Batboy Versus Captain COVID, Round One

Resident Florida Senate GOP Medicare fraudster Rick Scott wants America's governors to return the $360 billion in aid to local and state governments in the Biden American Rescue Plan signed into law yesterday, and Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is actually blaming Scott for not getting the Sunshine State more of the Democrats' filthy lucre.

 

In an open letter to governors and mayors, sent moments after the U.S. House on Wednesday approved the $1.9 trillion bill, Scott called it “massive, wasteful and non-targeted," urging states to follow his lead and send a message to Congress to “quit recklessly spending other people’s money.”

“By rejecting and returning any unneeded funds, as well as funds unrelated to COVID-19, you would be taking responsible action to avoid wasting scarce tax dollars,” he wrote. “After all, every dollar in this package is borrowed.”

Scott, a former governor of Florida, called his request “simple and common sense,” adding that money slated for state and local governments is “wholly unrelated to responding to the pandemic.”

Scott has a history of bucking federal funds. As governor, he refused to allow Florida to accept Obamacare-related money to expand Medicaid health care coverage.

His letter comes as polls show the legislation is extremely popular. A Morning Consult/Politico poll found 69% of U.S. voters said the "package is the right amount" or "doesn’t go far enough," including 54% of Republicans.

The latter includes, apparently, Scott's successor, Gov. DeSantis, who complained Florida should be getting a bigger piece of the pie.

While Scott was calling for rejection of the assistance, DeSantis announced he has big plans for the stimulus money. And he may well be blaming Scott, at least partly, for not getting Florida more of it.

“The Senate didn’t correct the fact that Florida is getting a lot less than what we would be entitled to on a per capita basis,” DeSantis, in an apparent jab at Scott and Sen. Marco Rubio, said Monday at a press conference.

The polarization on spending comes amid rumors that both DeSantis and Scott have eyes on the White House in 2024. At odds on numerous issues, DeSantis has for almost a year blamed Scott for the massive failures of the state's unemployment system, which was developed and implemented when Scott served as governor.

 

Now this is a fight I want to see more of. Rick Scott made billions in austerity cuts to the state's budget, including billions in health care system cuts (as a former hospital chain CEO, no less) and Ron DeSantis presided over 2 million COVID-19 cases and 32,000 dead.  These two villains actually make Jeb Bush look like a competent politician.

Floridians are of course the big loser, no matter who wins.

The End Of The Never Trumpers

The NY Times has finally realized that the "principled conservative opposition" that materialized to scold Trump was always a ruse, and there's no better example of that then the doomed "Never Trump" movement inside the GOP that disintegrated as soon as he got his Supreme Court picks.  They were always Trump, just not as willing to take to his extreme measures in order to win.  Nowadays there is only Trump.

As Mr. Trump has prepared to embark on a difficult fight for re-election, a small but ferocious operation within his campaign has helped install loyal allies atop the most significant state parties and urged them to speak up loudly to discourage conservative criticism of Mr. Trump. The campaign has dispatched aides to state party conclaves, Republican executive committee meetings and fund-raising dinners, all with the aim of ensuring the delegates at next year’s convention in Charlotte, N.C., are utterly committed to Mr. Trump.

To Joe Gruters, who was co-chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign in Florida and now leads the state party, the local G.O.P. is effectively a regional arm of the president’s re-election effort.

“I’ve had probably 10 conversations with the Trump team about the delegate selection process in Florida,” Mr. Gruters said, adding of a potential Republican primary battle, “The base of the party loves our president, and if anybody runs against him, they are going to get absolutely smashed.”

State and local Republican organizations typically operate below the radar of national politics, but they can be vital to the success of a presidential candidate. Party chairmen and their deputies are tasked with everything from raising money to deploying volunteers to knock on doors, and in many states they help choose delegates for the nominating convention.

For Mr. Trump, who prevailed in 2016 as an outsider with little connection to his party’s electoral apparatus, the ability to control the levers of Republican politics at the state level could make the difference in a close election or a contested primary. It also leaves other Republicans with precious little room to oppose Mr. Trump on his policy preferences or administrative whims — on matters from health care to the Mexican border — for fear of retribution from within the party.

Mr. Trump’s aides have focused most intently on heading off any dissent at the Charlotte convention: To that end, two of Mr. Trump’s top campaign aides, Bill Stepien and Justin Clark, have worked quietly but methodically in a series of states where control of the local party was up for grabs. They have boosted Mr. Trump’s allies even in deep-blue states like Massachusetts, and worked to make peace between competing pro-Trump factions in more competitive states such as Colorado.

The devotion to Mr. Trump was on clear display Saturday outside Denver, where the state party gathered to elect a new chairman. Though Mr. Trump’s unpopularity helped drive Colorado Republicans to deep losses last fall, there was no sign of unrest: Mr. Trump’s name was emblazoned on lapel pins and a flag toted by one candidate for the chairmanship, and his slogan — “Make America Great Again” — was printed on the red hat from which the candidates drew lots to determine their speaking order.

Mr. Trump himself stayed out of the race, and campaign aides sent the White House a short memo last month urging the president not to pick sides between allies after Representative Ken Buck, a deeply conservative candidate, lobbied administration officials for support.

But when Mr. Buck claimed victory in the race for chairman, he described his mission in terms of unflinching loyalty to the president.

“The key is that we make sure that the voters of Colorado understand the great job the president has done,” Mr. Buck said. “That is what my job is.”

You're either with Trump, or you're an "enemy of the people".  And folks are lining up to be on the side with the orange fascist at the helm.  If somebody's actually expecting John Kasich or Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney to show up and "save" the GOP from Trump, it'll never happen.

The Republican Party is the Trump Party and it always has been.

We have to save ourselves.

Last Call For The Shot Heard Round The GOP

Trump wins, Jeb loses in the Palmetto State.

Jeb Bush is suspending his campaign for the Republican nomination, he announced Saturday night.

Bush struggled for months to make inroads against Donald Trump, who constantly mocked the former Florida governor's "low energy" and for spending tens of millions of dollars on his campaign.

But it was Bush's disappointing finish in South Carolina, where his brother, former President George W. Bush, and mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, campaigned for him, that was the final straw.

"The people of Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken and I really respect their decision, so tonight I am suspending my campaign," Bush said, before being overtaken by emotion.

I figured Jeb would stay in until at least Florida, he couldn't even manage that.  It's all Trump, Cruz, and Rubio now.

Big takeaway from the exit polls: 73% of SC GOP primary voters are 45 or older, and 96% were white.  Trump won older voters by 11 points, where Cruz actually won people under 45 by 3 points.

Among the 46% of SC GOP primary voters who don't have a college degree, Trump won overwhelmingly, by 14 points over Cruz for High School or less, and by 12 points for those with some college.  But Trump also won college graduates, edging out Rubio by 3.

Trump won Republicans by 5 points over Cruz, but won the 22% of independent voters by 12 points over Rubio.

Finally, Trump beat Cruz by 4 points among evangelicals.  If you don't believe "prosperity gospel" is Trump's secret weapon, SC proves it beyond a doubt.

Last thing, and you'll hear this a lot: No Republican has ever won both NH and SC and has not been the nominee.  At this point, Trump should be considered the presumptive GOP candidate in November.

And the Republican party deserves every minute of it.

A Rude-bio Awakening

Nate Silver and the Five Thirty Eight team thought Florida Sen. Marco Rubio flubbed last week's pre-New Hampshire primary debate, but Silver offered the caveat that New Hampshire voters may have seen it differently.

We here at FiveThirtyEight endorse the conventional wisdom, for a change. Like most other people covering the event, we thought that Marco Rubio had a really bad night in Saturday’s Republican debate, that the three Republican governors (Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and John Kasich) had a pretty good night, and that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz were somewhere in between. 

Rubio, who received a C- in our anonymous staff grading,1 came into the night with a lot on the line. He began the evening at 16 percent in our New Hampshire polling average, with Trump at 30 percent. Believe it or not, that 14-point gap is not too much to overcome in New Hampshire; in the past, there have been last-minute swings and election-day polling misfires of about that magnitude in the state. By the same token, however, Rubio’s second-place position in the polls is not at all safe. Kasich and Cruz, both at 12 percent, and Bush, at 9 percent, could easily catch him; perhaps even Christie at 5 percent could also with a really strong finish.

If the final New Hampshire polls ahead of tomorrow's primaries are any indication however, Rubio is in real trouble.

An internal poll conducted on Sunday suggests that Marco Rubio’s fumbled debate performance has damaged his prospects heading into the New Hampshire primary.
The poll, conducted by the pro-John Kasich New Day for America Super PAC, shows Rubio plummeting to fourth place in the primary here, with 10 percent of the vote. Most of the polling conducted in the immediate days before the debate showed Rubio in second place.

The survey, which was based on phone calls to 500 likely voters (margin of error plus or minus 3 percent), was conducted Sunday, the day following the latest Republican debate. Rubio came under scathing attack from Chris Christie, who cast the first term Florida senator as too unready, ambitious, and superficial to occupy the Oval Office. 

Donald Trump holds a wide lead in the survey, receiving 35 percent. He more than doubles runner-up Kasich, who has 15 percent. In third is Jeb Bush, with 13 percent. Behind Rubio in fifth and sixth place, respectively, are Christie and Ted Cruz. Both receive 8 percent. 

The results are welcome news for Kasich and Bush, both of whom have made New Hampshire the centerpiece of the primary campaigns. Strong performances on Tuesday will give them reason to fight on to the South Carolina primary, which will be held Feb. 20.

Now, the grains of salt to be taken with a Kasich super-PAC poll showing him in second and Rubio fourth behind Jeb :(  are approximately the size of beach balls, but should this turn out to be the case, especially if Trump runs away with the win, it seems like Rubio's clever strategy of winning the GOP nomination by coming in third may be in a smidge of doubt.

The greater point is there's only so much the Village can do to stop Trump if he wins tomorrow and Ted Cruz is nowhere to be found in New Hampshire after winning Iowa.  Cruz finishing sixth behind Chris Christie?

Suddenly "Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump" is going to find its way into print sooner rather than later. Minor headline, suddenly Iowa doesn't matter anymore and South Carolina does.

It also means that if Rubio and Cruz finish that far out, the whole "No, YOU drop out so I can consolidate the anti-Trump/Cruz vote!" fight will go on for some time.

Oh, and just a reminder about the great "moderate" hope thing, as President, Marco Rubio would outlaw abortion and force women to carry their rapist's babies.

“It’s a terrible situation,” Rubio replied. “I mean, a crisis pregnancy, especially as a result of something as horrifying as that, I’m not telling you it’s easy. I’m not here saying it’s an easy choice. It’s a horrifying thing that you’ve just described.” 

“I get it,” he added. “I really do. And that’s why this issue is so difficult. But I believe a human being, an unborn child has a right to live, irrespective of the circumstances of which they were conceived. And I know that the majority of Americans don’t agree with me on that.”

Sorry ladies, Marco's making that choice for you.  Because rapists are dads too, you know.

Jeb Bush, Professional Loser Magnet

Jeb Bush is a horrible candidate, and I'm not sure how the reputation as "the smart Bush" got hung around his neck, but if there's one thing Jeb! is actually good at, it's siding with the losers well after the game is over.

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Sunday applauded Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's response to the water contamination crisis in Flint -- even though the situation was caused by Snyder's own administration.

"I admire Rick Snyder for stepping up right now," Bush said on CNN's "State of the Union." "He's going to the challenge. He's fired people and accepted responsibility to fix this."

Bush's praise comes as some are demanding Snyder's resignation over the preventable disaster in Flint, where as many as 100,000 people have been drinking and bathing in brown, lead-contaminated water that the government previously told them was safe. As The Huffington Post's Arthur Delaney reports, this happened because Snyder's government gave Flint bad water treatment advice.

When host Jake Tapper said he was surprised to hear positive words for Snyder given his role in the catastrophe, Bush held firm and said he's impressed with the way the Republican governor is owning the issue.

"Instead of saying, 'The dog ate my homework, it's someone else's fault,' once it became clear, he's taking the lead now," Bush said. "That's exactly what I think leaders have to do."

The guy has all the political instincts of a particularly runny cow pie, I swear.  He's abysmal at this. Rick Snyder is as politically toxic as the sludge water he's still forcing Flint residents to drink, and we're supposed to think that praising the guy is going to help Jeb Bush's case as "a guy who makes good decisions"?

Oy.  Can somebody just shut the guy up already?

Last Call For...Jeb?

The "smart Bush" is looking more and more like the burning Bush these days, and even Politico is writing Jeb's campaign epitaph with an eye towards who will benefit for his family's network of super-donors.

POLITICO talked to nearly two dozen major donors, and most say they are waiting for what one veteran Republican and former Bush 43 administration appointee described as the "family hall pass" to jump to another campaign after the New Hampshire primary.

“I’m resigned to it being over, frankly. It’s really disappointing,” said one top Bush Wall Street donor. “I’d urge him to get out after New Hampshire if he doesn’t do well, but he probably won’t."

The deterioration of the Bush campaign has been a humbling experience for his fundraisers. A year ago, even before he was a candidate, Bush's team was locking down donors across the country and getting commitments for six- and seven-figure checks with little trouble. Donors were pitted against each other to see who could raise more and be in the good graces of the man who, at the time, was described by many in Bush World as the inevitable nominee.

Now the fundraising pitch is decidedly different.

"Hey, I need you to throw away money on Jeb — out of loyalty," a Bush fundraiser has told donors recently.

Rival campaigns are watching Bush's finance operation closely and have been working behind the scenes to lay the groundwork to poach his donor network. So far, a top Florida Republican fundraiser, Brian Ballard, has been one of the only notable defections to Sen. Marco Rubio's camp after Bush's campaign attacked Rubio.

"Donors I've talked to are desperate not to abandon Jeb because of their long bonds and loyalty with the family, but they are also recognizing there is no ROI [return on investment] on this campaign," said Rick Wilson, a veteran Florida political operative who is backing Rubio. "The sense of these folks is it is so sad. They whisper to each other, 'When will Jeb go?'"

The mood is very much that in order for someone to be able to challenge Trump, the riff-raff and the chaff have to go, starting with the biggest drain holding back the most donor cash: Jebby.

I don't blame the Republicans.  They're just weeks away from putting a racist, bigoted white supremacist hatemonger out in front, and only a few months from assuring a nasty convention fight later in the year in order to try to strip him of the nomination.

The vultures are circling a lot of the remaining GOP field, frankly, but Jeb has the juiciest pickings.

Last Call For Compassionate Conservatism

Not that Jeb Bush has any shot at even being the nominee right now, but as with Marco Rubio, it's very illuminating to see just how far to the right the "moderate" Republicans are going in order to try to win over the Tea Party disaster that Republican primary voters have become.

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Friday proposed an overhaul of the U.S. welfare system that would eliminate what he called failing programs for the poor and send the federal dollars from them to the states to develop their own plans.

Bush, continuing an effort to position himself as the most serious, substantive candidate in the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, laid out his plan ahead of a poverty forum in South Carolina on Saturday.

Bush said decades of federal policy have not solved the vexing problem of how to help generations of Americans mired in poverty.

"We have spent trillions of dollars on the ‘war on poverty,’ but there are now still more than 46 million Americans living in poverty," he said in a statement laying out his plan.

Well, your father's cuts to programs and your brother's crashing the economy didn't help either, Jeb. America spent a total of 12 years under your family's policies as part of what you call a failure, let's not forget.

Bush, a former Florida governor, would take some controversial steps as part of his welfare plan.

He would eliminate the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps, housing assistance programs and a cash program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

He would use the money to give so-called "right to rise" grants to the states to let state governments fund programs they develop as the best way to address poverty.

To encourage more Americans on welfare to seek jobs, Bush would include in "Right to Rise" grants work requirements and time limits for able-bodied adults.

So Jeb would just eliminate federal welfare programs completely and let states deal with the problem, because states like Florida have such good ideas.  Block grants to states is the new universal fix for everything in GOP land, no doubt states wouldn't be required to use that money to help the poor, but it sure would be great if we could give it to rich people, right? They'll totally promise to creat jobs with it, Jeb pinky swears.

Compassionate Conservatism at its finest.

Money Can't Buy Everything

If Jeb! (more like Jeb?) can't buy a win in Iowa with all his hundreds of millions in Super PAC cash, then exactly what can he win?

Jeb Bush's campaign is canceling its Iowa television advertising buy and shifting money to double staff on the ground in January, the final month before the high-stakes Iowa caucuses.

The news will raise questions about whether the former Florida governor might pull out of Iowa given his fifth-place status here, with just 6 percent support of likely GOP caucusgoers.

That's not the case, Bush campaign manager Danny Diaz told The Des Moines Register.

The number of Iowa paid staffers who make personal contact with voters will be boosted from 11 to more than 20, including its Hispanic outreach director, he said.

Bush returns to campaign here Jan. 11-13 with stops in Iowa City, Grinnell, Des Moines and Ankeny.

The larger context is that Team Bush is making similar shifts from TV ads to its ground game in other early states, too. In January, they'll deploy 60 staffers from the Miami headquarters to the early states, including about 10 to Iowa.

And Bush's presence will still be prominent on voters' TV screens: A pro-Bush super PAC has reserved more than $19 million in ads across the first three states in coming days.

The Bush campaign itself has spent tens of millions on television ads to date, yet his candidacy has failed to catch on, something rival Donald Trump has mocked him for.

Diaz said the campaign is removing $3 million in previously reserved TV time: an Iowa buy of about $1 million and a January buy in South Carolina of about $2 million. It's instead increasing direct voter contact with a total of 60 additional staffers.

My question is this: why is Jeb? unable to do both?  The answer is that more and more, this is now the party of Trump and Cruz, of mean, inchoate rage against the dying of the, well, white.

Bush's aides acknowledged that Iowa can be a very tough state for mainstream GOP candidates. The three Republicans who have consistently led polls here since late summer, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, are outsider tea party candidates.

You don't say.

Jeb Comes To Jesus

It looks like Bush, Inc. is making some frank decisions about the candidacy of Jeb, and the big guns are coming out to try to save him.

Jeb Bush will attend a finance meeting this weekend in Houston convened by former President George H. W. Bush and attended by Bush's brother, former President George W. Bush, CBS News has learned.

The session, designed to assess where Bush's candidacy stands in the face of large-scale staff cutbacks and underwhelming poll numbers, will also be attended by Bush's mother, Barbara Bush. The governor's campaign confirmed the meeting will be held Sunday and Monday.

CBS News has also learned George W. Bush will headline a fundraiser for Jeb Bush in Georgetown (Washington, DC) on Oct. 29. The fundraising email, which went out earlier this week, was sent by George W. Bush's two former chiefs of staff, Andy Card and Josh Bolten. Jeb Bush will not attend the fund-raiser.

The email, sent to Bush-Cheney alumni, praised Bush's "extraordinary record of accomplishment and conservative innovation" and said that George W. Bush "looks forward to seeing his old friends at this event and to sharing his enthusiasm for Jeb's candidacy." Bolten and Card suggested that for those who can't make the event, there would be "other opportunities around the country," and the email closed, "Your help today will help position Jeb for a successful outcome."

The event underscores the need for the former Florida governor to lean on his brother's fund-raising prowess to aid his struggling campaign.

Don Poppy, Barbara and Dubya are making it clear that playtime is over and the "real adults" are in charge of Jeb's campaign now.  He's blowing it, and the operatives are now taking over the reins. Their first act is getting the rabble back in line and that line is "Jeb will be the nominee and next President" and all the weight of the Bush network is being brought to bear.

We'll see just how much power the Bush crime family has left these days.  It's still considerable, but enough to counter the rage of the Tea Party and the rise of Trump/Carson as clear front-runners?

I don't know about that one.  But I'm still not convinced Jeb's done.  There's still tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, and that will keep him in the race through at least the early primary states.

After that though, who knows.

The Bully And The Little Brother

Ezra Klein has a point here: even if Donald Trump doesn't win the GOP nomination, he'll be remembered for taking out Jeb Bush.

Over the past week, Trump and Bush have been in an argument that basically boils down to the question of was George W. Bush president on 9/11/2001?

Trump insists that Bush was president both prior to and during the 9/11 attacks, and he was therefore at least partly responsible for the security failures that permitted the tragedy. And to Trump's credit, there is considerable evidence that George W. Bush was president on 9/11/2001.

Jeb Bush's position is harder to parse: he argues that his brother was only responsible for what happened after 9/11, suggesting, perhaps, that someone else bore the responsibilities of the presidency on 9/11/2001. Or, to be a bit kinder to his position, he argues that the measure of as president isn't whether something like 9/11 happens, but whether it happens again. 

The result is this absolutely brutal interview CNN's Jake Tapper conducted with Bush. "If your brother and his administration bear no responsibility at all," Tapper asks, "how do you then make the jump that President Obama and Secretary Clinton are responsible for what happened at Benghazi?"

Jeb looks absolutely terrible here, and he's letting Trump sucker him into this.  But Jeb doesn't have a choice: he can't not defend his brother's horrendous foreign policy record, even though it's largely indefensible. And so Jeb is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

On top of that, Bush, like Kevin McCarthy, gives away the game on Benghazi at the same time as Jake Tapper actually asks the right question here and Bush completely sticks his entire lower body into his mouth, let alone just his foot.  Not only does he make the Benghazi committee look like a bunch of fools, he also hurts his brother on 9/11 and the multiple times US embassy personnel were killed during Dubya's administration.

It's actually embarrassing how bad Jeb Bush is at this.  Didn't anyone in his organization think to come up with any real defense?  Or did they even bother, for as I've said, how do you defend the indefensible?

George W. really was the smart brother.

Last Call For Last Year's Model

A couple of notes of Republicans and Obamacare to report today, first, Jeb! is introducing Jebcare! or something:

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Tuesday will lay out proposals to repeal President Barack Obama’s healthcare law and replace it with a system that provides a tax credit for the purchase of health plans and shifts power to the states.

Bush will detail his plan at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics in Manchester to start a three-day campaign swing through the state, which holds the first-in-the-nation primary election on Feb. 9 on the road to the November 2016 election.

This sounds familiar!

Key components of Bush’s plan would be a tax credit for the purchase of affordable, portable health plans that protect Americans from catastrophic medical events and an increase in contribution limits and uses for Health Savings Accounts to help with out-of-pocket costs.

Bush would replace the controversial Cadillac tax in Obamacare with a cap on the “employer tax exclusion,” the tax-free status of health benefits provided by employers, as a way to lower insurance premiums.

The “Cadillac Tax,” to take effect in 2018, is a 40 percent tax on the most expensive employer-sponsored health coverage.

He would allow employers to use financial incentives to encourage wellness programs, and enable small businesses to make tax-free contributions to their workers’ individual plans.

Bush would overhaul the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory system and set up a review of regulatory barriers to health innovation.

Oh good, tax credits.  Because the people who would lose their health insurance due to being thrown off expanded Medicare, the loss of exchanges, and can't afford health savings accounts would in fact totally get health care from this plan.   It's also the same plan that Marco Rubio has, because it's the same plan the Republican have had for over a year now, and they can't get the votes to pass it even when they control Congress.

And speaking of Marco Rubio, looks like our old friend Avik Roy has joined Team Marco after bailing on the now failed Team Perry. It's kind of awkward though...

Roy, a conservative health care policy wonk who initially backed former Texas Gov. Rick Perry's ill-fated campaign, on Monday announced that he'll be advising Rubio on policy, saying in a tweet, "No candidate expresses — and embodies — the American dream better."

Roy's past words about Rubio's policy haven't been as glowing.

One target has been the freshman senator's criticism of Obamacare's use of "bailouts" for insurers — shorthand for a complicated mechanism meant to provide cash to insurers who cover sicker, costlier patients than they expected to as a result of the health care law. Just this month, Rubio took credit for putting constraints on the program, which he derided as a "crony capitalist bailout program."

Roy, whose Forbes blog regularly features substantive takedowns of Obamacare and also the thin Republican proposals to replace it, has rejected that characterization of the Obamacare provision. He notes the mechanism was meant to coax risk-averse companies to offer new insurance plans to people getting covered under the health care law.

“It’s not an insurance company bailout if it’s the government that’s messing up the health insurance market, right?" Roy wondered in an appearance on CNBC last year. "The insurers are just trying to do their job.”

Oops.  Of course, that risk-pool provision was criminally underfunded by Republicans in last year's budget, and it cost Kentucky 50,000 insured just this month.

In other words, Republicans sabotaged Obamacare again.  Now they plan to finish the job in 2017.

The Voting Wrongs Act

Don't expect Jeb to sign any voting rights legislation if he's elected, like most Republicans who threw up their hands in 2008 and said "OK, we've elected a black president, what more do you people want" Bush sees the VRA as an antiquated, irrelevant relic.

The 1965 law, signed by President Lyndon Johnson, has dramatically reduced racial discrimination in voting. But for the past two years, its impact has been less clear. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the heart of Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. That provision laid out a formula to determine which states had a history of voting discrimination that would subject them to extra scrutiny every time they sought to change voting laws. At the time, nine states were affected by the clause. Unless Congress writes a new formula that would pass muster with the Supreme Court, the effect of the law remains muted. 

To Bush, singling out states for their historic racism is no longer relevant. "If it's to reauthorize it to continue to provide regulations on top of states as though we are living in 1960—'cause those were basically when many of those rules were put in place—I don't believe that we should do that," he said. "There has been dramatic improvement in access to voting. I mean, exponentially better improvement. And I don't think there is a role for the federal government to play in most places, could be some, but in most places where they did have a constructive role in the '60s. So I don't support reauthorizing it as is."

Of course not, because bruised southern white feelings are more important than the right to vote, Supreme Court even said so!

The scary, more serious part is this notion that the federal government doesn't have a role to play in guaranteeing that voter suppression is going on when southern states like Alabama are imposing voter ID laws and then closing drivers license offices in heavily black counties first.

This is exactly the kind of nonsense the Voting Rights Act was supposed to stop, but because it's been gutted, Alabama will most likely be able to get away with it and disenfranchise thousands of black voters in the process.

But that's the point: a Republican president won't enforce the Voting Rights Act at all.

Bush, Whacked? Con't

Daily Beast columnist Will Rahn doesn't pull any punches as he tells Jeb Bush to pack it in and drop out of the race for the good of the GOP.

The conventional wisdom a few months ago was that your brother’s catastrophic presidency would be your bid’s biggest hurdle. Now, in a fit of desperation, it looks like you’re about to draft him to stump for you. Putting aside that George W. is still despised by a not-insignificant swath of the Republican electorate, how is that going to play in the general should you somehow win the nomination? You’re making the Democrats’ job easy, Jeb. They’ll be more than happy to attach you to his legacy, and you’re doing that for them.

Speaking of the Democrats, we know what will happen if you drag this out through next spring. The going thinking right now is that the guys really low in the polls—your Rand Pauls and George Patakis—should be next to drop out. But what damage do they do to the GOP by staying in? You Bushes, meanwhile, for all your patrician aloofness, are some of the dirtiest campaigners out there, and every jab you get in at your fellow establishmentarians like Marco Rubio is going to be used against them by the left. It’s one thing to toughen up a nominee in a primary fight—it’s another to make them damaged goods, unready to lead. If you’ve got some golden piece of oppo that will take Rubio or John Kasich out of consideration, by all means use it now. Otherwise, time to step aside.

Electability has always been the central rationale of your candidacy. We’re reminded it’s been more than 30 years since a Republican outside the Bush family won the presidency. In 2000, your brother was able to make the case that he was the strongest candidate to take on the Democrats, particularly after he dragged John McCain’s name through the mud.

But your brother was an able campaigner, and you are not. The polls showed he had a particularly good chance of winning back the White House; the same can’t really be said of you. And again, he was a disaster as president. You were doing a decent job of shedding all that baggage, but now that’s he’s joining you on the campaign trail, you’re going to be shouldering all of it. And not for nothing, but your principal strategist, Mike Murphy, does have the distinction of being the only 2016 guru to have already run against Hillary and lost.

And even if your brother wasn’t a nincompoop, Jeb, you’re doing a fine job of messing this up on your own. You’ve already had more than your fair share of flubs. That “stuff happens” quote may have initially been taken out of context by the media, but guess what: Running for president, particularly when you’re a Republican, means dealing with a hostile press. You will not always be treated fairly, you will rarely be given the benefit of the doubt. Contrast your statement with Rubio’s nearly perfect response to a question about Black Lives Matter that was making the rounds on Twitter last week, and you see why Republicans worry about you leading the party through 2016.

I have to admit, in whatever alternate universe where the evil version of me is a Republican political blogger, I'd be giving the Bush camp the same advice.  The longer he stays in, the longet he becomes the punch line of the attacks on the GOP. "Just like his brother, only incompetent and stupid" is not exactly the best image the GOP wants to project if they want to win.

Granted, it's hard not to project that image given the people running.  But at this point, there's no way Jeb becomes the nominee.  The problem is, the Republicans have already committed millions to his campaign, so he can keep going as long as he wants to.

And keep doing damage the whole time.  Stay in Jeb, please!

Stuff And Things About Jeb

Jeb Bush really is making a total mess of this campaign, isn't he?

Jeb Bush invited a firestorm on Friday by saying that “stuff happens” in reference to renewed calls for legislative action after tragedies like the mass shooting in Oregon.

“I had this challenge as governor because we had — look, stuff happens,” he said at a forum in South Carolina. “There’s always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”

The inelegant phrase immediately set off a wave of criticism from observers suggesting he was playing down the scourge of gun violence and the tragedy on Thursday, in which a gunman killed nine people at a community college in Roseburg, Ore.

Mr Bush, taking questions from the state’s attorney general, Alan Wilson, was speaking about a pattern of proposing legislative responses that he said did not halt the tragedies they were meant to stop.

Asked afterward about the “stuff happens” comment, Mr. Bush said, “it wasn’t a mistake,” and requested that a reporter point out “what I said wrong.”

“Things happen all the time,” Mr. Bush said. “Things. Is that better?”

There are three issue here.

First problem is the GOP notion, widely held, that there is nothing that government can do or even should do in order to prevent the mass slaughter of citizens like this.  More than 30,000 people die yearly to firearms in the US and somehow Republicans have not only counseled that the government shouldn't prevents it, but that it can't: it's the blood that waters the tree of liberty, the necessary cost of a free society where firearms "preserve" the Constitution. Indeed, 300 million firearms in the hands of American citizens is good and necessary and there's nothing that we should do in order to curtail that number. By far, this is the biggest issue and the largest debate we need to have, but cannot.

Problem number two is the fact that Jeb Bush, like most Republicans, are running for President (you know, Chief Executive of the Federal Government) in order to specifically not do anything.  Vote for me, I won't solve you problems!  Republicans of course don't think government is the answer (gun deaths, the economy, the environment) unless they do (Sharia law, women's reproductive systems, repealing health insurance).

Finally, Jeb's mealy-mouthed "What's the big deal?" reaction to this just makes him look even more like a privileged creep with all the empathy of Mitt Romney.  It's truly amazing how out of touch the guy is, and incapable of hiding problems one and two from "moderate" voters.

Anyway, add another gaffe to the pile for Jeb, who is self-destructing at the cost of hundreds of millions in donor and super-PAC dollars before our very eyes.

Bush, Whacked?

A brutal story this morning in the Washington Post about Jeb Bush indicates that his donors are threatening to jump ship unless he turns things around in October.

Jeb Bush is entering a critical phase of his Republican presidential campaign, with top donors warning that the former Florida governor needs to demonstrate growth in the polls over the next month or face serious defections among supporters.

The warnings, expressed by numerous senior GOP fund­raisers in recent days, come as Bush and an allied super PAC are in the early stages of an aggressive television ad campaign they say will help erase doubts about his viability.

But Bush continues to battle against a steady decline in the polls, sinking to fifth place at just 7 percent in a national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday and similarly languishing in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

The warnings from top donors come as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s exit from the race re­focused the battle within the GOP’s establishment wing as one between Bush and his former protege, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Right now, the momentum appears to be behind Rubio, who has jumped ahead of Bush in most polls. At least a third of the bundlers who signed up to raise money for Walker have switched their allegiance to Rubio, while a smaller number have gone with Bush, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Bush also is facing fresh scrutiny for comments that critics say bear echoes of remarks Mitt Romney made during his 2012 GOP presidential bid, part of a pattern of awkward statements that Bush or his campaign have had to clarify.

The real problem is that last part.  Republicans clearly are backing political outsiders, and there's just no way that Jebby here can portray himself as anything other than the establishment's top candidate, a living reminder of the failures of the last two Bushes in Iraq and with the economy.  The Tea Party views him with nothing but contempt.  The smarter money is shifting to Rubio on the establishment side, and while Rubio is trailing Trump, Carson, and Fiorina, at least he's not, you know, Jeb Bush.

And let's face it, Jeb's political instincts are even worse than Romney's.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) says Americans will miss outgoing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

“I admire John Boehner greatly, he’s a great public servant,” the GOP presidential candidate said on “Fox News Sunday.” 

“He left at the apex of his time in service to the country with the pope speaking in Congress. I think people are going to miss him in the long run because he’s a person that is focused on solving problems.”

That may be true, but backing Orange Julius, the least popular Speaker of the House in my lifetime, probably isn't a good idea.

Even among Republicans, Boehner's image tilted negative. While 37 percent reported favorable impressions of him, 42 percent were unfavorable. Those mixed reviews reflect the divisions within the Republican Party he led in Congress, as strident conservative factions regularly voiced distrust of party leadership. In late 2013, Pew Research surveys found Boehner with far more negative ratings among Republicans identifying with the tea party movement than non-tea party Republicans.

Still, Jeb has more money than anyone else so you can't count him finished (John McCain after all came back from the dead.)  The problem is that money isn't helping him.

We'll see how long that money sticks around.

Sunday Long Read: The Guy WIth The Buy

Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is ready to buy himself a president, and he has the billions to do it.  NY Magazine's Jason Zengerle takes a look at the man who would purchase 2016 despite Donald Trump in the race wrecking his plans.

In the 2016 presidential race, Adelson insists he will not repeat the mistake he made in 2012 of backing a spoiler. “I think he feels guilty,” says one person who has discussed the matter with him. “I think he knows how much he fucked up.” Adelson has told several associates that he will likely not decide on a candidate until he’s had an opportunity to watch a few debates. Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, an Israel advocate who’s friendly with Adelson, says the mogul’s priority this time is to support a candidate who’s electable: “He’ll match his emotionalism on this issue with some hard data. His principles and his desires remain the same, but I think he’s going to balance those with an empirically based judgment on the reality of the marketplace.”

Of course, thanks to Donald Trump, the Republican marketplace is a flaming mess at the moment. The challenge Adelson now faces is determining which candidate stands the best chance of defeating not onlyHillary Clinton but also the man whose Las Vegas hotel is just a few clicks down Mel Tormé Way from the Venetian. While Trump boasts that his daughter converted to Judaism and blasts Obama as “the worst enemy of Israel,” his knowledge of the Middle East is sufficiently shallow that Adelson apparently believes Trump wouldn’t be an effective ally of the Jewish state.

But Adelson is also said to be conflicted about the various potential Trump-slayers. Scott Walker, despite intensive lobbying efforts, is viewed by many close to Adelson as insufficiently serious about Israel and foreign policy. (“Look, he’s the governor of Wisconsin,” says Morton Klein, the president of the Adelson-backed Zionist Organization of America. “He knows about cheese and cutting pensions.”) Rubio is a personal favorite but might lack the necessary ruthlessness to take out The Donald. Ted Cruz, meanwhile, is well positioned to appeal to the same GOP primary voters Trump’s currently energizing, but he is probably too conservative to beat Hillary.

Which brings Adelson to Jeb Bush, the candidate who seemingly has the best chance of slaying both Trump and Clinton but whose relationship with the mogul is as vexed as any of the Republican contenders. If Adelson really feels that backing Gingrich over Romney was a mistake in 2012, backing Jeb this time around would be a kind of atonement. But, frustratingly for Adelson, the heir apparent to the Bush dynasty has not always been so eager to play along.

If there was a big loser in 2012, it was Adelson, who spent a $100 million on Newt Gingrich only to see him crash and burn well before the primaries even started.  He's backing Jebby this time.

Who is at five percent.

Just because you're rich, doesn't make you very bright, I guess.

Taxing America's Patience

If you're still wondering how Jeb! Bush is hovering around the 5% mark in GOP polls, it's because he's trying to sell his brother's policies with all the charisma of Mitt Romney with a head cold. Greg Sargent:

Time magazine reports that a new analysis from the Dem-aligned Center for American Progress calculates that Jeb Bush’s new tax plan would cut his own taxes by $773,000. This suggests that Democrats will try do to Jeb what they did to Mitt Romney: Cast him as a walking symbol, and personal beneficiary, of GOP priorities that seek to preserve or even exacerbate a tax code rigged for the rich and against the middle class. 

What’s interesting here is the Bush campaign’s response to charges that his tax plan would result in a huge windfall for the rich: It is arguing that his plan would nonetheless increase the share of the overall tax burden that the wealthy bear.

Buttressing the argument that people like Jeb would make out very well from Jeb’s plan, the Wall Street Journal reports that a new analysis from a business-backed tax group concludes that the biggest boost in after-tax income under his plan goes to the top one percent of earners, that is, people making more than $406,000:

They would see their after-tax incomes increase on average by 11.6%, according to the analysis. That’s the biggest change for any income group. 

The average for all income levels would be a 3.3% increase in income. The second-biggest beneficiaries would be folks in the top 10%, those making more than about $117,000. Their incomes would go up by 4.7%. 

The Bush campaign responds that his tax plan also cuts taxes for tens of millions of middle class families, and eliminates income taxes entirely for a range of lower income families. In sum, a Bush campaign spokesman told the Journal, the Bush plan means that “the highest earners actually pay a greater share of the tax burden than they did before.”

Even stupid Republican voters are figuring out that a tax plan that would save the one percent billions in taxes means somebody's got to pay for schools and roads and water pipes and things, and that if the one percent isn't paying for it, somebody else has to.

More and more are finally realizing that "somebody else" = "me".  Only took them 40 years to figure that out, too.

Bush Tax Cuts Forevah

Jeb Bush is tired of getting 5% in the polls, so he's going to amaze people with something they've never seen before:  more Bush tax cuts!

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush convened an hour-long gathering in Manhattan on Tuesday morning with three longtime advocates for sweeping tax cuts, seeking their counsel at the office of New York Jets owner Woody Johnson and sharing the details of his campaign’s economic plan, which will be formally unveiled Wednesday in Raleigh, N.C. 

The trio of supply-side conservatives — Heritage Foundation economist Stephen Moore, publishing executive Steve Forbes and CNBC contributor Larry Kudlow — met with Bush alongside Johnson, Bush’s national finance chairman, according to two Republicans familiar with Bush’s schedule. 

Those Republicans, who requested anonymity to discuss the private session and the Bush campaign’s outlook, said the former Florida governor hopes his tax offering will jumpstart his candidacy, which has lagged behind GOP front-runner Donald Trump for months, by proposing lower corporate and personal tax rates while also eliminating a number of deductions that favor Wall Street investors.

Courting the party’s tax-cut enthusiasts Tuesday was the first step in that effort, the Republicans said, calling it a gesture of goodwill and a signal to the party’s business wing that in spite of the rollicking race so far, Bush is mounting an aggressive fall campaign built around traditional GOP principles. Later Tuesday, Bush will visit the offices of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, whose writers have for decades been ardent proponents of smaller government and lower taxes.

Yay tax cuts for the rich!  That'll totally fix all of America problems.

Well, it will for the rich.  Until the economy collapses again, but hey, rich people can survive that, so no problemo, dude!

Seriously, do you get the feeling that the Jeb Bush campaign might be out of ideas?

Last Call For Bushwhacked On The Campaign Trail

Suddenly Jeb! is looking like he can't shake the Loser! albatross hanging around his neck.

There's another sign — if you needed one — that Jeb Bush is sucking wind in the Republican primary: Three top fundraisers from Bush's home base of Florida have left the campaign.

The particulars of the split are up for debate, according to Politico's Alex Isenstadt and Marc Caputo, who broke the news. But regardless of the proximate cause, it's a big deal because it suggests two larger issues for Bush's campaign: He's dug a big hole and there's concern in his own camp that he won't be able to dig his way out.

It also comes less than three months after Bush shook up his staff and installed Danny Diaz, a veteran Washington operative, as campaign manager.

In the last public national poll, conducted by Quinnipiac, Bush was tied for third place, behind Donald Trump and Ben Carson, at 7 percent. Ironically, fundraising prowess has been Bush's calling card in a campaign that was supposed to blow his rivals out of the water. Even Mitt Romney, who had to fend off a rotating set of ill-fated front-runners like Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain, enjoyed a pretty steady rise in polling. Not Bush.

The three fundraising aides left after clashing with national campaign staff, Politico reported, and it's not clear whether they will continue to have a role with Bush's Right to Rise super PAC. But what is clear is this: It's rare for three high-profile staffers to bolt a campaign they see as likely to land the candidate in the White House, and it's equally rare for a winning campaign to shed three high-profile aides.

Especially since Jeb!'s super power is superior fundraising and a war chest that dominates his foes, to see three fundraisers leave the campaign is a massive (one might even say "yooooge") admission that money isn't going to save him.

And if money can't save him, then he's got...what, exactly?

Trump continues to roll and roil over his opponents.  He's the monster unleashed and the normal rules simply don't apply anymore.

The person that hurts the most of course is Jebby.

I don't think Bush is going anywhere and will stay in the race, that's something his money does afford him.  But he's polling in single digits. like a giant loser.  And nobody likes a loser.

Words Overheard

Quinnipiac University asked people as part of their most recent 2016 candidate poll to name one word that describes the candidate the best, and the results were very interesting judging from the top five answers.

What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Hillary Clinton? (Numbers are not percentages. Figures show the number of times each response was given. This table reports only words that were mentioned at least five times.)

liar 178
dishonest 123
untrustworthy 93
experience 82
strong 59

Clinton still having serious issues on trustworthiness.  But she came off better than Donald Trump...

What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump? (Numbers are not percentages. Figures show the number of times each response was given. This table reports only words that were mentioned at least five times.)  

arrogant 58
blowhard 38
idiot 35
businessman 34
clown 34

Ouch.  "Arrogant blowhard idiot businessman clown" sums up The Donald quite well, I'd think.

But Jeb Bush came out with the most amusing bunch of descriptors:

What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Jeb Bush? (Numbers are not percentages. Figures show the number of times each response was given. This table reports only words that were mentioned at least five times.)  

Bush 136
family 70
honest 53
weak 45
brother 41 

Probably explains why Jeb has stopped pretending his brother doesn't exist and is now having Dubya help him fundraise.  He's in that much trouble that he's actually having the worst president in modern history stumping for him.

But if Hillary's in trouble, Donny and Jeb are deep underwater and sinking fast.