The tea party's "common" problem

Michelle Malkin once tweeted to her tea party followers, "When it comes to Common Core peddlers like @JebBush et al: Don't read their lips. Follow the money."

"It's been a huge financial and political jackpot for Bush," Malkin later said in an interview. "Advocating for purported high standards takes him across the country and puts him in touch with a lot of deep pockets. But, of course, he didn't anticipate this backlash. Does he still come out ahead by fronting for Common Core?"

Yes, Michelle he does come out ahead, where it counts. Wonder what she will tweet to her

followers if Jeb decides to accept her party's nomination? Probably something like, "Jeb may be a crook and a crony, but he's our crook and crony."

Tampa Bay Times: Jeb Bush's Common Core problem strikes at heart of his foundation

Mark Levin: Jeb Bush The ‘Dumbest Of The Bushes’

The Nation asks the right question, and provides an answer

The most recent issue of The Nation features an article that asks the question, "Will Jeb Bush Follow in His Brother's Footsteps on Foreign Policy?"  It answers the question by citing a RightWeb article exposing JEB! for the neocon he is.  According to the source:

Feels Good!

"...Bush 'rarely comments on foreign policy,' it is noted that Bush 'has appeared particularly unwilling to push back against the neoconservatives who supported his brother’s administration, at times echoing their complaints about the Obama administration’s foreign policy.' They add that Bush, who often focuses on Latin America, has apparently called for increased US aid to anti-government forces in Venezuela. And RightWeb adds more about Jeb Bush’s affiliation with PNAC [Project for the New American Century]:

Although not well known for his views on foreign affairs, Jeb Bush has been a supporter of hawkish factions in the United States, including the neoconservative PNAC. In 1997, just before his successful run for governor, Bush was one of more than two dozen prominent political figures to sign PNAC’s founding statement of principles...Among PNAC’s 25 charter signatories were several people who would become senior members of President George W. Bush’s administration, including Dick Cheney,Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis Libby, Zalmay Khalilzad, Peter Rodman,Paula Dobriansky, and Elliott Abrams."

Project for the New Iranian Night Sky?

For those "constitutional conservatives" hoping to avoid having to fall in line and vote for another neocon, or stay home, The Nation has this prediction:

"Given the united front against the Tea Party by the Republican establishment, Karl Rove’s Crossroads and the US Chamber of Commerce, the GOP winner in 2016 is likely to be an establishment-leaning candidate..."

If not JEB!, then who for the GOP?

Clearly Jeb Bush cannot win the presidency.  For the Republican Party to nominate him would be nothing short of committing an act of deliberate electoral suicide.  He is being promoted by the media, and some well-heeled, self-serving donors and party leaders because he is party royalty (a safe choice for the speculator class and coupon clippers, goes the assumption, even if he loses). The other alteratives to JEB! being heavily promoted by the media (Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and until recently Chris Christie) are all now as equally unelectable as Bush.  Though Paul does poll better than JEB! against Hillary, he and Cruz are both unacceptable to the party establishment as a standard bearer.

So, does the GOP literally have no one who could be competitive with Hillary Clinton on a national level?  They probably do have competitive candidates, most likely a governor somewhere, but none are being promoted, or seriously discussed at this point.   Who might be a viable alternative to a Jeb Bush gotterdammerung?

The most obvious one, if he wins reelection this year, is John Kaisch.

He is a reasonably popular governor of a crucial swing state (Ohio) who isn't well known (meaning he isn't already perceived by the public as a typical reactionary nitwit), isn't an extremist, and is someone who likely would come across as reasonably intelligent and non-threatening as a presidential candidate. Kaisch would probably put Ohio at least into play if he were the nominee, and might even force Clinton to defend Michigan.

Kaisch does have some downsides.  He was associated with Wall Street speculation during W.'s administration, and, like JEB!, worked for Lehman Brothers (as managing director of the Columbus, Ohio regional office, not in New York) just prior to the investment bank's collapse.  He also had some history, as governor, of attacking public employee unions, but he took a less extreme and less confrontational position on unions than the more prominent (and less nationally electable) Scott Walker.

If Republicans can avoid another brush with the Bushes, and nominate someone like Kaisch, they may, or may not, beat Hillary, but they can probably avoid a historic, generational catastrophe.

Would Hershel Walker do a commercial for JEB!?

Raise your hand for JEB! in 2016?

Hershel Walker found great success and fame on the football field, some short success as a mixed martial artist, and now he is quite successful as a motivational speaker. He also ought to consider modeling, given his rather impressive debut in ESPN's 2010 "Body Issue."   Mr. Walker has found time lately to endorse one Jack Kingston, a Republican running for US Senate in Georgia.  JEB! and Marco Rubio are also endorsing Kingston in his run-off bid against David Perdue.  Ironically Perdue (a corporate fat cat cousin to former GOP Georgia governor Sonny Perdue) has consistently polled better than Kingston against Democrat Michelle Nunn.

Walker's ads are financed by the U.S. (not Georgia) Chamber of Commerce, so given the polling paradox, and that JEB! is endorsing Kingston also, you have to conclude that there is something about Perdue that makes the right wing segment of the national plutocracy worry he might be too "independent" as a Senator, even though he is sort of one of them.  "Independent" like maybe George Soros, or Warren Buffet.

Also, it might be important to know, should Kingston not be able to win in November, that Michelle Nunn, the alternative, is the former director of George H. W. Bush's Points of Light foundation, and reports "good relations" with the Bush family.  Don't expect her to spend much time with Elizabeth Warren if she makes it to the Senate as a "Democrat."

Wash Post: Football great Herschel Walker joins the ranks of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio

Hillary still destroys the Crown Prince John Ellis by historic landslide margins

Get back in your ranks, teabaggers!

Karl Rove must be burning some midnight oil next to his drawing board now that clear evidence is in showing that his latest slash and burn strategy has failed miserably. Likewise, just as friendly, Rove-baited media sources have ramped up the JEB! 2016 drumbeat (JEB! is sort of smart, unlike his brother), the latest Zogby national poll should give them serious pause. Despite inherently JEB!-friendly media like Forbes spinning the results with nonsense like "Jeb holds Hillary under 50 percent," the reality is that Hillary would absolutely demolish JEB! by a margin of 17 points (the exact same margin she beats Rand Paul), 49 percent to 32 percent, with 14 percent saying, outright, they would vote for "someone else."  Paul actually polls beater than JEB!, with 34 percent support, and only ten percent chose "someone else" when he is the alternative to Hillary.

When respondents to a poll, even though they are not given a specific option, say by double digit margins they would vote for "someone else" that ought to give the Republican plutocrats something to think about when contemplating how hard to force JEB! down the throats of their tea party.  Even a flake like Jesse Ventura could probably siphon off enough votes to hold JEB! at, or below, Barry Goldwater levels in a matchup with the Clintons.

Newsweek asks the wrong question, and doesn't give a good answer.

The Bushes have made the cover of the latest issue of Newsweek, featuring a caricature of Poppy, W., and JEB! as players in a Game of Thrones presidential drama, and a piece entitled "Can Jeb Bush Win the Presidency?"  The answer given is:

"Jeb would need to face the ultraconservatives, the Clinton dynasty and the vicissitudes of luck."

Left out was that JEB! also would need to face the sorry presidential legacy of his family's prior occupants of the Oval Office, but the correct answer to the question asked is simpler and shorter: no. But that is the right answer to the wrong question. The question Newsweek should have asked, in an otherwise laudatory puff piece about JEB!, the Bush family and how it compares (favorably) to the Kennedys and Adamses in American's pseudo-royal lineage, is "Can Jeb Buy or Steal the White House?"  The answer to that question is: probably not, when you factor in the poisonous record of his brother, and that Hillary is perfectly acceptable to much of America's plutocracy.

Newsweek has undergone some rough times of late. After massive losses, its then owners in 2013 turned it into an "online only" ueber-blog, alongside The Daily Beast.  Later in 2013, the Newsweek brand and the online version (but not the Daily Beast) were sold again, and it has reemerged as a print mag in 2014.  If you believe Mother Jones, it's now nebulously owned, through a front media company, by an obscure right-wing and homophobic Korean-born sect leader who bears a potential parallel to Sun Moon.  Moon's Unification Church now owns DC's Republican, right wing newspaper, the Washington Times. Whether there is a pattern working here, or not, this might go a long way to explaining why Newsweek is the latest media outlet to boost JEB! as the potential 2016 savior of the GOP.

Another important question Newsweek should have asked is, "Can Jeb Buy the Republican Nomination?" The answer there is: yes.

Will Jeb seek to buy the Republican nomination?  He has promised his Wall Street and neocon donors, now holding their powder and money dry, he will let them know before the end of this year.

America awaits its fate.

Mother Jones: Who's Behind Newsweek?

The Guardian: Faith and a media icon: Newsweek's unconventional new owners

Moonies, Messiahs and Media: Who Really Owns Newsweek?

Gawker: The New Owner of Newsweek Believes Homosexuality Can Be Cured

JEB! the "wonk" is becoming the punchline to a national joke.

Rove is completely off his game now that eight years of Toto-reality from 2001 to 2009 pulled back the curtain on his "king-making" judgment and abilities.  His recent efforts to remake the lazy (if yet intelligible) "old school tie" brand of genial stooge for cronyism and elitism that is Jeb Bush into some serious policy wonk and intellectual with baited PR released through friendly media contacts has all but bombed out on the "Peoria" circuit.  No one with with a brain who pays the least bit of attention to politics, world affairs and history will buy Jeb Bush as an "intellectual." Smarter than his wastrel brother yes, (which is not that much of an accomplishment), but not much more than that.

The "punditocracy" is having a lot of sarcastic fun with this desperate Rovian ploy:

"Jeb Bush has a dirty little secret that he wants to tell, and he doesn’t even care who knows: He’s a “geek”! A nerd. He’s so silly like that, caring about policy all the time when all everyone else wants to do in life is have a good time.

Such is the message passed off in a weekend New York Times riff on the former Florida governor. It may be the most comically obvious attempt we’ve seen yet in the 2016 proto-campaign from Jeb’s handlers to show that he’s not an idiot like his elder brother, the former President Bush. The piece is filled with effusive quotes about how bookish and wonky and smart Jeb Bush is. Rarely is an image-crafting piece so indiscreetly dropped by a politician’s handlers. Hell, a reading list is even provided to run alongside the profile to offer even more proof that, yes, the rumors are true, Jeb Bush is literate. And the pace in which he devours middlebrow histories and libertarian at-length ranking and Bill O’Reilly’s “Killing ____” books is breathtaking."

And then there is:

[New York] "Times reporter Michael Barbaro (5/24/14) explains that Bush is "bookish," a "voracious reader" and "self-described nerd" who "flew in Ivy League social scientists for daylong seminars with his staff."  ...Indeed, Times readers are told that during his tenure, "the Florida governor's office at times resembled a mini-university." ...Barbaro notes that these days, "Bush peppers his speeches with statistics, academic-sounding references to 'quintiles' and self-deprecating jokes about his own geekiness."...The Times includes a sidebar consisting of  "a selection of what he has read or is now reading." On the list? Bill O'Reilly's latest, Killing Jesus...It's what all the nerds and wonks are reading."

Dumb and Dumber?

Those promoting JEB! for president are doing so because they think (probably correctly) that he will be a non-threatening, pliable, semi-articulate front man for their plutocratic control of the national government and its policies.  Selling JEB! to those less critical voters who have no control will be exponentially harder than peddling his inarticulate brother's "everyman" you-want-to-have-a-beer-with scam. JEB! won't be running against a wooden wonk himself, an opponent like Al Gore. The very idea of packaging JEB! as a right wing version of Al Gore illustrates the desperate dead end position the GOP finds itself in as it again prepares to do battle with the far more resourceful and charismatic Clintons.   As one pundit, putting aside the snark for a moment of actual intellectual prescience, noted:

"...Jeb Bush does not need to worry about proving his intellectual bona fides to the more pressing audience, the GOP presidential primary electorate. There’s plenty about George W. Bush’s legacy that they don’t like, but none of it has to do with the popular perception of him as a moron. These are not discerning customers, in that regard. What they do remember negatively about George W. Bush’s presidency, and have worked hard to eradicate from their ranks ever since, is his big-government [neo] conservatism. In this respect, George and Jeb are nearly identical."

Jeb Bush Is a Wonk–Just Ask Him

Jeb Bush’s humiliating plea: I swear I’m smart

Jeb Bush Claims He's More Bookish Than His Brother. Karl Rove Begs To Differ.