Things GOP Candidates Say That Make You Go “Hmmm”
Sometimes you wonder what they’re thinking
As conservatives, we have a wide selection of candidates to consider in the 2016 Republican primary, and sometimes, these candidates say things that either they (and we) wish they hadn’t said or that leave us scratching our head in wonder. I thought I’d post a few of the things that I’ve read about over the past week or so that made me go “hmmm.”
Lindsey Graham, noted bachelor, promises a “rotating First Lady.” From the Daily Mail interview with Graham:
There’s an important question nagging Lindsey Graham as [he] tries to become the first bachelor in White House since Woodrow Wilson.
Who would be his first lady?
Thinking it over, the Republican senator told Daily Mail Online: ‘Well, I’ve got a sister, she could play that role if necessary.’
Chuckling, he added: ‘I’ve got a lot of friends. We’ll have a rotating first lady.’
According to Politico, Graham further claims that he is “not defective” before (rightly) noting that marriage is not a Constitutional prerequisite to the presidency.
My first response upon hearing all of this was “what in the world is he thinking?”, but it’s not unheard of for someone other than the First Lady to fill that role for presidents without wives. When presidents wives have died, for instance, sisters, daughters, and other relatives have filled the ceremonial role of First Lady. The Mail also notes that two presidents have taken office as bachelors: James Buchanan and Grover Cleveland.
Next up is Ted Cruz who asserted that his TPA support does not mean support for the TPP. According to his website:
TPA is what the Senate voted on recently. I voted in favor of fast track because I support free trade. I think free trade benefits America. It creates jobs — opening markets to our farmers, to our ranchers, to our manufacturers, improves economic growth. In Texas alone, roughly 3 million jobs depend on international trade.
And if you support free trade, the only way history has shown free trade agreements get negotiated is through fast track.
Now there is a second issue which has caused a great deal of confusion and that is TPP…it is one specific trade deal that is being negotiated. It is separate from TPA. Congress has not voted on TPP, and there’s a great deal of concern about TPP.
Now, I have not voted on TPP, and I haven’t decided if I will support it or not, because the negotiation isn’t complete, and I’m going to wait and review and see what the agreement is first before assessing if it would be beneficial or harmful.
Technically, this is correct (and not a deal-breaker for me), but it has a lot of conservatives scratching their heads.
Another head scratcher was Rand Paul’s “white kids don’t get the same justice” comment. According to Hot Air:
The Kentucky senator didn’t do himself any favors when he decided to conflate multiple cases and then contradict his own message in a matter of moments.
“The Democrats have utterly failed our inner cities, and utterly failed the poor,” Mr. Paul said. “Don’t let them tell us it wasn’t them. A lot of these policies came from Bill Clinton. In Ferguson, for every 100 black women, there are 60 black men. That’s because 40 are incarcerated. Am I saying they did nothing wrong and it’s all racism? No. What I am telling you is that white kids don’t get the same justice. … The arrests in Baltimore are 15 to one black to white for marijuana arrests.”
Right after injecting the white kids don’t get the same justice comment, he turned around and tried to soft pedal the racism angle.
I get that Rand is trying to reach out to minority voters who don’t typically vote Republican, and I applaud his doing so. But . . . I’m not sure that adopting the language of the left is the best way to do this, particularly if you’re not well-versed in their view of racism in America.
Given a choice between a leftist and a conservative voicing the same message, Democrat voters go with the Democrat, not the Republican. I’m unclear as to why the GOP doesn’t get this.
And finally, we have Jeb Bush’s as yet undeclared candidacy and his (un)campaign’s floundering.
Last month, reports were that Jeb’s super PAC was set to meet it’s $100 million goal; this month . . . not so much. With reports of now-skittish deep-pocketed donors losing their appetite for a third Bush presidency as his numbers tumble, Jeb explains his campaign shake-up:
In his first comments since Monday’s shakeup, Jeb Bush told reporters here he felt the need to reorganize his team based on “the magnitude of the journey,” not any perceived struggles of his nascent campaign.
Bush, who spoke to reporters outside his hotel here Wednesday morning, said he named Danny Diaz his campaign manager — moments after reminding the assembled press “we don’t have a campaign” — instead of David Kochel “based on the skills of people I’ve gotten to know.”
In light of Jeb’s refusal to pander to the base and difficulty finding a conservative position on most domestic policy, it’s difficult not to harken back to his bizarre 2012 statement that he “used to be a conservative.” Jeb and his campaign may be surprised his campaign isn’t taking off, but few of us are.
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Comments
GOP is proving to be intimidated at every turn.
Blackmail?
Greed?
No spine.
No substance.
No integrity.
Miss Lindsay needs to decline to comment until he makes it past the first debate. Assuming that he doesn’t want to look really clueless.
Regardless of his viability, he has just shown that the MSM owns him.
Carly’s looking better and better.
“No spine.
No substance.
No integrity.”
****
The explanation is usually evident if you follow the money. For the most part, partisan differences are just Street Theater for the gullible public. The deals are done, outcomes decided, spoils divided and acting parts assigned by the Uni-Party well before the public show goes on stage.
Cruz’s comment is perfectly understandable and correct. I have been really annoyed with all the conservative columnists and radio personalities who are getting this wrong.
What failed, first of all, was the union sweetener to the trade negotiation authority bill, which was supposed to bring Democrats on board. That failure was fine with me.
The next vote was/is on the trade negotiation authorization, i.e. “fast track” negotiating authority. Cruz favors that, Andrew McCarthy at NRO favors that, and so do I. It extends current “fast track” authority for five years, the last three of which (I hope!) will be under a more sensible president.
The actual trade agreement, which is still under negotiation, will have to be revealed in its entirety to the public and to Congress for 60 days, after which time Congress has 90 days to vote against it and kill it if it’s not a good deal. That’s the time to call for rejecting it if it gives away American right to regulate immigration or has any other provisions not to our benefit. If it’s negotiated by the current administration, it’s a good bet Congress will reject it because they’re not likely to make a good deal.
Yep. Mixing Cruz in with the other false-steppers was wrong of Fuzzy. Sometimes her thinking is influenced by her slippers, I guess. Happens to us all…
Hee, Rags, the slippers did it!
I debated on whether or not to include him, but I figured that if I didn’t, someone would point out that he’d said this and then get all upset that I left it out because of my well-known support for Cruz. Shrug. The Cruz thing isn’t a deal breaker (the other guys never had a chance with me, anyway).
“Bias in support of Ted Cruz is no vice…” To paraphrase…
Shhh, between you and me, Rags, what I said by way of commentary about the Cruz quote was “technically, this is correct.” But don’t tell anyone, k?
The way I read it, was this:
This so-called trade adjustment or job training, which is probably mostly a boondoggle was something that has bene in every trade bill for some time, but conservatives wanted to vote down the whole thing if it was included. It had been passed as one bill in the Senate.
So the House Republican leadership came up with the idea of splitting the bill, and having it pass in two separate votes. That would give some House Republicans an opportunity to vote against the job training/trade adjustment while voting for the bill that would give a future trade agreement an up or down vote with no amendments allowed.
It was clear that the trade promotion authority was going to pass, or was likely too, or so the whip cpunt showed.
So the Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, came up with the strategy of voting against the first bill, which they wanted! because by adding their votes to the Republicans opposed to the bill, they would defeat it, and then it was thought that then the TPA itself wouldn’t even be brought up for a vote.
It was thought Democrats would vote it down if the job training was missing.
But it was, and it passed, barely, since this was not a vote on final passage.
But they can’t send just that to a conference committee. I’m not sure why they need to pass the second bill at this point, since they could stick it back in in conference committee anyway, but maybe the House version is a little bit different, and if they didn’t pass something maybe they’d be very limited in what changes they could make to the Senate language. Something did not get into the stories.
Anyway, now they are going to try to pass the other bill in the House.
House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi indicated she was amenable to voting for this the second time, with some changes, and especially if they also brought up to th floor a separate bill for construction.
That would create union jobs, except not the same jobs that might be considered lost to trade, which seems to indicate that the AFL-CIO is not concerned about any individual members, but is concerned about the number of dues paying members, or in, other words, the size of Richard Trumka’s empire.
Short article about Trade Adjustment Assistance (which isn’t what it says it is)
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/04/trade-adjustment-assistance-enhancement-act-budget-gimmicks-and-expanding-an-ineffective-and-wasteful-job-training-program
Name one thing that the current Republican party has stood firm and blocked that Obama wanted that was bad for the country? We have years of practical examples that they will not, no matter how bad it is. Since we cannot trust the Republicans to do anything but Obama’s bidding, it makes perfect sense to remove the opportunity for collaboration.
IF we ever have a president that is trustworthy, then we can give him fast track. Until then, NO.
I think Ayn Rand had the GOPe nailed when she spoke these words in 1960 at Princeton:
Yep. Rand was wrong about a lot of things, and never more so than in this speech.
Capitalists ARE concurrently altruists, the first enabling the other.
Just as Adam Smith wrote in the seminal year of 1776 and a little later (though Smith never used the term “capitalist”).
Rand’s probable narcissism drove her to the common symptom of seeing things in polar extremes, and people as trolls or demigods.
Rand’s problem is that he is his father’s son. It’s as simple as that.
Can you imagine a woman that would sleep with Goober Graham? Ugh.
I wonder why the GOP is so afraid of a government shut-down. Sure the media blames them exclusively, but if you look at the actual results, since the last shut-down, the GOP has gotten control of the Senate and increased count in the House. Perhaps the real results are not as bad as the media saya.