Discussion for article #240881
“That’s almost exactly what Jeb Bush is saying in announcing he’s willing to take some hits in the primaries if it enables him to win a general election. But conservatives naturally resist this kind of tradeoff, which they believe they’ve been asked to make far too often with far too little payoff.”
Yes, all these conservatives do is give, and give, and give! And what do they get in return, I ask you? It’s time for them to take a stand, like shutting down the government, or something.
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“But more importantly, as conservatives have given vent to rage over rapists and murderers pouring over the border, the abortion “holocaust” spilling over into open infanticide, a new crime wave emerging from anti-police protests, and Barack Obama consciously selling out the country and its most important ally to the Ayatollahs, the once-gripping saga of Scott Walker taking on the public-employee unions of Wisconsin just isn’t as galvanizing as it once was.”
Or to put it another way, propping up the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class is no longer enough in today’s GOP. You have to be a flaming bigot, too. Scott Walker just didn’t make the grade.
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So, then, assuming that the troika will eventually fade, who does the crazy caucus rally around? My guess is Cruz. And the Establishment, which hates him with a white hot passion, will have to back who? Rubio? This could be the start of a civil war that could take years and cost millions of lives.
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Walker’s appeal would be difficult to project…
About as appealing as chewed food.
In WI, he was that unwelcome door-to-door salesman
that wedged his foot in the door–
smooth-talked his way into the place–
ransacked it with impunity–
then smeared his name on the wall in feces.
jw1
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A well-reasoned, sensible, and sober essay. Yet I cackled like Woody Woodpecker all the way through it.
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Alec McGuiness via Ed Kilgore:
Watching him, it was hard to believe that a politician so seemingly banal had been the catalyst for such turmoil.
Yes, it usually is - thus Hannah Arendt’s observation on the banality of evil.
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TPM Headline:
The Sad, Unremarkable Demise Of Scott Walker
If it’s unremarkable, why are we remarking upon it?
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Yep. The Tea Party is the party of The Giving Tea - if, you know, the giving tree had said to the boy, “Screw you, you irresponsible commie brat, buy your own wood instead of sucking mine dry!”
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I’m mostly just ticked that he didn’t last long enough to resign from Governor before flaming out. The saddest thing is how many buses he threw us under in Wisconsin, only to impress approximately no one while being completely, embarrassingly upstaged by Rump The Insult Comic. Wisconsin is totally awesome for billionaires who don’t live here, but those of us who do are stuck with crappier schools, fewer parks, costlier insurance, lower bag limits on fishing and different rules on every lake, as if the game wardens existed to trick anglers out of $187.50. It would be 20 years to repair the damage if we started today.
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Years ago in a Phoenix Hooters restaurant, we somehow found out that our waitress was a kindergarten teacher. She cheerfully told us she was making more in tips than she did teaching, but she’d probably keep teaching for the insurance and because she loves kids. Well I saw the perfect summary of Scott Walker’s impact on Wisconsin last Friday, when the first grade teacher across the hall from my son’s class served us our fish fry.
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We can only hope…
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Rick Perry, Dim Bulb: GONE. Scott Walker, Dim Bulb: GONE. Who will be the next Dim Bulb to go?
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So, what’s the downside?
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Part of the problem here is that Walker was in the run because of the Koch brothers. He obviously knew what they liked and was able to play to it. They pushed Walker because they got answers they liked from him - an ongoing ego loop for the Kochs. It didn’t mean he was a good candidate, just that he had their favor. People saw that he was a Koch favorite and that gave him some gravitas. But he just couldn’t pull it together for a national election. You can’t dress up a tuna sandwich and call it a Reuben.
The Koch brothers are good at business but not so good at national politics. I don’t see that changing any time soon.
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I found this piece in Politico pretty interesting, if you like that “The Boys on the Bus” , inside baseball stuff like I do.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/scott-walker-2016-fall-213956
Here is the big take away for me: They knew they were having fund raising problems immediately following the first debate…that became crystallized over Labor Day Weekend (first red flag…it takes you five weeks for that to crystallize?) when they went to Texas aiming for $500 thousand and only pulling down $180 thousand, and at the same time having a mailing fund raiser actually lose money for the first time. So the campaign manager sits down with Walker and tells him they have a revenue problem and they need a plan…3 days before the second debate. So 2 weeks after the problem has “crystallized”, 7 weeks after they actually knew it was a problem, they sit down to say they need a plan.
Ok, well, at least you sat down with a plan, right? No. He went to Walker 7 weeks late and said they need a plan. 8 days later ,Sunday night, they day before Walker is pulling the trigger, this campaign manager comes up with a brilliant plan. Lets cut expenses!
9 weeks after donors got on the phone and told them there is a problem and stop bellying up to the campaign…3 week after it is written on the wall for them in great big letters…1 week after he decided they need a plan…he comes up with the obvious plan.
Apparently Walker wasn’t the only that was slow thinking on his feet.
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I have one final question on this sack of excrement. How many out of wedlock children DOES he have?
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They’re good enough at playing/paying politicians to not be in a federal prison yet - which really is where they should be, given all the shit their companies have pulled over the past several decades.
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None, probably. It’s not that I don’t think Walker would cheat given the opportunity, I just find it hard to imagine anyone succumbing to his lack of charm.
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Beautifully stated FGS. There’s nothing sad about Scott Walker other that he became your Governor and deliberately made life that much harder for many of the good people of Wisconsin. What’s sad is a school teacher doing double duty as a waitress at Hooters - just so she can have the “basics”. What ever happened…
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