I’ll kick this post off by acknowledging that this issue likely has not gotten too much attention because nobody thinks Ben Carson is going to be the Republican nominee. But Republicans seem to have decided in the last two or three weeks that Donald Trump actually could become the Republican nominee. And Ben Carson is the only one running even close to him in the current (yes, yes, yes very early) horse race numbers.
So here’s my question: Establishment Republicans are positively terrified by a Trump nomination for two distinct reasons. First, because they assume he’d eventually go down in flames and take other party standard-bearers down with him. Second, he’s really pretty heterodox from a GOP perspective. In the terrifying hypothetical that Trump were actually elected 45th President they don’t really have any sense of what he’d do in office. (For myself, I could easily imagine a President Trump ending up like second term Arnold Schwarzenegger.) So if Trump’s the worst case scenario, what about Carson? It seems to me that even from a partisan perspective, Carson is at least as catastrophic as Trump.
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We thought we wouldn’t have Sen. David Vitter to kick around anymore? Good lord, this is quite a story. If you know politics, you know you can’t put anything past the novelesque and often delicious nonsense that goes on in Louisiana. But this is good stuff even for the Big Easy and it brings in the mix of malevolence and desperate incompetence of Fargo. Anyway, let’s go to the tape – literally.
The reviews appear to be unanimous. For Republican committee members, yesterday’s aggressively-billed, epic, hinge-of-history interrogation of Hillary Clinton was something ranging from a catastrophe to, as The Washington Examiner’s Byron York put it, “a bust.” Erick Erickson called it a “waste of time.” It went downhill from there.
Obsessing about Clinton’s friend who didn’t seem to have anything to do with anything was either bemoaned or ridiculed across the board. I saw it as more than anything the GOP committee members’ long, desperate twilight struggle to find out what they were even trying to talk about. The mission was not successful. Though they left it all on the field … of battle.
I think it wasn’t just a no news event and thus by definition good news for Hillary, as Byron put it. I think it was a good deal more.
Jeb! cuts headquarters staff and slashes payroll by 40%.
TPM Reader BA checked in mid-day about the events on Capitol Hill …
Re: “It helps her”, I think I would add that it’s hard for me to imagine any of the Democrats running against Hillary pulling this off as well.
As an active Democrat who has remained, thus far, undecided, her performance here and at the debate have gone a long way toward convincing me to support Clinton instead of Sanders; even though, politically, my ideals line up more closely with Sanders’ democratic socialism than Clinton’s quasi-third way centrism.
This could seriously be a watershed in the Trump saga. For I think the first time ever Trump tossed overboard a Scape-tern to run away from a tweet.
This changes everything.
I think Sen. Reid and those other Senators are right that it would probably be appropriate for the RNC to pick up the tab for the millions spent by Trey Gowdy’s ‘Benghazi committee’. But in fairness, probably fair for the DNC to pick up the bill for day’s event.
Listening to the questions from Republicans questioning Hillary Clinton, it’s hard not to step back and ask what it is they’re even trying to prove or what their point is. The lines of questions are disjointed and they’re pressing points she either freely concedes (yes, it was terrible and she’s ultimately responsible) or the point of which isn’t even clear (why did Sid Blumenthal send you so many emails?). It’s not going well for the committee at all. What’s most revealing about the testimony so far is that they definitely get that: they know it’s going badly for them. And that’s led to a rather churlish and defensive tone to the whole proceeding that’s further deflated any sense that this is more than a clown show where the clowns are struggling.
I must say, I think this whole engagement helps Hillary. Whatever else you can say about Hillary Clinton, she knows her stuff. She’s a pro. It’s very hard to imagine any of the Republicans presidential candidates being able to roll with this kind of questioning, or have even remotely this range of knowledge. For her interlocutors here, who mainly come off as jokes, and for the whole GOP caucus, you can see why they just couldn’t and can’t forgive Kevin McCarthy for his goof. He really screwed the pooch.