I just want share some news out of the Granite State. The Hill reports that a certain Republican ex-Senator from New Hampshire is a bit vituperative in his opposition to Donald Trump becoming our next president.
Former Sen. Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H.) said he’s considering voting for Hillary Clinton over “sociopath” Donald Trump.
Humphrey, who served in Congress from the ‘70s to 1990, told NBC News he is confident that Trump has major psychological issues, and said that the prospect of Trump becoming the commander in chief is “frightening.”
“I am ever more confirmed in my belief that Trump is a sociopath, without a conscience or feelings of guilt, shame or remorse. And he is pathologically insecure, recklessly attacking anyone who does not confirm him as the best there is,” he wrote in an email to the news network.“To imagine Trump in charge of our armed forces at a moment of crisis is frightening,” Humphrey added.
It’s not the first time he’s leveled the accusation at the GOP nominee, telling the New Hampshire Union Leader in May, “Unequivocally, I am not supporting Donald Trump. I think he’s a sociopath.”
But on Thursday, he said he may vote for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton; he supported Ohio Gov. John Kasich in the Republican primary.
“I would only vote for Hillary in the event of a very close contest,” Humphrey said.
“Meantime, I’m hoping the Republican leadership, at long, long last will show the courage and principal to denounce Trump and to demand he renounce the nomination or face a reconvening of the convention.”
Now, you might think this is just one dude and it doesn’t really augur much for how the election will go up in Live-Free-Or-Die country, but that’s not the case. The latest poll out of New Hampshire has Clinton leading 47 percent to 32 percent in a two-way race. When they gave Jill Stein and Gary Johnson as options, Clinton’s lead went from 15 points to 17 points.
As for the Kelly Ayotte, a current Republican senator representing New Hampshire who is up for reelection, the poll shows her trailing Governor Maggie Hassan 40 percent to 50 percent.
Senator Ayotte losing by 10 all of a sudden?
Gordon Humphrey essentially claiming Kelly is unprincipled and lacks courage? Hell, that’s a direct attack on the Senator’s brands, isn’t it?
This is good news for John McCain.
Think of the Trump campaign as a 50+1 car pile up at a railroad crossing with a 100 car coal train coming down a 4% grade where the engineer has just had a heart attack and the train is blowing through every stop warning light.
Luckily, the only people in the cars are Republican candidates for office.
http://www.theonion.com/article/why-can-i-never-seem-say-right-thing-weeps-trump-p-53408
Interesting how lately more of the some what sane GOP members have come to the shocking realization, that the GOP has become a safe haven for the Mentally Ill in the USA. All it took was the GOP to allow an obviously Mentally Ill Trump to become the Presidential Candidate and poof! Just like magic droves of un-diagnosed Mentally Ill Trump followers came and took over the GOP party.
Hey GOP you all allowed this to happen.
I’m going to be a pill and call that poll suspect. NH substantially bluer than Michigan and Pennsylvania, both around +10 according to polls out today? No. Just, No. The polls are showing Clinton with an overwhelming lead, but not anywhere near this overwhelming. Probably we are genuinely in the lead in NH, but nothing like this.
It just has to be believable enough to cause the other side to freak out and start doing even dumber things, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It’s been a long while since NH was a reliable, rural, red state. Now it’s a suburb of Boston, which is about as blue as you can get.
The NH GOP has always been split along lines now visible in the national party.
There’s the Mad Meldrim Thomson/William Loeb Orange-County-CA-with-Snow GOP.
There’s the Judd Gregg/Warren Rudman goo-goo traditional New England GOP.
Apart from tax fetishism, they might as well be two parties….
…Ayotte’s not nutty enough for the nuts, but she’s thrown in with them to an extent that makes the goo-goos peel-off-able.
Fallen between two stools.
This would be an awesome polling question: “Do you believe Donald Trump is a sociopath, or not?” Maybe we could get PPP to ask that question. Then if they get 30-40% saying yes, CNN might be tempted to ask him on camera.
“I’m a yuuuge sociopath! The biggest! You’ve never seen a sociopath like me!”
Ayotte won in 2000 with a 20+% margin. Turnout was uncommonly low for NH, but she did receive more votes than Sheehan did in her 2014 election
While her problem this time may be Trump, she didn’t put herself in a good position before then by aligning herself with the “just say no” McConnell Senate faction.
OTOH, Hassan has been a more visible presence in NH with her elections in 2012 and 2014 and role as governor. But her wins, like Sheehan’s 2014 re-election, were more narrow than Ayotte’s.
Not a down ticket race that I’d call before the campaigning for it begins.
Ordinarily, I’d agree with you, Marie. Historically, NH has been “rock ribbed Republican” simply because they were the actual, god love us compassionate conservatives.
Then the Libertarian children of the People’s Commonwealth of Massachusetts began moving to Manchester to escape Taxachusetts and the politics of NH became weird.
Ayotte aligned herself with the insane right in 2010. As we have found out, 2010 was a wave election. The alignment made sense in that it got her an easy election. She did not, however, realize that 2010 wasn’t reflective of NH because the root cause of the wave was a RW media reaction to Obama.
NH has many faults. In your face racism isn’t one of them (not to say there isn’t racism in NH, but it sure as hell ain’t MS). Ayotte needed to get out from under the Tea Party and she didn’t do it.
Trump and Co got a pass from “moderate” Republicans up until the just after the Convention. Trump and Co didn’t swerve to the center as expected. The “moderate” Republicans (which are well represented in NH) are in the process of recoiling in horror while clutching their pearls.
You might be right about the poll being an outlier. I’m not sure I trust it either. But it is not totally out of bounds … given that it is NH.
We seem to be in agreement on this one. Although I described her Senate affiliations as hard right (McConnell) rather than Tea Party. She was rewarded for that through a higher profile in the Senate and perhaps given some power. Opposing Obama instead of challenging the GOP Senate leaders. Don’t know if that’s who she is or it was a political calculation on her part. Possible that she didn’t expect to face a viable and tough challenger. Now she’s stuck and quite possibly in no-man’s land.
OTOH, an incumbent does enjoy some advantage. Also, she’s still young. Neither of which I discount. Yet, it does seem to me that she’s a bit too far to the right for the NH presidential election year electorate. OTOH, I don’t think her 2010 win can be dismissed as nothing other than a “wave election” result. Even though that was her first election, she held the high profile AG position (appointed not elected in NH). However, unless her 2010 opponent was a real dud, her winning margin was outside the norm for either a Republican or Democrat and the last two election cycles in NH have been advantage Democrat. All things considered and at this point, this one still seems to be a toss-up to me.
John Harwood tweet:
Was such a pronouncement made in ’08, ’00, or ’80? Reagan was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s which would seem to be a disqualification for high pubic office. Or did he get a pass because he had unseen or unknown handlers (including Nancy and her astrologer)? Cheney would make up for GWB’s shortcomings. That worked out well, didn’t it?
There’s always the power behind the throne, and the GOP establishment has run a long tail group for a long time. That’s why I don’t think they worried much about Reagan – who was mostly reliable when he was coached to memorize his lines for his speechifying – and about W, who was mostly compliant (other than the defiant “I am the Decider in Chief.” And Cheney was patting him on the head saying: “oh yes, you are!” cough cough).
Trump, clearly, will not go along to get along. Trump is clear in his assertion that he, and he ALONE, will run the show. I think if Trump had been compliant like Reagan and W, he would’ve had a really really really good chance of making it. But he’s not. He’s delusional enough to believe that he has “good ideas” and knows how to “make America great again.” Yet when you really listen to his ideas, they are mostly ridiculous and crap. And then he’s dangerously out of control.
W and Reagan? UNDER control.
Therein lies the bigly difference.
Wasn’t discussed that openly back in 1988. A lot of people simply referred to it as getting older and didn’t see the seriousness of what Reagan was going through.
The pits when the lead refuses to hit his marks and stick to the script.
Trump appears to be dumb enough to have concluded that improvised TV productions beat scripted ones and therefore, the same should apply to presidential campaigns. For a “savvy businessman” he sure doesn’t seem to know much. A cheap production in a prime time slot does well until there’s decent competition in the time slot. His campaign is following the same downward curve as the ratings for his TV show. Did he “think” he had six years before his political career landed in the dumpster? ha ha.
Frank Luntz (entering the Twilight Zone) tweet:
Can Trump even read a balance sheet? Not that that would help him conduct a ‘forensic audit’ of the USG. As Trump has landed in bankruptcy court numerous times, that indicates that cash accounting isn’t his forte and therefore, he couldn’t audit the USG budget if were given a hundred years to do it.
Geez. Luntz is as delusional as Trump. Grasping at straws.
I lived long enough on the east coast to know what Trump was – a con. I guess as a show man, he had a good run on reality tv and made money there. The tiny little bit that I watched any reality tv did not make me a fan, but I realize that it has been popular and made money for certain people.
I really don’t know what Trump thought. I always saw him as sort of delusional, but this whole campaign has taken it to a new level.
Trump IS a lot like many other “successful” (ie, rip off cons) Republican businessmen, like RMoney & W, who basically made money by running businesses into bankruptcy – laying waste to jobs – while walking away with big buck$. This has been a winning formula for some, and I guess it was for Trump. He laid waste to 4 casinos – with many jobs created and then destroyed – but he walked away with big buck$.
Near as I can speculate, Trump saw what W and RMoney did and figured: hey, they’re no smarter than me. I can get in on that Presidenting CON, too!
The big difference? RMoney & W come from political families, and after a fashion, both understood the rules of the game. And possibly (??) both had some level of respect for the office and the country (maybe). Trump? Not from politics; didn’t want to play the game; thought he was smarter than them; even more ego & hubris than Bush & RMoney, plus his narcissistic personality disorder is off the charts. And apparently no real respect for the office or the country; it’s all about Trump. W is just a drunk. RMoney has his church. Trump demands constant adulation and only Yes MEN. Not a winning formula for Trump in this gig. Too loose of a canon and too out of control.
I don’t know. Perhaps this is his standard MO for when he gets in trouble. Daring the GOP to say, “You’re fired,” and then double-downing on the dare with ever increasing outrageous stunts (demands to creditors in his bankruptcies). What he would be overlooking (and GOP elites praying for) in this instance is that the Trumpsters can bring out the hook (please, please, we’ll accept anybody but Trump). That way he would be deprived of the opportunity to walk away saying, “Told ya, the game is rigged.”
He’s become a turbo-charged Ben Carson. Lost his mojo as the only one that could beat Hillary to the only one that can lose to Hillary two months before the election. This might end the fascination among American voters for political novices in presidential elections. That would be a good thing.
That’s an apt description. There’s something truly off with the wiring in both brains.