Remarkable way for Scott Walker to end his campaign. He didn’t name Trump explicitly, but clearly was referring to him when he lamented the GOP race being about personal attacks and what you’re against, rather than the sunny optimism of Reagan and a race about what you are for. He then took the remarkable step of urging other candidates to consider withdrawing from the race, too, so Republicans can coalesce around a true conservative candidate. That is not Trump, obviously.
As much as I said he was pretty obviously done, Scott Walker’s departure from the race sure seems abrupt and even premature. It’s hard to have much hope when you go from a first tier candidate to significantly under 1%. Still, not only is it early but the race is so unsettled and chaotic, couldn’t he have held out a bit longer? But David Kurtz reminds me of a key point about Walker. Going back to the early days when he was the new Governor of Wisconsin, Walker was always a creature of the Koch Brothers and like big donors. (There was actually a comical episode some of you may remember when a prankster called Walker up as “David Koch” and talking to Walker for something like an hour. He recorded the call and then made it public.)
Responding to ban on Muslim presidents controversy, Carson campaign says “Republican primary voters are with us at least 80-20.”
You’ll see in this latest piece we published that Ben Carson himself was rejected as a speaker at a Christian event because of his own religious beliefs. Carson is a Seventh Day Adventist. It’s all a bit ironic coming after Carson said a Muslim shouldn’t be President of the United States.
But the apparent disinvitation to Carson got me thinking because it brings up an issue that has always fascinated me. Seventh Day Adventists do not believe in heaven or hell or the immortality of the soul – which creates significant distance between them and most Chalcedonian Christians.
Texas man vandalized his own truck and blamed it on Black Live Matter activists.
Jeb Bush says a new TV ad attacking his brother, put together by an outside Democratic group, is “disgraceful.” This comes after Jeb himself put out a meme after last week’s debate embracing his “he kept us” safe line from his exchange with celebrity businessman Donald Trump. It’s hard to see what exactly is “disgraceful” about criticizing the record of a former president just because he happens to be another candidate’s brother. Indeed, as Amanda Marcotte notes here, the “he kept us safe” line is problematic on the merits, unless you consider the catastrophic 9/11 attacks the world’s most epic presidential mulligan. Even post-9/11, which of course is what the defenders want to focus on, getting the country embroiled in the catastrophic and terrorism irrelevant Iraq War doesn’t look like such a great idea in retrospect either.
But for the purposes of 2016, I’d argue that all these substantive points are borderline irrelevant.
Pro-Confederate flag group trolls civil rights rally with a civil rights rally with aerial overflight message extolling the Confederacy. Alas, they misspelled the message.
After a week of apologies and celebration of the young Irving, Texas, student, the Ahmed-Truth movement is now underway.
A new CNN poll out today shows a sudden rise for Carly Fiorina and at least some drop in support for Donald Trump. But I would argue that the real news from the poll is tied to Marco Rubio and to a lesser degree to the abysmal showing of Scott Walker who has been falling fast and now comes in at under 1%.