What some Tea Partiers wish tonight's debate would be:
What it actually will be:
The possible surprise of the night? The Howard Wolowitz of the 2016 field (go to 0:48)....
....out-Trumping Trump:
Like everyone else, Bush soon found Trump impossible to ignore. When Trump re-posted a nasty tweet a couple of weeks after his contentious announcement speech — “Bush has to like Mexican illegals because of his wife”—the former Florida governor was forced to respond. “You can love your Mexican-American wife,” he told one interviewer before telling another that Trump was “preying on people’s fears.”
The half-dozen conservative senators and governors who had planned to run before Bush brought out his shock-and-awe fundraising campaign, had to laugh: They viewed Bush himself as an intruder, a political semi-retiree who sat on the sidelines for eight years while they fought Barack Obama. Now it was Bush’s turn to rage at an outsider.
“Seriously, what’s this guy’s problem?” he asked one party donor he ran into recently, according to accounts provided by several sources close to Bush — and he went on to describe the publicity-seeking real estate developer now surging in public polls far ahead of Bush and all the sixteen others in the Republican field as “a buffoon,” “clown” and “asshole.”
Caveat: Bush III only said that privately, and if he tried to work up the nerve to say it tonight, he'd still be standing, stammering, on the stage after the janitor turned off the lights, locked up, and left the theater. Kind of like Howard trying to talk to his Buford T. Pusser father-in-law. And given that Trump's presence in the race does him a huge favor by smothering all the conservative candidates in the race and leaving the way open for him and his "shock and awe" warchest to cruise to the balloons and confetti in Cleveland a year from now, would Jeb really be that foolish as to flush his "safe, moderate" brand in so visible a fit of uncharacteristic pique? Hard to see it.
But it would be an interesting fistfight.
And about "shock and awe" fundraising:
Governor Scott Walker was the favorite in an informal straw poll of wealthy donors attending the Koch brothers' gathering of GOP candidates in California, literally becoming the hands-down favorite of most of the hundred or so donors in a closed door session.
Republican pollster Frank Luntz asked donors to clap to show their choice for the 2016 nominee, and Walker by far got the most applause, sources at the gathering told Politico.
He was followed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, with former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina after them.
One source, though, said former New York Governor George Pataki and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham got no claps at all, and Luntz joked about how quiet the room had become.
The Kochs are stiffing Trump as well. But let him spend his own fortune to put together data and analytics services and GOTV armies and whatnot. If he's truly a serious candidate, it oughtn't be any problem for such a "can-do" kind of guy.
C'mon, Tea Party Trumpsters, wouldn't you rather see a Walker-Bush showdown that can get us back the White House than a Trump-Bush brawl that can only wind up giving us President Rodham? Watch that first ten-hour Trump porn vid and get it all out of your system. It'll do you a lot of good.
UPDATE: Eh. Christie and Paul duked it out over counter-terrorism and national security, with the Big Man winning the argument on both style and substance. Trump talked more than anybody else, his whining about Megyn Kelly's question about his misogyny will simply affirm supporters' and opponents' views of the man, and again refused to rule out being the Ross Perot of 2016. Interesting that it was Paul that challenged him on it. But then his campaign is in the waste extractor anyway, so he had nothing to lose. It might have been more effective, too, if he didn't have the physical stature of a Keebler Elf and the hairdo of Carrot Top.
Overall, this first encounter won't change any campaign dynamic. But then with such a ridiculously overloaded stage, it hardly could have.
No comments:
Post a Comment