . – I can’t ever remember watching any live convention coverage, ever. Never seemed to be any point to them.
1980 Dem’s Floor fight by Ted Kennedy. The whole family watched together.
Rumor is Trump’s kids will speak. That will get a YUUUGE audience – even Trump thinks Ivanka is hot.
I also heard this. One wonders if part of the reluctance of some to speak is because they have heard Trump and his family intend it all as a Brand advertisement, with the requisite obsequiousness.
It won’t matter. Even if the don’t attend, they will own it.
.
I’m guessing that they know it’s far too late to bump him off, even if they could make it unequivocally look like an accident.
They’d have to be able to frame a high-visibility Black Lives Matter activist, complete with faked video.
Yikes!! Don’t give Breitbart video fake con”artist,” James O’Keefe any ideas!! Not snark.
do you think they’ll force some people to show up?
The Republicans are screwed no matter how they go with this. If they try to steal the nomination they’re even more screwed. I see no way out for them and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer party.
From your mouth to God’s ear, and all that.
Remember that Trump has already declared he wants this to be more of an entertainment event, then looking at the list of Trump supporters one can only imagine Ann Coulter in a mud wrestling event with Kid Rock.
There’s always Sarah Palin, followed by Ted Nugent but any Rep with any patriotism in their veins won’t take the stage.
Its entirely possible ratings will be through the roof thanks to rubberneckers
Actually, it should be Ann Coulter mud wrestling Sarah Palin while Kid Rock and Ted Nugent provide musical accompaniment. Good Lord, that double bill would be the all-Michigan Wingnut Rock Stars!
So true. Thinking that the Kid & Ted would be the only ones to provide music, the good rockers have all told Trump & R’s they can’t use their music.
With Huckabee on bass.
Just have them fill time with Republican Karaoke Night and Republican Dancing with the (Non-)Stars Night. People eat that shit up.
the “reality”-teevee-“star” nominee.
Make it Theme Night!
“Republican Dancing with the (Non-)Stars Night”–Tom DeLay vs. Bristol Palin!
Now you’re talking! I’d bet Tom DeLay would have no problem showing up for Trump for the right amount of payola. And Bristol’ll do it for the attention. A match made in hell.
I think El Rushbo is still solidly behind Trump. Thats what 3 hours right there?
While I’m on the road, I tune in Rush from time to time. He’s going through a rough time.
Cruz seemed to be his favorite entering the primary season, because Teddy was in Limbaugh’s sweet spot: completely doctrinaire life-long conservative and a super-duper bomb-thrower who led the shutting down of the government, which Rush loved. Senator Cruz was also an obsequious seeker of approval from Limbaugh and all other players of their Mighty Wurlitzer, and Rush could count on Cruz avoiding any personal behavior problems which would bother him.
On the other hand, Donald didn’t meekly seek to kiss Rush’s ring to help his campaign, and he is most definitely not a life-long doctrinaire conservative. But Donald does have that hateful bomb-throwing blowhard thing going, so it’s hard for Limbaugh to avoid feeling a personal connection with that. And on yet another hand, Rush’s audience is split, with anti-Trumpers bringing things up in their calls to Rushbo that he has problems responding to clearly and simply.
Overall, it’s a real conundrum for El Chubbo.
A good reason to read Purdum and Vanity Fair profiles:
<blockqquote>… his [Henry Paulson’s] previous job in government, as an office assistant to John Ehrlichman in the Nixon White House, had ended 33 years earlier in what could mildly be called disappointment. (Watergate brought Ehrlichman down before finally snaring Nixon himself.)
Learned something new — if not surprising. The old Nixon gang is coming together for one last hurrah.
Well Tundra Trash will be with there to reprise her faaabulous lipstick on a pig speech. She could always bring her ever-expanding (by kids out of wedlock – not that I care, but I thought that was a no-no to the so-called “family values” crowd) brawling brood with her to fill out the stage.
Trump’s overbred spawn might recoil in horror at having to rub elbows with the Wasilla crowd, but oh well.
And then Trump can feature different Trump commodities each night to fill up the stage: a) Trump steaks, b) Trump wine, c) Trump clothes, d) Trump golf courses, e) Trump hotels, e) Trump casinos (are any still open).
I’m sure Trump would think that’s a yuuugely good idea. Product placement. Cha-Ching!!
And then Donald can just yammer on for hours and hours extoling how great he is. Periodically he can have his daughter – who’s super HAWT btw – to come out and stand around pouting while featuring her boobs prominently. And so forth.
I’m sure Trump’s fans’ll love it. It’s what they understand.
Donald Trump calls Elizabeth Warren a `racist’
06/27/16 04:16 PM
By Steve Benen
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) hasn’t just been active in calling out Donald Trump; she’s also positioned herself as one of the nation’s most prominent Democrats that Republicans just love to hate.
This NBC News report, for example, is a reminder that the presumptive GOP nominee is doing more than just trading rhetorical jabs with a Senate critic. One gets the impression that Trump vehemently dislikes Warren on a rather personal level.
Let’s pause to note two things. First, if Donald J. Trump, of all people, wants to have a debate about who is and isn’t “a racist,” he’s making a terrible mistake. Second, the background on Trump’s latest whining has to do with Warren family lore about a Cherokee ancestor.
Republicans don’t believe Warren’s family history, and have used this in recent years to make ugly, racially charged attacks.
Warren claiming, happily, to have minority blood is very, very racist, because it’s very, very racist. In addition, it is very, very racist. And don’t forget that it is very, very racist.
OK, where do I apply to be Strongman Trump’s Twitter voice? I’m pretty sure I got this down.
OT:
How Britain Can Break from Brexit
A roadmap for how Britain can walk itself back from its disastrous referendum.
by Richard Ned Lebow and Simon Reich
June 27, 2016
Like so many important events, “Brexit” – the decision by British voters to withdraw from the European Union (EU) – is the outcome of both social forces and human agency. It offers important political lessons for how to maintain Western democracy and cooperation.
The successful campaign to withdraw Britain from the EU was the work of disgruntled Tories who have not gotten over the loss of empire, the decline in unquestioned authority and privilege of the upper class, and who share the delusion that independence from Europe could somehow restore this bygone era. For decades, these backward looking Tories were consigned to the backbenches of the Conservative parliamentary party. Their moment came in 2013 when Prime Minister David Cameron pledged that the people must “have their say” on Europe and promised to hold a referendum if re-elected. In February 2016, Cameron honored his pledge, announcing a referendum in June. Those voting to withdraw from the EU won a narrow victory – 52 to 48 percent.
The English, the elderly, the rural, and the uneducated voted disproportionately in favor of leaving. But among young voters, 75% wanted to remain in the EU, a percentage almost matched by Londoners, voters in several other major cities, and those in highly educated communities like Oxford and Cambridge. The young are justifiably angry that the opportunities the EU offered them have been taken away by the same generation that has increased their tuition fees and made house ownership an impossible dream. Like many educated and cosmopolitan British people, they have multiple identities, and European is one of them.
Leaders are rarely, if ever, the prisoners of public opinion, and all the more so on the question of the EU in Britain, where nearly half the population supports remaining. So how and why did David Cameron create a crisis that would have been so easy to avoid? The answer lies in his exaggerated fear of UKIP (the United Kingdom Independence Party) and its leader, Nigel Farage. Committed to leaving the EU and reclaiming British “independence,” by 2014, the UKIP benefitted from the defection of two Tory MPs – one of them appropriately named Reckless – and were doing well in the polls. Tory backbenchers were increasingly outspoken on the EU, and David Cameron agreed to hold a referendum, hoping the promise would keep his party united and present further defections to UKIP. This was a huge miscalculation by the prime minister. Support for UKIP had already gone flat and the Conservative Party easily weathered the defection of a couple of disgruntled members. Moreover, the 40 or so MPs pushing for withdrawal constituted a small faction of the 330 Conservative MPs. Collectively, they might have brought the government down, but did not do so because of the greater expected cost to themselves.
Is he going to display the steaks and the water and magazines next to the podium again?
We can count on being subjected to Trump Brand sales pitches during prime time TV broadcasts at the Convention.
I am not kidding. I wish I was.
Seriously, what prominent GOP elected official will be the last to speak on nomination night right before Trump?
It appears to me that a nationwide TV audience will be treated to Senator Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions. No alternative comes to mind.
I thought about Governor Christie, but with his self-serving speech on Romney’s nomination night, The Obama Hug, and his poor performances in the primaries, Christie doesn’t seem like the popular, unifying choice that Trump and the Party would want to put up there.
Good God, Jeff Sessions. That’s appalling.
Perhaps too notoriously racist for that role.
Well, gosh, I vigorously agree with that view of Sessions.
But I seriously can’t think of anyone else Trump and the Party would want up there. The Speaker and Senate Majority Leader won’t do it.
I don’t think Senator Grassley would want to hurt his re-election chances. Maybe Senator Cotton?
They won’t put up some back bencher in the House, will they?
Newt Gingrich?
I hadn’t really thought about this before now. The mind boggles.
Is Carson going to speak? I’m looking forward to that.
Suffering from insomnia?
Hey baby this is prime time we’re talking about! Trump will probably get some musical numbers in there, a couple of comedy acts… Jerry Lewis would be huuuuge. Are the June Taylor Dancers still around? Trump and Rush could do a softshoe number ala Hope and Crosby. I’m telling you, the sky’s the limit!
Trump Adviser Claims Tax Plan Won’t Cost Money And Expects People To Take His Word For It
BY BRYCE COVERT
JUN 27, 2016 3:36 PM
In its analysis, Moody’s included the finding of the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, which concluded that Trump’s tax plan would cost the government $9.5 trillion over a decade based on its own complex modeling. It wasn’t the only place to come to a similar conclusion. The more progressive Citizens for Tax Justice found it would cost $12 trillion over a decade; the more conservative Tax Foundation, which takes into account assumptions that tax cuts spur economic growth, still found it would cost $10.14 trillion over a decade.
But Navarro argues those findings can’t be true because Trump says his tax plan will be revenue neutral. “One of the worst mistakes of the Moody’s report is to ignore the cornerstone of Donald Trump’s tax reform plan, revenue neutrality. This principle is clearly stated on the Trump website,” Navarro’s report says. “It follows that under revenue neutrality, none of the downstream negative effects predicted by the Moody’s report occur.”
Navarro doesn’t offer his own modeling or analysis. “I don’t have the elaborate model of Moody’s,” he told the Washington Post in an interview. “The basic foundation of my analysis is, ‘garbage in, garbage out.
There’s no other way to put this:
He’s just a phucking embarrassment.
………………………
Justice Thomas Passionately Argues That Convicted Domestic Abusers Need Easier Access To Guns
BY LAUREL RAYMOND
JUN 27, 2016 2:25 PM
Today the Supreme Court handed down two decisions: The first is a monumental, headline-grabbing defeat for anti-abortion groups. The second is a highly technical case about gun rights that’s being mostly overlooked.
In the dissenting opinion for the latter case, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argues that convicted domestic abusers have been defrauded of their right to deadly weapons.
At-issue in Voisine v. United States is a technical question of whether two men with convictions for “reckless” domestic assault fall under a federal law prohibiting people convicted of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” from possessing a firearm. The law prohibiting domestic abusers from possessing firearms wasn’t the question under discussion — instead, the question was how far that law reached over certain states’ differing domestic assault laws.
Justice Thomas, however, was very concerned in arguments about the broader law that domestic abusers at large can’t have guns — breaking 10 years of silence on the Court to complain at arguments in February.
Domestic violence.
Battery.
Beating.
Abuse.
Those are the terms that a sane person uses for the violence committed between two individuals.
Others prefer euphemisms, such as…well, let’s see what Justice Thomas prefers to call it.
“Intentional non-consensual touching”.
Justice Thomas can’t retire soon enough. And by retire, my preference for his “retirement” results in US taxpayers not being able to pay him any type of pension.
A euphemism for “retirement”, to be sure.
The Supreme Court’s Abortion Decision Is An Unmitigated Disaster For Abortion Opponents
BY IAN MILLHISER
JUN 27, 2016 11:50 AM
Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt is a beat down of Texas’ anti-abortion law HB 2. Justice Stephen Breyer’s majority opinion piles facts upon evidence upon statistics to demolish Texas’ supposed justification for the law. At one point, Breyer even damns the law with words uttered by Texas’ own attorney. By the end of the opinion, it is surprising that Breyer did not finish with the two words “HULK SMASH!”
Even more significantly, Whole Woman’s Health leaves the right to an abortion on much stronger footing than it stood on before this decision was handed down. It’s difficult to exaggerate just how awesomely anti-abortion advocates erred in urging Texas to pass HB 2 in the first place. This law was supposed to provide those advocates with a vehicle to drain what life remains in Roe v. Wade. Instead, reproductive freedom is stronger today than it has been at any point in nearly a decade.
HB 2, and the litigation strategy used to defend it, took advantage of an apparent contradiction in the Court’s abortion jurisprudence. Roe itself held that the “State has a legitimate interest in seeing to it that abortion, like any other medical procedure, is performed under circumstances that insure maximum safety for the patient.” More recently, in 2007’s Gonzales v. Carhart, a 5-4 Court held that lawmakers enjoy “wide discretion to pass legislation in areas where there is medical and scientific uncertainty.” The question in Whole Woman’s Health was whether a state could enact a sham health law that did little to advance women’s health and a great deal to shut down abortion clinics, and then claim that enough “medical and scientific uncertainty” exists to permit such a law to stand.
It’s all very obvious who will speak:
Night 1 – The Party of Abraham Lincoln – Of the people, by the people, for the people
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III
Ben Carson
Pat McCrory
Allen West
Night 2 – The Party of Theodore Roosevelt – Speak softly
Ted Cruz
Mario Rubio
Alex Mooney
Tom Cotton
Night 3 – The Party of Eisenhower – Beware of the military-industrial complex
Richard Burr
Deb Fischer
Joe Wilson
Sam Brownback
Night 4 – The Party of Reagan – Facts are stupid things
Michele Bachmann
Bobby Jindal
Joni Ernst
Louis Goehmert
Night 5 – The Party of Trump – Brass – You never thought you’d see us here
V.P. Nominee – Ann Coulter
Presidential Nominee – Donald J. Trump
An Elizabeth Warren vs Ann Coulter VP debate????
Popcorn futures would be a bubble all by themselves.
Oh, gee, this is great, Tarheel.
I think they should just have it for one or two nights. Hold the delegate vote the first day, the VP speech and then Trump himself the second day.
some new rumors: no sign of any Repub officials but Trump does have a few of his friends from sports.
from Deadspin