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2016 Republican Primary Tag

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 13, 2016 25 Comments
Wednesday morning, an abbreviated interview from Marco Rubio's time as Speaker of Florida's House mysteriously surfaced and began bouncing its merry way through the political corners of the internet. Judging solely on the content of the 2008 clip (which cuts off Rubio mid-sentence) the viewer is led to believe that way back in the day, Rubio advocated for carbon taxes and cap and trade. Basically, Al Gore, Jr. First the clip: It concludes with Rubio saying, "I am in favor of giving the Department of Environmental Protection a mandate that they go out and design a cap and trade or a carbon tax program, and bring it back to the legislature for ratification some time in the next..." and that's where we're left hanging. There's just one teency weency problem though -- that's not what Rubio said, at least not entirely.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 13, 2016 20 Comments
Shortly after Obama's state of the union address last night, Ted Cruz appeared on the Kelly File and mercilessly lambasted the president for omitting recent developments in Iran as well as terror attacks like the one in San Bernardino. The FOX News Insider reports:
'State of Denial': Ted Cruz Bashes Obama's State of the Union Address President Obama's final State of the Union address was more like "a state of denial," Ted Cruz said on "The Kelly File" tonight. The Republican presidential contender told Megyn Kelly that he's not surprised that the president didn't mention ten U.S. sailors held by Iran during his speech.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 11, 2016 35 Comments
Fox Business News announced the line up for the January 14, 2016 Republican Debate. This is the last debate before the Iowa caucuses. Mercifully, we are down to just 7 people on main stage. The Big Names not on stage anymore are Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina. Jeb is now on the edge, physically and metaphorically. Looking back, it's interesting how there has been a realignment. Jeb is moving on down, and Christie fought his way back. What has not changed is Trump in the center position, and a solidifying of what everyone knows -- it's Trump at the top, Cruz as the main challenger. Carson is a goner. Jeb is a goner.  Rubio, Kasich and Christie are vying for the non-Trump, non-Cruz candidacy. Here's how things looked at the mid-December 2015 CNN debate:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 11, 2016 10 Comments
Just before the end of 2015, Ben Carson's campaign manager along with 20 staffers quit. Less than two weeks later, all New Hampshire paid staffers for a pro-Carson PAC, 2016 Committee, quit and left to volunteer for Ted Cruz. WMUR reports:
All five paid New Hampshire staffers at the pro-Ben Carson 2016 Committee super PAC quit their posts on Sunday to become volunteers for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, WMUR.com has learned. Jerry Sickles of Keene, the spokesman for the staff, said he and the other four staffers recently came to the conclusion that Cruz is the conservative most able to win the GOP presidential nomination and the presidency. He also noted that Carson has spent very little time campaigning in New Hampshire, which became frustrating to him and the other staffers as they tried to build support in the state.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 11, 2016 99 Comments
Back in November, Donald Trump asserted that if elected president he would have a "humane deportation force" to round up all illegal immigrants and deport them.  This statement is now being used in interviews with other presidential candidates who are opposed to amnesty and want to close the border and enforce existing immigration law. For example, in a Sunday interview, CNN's Jake Tapper harangued Ted Cruz on Trump's concept of a "deportation force." Watch:

Posted by Jonathan Levin on January 10, 2016 27 Comments
Bill Kristol, Founder and Editor of that mainstay of the Republican Establishment, The Weekly Standard, has finally come to recognize Donald Trump's contribution to the Republican candidates as a group. Kristol is not a Trump supporter and has predicted his fall for months.  After Trump derided John McCain's heroism for merely being a POW for five-plus years, Kristol said, "he's dead to me."  In the same interview he opined, "I don't think he'll stay up in the polls, incidentally. Republican primary voters are pro-respect the military. And he showed disrespect for the military." In September, Kristol said on CNN, “I doubt I’d support Donald. I doubt I’d support the Democrat.” Instead, “I think I’d support getting someone good on the ballot as a third party candidate.”  In reporting Kristol's comments, Salon referred to him as a "notorious neocon" and a "neocon prince."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 09, 2016 28 Comments
As we discussed last weekend, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' is wooing supporters of Republican presidential contender, Donald Trump. Not uncommon in a general election, reaching across party lines to glad-hand during primary season should be bizarre. But in this particular election cycle, both Trump and Sanders' strongest support comes from two strikingly similar groups of disenchanted Americans. Back to last weekend's post exploring this phenomenon:
Sound impossible? Data suggests otherwise. Though Trump has successfully syphoned off some traditional Republican supporters, the majority of his support base is comprised of a very particular kind of Democrat.

Posted by Taryn O'Neill on January 07, 2016 14 Comments
Employees at Los Angeles' La Brea Tar Pits arrived Monday morning to find three signs hung on an outdoor display of elephants. The elephants stand in and around one of the museum's tar pits that have seeped natural asphalt for tens of thousands of years. The La Brea Tar Pits and Museum is an active excavation site where archeologists have found and continue to find countless fossils dating back to the Pleistocene epoch, or the earth's last ice age. A 'hello my name is JEB' tag hangs from the tusks of an elephant partially immersed in tar as a visibly worried baby elephant draped with 'Rubio 2016' watches on the perimeter. Another elephant labeled 'establishment GOP' observes the scene nearby. The scene is rich with anti-establishment overtones. Whether one agrees with the artist or not, it was a clever move.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on January 07, 2016 87 Comments
Two recent discussions lay out a path to victory for Marcio Rubio in the 2016 Presidential election.  The New York Sun's Conrad Black even writes that the presidential election is Marco Rubio's to lose. According to Black, the Republicans have an advantage in the general election, whoever wins the nomination:
a party has won three consecutive presidential elections only when the incumbent was very popular at the end of the second term or when there were unusual encumbrances to a change.
It is fair to say that Barack Obama is not very popular.  According to Gallup, his approval rating is below average for President entering their eighth year in office.  "Unusual encumbrances to a change" is an awkward formulation, but there is nothing obvious at present.  So Black gives the nod to the Republicans.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 06, 2016 64 Comments
In the wake of Donald Trump's call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S., the UK saw a huge response to a petition that calls for Trump to be banned from the UK.   While there is a petition against banning Trump, it has, so far, only 39,537 signatures. With 560,000 signatures on the petition for a ban, the UK parliament has tempered its initial stance and is now set to debate the Trump ban after all. The Guardian reports:
MPs are to debate calls for the US presidential candidate Donald Trump to be banned from the UK following his controversial comments about Muslims, after more than half a million people signed a petition.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 05, 2016 15 Comments
Ted Cruz's video ad, Invasion, is getting a lot of attention for the scenes of suits running across the border. But it's not the key moment in the video. That key moment comes when the screen splits to view Marco Rubio next to Cruz, with a cotton-mouth expression on his face as Cruz slams the economic impact of illegal immigration: Marco Rubio Ted Cruz Invasion Video

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 04, 2016 48 Comments
Two Republican presidential candidates have spoken out against the Oregon standoff: Senators Cruz and Rubio. Aleister blogged about the precarious Oregon situation yesterday:
Protesters have taken over a small federal building in Oregon and some of them are armed. One of them is Ammon Bundy, son of rancher Cliven Bundy who was in the news last year for clashing with federal authorities over land use. The reason for the protest seems to be two-fold. The situation which set off the protest was the prosecution of a pair of father and son ranchers named Hammond. The Hammonds are not part of the protest however and are expected to surrender themselves to authorities Monday for separate charges. The second aspect of the protest is a grievance over the federal government taking over land that used to be owned by ranchers.
In an interview on Iowa radio station KBUR Monday, Sen. Rubio acknowledged the federal government has too much control over land in the western half of the country, but urged protestors to seek a lawful remedy:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 03, 2016 34 Comments
Donald Trump has attracted a somewhat unorthodox foe -- Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders. Because the 2016 election cycle hasn't been bizarre enough, we now have a self-professed Democratic-socialist candidate actively attempting to woo supporters away from the Republican frontrunner during primary season.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 02, 2016 25 Comments
There has been a lot of speculation about whether or not Jeb Bush wants to be president.  He doesn't seem to have that "fire in his belly" that his brother so often demonstrated on the campaign trail, and he didn't seem to be very interested in his campaign at the outset beyond the massive fundraising efforts and trying to win support from the traditional GOPe "king makers."  This, actually, is what convinces me that Jeb does want to be president; he's just doing it the old, tired way, a way that simply doesn't work as traditional venues for political campaigns simply don't have the same audience share (and thus power) they once did.  It also doesn't help that the Republican primary voters are fed up with—and actively rebelling against—the traditional "it's your turn now" approach to GOP candidates for president. Jeb and his campaign have a tried a number of strategies to help salvage his campaign, but from cutting staff to clumsy and awkward attacks on Marco Rubio and Donald Trump, his campaign quickly moved from tragedy to farce.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 31, 2015 6 Comments
Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson's campaign suffered a hefty loss Thursday -- both his campaign director and top communication's aide resigned, according to Politico.
Ben Carson's campaign manager and top communications aide resigned on Thursday, throwing the retired neurosurgeon's presidential run into chaos, with conflicting reports emerging about who will take over the struggling operation. Campaign manager Barry Bennett and communications director Doug Watts both resigned, effective immediately, after weeks of speculation about a shakeup. Carson last week indicated such a move, saying that "everything" was "on the table" as far as changes with his campaign, though he later walked that back and said, “I think the people that I have are spectacular.” Armstrong Williams, a close Carson confidant, told POLITICO he expects Bennett's replacement to be General Robert Dees, a top foreign policy adviser.
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