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It shouldn’t be surprising that the clown who brought Alan Keyes to Illinois is behind the most toxic candidate (ignoring Nazi gadflies) in recent history. f
Racist Snowflake Mike Bost is Worried About Maoist Struggle Session at Town Halls #racistsnowflake
Mike Bost’s entire political brand is being an asshole.
“Enough! I feel like somebody trying to be released from Egypt! Let my people go!” he hollers. “These damn bills that come out of here all the damn time come out here at the last second and I’ve got to try figure out how to vote for my people!”
The video of those remarks went viral that year. In it, Bost is seen throwing the bill into the air. He whiffs at the pages as they fall, then picks up the papers and throws them again.
So now Mike Bost is very concerned about people not acting cordially at Town Halls. Via Capitol Fax
“The amount of time that I have at home is minimal, I need to make sure that it’s productive,” Bost said Friday. “You know the cleansing that the Orientals used to do where you’d put one person out in front and 900 people yell at them? That’s not what we need. We need to have meetings with people that are productive.”
Clearly we have a snowflake here who is need of safe spaces that don’t allow assholes like Mike Bost in them.
Oh, and what the fuck with Oriental? Seriously? He’s like 10 years older than me. He doesn’t get the grandpa racism dispensation for old people saying dumb things.
So for all tweets about Mike Bost remember #racistsnowflake
For those not getting his reference he’s talking about Struggle Sessions held in Maoist China where people were humiliated for not matching the party line. Just a bit different from a politician facing his constituents.
Kirk’s Other Weird Moment – Defending Calling Obama Drug Dealer in Chief
While I don’t want to take away from Mark Kirk’s racist meltdown last night, he also went off on a weird tangent. Some time ago he referred to President Obama as the Drug Dealer in Chief.
Duckworth brought this up last night:
Duckworth: I also wonder about a Senator who called the President of the Drug Dealer in Chief or a back in 2007 said that one of the best things that we can do to combat illegal immigration from Mexico is be to send contraceptives free to Mexico. These are not solutions that help. Frankly even his recent votes and he voted against the equal pay act for women and called it the most sexist legislation ever. He voted against allowing students to refinance student loan debt. He even traveled to China and the Chinese not to invest in America because we were not a good bet.
These are not all the the hallmarks of a Senator was looking out for the people of Illinois and the people of Illinois deserve someone who’s going to fight for them every single day because let me tell you something. When i was in Granite City and I met with steel workers who were laid off two days after Christmas they didn’t want to hear that their senator had gone to China and told the Chinese not to invest in America. What they wanted was a senator who’s going to fight for them every single day and I will be that person because I’ve lived their lives. I’ve been on food stamps, I relied on student loans, I was a student paying off student loan debt I know what it’s like and I think that it’s time we have a Senator who does his job.
Kirk:I would say that when we talked about drug dealers are that I strongly opposed the 400 million dollar ransom payment that the president made in cash to the Iranians even after he certified that they are the State Sponsor of Terror. Those a drug dealer words are not mine there they were words of the European Union. Remember the European Union canceled the printing of the 500 Euro note because they said it… Remember most of the payment for the four hundred million dollars was in 500 Euros so if you do the math there eight hundred thousand five hundred Euro notes were in that payment. They canceled the printing of the 500 euro note because the European Union, and this is a quote directly, they said the note was too involved in drug dealing of terror.
What the hell was that and how is that justification for calling the President the Drug Dealer in Chief?
I Want What He’s On
The California GOP consigned itself to permanent minority status when it became anti-immigrant and the non-white population has only grown since then.
When Insane People Take Over Our Politics
When insane people take over our politics.
Kilmeade almost made an attempt to stop Trump, but then he decided, what they hell. In truth, it is better TV.
We Have Dan Proft To Thank For All of This
Without Dan Proft bringing in Alan Keyes in 2004 at the beginning of conservatives losing their mind about Barack Obama, I don’t know that we get to to the peak of the anything, but the black guy movement with reality show host Donald Trump and sociopath Ted Cruz running to replace Obama—and doing well.
Bruce Dold Becomes Tribune Editor
Dold has been the editorial page editor at the Tribune for some time now. So if you loved the well reasoned editorials, now you get a whole paper of it.
I’m sure Dold is a nice guy and the Trib has hardly ever been a liberal bastion, but the comical turn of the Tribune editorials with Rauner have only taken the slide that started with Zell on Earth and exacerbated it.
t
Just Stop.
If you are arguing that the most recent insider endorsement of Rubio (Nikki Haley) or any other establishment candidate is a big deal…just stop. Stop. It doesn’t matter. At some point you need to realize the rules don’t apply to this election. I argued Trump was a flash in the pan for several months. He’s not though and it’s going to be easier for you the sooner you accept that. This is a similar point to when people kept insisting that each time Trump ups the ante and says something even more offensive that it will now hurt him. All the establishment opposition and all the ugly racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc etc etc aren’t hurting him. In the words of the early blogosphere, the establishment opposition and offensive behavior are bugs, they are features.
The models aren’t holding this year on the Republican side especially. What is most disturbing is that people aren’t putting together what has changed in the last several years.
First, we see unprecedented amounts of money from outside groups. The money is no longer funneled through the party or party elites. That weakens the influence of the party and the party elites.
Second, we have new political tools that don’t require candidates to use party leaders as gatekeepers. You used to need to have lists from the party to build an operation–phone lists, address lists, e-mail lists. Now campaigns can just build those lists in a short amount of time.
Third, the media is no longer an establishment media that goes to party leaders only. There are multiple sources and people tend to choose their media based on their beliefs leading primary and caucus voters away from the establishment sources.
All of this has been going on for some time, but the impact is hitting now as these forces have become stronger and reinforce each other.
It’s all centrifugal forces at work away from the party and the center since the stronger believers who are dominating this year are more polarized and view moving from the center as a good thing. Is it going to be like this going forward in the next election? I don’t know.
We need to remember our models are based on assumptions that the same processes are at work in each election. The processes have changed and the outcome is going to as well. I don’t know if it is a lasting change, but you shouldn’t expect the same result from different actions.
t
Watch the Organization
I’m always frustrated trying to figure out how the candidates are doing in organizing states. Reporters for the most part have very little understanding of how campaigns organize themselves and thus don’t report on it. Not to mention that might take work.
But the hints in the Republican primary point to Ted Cruz putting together a strong organization that can lead him to a victory or near victory, but vaulting him into the top tier.
You could feel it in Iowa last weekend. Starting with that Feast of Fat Things on Friday night, the fortunes of Tailgunner Ted Cruz began to achieve breakaway velocity. The Libidinous Visitor wasn’t even in the state. Neither was Jeb (!). And among the candidates who did stop by, Cruz clearly was the one most closely tuned into the frequencies that only Iowa Republican caucus-goers can hear. In addition, he has slowly and steadily built the kind of field operation in the state that can deliver for him in the middle of a blizzard come the first weekend of February. Somehow, lost in the blare of the Trump, and amid the blinding brilliance of Dr. Ben (The Blade) Carson on just about every subject known to man, Cruz has run a smart, stealthy campaign, shrewdly calculating that, sooner or later, the two mock frontrunners will come back to the pack and positioning himself as the obvious choice for any of their voters who choose to go over the side. Cruz has money and organization and, unlike many of his rivals, he seems to be capable of a kind of strategic patience.
Trump doesn’t seem to have much of an organization, but has mastered free media enough that I wouldn’t discount him entirely. It’s possible he could pull off a win though I wouldn’t doubt if he loses Iowa and wins New Hampshire. Carson though–well grifters trying to sell books usually aren’t real good on organization building.
All that said, traditionally political science predicts the party determines the winner meaning party elites usually control the process and neither Trump nor Cruz have significant party support. In fact, the establishment is blubbering incoherently about Trump and hates Cruz. If there is a year for the traditional model to fail, it’s this year. Or maybe Rubio pulls it out. Notably the most establishment support is to Bush who appears to be doing everything possible to spoil that advantage.
Nate Silver is convinced Trump is fleeting, but I think he’s being a bit too flippant. No one has ever run with Trump’s ability to generate free media, Trump is not tethered to donors, and the Republican party has been having a several years long revolt at the grass roots level. All of that doesn’t guarantee a Trump win by any means, but we have seen it happen time and time again in primaries at a lower level. We shouldn’t dismiss Trump at this point. Nor Cruz who has very limited establishment support.
Carson, dismiss away.