I have trouble thinking of Marco Rubio as a serious candidate, let alone a possible choice for the Republican Establishment, but that’s mainly because I know that Florida politics are a cesspool and that his time in the Florida legislature won’t stand up to national scrutiny. Nominate him at your own risk, but no one in their right mind would pick them as their running mate and that will become clear when they do their vetting.
Nonetheless, Rubio appears to belong in the trio of candidates who are acceptable to the Republican Establishment. And it’s telling that Rubio hates his job in the Senate, and that the other two hate the Republican electorate.
So, what I’ll be looking for in the tonight’s Republican debate is to see if the three Republican “Establishment” candidates are going to use their opportunity to speak about the most pressing issue facing their party. Ohio Governor John Kasich recently put it this way, “What’s happened to our party? What’s happened to the conservative movement?”
So, do Jeb!, Rubio and Kasich have an answer for that question? Are they going to try to get the Republican debate audience to wake up to the ridiculousness of telling pollsters that you want Ben Carson or Donald Trump to be the president of the United States?
I think the debate is supposed to be focused on economic policy which means that meta-converations about the state of the Conservative Movement might have to be crowbarred into answers to questions about things like the debt ceiling or Dick Cheney’s observation that St. Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.
That’s fine, I think. I think the debt ceiling is a very appropriate place to begin discussing the Conservative Movement’s detachment from reality. Rand Paul will talk about filibustering the effort to pay our bills on time and Ben Carson will promise to never raise the debt ceiling during his presidency. Those will be prime opportunities for Jeb!, Rubio and Kasich to tell them to stop talking nonsense.
If they aren’t willing to confront the stupid-demons in the debate, then they should shut up about the tone and tenor of the campaign and just drop out.
>>that will become clear when they do their vetting
vetting? does that still mean anything in the party that nominated Sarah Palin?
anyway, repubs like their politicians to lie cheat and steal. those are only bad things when Democrats do them.
Palin was evidence of McCain’s simple-minded weightings of vetting variables which is also in evidence from all his other poor decisions. A “rocket scientist” he isn’t.
What I hear is they want an outsider, meaning, to me, that they are sick of the bullcrap they have been spun for 35 years. The diehard Cold Warriors won’t accept “the Communist” Sanders but other, younger, Republicans say Sanders would be better than either Hillary or Jeb!(tm), except he wants too much “free stuff for minorities”(actual quote). They are still hung up on what somebody else is getting instead of what they are not getting. The public schools have taught them nothing about economics so they believe Republican Reaganesque fables that the government hurts the economy, regulation hurts the economy, the USA will go bankrupt like Greece or Zimbabwe, et cetera. I shake my head in dismay as it’s always “I deserve higher pay, but minimum wage workers don’t because they are losers”. We are ALL losers in this Permagov(tm)(AG) zero sum game. It’s time to go for the 1% with pitchforks.
Thanks for watching this so I don’t have to. I’d either destroy my TV, puke on the family room carpet, or have a fatal stroke (to the delight of many here).
Has always amazed me that such large numbers of people would be more invested in keeping others down than notice that they aren’t getting much of anything either. There was that brief period of time when white men did get more but seem to have lost the reasons why they did and have lapsed back into blaming women, minorities, and liberals for why they still aren’t getting more and their large fair-share of the whole.
It’s one of the major failings of my class. It allows the aristocrats to rule us by divide and conquer. They left Europe because they were sick of being serfs and peasants, then their children/grandchildren voluntarily surrender themselves to the same people. And I hate to tell you but the women are some of the worst. They perpetuate the system, maybe because of Stockholm syndrome.
Not Stockholm Syndrome. Girls are raised to believe that their future and status is primarily derived through their ability to snag a man and become a mother. Those that do best at their lessons get lots of pretty stuff to wear and be admired. Those that don’t do so well can still take some comfort in having a man around the house even if the women has to work to support his lazy ass and do all the housework, shopping, etc. And they go to church as frequently as possible to reinforce the lessons in the life that was supposed to be so wonderful and mostly sucks.
So they marry and don’t correct a man who is dumb as rocks because he’s easy to manipulate? Could be! Most men (if not all of us) are ruled by “the little head” anyway. I do know men will believe the most incredible flattery from women.
Just give the average American man a big screen TV with an ESPN subscription, all the beer he can keep down and whisper to him at night that he’s the sexiest man alive and he’ll think he’s died and gone to heaven.
The dynamics involved in the individual stories vary widely. And there isn’t an overall or aggregate theme other than the value of having a man that’s instilled in girls from a young age. That’s a biggie for women.
Yes. And the attitude is often not only having a man, but being actively submissive and subordinate. For instance, I can’t get over how one of my evangelical sister-in-laws has a high-powered, highly-paid career, and yet has attempted to live the submissive wife life – to her detriment. She still thinks and believes the man should be the head of the family, even after the abuse she’s suffered. (This is not hyperbole.) It seems so warped to attempt to live this ideal based only on a top-down religious-cultural ideal. How did that work out for her? Not very well, but she still wants it.
If women want to be submissive and subordinate to their men, that’s their choice. What I find insufferable is when they complain about everything they have to put up with AND in the next moment act all la-dee-da because because they have a man.
Pressures go both ways. When I talk to men about my marriage and how it’s a partnership with both sides conceding points that are vital to the other, they laugh and call me “hen-pecked”. No wonder they are mostly on second, third, and in one case fourth marriages.
BTW, I AM the senior partner. When push comes to shove, I win. But that is to be expected when the bulk of the funds comes from one partner. A wise man doesn’t let those crises arise often. But it gets all wrapped up in male-female identity, so that in the opposite case, when the woman earns much more than the man, his ego can’t stand it. They think their masculinity is under attack. But they would willingly submit to a higher earning man.
“Money” — the other contaminating variable in relationships.
Why should the partner with the higher employment/investment have a senior (superior?) position in the relationship? Good thing that’s a more common position attitude among men than women since in two income households today, women are increasingly the higher income earner.
Making concessions may not be the best way to describe for other men how you and your wife make your marriage work. Those that succeed tend to do better at weighing the relative importance to each partner on a conflict issue. And if equally important to both but doesn’t have any direct impact on their day-to-day lives, they are more comfortable with “agreeing to disagree” and set it aside as resolved.
Egos — both male and female — do get wrapped up in minor and silly stuff. OTOH, that can mask how ill-suited for each other a couple really is.
Well. I was wrong. Rand stepped up and will be first to filibuster. I agree that Jeb, Rubio, and Kasich will will oppose the shut down only to confirm their RINO lables.
Jeb and Rubio are both dead meat. If you can’t compete in your home state, you can’t make it anywhere.
Rubio was NEVER the establishment candidate. He was only called that because the other yahoos were so far out of sync with reality.
Jeb cooked his goose with the blah, blah, blah comment. It reminds me of the SNL takeoff on Fred Thompson: “How Badly Do I Want To Be Your President? On A Scale Of One To Ten, How ‘Bout A Six?”. Won’t play in Peoria fer sure!
Kasich might survive the current debate, but he’s already killed his chances with his Social Security comments.
Graham for some reason was never even an afterthought for for the establishment.
Nobody left in the Klown Kar. The Republican Establishment has apparently decided to sit this one out. Taking a Trotskyist position “things have to get worse before they get better”.
Hillary OR Bernie will eat the remaining alive … with whatever unelectable ass they choose for VP as a nice desert with strong coffee and port wine.
Well, David Brooks has been procreating the Rubio Presidential Poultry Talking Point for several months then Chuckles Todd floated the Rubio chicken feather on MTP Sunday, so someone is busy faxing some pro Rubio hype to The Village People.
Jeb has cooked his goose so many ways now it’s been reduced to charcoal.
Rubio wasn’t the establishment candidate, but he’s becoming it, as all the other establishment candidates are looking pretty hopeless. Trump has a real interest in taking Rubio out as if the establishment candidates are out he’s probably the Republican’s best shot at winning.
what was Jeb?’s blah blah blah comment? can I have missed that treasure?
Jeb Bush on rumored campaign death spiral: `Blah, blah, blah’
wow! thanks
Baltimore Sun Blimp On the Loose
The writers, Matthew Hay Brown and Ian Duncan, had fun with the story and as such, deserve a few more readers for it.
so sorry i didn’t get to see that
“contained” I love that. in what? a vacant football field?
Took “contained” to mean under guard and protected until the US military folks could get there and retrieve their big balloon.
“It is no longer moving” is what tickled me. As if it was dead after having been alive.
Oh dear — they did shoot to kill it.
The blimp made the GOP debate:
Umm. Government or the awesome private sector that delivers high quality at low cost?
I know lighter than air is definitely a hobby horse of the aerospace industry. When I was a senior (aerospace engineer) our design projects almost all revolved around lighter than air. One design group had to develop a vehicle that could carry a massive payload full of people and tanks/planes “from the west coast” to “Korea”. As if we didn’t know that they were essentially asking us to design something in the event we attack North Korea.
My project was a lighter than air wind turbine. Not very feasible when compared with standard three bladed wind turbines, but at least it’s not designed to kill people.
Seems as if I missed the GOP J/V “debate.” (Not that I knew another one was being held and hadn’t been junked due to low ratings.) Just as well, didn’t need to hear a gaggle of no chance candidates repeat their well rehearsed BS lines.
What exactly is it in his past that you think will sink Rubio? I’m not seeing it in your links. Florida politics is dirty? This is the same thing we heard about Chicago politics.
I think your question boils down to: will any of these three walk the plank for the probably-futile purpose of waking up the party. And the answer is: not until it is clear they have no hope, at which point what they say won’t matter anyway. In fact, it would probably only matter now for the purpose of pissing off the base further.
Maybe the debt ceiling. It may be that one of them is willing to call BS on that because I’m sure the money boys are sick of this game, so there will be fundage available for whoever stands up to it.