Tag: jim gilmore
Debate Memo: 5 Things To Look Out For Tonight

Debate Memo: 5 Things To Look Out For Tonight

Welcome back to the GOP Thunderdome.

The candidates have got their zingers ready, loaded with talking points to launch at each other and the moderators like so many verbal bird bolts. The only things they can all agree on is that Hillary Clinton is evil, and that the last seven years didn’t happen in any way that accords with reality.

As Fox News did back in August, CNN has divided the second Republican debate into two movements: a primetime showdown for the top 11 candidates who still stand a chance at the nomination, and a warmup act picking up the runoff. 

Here are some things to look out for in this, the second round of the Republican bout for the big chair.

1. The Underdogs Are Back In Town

Back in August, the breakout star of the GOPeeWee debate was former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, whose conviction and confidence catapulted her poll numbers from a negligible low to an even keel with the likes of Republican luminaries Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich.

A seemingly last-minute revision in the rules of the debate allowed Fiorina to surge into the 11th spot on what was meant to be a Top 10 card.

But the fortunes of the four candidates who made the happy-hour ticket are pretty much DOA. With all of them polling at or around 1 percent, they barely have a heartbeat in the race.

Former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore was not even invited to the minor-league debate, though he said he would be live tweeting. (National Memo will also be live tweeting the debates, and we stand about an equal chance of winning the Republican nomination.)

Expect Lindsey Graham to rattle his saber about ISIS, and Bobby Jindal to continue his crusade against Donald Trump. Rick Santorum may try to fill the (infinitesimal) vacuum left by Rick Perry and present himself as the credible authority on immigration, unlike Trump. The pro-gun-control, pro-choice George Pataki will try to act like a reasonable person, because that’s about the only tactic he has left.

2. The Inside/Outsiders

Fiorina wasn’t the only outsider to leap into the field.

Seizing on diminishing faith in the Republican establishment (remember when Jeb was a frontrunner?) and widespread discontent with the political niceties in general, Donald Trump rode a wave of bluster and bullying to rise from a sideshow joke, who reportedly had to pack his own announcement speech with paid extras, to a credible threat to every other Republican candidate.

In his own quiet way, Dr. Ben Carson’s narrative of party crashing and unlikely ascension mirrors Trump’s. The calm, studious neurosurgeon has repeatedly invoked the human brain’s capacity to adapt and learn as a way of deflecting attention from his own political inexperience and occasional gaffes that have revealed his glaring ignorance of foreign and domestic affairs.

With Fiorina, Carson, and Trump collectively snagging nearly the majority of Republican voters, rising stars like Walker and Rubio, and establishment totems like Bush, have been on the sidelines. Tonight, expect to hear them roar.

3. Everybody Hates Trump

To paraphrase Rick Wilson writing in Politico, this is the moment to go medieval on the ass of The Donald.

But whether the remaining candidates have found among the 10 of them the collective courage to take on Trump remains to be seen.

At least one, Ted Cruz, has made the dangerous, but not necessarily stupid, bet of hitching his wagon to Trump, a man he has described as his “friend.” It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement: Cruz, the career politician with an air of gravitas, provides experience and ballast to the bombastic Trump, while still being inflamed by the same righteous anti-establishment rage that animates his supporters. Cruz also has on hand the social conservative bonafides that Trump has failed to bring convincingly to the table.

Rosalind Wiseman, a national bullying expert who wrote a book that formed the basis of the movie Mean Girlsfound that The Donald’s rhetorical tactics closely mirrored those of an adolescent bully “who truly does not care about the consequences of his actions” and “delights in his own ability to manipulate and to show that nobody can stop him.” 

For the most part, the GOP contenders have stood on the corner like a pack of abused dogs for long enough, letting Trump roll over them. But now that they know there’s nothing to be gained by playing nice, and since most pundits and pols have made the transition from amused to terrified, the places where Donald is vulnerable to attack are likely to get exposed: his business connections, his affiliations with the Clintons, his waffling on abortion, health care, and gay marriage — plus his own multiple marriages and history of infidelity.

Tonight, Trump’s blood is in the water.

4. Watch the Corners

Don’t let the explosive Trump vs. The World melodrama draw all the attention away from the other side fights.

You can expect Chris Christie and Rand Paul to resume their fiery tête-à-tête regarding domestic surveillance and civil liberties. At the August debate, Christie cited the tragedy of 9/11 and touted his record of prosecuting terrorists under the PATRIOT Act. Paul, the Kentucky senator with the libertarian streak, accused Christie of fundamentally misunderstanding the Bill of Rights, and in particular the Fourth Amendment, and of indiscriminately rounding up records on innocent Americans.

Expect social conservatives — particularly Cruz and Mike Huckabee — to argue over who can impose the most effective Christian theocracy on America. The fronts for this particular battle include gay marriage, Planned Parenthood, and the noxious notion of “religious liberty.”

Cruz is trying to build up right-wing momentum to have a standoff over defunding Planned Parenthood, which could result in a(nother) federal government shutdown. The leadership doesn’t want to do it, opening more fissures between Cruz’s fire-breathing brand of Tea Party conservatism and the hapless Republicans trying to actually run things.

Kim Davis, the recalcitrant Kentucky county clerk is likely to get namechecked. GOP candidates’ attitudes toward the anti-gay bureaucrat, who spent five nights in jail rather than issue a same-sex marriage license, have run the gamut: Christie and Fiorina told her to do her job, while Huckabee and Cruz are ready to make her a saint — even though she’s actually a Democrat! (Perhaps the outpouring of Republican support will sway Davis’ affiliation: she already found Jesus, it shouldn’t be too hard to find Reagan.)

Despite being a devout Christian, Ohio governor John Kasich is among the more reasonable on the subject of marriage equality — simply by having conceded that the Supreme Court’s recent decision legalizing gay marriage is indeed the law of the land, and that everyone should abide by it. In the first debate, he also noted that he personally attended a gay friend’s wedding.

5. Skeletons in the Closet

Of course it wouldn’t be a good debate without a couple of good “gotcha” questions — or, as we used to call them, “questions.” Possibly topics may include the following:

It so happens tonight’s debate occurs just after the seven-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers — an implosion that precipitated the Great Recession. Lest we forget, two of tonight’s debaters — John Kasich and Jeb Bush — used to work at Lehman, as an executive and advisor respectively, during the highly consequential era of the Freewheelin’ Aughts. Watch them try to square their record of helping to demolish the economy with their promises to fix it.

Tapper will likely ask Carson to expand on his proposal to abolish the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Carly Fiorina might come under scrutiny over the recently unearthed report that her company, Hewlett-Packard, did extensive business with Iran through foreign intermediaries. Though come to think of it, this shouldn’t be a disqualifier: Dick Cheney did business with Iran while at Halliburton — and the great GOP demigod and namesake of Wednesday night’s debate venue, President Ronald Reagan, sold Iran weapons while he was actually in the White House.

The debates will take place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, and will air on CNN Wednesday night at 6 pm and 8 pm ET.

Illustration: DonkeyHonkey via Flickr

Jeb Bush Needs Some Razzle-Dazzle

Jeb Bush Needs Some Razzle-Dazzle

A plan to energize Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign:

1. Add another exclamation point to your posters and bumper stickers, so that they look like this: “Jeb!!”

This will put you ahead on the charisma meter, because most other candidates don’t even use one exclamation point on their campaign signs!

2. Provide unlimited Starbucks at all town-hall meetings.

Free coffee would be one way to make sure your supporters appear enthusiastic and alert while you’re explaining your position on, say, Common Core.

To attract more young people, offer cans of Red Bull to anyone willing to jump up and down waving a “Jeb!!” sign.

3. Play cooler music at your campaign rallies.

Donald Trump uses an Aerosmith jam to rock his audience, so why not Zeppelin or the Stones for you? The band members are approximately the same age as the average Republican primary voter, so let’s make that connection!

4. Work on your wardrobe.

Lose the baby-blue Brooks Brothers shirt, OK? And taking off the necktie doesn’t make you look like a casual dude—it just makes you look like a banker who’s getting ready to change a flat tire.

Rick Perry started wearing eyeglasses to make people think he wasn’t so dumb. What if you started wearing blue jeans to make people think you aren’t so wonky?

Unpressed stonewashed jeans — would that blow their buttoned-down minds? Khakis are what they’d be expecting from a Bush, but jeans and Skechers?

Boom!!

5. Tone down the whole Florida thing.

At this point, everybody in the country knows you were governor of Florida. Endlessly bragging about it doesn’t seem to be working.

That’s probably because too many prospective voters have either been to Florida, or read enough wild stories to know that it’s not a model of honest, efficient government. It’s also not a particularly tranquil place to live.

These days, folks in Iowa or New Hampshire hear the word Florida and they think of drug shootouts, Medicare fraud, sinkholes, and giant pythons.

While on the campaign trail, you’d be better off speaking in broad terms about your experience as the two-term leader of a dynamic, fast-growing Southern state.

Just leave it at that.

6. At the next television debate, don’t stand next to Trump.

This is not an issue of height, or hair. You definitely are taller than he is, and you obviously don’t have hair plugs taken from an orangutan’s armpit.

However, Trump is so loud and bombastic that he makes those around him fade into the background. The best way to distance yourself from this preening gasbag is to physically distance yourself.

Demand a podium at the farthest end of the row of candidates, preferably beside Rand Paul or Bobby Jindal, if either of them makes the cut. It’s impossible not to look presidential standing next to those guys.

7. Start spending serious money on ads.

In six months your SuperPAC raised $103 million, more than any of your opponents. It’s ridiculous, really, how much you’ve got in the bank.

But now the wealthy donors who gave you all that dough are watching your poll numbers drop and wondering if they made the right choice. If you don’t turn things around pretty soon, you could wake up with George Pataki and Jim Gilmore—who, by the way, are actual Republican candidates—nipping at your heels.

So use some of that huge stash and crank out a few ads, fast. Go warm and fuzzy at first—generic family stuff. If you’ve got a dog, put him in the commercial.

Next aim for the seasoned, thoughtful, hardworking Jeb—rolling-up-the sleeves type of footage, though please, God, not in the Brooks Brothers.

8. Get mad. Or at least pretend to be mad.

Waiting for Trump to flame out might seem like a sound strategy, but in the meantime you’d better lock up second place. Would it hurt to fight back a little harder?

The jerk slurred your wife’s national heritage, yet you never braced him about it during the first debate, when he’s standing right beside you.

Sometimes there’s a fine line between mild mannered and wimpy. No one’s expecting you to morph into an electrifying personality at age 62, but they do expect evidence of a pulse.

Come on, Jeb! Or, even better, Jeb!!

(Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for The Miami Herald. Readers may write to him at: 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL, 33132.)

Photo: Former Florida governor and Republican candidate for president Jeb Bush greets supporters at a VFW town hall event in Merrimack, New Hampshire, August 19, 2015. REUTERS/Dominick Reuter

Minor League GOP Candidates Take The Same Line At Warmup Debate: ‘Go Backwards’

Minor League GOP Candidates Take The Same Line At Warmup Debate: ‘Go Backwards’

There were no fireworks at the first Republican debate of the 2016 election: a warmup event created to catch the runoff from the uniquely crowded GOP field. The debate played like a chamber piece opening act for the main event.

Rather than take potshots at each other, the seven candidates relegated to the second-tier debate seemed to be wrapped up in honing their own audition for the big league, and united in a tacit pact to take aim at safe targets: illegal immigration, radical Islam, marriage equality, and legal abortion.

And if any GOP contender in the so-called “minor-league” had suffered a loss in confidence from their low poll numbers, none of them showed it.

Former Texas governor Rick Perry, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, former New York governor George Pataki, and former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore took the stage before the virtually empty Quicken Loans Arena in downtown Cleveland to condemn President Obama’s entire legacy, the Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, and the “elephant not in the room,” Donald Trump.

Fiorina burned with conviction, claiming that she was exactly as high in the polls as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama had been at this phase of their respective elections, and seemed to set the tone for the entire debate with her assertion that the next president needed to “begin by undoing” the current one’s record, whether “EPA regulations or the Iran deal.”

Each candidate took the tack of characterizing the last two terms as an utter failure, and each asserted in his or her own way that the only way forward was backward. They promised to reverse, void, tear up, and cancel President Obama’s policies on every issue.

Obama, Jindal said, lacked “moral honesty and clarity” in his negotiations with Iran and his manner when discussing radical Islam in general, dismissing Obama’s “hearts and minds” approach for a hard hawkish line: “Sometimes you win a war by killing murderous evil terrorists.”

Graham echoed his own hawkish line, swearing that he would do “whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to defeat” ISIL.

A smirking Perry vowed to bring a bunch of Wite-Out to the Oval Office on his first day to erase Obama’s executive orders. “The first thing I will do is tear up that agreement with Iran,” he said.

Graham said he would restore the NSA’s domestic spying apparatus, which he said had been “gutted,” repeal Obamacare, rescind Dodd-Frank, reverse Obama’s veto on the Keystone XL Pipeline, and restore American ground troops to Iraq (and Syria as well).

On the subject of Planned Parenthood, each candidate expressed moral outrage at the notion that the nonprofit women’s health organization was, in Graham’s words, “harvesting organs in little babies” — echoing claims made in deceptively edited videos released by an anti-abortion group.

Jindal declared that he would unleash the full force of the executive branch — including the Department of Justice and the IRS — on Planned Parenthood. He voiced his support for shutting down the government over Planned Parenthood, although he said that if the government were to shutter, it would be President Obama’s decision for not bowing to congressional Republicans.

Jindal touted his success slashing and burning through Louisiana’s budget — even though his approval ratings in his state are at a dismal low.

Many of the candidates expressed an intention to enshrine “religious liberty” rights — a gloss on legislation designed to protect the right of Christians to discriminate against gay couples.

On immigration, Perry trumpeted his success as Texas governor who could secure the border, denounced Amnesty and so-called “sanctuary cities,” and said that all immigration policies were moot until the border could be effectively secured. Santorum echoed his hard line: When asked what he would say to a child whose family was broken up by his harsh immigration policies, the former Pennsylvania senator said that America is a country whose compassion is reflected in its laws, and that “America is worth the wait.”

Each candidate was asked to reckon with the force of nature that is Donald Trump — currently the GOP frontrunner.

Fiorina mentioned the mogul’s connection to the Clintons and history of donating to Democratic candidates, while Perry excoriated Trump for once supporting a single-payer health care option. Fiorina said that his flip-flopping on a number of issues was alarming, but claimed that The Donald’s surge in support was due to widespread outrage in the political class and Trump’s success in firing up passion: “He’s tapped into that anger,” she said.

An unlikely feat for this crowd.

Republican Gilmore Files Paperwork To Enter Presidential Race

Republican Gilmore Files Paperwork To Enter Presidential Race

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore filed the paperwork on Wednesday to join the race for the Republican presidential nomination, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Gilmore becomes the 17th candidate to seek the 2016 nomination, a field that includes former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, businessman Donald Trump and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Earlier this month, Gilmore, 65, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper that he planned to formally enter the race in the first week of August.

Gilmore, who briefly sought the 2008 Republican nomination before dropping out, served one term as Virginia’s governor, from 1998 to 2002, and was the chairman of the Republican National Committee in 2001.

It was not clear whether Gilmore will participate in the first official Republican debate, on Aug. 6 in Cleveland. The top 10 candidates in national polls will take part in the prime-time debate, with the other presidential hopefuls participating in a forum earlier in the day.

(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Photo: Jim Gilmore speaks at the Koger Center for the Performing Arts before tonight’s nationally televised debate between ten presidential hopefuls at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina, May 15, 2007. REUTERS/Larry Downing