Tag: Republican Candidates

More On The Mini Dictator, DeSantis

I hope that everyone had a good holiday weekend but it is time to return to the surrealistic world of American politics.

Since he announced that he would seek the GOP nomination there has been a wealth of criticism about him as a candidate…..me included but not everyone thinks it is a big deal that so many have turned this story into….

An articled that appeared in the “National Review’….

Ron DeSantis launched his 2024 campaign Wednesday night and, as you may have heard, it did not go exceedingly well. “DeSaster” was trending as a hashtag after the glitchy announcement event on Twitter. Calling attention to the many, many headlines describing it “horrendous” or words to that effect, Elon Musk himself put a different spin on things: “I call it ‘massive attention,'” he tweeted. “Top story on Earth today.” So which is it: An embarrassing failure, or did Twitter essentially crash because of legit interest in the Florida governor’s campaign? “As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle,” writes Jim Geraghty at the National Review.

Geraghty finds the sentiment that this was an unprecedented political gaffe to be “spectacularly inaccurate,” one that “reflects an ignorance of recent American political history that is best explained by severe amnesia.” He argues that the rollout will be remembered as a minor blip as DeSantis’ campaign advances. “I still believe that the key moment in the 2024 GOP presidential primary will be the first time DeSantis and Donald Trump are on the same debate stage, and the first time DeSantis challenges Trump to his face, and how that exchange plays for the two men.” Until then, nobody should get too worked up. (Read the full op-ed.)

Overreaction?

Then explain the early days DeSantis raised millions…..

Ron DeSantis took a lot of grief over his glitchy campaign launch on Twitter. But the Florida governor now has $8.2 million worth of comebacks for his critics. That’s how much his campaign raised in the first 24 hours after the launch, an amount described variously as “massive” by Axios, “blockbuster” by Fox News, and “huge” by the New York Times. As the Times notes, it far outpaces former President Trump’s campaign, which reported raising $9.5 million in the first six weeks of his launch. Another notable contrast: When he became a candidate in 2019, Joe Biden raised $6.3 million in his first 24 hours.

In the view of Axios, the fundraising haul clearly cements DeSantis as the prime challenger to Trump. “$8.2 million in the first 24 hours,” tweeted DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin. “Our Great American Comeback!” So what about those Twitter glitches? Criticism and mockery may have been all over the media, but Politico took the pulse of Iowa residents who turned out late Wednesday night to hear another 2024 candidate, Sen. Tim Scott. The upshot is that most people couldn’t have cared less about the governor’s Twitter fiasco.

This scares me as he should every other thinking person.

Then I read a post about his Florida bill, HB 1285…that would create a state army (WTF?)…

Read the post for yourself….

DeSantis Signs Bill Creating $100 Million State Military

This smacks of Germany of the 1920s

If there are any Floridians reading please let us know it this is a true thing or some sort of satire….

But not to fret Donald the Orange is on the spot to give us a thrill…..

“HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, BUT ESPECIALLY TO THOSE WHO GAVE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE FOR THE COUNTRY THEY LOVE, AND TO THOSE IN LINE OF A VERY DIFFERENT, BUT EQUALLY DANGEROUS FIRE, STOPPING THE THREATS OF THE TERRORISTS, MISFITS AND LUNATIC THUGS WHO ARE WORKING FEVERISHLY FROM WITHIN TO OVERTURN AND DESTROY OUR ONCE GREAT COUNTRY, WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN IN GREATER PERIL THAN IT IS RIGHT NOW,” Trump wrote. “WE MUST STOP THE COMMUNISTS, MARXISTS AND FASCIST “PIGS” AT EVERY TURN AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

And his loyal will believe this crap…..there should be nothing happy about remembering our war dead…..but that is just me.

Are you paying attention?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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A Day For Sad News

Wednesday was a day for sad news….

First the ‘Queen of Rock and Roll’ has died…..

The world has lost one of the most beloved recording artists of all time. A spokesperson says Tina Turner has died peacefully at her home near Zurich, Switzerland, after a long illness, the Telegraph reports. Turner, who was born Anna Mae Bullock in Tennessee, was 83 years old. She was known as the “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” with massive hits including “What’s Love Got to Do with It” and “(Simply) The Best,” per Reuters. “With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model,” the spokesperson says.

Turner had been in poor health in recent years, the Guardian reports. She was diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 2016 and received a kidney transplant from her second husband, former EMI record executive Erwin Bach, in 2017.

She will be missed and may she rest in peace.

Dammit!  It’s official!

The second piece of sad news came in the evening…..

Most thinking people have been dreading the possibility that the mini dictator from Florida would try to bring his form of mind control to the nation.

We can stop our dread…..DeSantis made it official yesterday.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is officially running for president. The Republican filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday, hours before a 6pm ET Twitter Spaces session with Elon Musk in which he is expected to launch his campaign, the AP reports. DeSantis enters the race behind front-runner Donald Trump in the polls but well ahead of other challengers. Today’s move puts DeSantis “in direct competition” with Trump for “the heart of the Republican Party,” per Politico.

Twitter was not polite to the announcement…

A DeSantis campaign official tried to cast the glitches as a positive, saying “Governor DeSantis broke the internet—that should tell you everything you need to know about the strength of his candidacy,” per CNBC. Although DeSantis couldn’t be heard for a while, Twitter employees were audibly complaining about the situation. “That was insane, sorry,” Musk said after having to borrow another account because his crashed. Musk had told the audience Twitter’s servers were straining under the demand.

Glitches or not, DeSantis’ audio announcement lacked the usual trappings of a presidential campaign announcement—no soaring music, uplifting rhetoric, or cheering crowds. “I don’t care about fanfare,” he said. DeSantis promised his audience that come January 2025, “I will be taking the oath of office as the 47th president of the United States.” Trump answered DeSantis with a couple of videos mocking the governor on Truth Social, as well as the gibe, “His collar is too big!”

We now have DeSantis, Trump and Scott for the GOP nomination….there is one thing we can be sure of….the lies will flying and the truth will be suppressed.

Now is the time for any real conservative out there to start looking for a ‘real’ candidate that has the best interests of the country at heart.

If there are any left….that is….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

A DeSantis Foreign Policy

I know it is a little early and so far the only confirmed candidate is former president but the popular sentiment is that Florida’s governor will throw his hat into the fray for 2024.

If that is truly the case I would like to look at his possible stands on foreign policy……

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has become one of the main challengers to Donald Trump for leadership of the Republican Party in the wake of his landslide reelection victory last week over Democratic candidate Charlie Crist. 

While DeSantis is best known nationally for controversies over Covid and culture war battles, he has a foreign policy record from his years in Congress and even during his tenure as governor that also merits closer scrutiny. If he seeks the Republican nomination for president, as many now expect he will, voters should be aware of the foreign policy worldview that he brings with him. 

Before he left the House for Tallahassee, DeSantis established himself as a vocal critic of the Obama administration’s foreign policy with an emphasis on attacking U.S. diplomatic engagement with Iran and Cuba. His three terms in the House overlapped with Obama’s major initiatives of negotiating the nuclear deal with Iran and restoring normal relations with Cuba, and like the rest of his party DeSantis was hostile to both policies. 

The hardline positions that DeSantis has taken on issues relating to Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela are not surprising given Florida politics, and they have aligned him closely with Florida’s hawkish Sen. Marco Rubio and fellow Iraq war veteran Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

During the original debate over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), DeSantis was an early and vocal opponent of an agreement with Iran. He co-authored a July 2015 op-ed in Time with Tom Cotton outlining the usual hawkish objections to the deal. Like most critics of the agreement, they misrepresented what it would do and exaggerated the benefits Iran would receive from sanctions relief. The op-ed was long on outrage and short on offering any serious alternative to diplomacy to resolve the nuclear issue. 

DeSantis and Cotton also indulged in rather hysterical threat inflation about Iran, saying, “They will stop at nothing to end our way of life.” 

What might a DeSantis foreign policy look like?

Typical GOP misinformation when it comes to foreign policy….

In essence DeSantis is a clone of Trump and if he is successful at winning the presidency we can expect nothing good to come out of his foreign policies.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

2024 Is Not That Far Away

I keep reading the hope that all this societal division can be overcome with a successful 2024 election…..I find it a delusion.

Here are the possible 2024 GOP candidates (this could all change but for now these seem like the most logical choices the GOP has to choose from…..

10. Mike Pompeo

9. Greg Abbott

8. Chris Christie

7. Donald Trump Jr.

6. Ted Cruz

5. Mike Pence

4. Tim Scott

3. Nikki Haley

2. Ron DeSantis

1. Donald Trump

All are batcrap crazy Trumpite kool-aid drinkers….if this is the final list of GOP candidates then very little will change.

Can you think of anyone else that would make this list?

And it is not looking good for the Dems either…..Biden is not doing well on approval…

The midterm elections could spell disaster for President Biden and the Democrats, if recent polling is any indication. A new Gallup poll shows an average of 47% of Americans surveyed in the fourth quarter of 2021 identified with or leaned toward the Republican Party compared to 42% for the Democratic Party—for a net swing of 14 points from the first quarter, when Democrats held a 49-40 advantage, CNN reports. As Gallup notes, a 5-point Republican advantage hasn’t been seen since 1995, after the party took control of the House for the first time since the 1950s.

Democrats could be in for what NBC News terms a “shellacking.” History shows that “in 1994, 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018—when the president’s party suffered big losses—overwhelming majorities said the country was headed on the wrong track before the election; each president’s job rating was below 50%; and the president’s party trailed on the generic ballot,” the outlet reports. NBC’s October poll indicated 71% of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction and put Biden’s job rating at 42%. “The silver lining for Democrats is that they enjoyed a narrow lead on the generic ballot,” per the outlet, which notes its own latest poll is due out in a few days.

However, this speculation comes far too early for Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Poll, who argues the election will hinge on how the COVID-19 pandemic plays out over the coming months. “Remember that the pandemic affects almost everything—the economy, health care, education, employment, and family finances,” he tells the New Republic. Yet with others focused on the stalemate over voting rights legislation, Senate Democrats plan to push forward, even without the votes to change filibuster rules. As the Hill reports, there is talk of them forcing Republicans to stage a talking filibuster, with senators present on the floor, with an eventual simple-majority vote.

The polls are not looking good for Biden and his re-election….people think he should just move over for a better choice….

President Biden ends his first year in the White House with a clear majority of Americans for the first time disapproving of his handling of the presidency in the face of an unrelenting pandemic and roaring inflation, according to a new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. More Americans disapprove than approve of how Biden is handling his job as president, 56% to 43%. As of now, just 28% of Americans say they want Biden to run for reelection in 2024, including only 48% of Democrats, the AP reports. Asked on Wednesday at his news conference about his flagging popularity, Biden responded, “I don’t believe the polls.”

It’s a stark reversal from early in Biden’s presidency. In July, 59% of Americans said they approved of his job performance in an AP-NORC poll. His approval rating dipped to 50% by late September in the aftermath of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan and during surging coronavirus infections. The latest poll shows that confidence in Biden’s handling of the pandemic has eroded as the omicron variant surges. Just 45% say they approve of Biden’s handling of COVID-19, down from 57% in December and from 66% in July 2021. Overall, the poll shows Biden in a better position than former President Donald Trump was at a similar point in his presidency; in February 2018, just 35% of Americans said they approved of Trump.

 

 

Americans are even more downbeat about Biden’s handling of the economy, with just 37% approving, often citing inflation. Gary Cameron, 66, of Midwest City, Oklahoma, said the president’s verbal gaffes and age—79—don’t give him confidence that Biden has the skill or energy to pull the country out of its malaise. Other respondents said Biden’s age and life experience have been an asset. Nicole Jensen-Oost, 79, of Plano, Texas, said Biden has demonstrated leadership and empathy through the pandemic. “This man has heart,” she said. “He’s compassionate, and the country needs that right now.” The poll was taken this week and reports a margin of error for all respondents of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

Think about that for a moment…..Dems losing support and the GOP is gaining…a party that belongs to Trump and his minions…..does it concern you yet?

I will keep my readers updated as often as I can….and I will make my thoughts known on the Dem side of the equation.

All in all I weep for my country….all I have left is knowing that I am old and will not be around to see the final demise of a once great country.

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I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Will 2022 Be A Bad Year?

If you are a Dem candidate in a Red State then your chances are slim.

Some say that 2022 will be a disastrous election for the GOP (I do not agree….will explain later)……and I think that the governor’s election in Virginia is a precursor…..

Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin were locked in a tight race for Virginia governor Tuesday night, the most closely watched contest in an off-year election that could prove a referendum on President Biden’s first year in office. The Washington Post and the AP called the race for Youngkin early Wednesday. Our previous rundown follows:

  • The Biden lens: The initial results are a stark departure from 12 months ago, when Biden captured the state by 10 points. A loss in a state that has trended toward Democrats for more than a decade would deepen the sense of alarm inside the party heading into next year’s midterm elections, when control of Congress is at stake. But the AP reports Biden expressed optimism going into the evening while acknowledging that “the off-year is always unpredictable.”
  • Inside the campaign: The bruising campaign centered on issues including Youngkin’s ties to former President Trump, abortion rights and culture war battles over schools. Youngkin, a former business executive, has never held public office. Voters saw the economy as the top issue, followed by the coronavirus pandemic, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of statewide voters.

(This Dem defeat also tells me that they voter is sick of Clintonian candidates)

This election means little to the average voter at this time….but it is never too early for us to start paying attention to the trends that are developing in our nation that will most likely influence the election results in 2022….

The site FiveThirtyEight looks at all the stats collected and has a pretty good track record at predicting elections outcome….but 2022 is a horse of a different color…..

… control of the House and Senate will once again be at stake in the November 2022 midterm elections, and one of the best tools we have for predicting those election results is polling of the generic congressional ballot. The generic congressional ballot question typically asks respondents which party they intend to vote for in the upcoming congressional election, without naming specific candidates1 — allowing the question to be asked nationally to gauge the overall political environment. And for several years now, we at FiveThirtyEight have been collecting these polls and calculating a weighted average for them, and we’re excited today to publish our generic ballot average for the 2022 election cycle. 

Our Best Tool For Predicting Midterm Elections Doesn’t Show A Republican Wave — But History Is On The GOP’s Side

Voter rights will most likely be a major issue during the election…..and those white people that worship at the alter of the GOP insanity it will raise them (candidates) up…..

A jaw-dropping majority of White Republicans say the country has done enough to ensure that Black Americans are treated equally.

In an extensive Axios-Ipsos poll timed for the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, respondents were asked to choose between two statements: “Our country needs to continue making changes to give Black Americans equal rights with white Americans,” and “Our country has made the changes needed to give Black Americans equal rights with white Americans.”

Overall, 59 percent said that the country needs to continue making changes, versus 39 percent who said we’ve done enough. There were significant racial divides on the question, with 48 percent of whites saying we’ve done enough — still a minority — while 92 percent of Black respondents said the country needs to continue changing.

But an even more stark partisan racial divide exists, with a whopping 79 percent of white Republicans saying America has done enough to ensure equality, versus only 12 percent of white Democrats who said the same.

Respondents were also asked if they agree with the statement “America is not a racist country,” and white Republicans were twelve times more likely than white Democrats to agree. In fact, more than twice as many Black respondents — 9 percent — agreed that America is not a racist country than the 4 percent of white Democrats who said this.

Jaw-Dropping Number of White Republicans Say We’ve Done Enough to Ensure Equal Rights for Black Americans in New Poll

An even scarier poll umber is the Repubs believe BS……

Fifteen percent of Americans agree with the central false tenet of the QAnon conspiracy theory: that the government and other entities are controlled by Satan-worshipping pedophiles running a child sex trafficking ring, according to a new poll.

Among Republicans the survey, released Wednesday by the Public Religion Research Institute, found that 23 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that “the government, media and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.”

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/555699-15-percent-of-americans-believe-central-qanon-theory-poll

How disturbing is that?

Could this election splinter the GOP?

A splintering of the Republican Party has long been speculated, and while it’s hard to know whether this is, in fact, a turning point or an isolated incident that will soon recede from the headlines, these four scenarios are possible.

But will it?

Then there are the Dems…….

Dem candidates have a massive hill to climb on this issue with conserv white people….the Dems are the ones that will have a bad year election in 2022.

Why?

Regardless that they had two majorities in Congress they limped through 2021 with some archaic dead political belief in bi-partisanship…and that is what we get when Centrists control the party.

Instead of pushing through their agenda they wasted time and energy trying to sweet talk a bunch of do-nothing Repubs to seeing policy their way….was never gonna happen in a Trump-centric party yet they wasted  months that progress could have been made.

I think the GOP will have a good election in 2022….and the country will suffer further degradation.

Why?

I think that misinformation and social media will play a huge roll in the 2022 election….and that smells bad for Dems.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

 

Closing Thought–05May21

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

Will Mike Pence challenge his master in 2024?

It has been reported that Trump is vaguely promising he will run for president again 2024….but now Pence is signalling a plan as well….

In his first public address since the end of the Trump administration, former Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday put down a marker for a potential return to elected office, telling an audience in early-voting South Carolina that he will spend the coming months “pushing back on the liberal agenda” he says is wrong for the country. “We’ve got to guard our values … by offering a positive agenda to the American people, grounded in our highest ideal,” Pence told an audience of several hundred at a Columbia dinner sponsored by a conservative Christian nonprofit. “Now, over the coming months, I’ll have more to say about all of that.” The choice of South Carolina for Pence’s post-administration debut has definite political overtones, helping him develop exposure for a potential 2024 presidential bid, theAP reports.

 

Pence, who since leaving office has been doing work with the Heritage Foundation and Young America’s Foundation, has not indicated if he plans a future run. Earlier Thursday, South Carolina Democratic Chair Trav Robertson said Pence was coming to the state to “try and salvage his relationship” with Trump supporters irked that Pence didn’t support efforts to block certification of the 2020 presidential election. On Thursday, Pence promised to reveal more of his ideas soon, promising that he would be challenging the Biden administration’s “avalanche of liberal policies” as he ramps up speaking engagements around the country.

What will he do if the master of the GOP decides to run….will their be any challengers or will he cowtow to the Orange man from Florida or will they all prove that they are truly the cowards I believe them to be?

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Next Trump

Donald the Orange lost in 2020 and after months of antics and end runs…..Biden has been sworn in as the 46th president to the United States.

But Trump may have sealed his political demise for his actions and words on 06 January.

But say he dodges a bullet and returns to political activity…..which he will.

Now we can look forward to more antics by Trump and those slimy sycophants for the next challenge in 2024.

Whether Donald Trump runs again in 2024 or fades from politics, his enigmatic hold on tens of millions of Americans will be a lesson to the next demagogue. Much will be learned from Trump’s successes in manipulating huge swaths of the public, and also from his failures to translate his autocratic desires into practical power.

Just the fact that 72 percent of Republicans tell pollsters that they believe Trump’s discredited claim that he won the 2020 election is a mark of his perverse success in selling the Big Lie. His outsized personality, his ridiculous assertions, his coarse and insulting talent for channeling resentments felt by masses of alienated citizens placed him so far above reproach in so many minds that his obvious corruption and damage to the country’s reputation and national security made no impact on the committed. After four years of falsehoods, incompetence, and immorality, he won eleven million more votes than in 2016 (up from 63 to 74 million).

He has deftly played the dual role of tough guy and victim, of swaggering bully and persecuted prey. This is a skillful embodiment of the wishes and fears of the millions, mostly white working class, who feel marginalized and dishonored while yearning for the wealth and strength that Trump appears to possess. He has given them the dignity that many feel they have been denied by the liberal, urban, multiethnic society that their country is becoming.

The Next Trump

Let’s say Trump decides to NOT return to the campaign trail in 2024….who would care his torch forward?

(This may be a moot point for his CPAC performance Trump is hinting that he will run again 2024….this may put a halt to anyone trying to take up the hatred mantra of Trump by any of the sycophants that pray to him daily)

Who among the GOP are likely to be the next Trump?

There is speculative chatter that one of Trump’s children, perhaps his elder daughter Ivanka, could enter the political arena. But here are some other front-line contenders for the GOP nomination in 2024.

Nikki Haley

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/531796-five-gop-contenders-other-than-trump-for-2024

No matter whether Trump runs or not in 2024 his influence on the GOP will be felt for years.

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–22Sep20

“War–What’s It Good for?”

My regulars here on IST know and understand that I am an antiwar voter and have been his 1970….and every election I am disappointed in the lack of an actual antiwar candidate or platform or anything that would say the we are against our endless wars.

And the election of 2020 is NO different…..neither Biden or Trump is what I would call antiwar…the rhetoric is not even there anymore.

It use to be that both major parties had an antiwar wing….but sadly those days are gone…gone….gone…..

Elect Joe Biden, former (Republican) Secretary of State Colin Powell said in his Democratic National Convention appearance Tuesday night, and he’ll “restore America’s leadership in the world.”

Powell’s comments were followed by a video touting Biden’s friendship with the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), another heavyweight GOP hawk. Meanwhile, there’s a pro-Biden super PAC of George W. Bush administration alumni, and Biden has racked up support from a who’s who of neoconservatives (Bill Kristol, Max Boot, David Frum, Jennifer Rubin), as commentators left and right have observed.

These alignments highlight an increasingly undeniable fact of American politics in 2020: The anti-war wing of both major parties is dead. Your presidential choice is between war and war. There’s no faction of Republicans or Democrats which combines real power with a durable, principled interest in turning American foreign policy away from global empire.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/anti-war-wing-both-parties-195532097.html

I am still an antiwar voter….I do not subscribe to the slogan that anybody but Trump….that sadly lacks any direction for this country.

Since I am still antiwar I will have to look elsewhere for a candidate…..and that means that I will be blamed for Biden’s loss….not to worry I am use to it.

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Onto 2024?

Closing Thought–06Jul20

I know we do not even have a good idea of what to expect for 2020…..but never mind the racist little shits are already looking to 2024 for a replacement of Trump at the head of a ticket of racist bullsh*t.

Who you may ask.

His name is Tucker Carlson….FOX propagandist.

The 2020 election is still months away, but it’s evidently not too early to start the speculation about 2024. And in this case, the speculation centers on Tucker Carlson of Fox News, who is the subject of multiple stories—most notably at Politico and Business Insider—that explain why he makes sense as the GOP candidate in the next election. Coverage:

  • The buzz: A story by Alex Thompson at Politico says party strategists are “buzzing” about the 51-year-old Carlson as a 2024 candidate, and a consensus is emerging that he would be an immediate frontrunner after the 2020 dust clears. “He’s a talented communicator with a massive platform. I think if he runs he’d be formidable,” says Luke Thompson, a strategist who worked for Jeb Bush’s 2016 super PAC. In all, 16 party bigwigs interviewed voice the same sentiment.
  • Ditto: Tom LoBianco at Business Insider reports that “a small group of New York donors also began talking at the start of June about running him for president in 2024.” He quotes conservative activist Jon Schweppe to explain the momentum: Carlson is “taking a moment when the GOP is lacking vision or any sort of moral clarity—and he’s providing it,” says Schweppe. “Naturally, his following is growing. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I hope the president is watching.”
  • The ideology: Think Trumpism, but without President Trump himself. Politico’s Thompson describes it as “a blend of anti-immigrant nationalism, economic populism and America First isolationism that he articulates unapologetically and with some snark.” And Carlson goes after the president publicly when he thinks Trump isn’t adhering to the vision.
  • The audience: Big, and growing. As Poynter notes, the latest TV ratings show that Carlson didn’t just lead all shows in the quarter, his Tucker Carlson Tonight “had the best viewership in the history of cable news.” Carlson drew a staggering 4.33 million viewers in the quarter, and that’s despite big-name advertiser boycotts over Carlson’s comments on the George Floyd protests. An example: “This may be a lot of things, this moment we are living through,” Carlson said. “But it is definitely not about black lives and remember that when they come for you, and at this rate, they will.” The Poynter piece also takes note of Carlson’s “flip-flopping” on the coronavirus response during this ratings period.
  • The clout: In a story about Trump at Vanity Fair, Gabriel Sherman reports that the president called Carlson late last week amid sinking polls and generally bad news and said: “What do I do? What do I do?” And the analyses above suggest that Carlson’s growing audience shows that more and more people are looking to him for a sense of where the party is headed. A piece at OutKick by Bobby Burack notes that Carlson’s audience is growing among all age groups.
  • Will he? Carlson “has not seriously broached” the idea of running, writes LoBianco, citing several sources. And Carlson has publicly dissed the idea of running for office previously. But some think he appears to be positioning himself for a run, as when he formally cut ties with the conservative Daily Caller, which he started. Yes, this talk of a 2024 candidacy may be “pure fantasy,” writes Seth Cohen at Forbes. “But if we have learned anything over the past several years, it is that, for better or for worse, sometimes television can become reality.” Carlson currently “has the ability to shift the perception of millions of Americans every day,” he notes. “The question is, in four years, would he want to move from being the shaper of that reality to the leader of it?”

Just what the country needs…..another liar and purveyor of BS labelled as news.

Something to think about as you prepare to vote in 2020.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

GOP Is Cowardly As Well

I have written many times just how cowardly I think the DNC/DCCC has become…it tries to pick the candidates for the voter with the help of the MSM…..and now the GOP has joined into the undemocratic practice.

They are choosing the candidates for the voter……trying to head off any embarrassment for “you know who”……

Four states are poised to cancel their 2020 GOP presidential primaries and caucuses, a move that would cut off oxygen to Donald Trump’s long-shot primary challengers.

Republican parties in South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Kansas are expected to finalize the cancellations in meetings this weekend, according to three GOP officials who are familiar with the plans.

The moves are the latest illustration of Trump’s takeover of the entire Republican Party apparatus. They underscore the extent to which his allies are determined to snuff out any potential nuisance en route to his renomination — or even to deny Republican critics a platform to embarrass him.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/06/republicans-cancel-primaries-trump-challengers-1483126

This means the newest challenger to Trump will face a steeper hill to navigate……

President Trump just picked up another opponent in the Republican primaries: Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor and congressman, has decided to launch a longshot challenge to the current occupant of the Oval Office, reports the AP. “I am here to tell you now that I am going to get in,” Sanford said in an interview on Fox News Sunday. When asked why he was taking on an incumbent who’s popular within the party, Sanford said: “I think we need to have a conversation on what it means to be a Republican. I think that as the Republican Party, we have lost our way.”

The 59-year-old Sanford has long been an outspoken critic of Trump’s. He frequently questioned Trump’s motivations and qualifications during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election and called Trump’s candidacy “a particularly tough pill to swallow.”

That makes 3 challengers to Trump’s candidacy……

Tell me what you think….should the party decide who should represent the people and take it out of the hands of the voter?  Or should the voter be lead around by the nose?

“Lego Ergo Scribo”