Donald Trump: Come Kiss the Ring

Don't think vegans eat shrimp, do they? Have a cousin who is at least vegetarian, not sure if she is vegan, have to check. She is a liberal democrat though.

 

Some do, as a middle ground at parties.

 

So the consensus seems to be that Rubio won last night's debate. Is the party finally going to coalesce around his candidacy? Is the NYT still so mad that he bought a house?

 

CNBC is still mad that he cashed in a 401k, and paid penalties to do it, even after getting a book advance to pay some bills.

 

I thought it was because he got four traffic tickets. Or was it because he bought a boat?

 

Yeah, the NYT decided all on its own to get pissed off. You're savvier than that.

That was a GOP rival plant story. Hell, it might not even have been a rival.

Rubio should be rolling. Clearly he's the coolest guy in the race. He's the JFK type. He makes Cruz look like a nerd. Hell, Cruz makes Cruz look like a nerd, but Rubio, by contrast, appears to be someone who could talk about, say, sports.

But there's widespread concern that the guy is a terrific talker, bright, able to cut through some bullshit...and just not that hard of a worker and kind of weak-spined as a result; that, when push came to shove, he'd acquiesce on things out of sheer lack of will.

You either have the self-motivation to grind or you have a spouse who will grind you up if you don't, or both, or neither, in which you're one of those talented people whose only intermittently does good work but is tolerated out of talent and general likeability. It's true in journalism, true in the legal world, true anywhere. It's true of the presidency, but not a good place for it to be true.

At this point, W is a cautionary tale for the GOP. (And, to some degree, Obama, who didn't find his grind until the 2012 election cycle, after which he's become a pretty good president despite no real legislative power) Who would be Rubio's "handlers" and "advisers?"

In other words: Who are the assholes who have to look like hell and stay up all night and do all the work because the top guy called it a day? Somebody has to be the one who doesn't sleep. Somebody has to be the one who plots the course of the world and wants to do all the detail work that the top guy doesn't. Who would help Rubio? Think-tankers? Fox News and Clear Channel and Red State will not help you govern shit. They exist to make money off of a worldview. That's it. So who helps Rubio actually run the country? Would he get to, oh, 30 states over four years? Would he get out the vote in key elections? Could he be bothered to be there? You know nutball Ted Cruz will be there. You know Chris Christie - who relishes nothing more than winning elections and shooting off his mouth in the aid of winning them - will be there. Would Rubio?

The GOP has lived in fear for decades that another Nixon - read: Chris Christie - get in the White House. Never mind that it's Nixon, sociopath that he was, who has the GOP where it is today with the southern strategy, the GOP doesn't want another Nixon.

But W's tenure gives everybody pause, as it should. The last four years of his presidency were a spectacular flop, and I never thought it was ideology - as voters were led to believe by the cynical Tea Party backers - but sheer, hard work of governance. W didn't have a grasp on it, his team got old as dirt and lost its fastball, and it fell apart.

Me? I want a competent grinder in the White House who also isn't a zealot like Ted Cruz. So, on the GOP side, I naturally tend toward Christie or Bush or Kasich and, even, to a small degree, Trump, and away from a total neophyte like Carson.

 

Good points, Alma. That's one of the things that is slowly winning me over with Trump, is I think that as long as he stays engaged and doesn't get fed up with the back-and-forth political bickering, he'll work his ass off to find a way to get the job done. He's an ultimate example of a Type A personality, which means he NEEDS to do a good job for no other reason than he has to in order to satisfy his own ego. That's not the worst thing in the world.
I don't know if Trump could or would want to sustain that for eight years, but I think he could be a very effective one-term president like James K. Polk.

 

Yah, he did a great job with the USFL.

 

So apparently Jeb has a new motto: Jeb! Can Fix It!
Hilarity ensued on social media. Good to know the person formerly handling Bill Cosby's social media account found new work.

 

Jeb! Can't Fix Shit!

 

For the hopeless junkies among us, governors races tonight in Ky. and Miss., a pot legalization initiative in Ohio and a handful of other races. Anybody keeping up with some of these?