Republicans Use The Same Lesser-Of-Two-Evils" Argument That Hillary Supporters Use

When he was running against Trump, Rick Perry said "he offers a barking carnival act that can be best described as Trumpism: a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued. Let no one be mistaken--Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised, and discarded." Thursday Perry discarded his diagnosis and announced he would not just vote for this cancer on conservatism but will do everything he can to help get him elected. Marveling at Trump's marketing and branding skills, he told CNN that Trump "is one of the most talented people who has ever run for the president I have ever seen." Hillary's campaign pointed out that Perry had once remarked that Trump's "comments... should completely and immediately disqualify him from seeking our nation’s highest office." But poor Rick Perry isn't the only GOP opportunist who's changed his tune on Trump.

Poor Dr. Ben who once warned Republicans that Trump's "level of dishonesty... should be something that concerns all of you guys" is now heading up Trump's search for a running mate. He hasn't quite allowed himself to be debased on a Chris Christie level... but he's just a couple steps away.

And speaking of poor Christie, who was just named the head of Trump's transition team, often referred to Trump as "a carnival barker" and warned Republicans that "showtime is over; we are not selecting an entertainer-in-chief," which is an indictment of Trump that sounds a lot like what President Obama had to say about him Friday, is now a professional Trump sidekick and punching bag.

Little Marco, sweating for the VP nod-- or at least a cabinet gig in an administration that will never be-- has come around to seeing Trump as a fine potential president. Just last March he had told fellow Republicans that Trump is "the most vulgar person ever to aspire to the presidency," noting 2 weeks alter that he is "absurd, offensive, [and] ridiculous." Rubio warned Republicans Trump is "a con artist" who is "an embarrassment" and "unelectable" and that he "has not proven an understanding of these issues or the preparation necessary to be the Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military force in the world." Those were the days he was laughing at Trump for spraying on orange tans and wearing pancake makeup and insinuating Trump's howling personality defects stemmed from a complex developed because of a small, deformed penis.



Thursday, Trump told Fox News viewers that "We always had a very good relationship, Marco and I. And then it got a little bit nasty for a period of time. And then we had the election. That was a tough time for Marco. Marco’s a good guy. A really nice guy. And I like him. But not necessarily with respect to any position (on the ticket). But it could happen."

Until he endorsed Trump the other day as a kind of lesser-of-two-evils, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul always seemed outraged that Trump admitted on the debate stage that it was his practice to buy (like in "bribe") politicians. Yes, that even sounds wrong to some Republican politicians. But there was more that Paul understood about Trump that freaked him out-- and rightfully so: "What worries me most about Donald Trump other than all the other crazy things is that I believe that he wants power." Remember when you thought Rand Paul seemed a kind of serious when he asked if the emperor has any clothes brains?



Now Paul is tarnishing his own brand by cuddling up with Trump. A libertarian publication, reason.com explained the invocation Paul is making about Trump being a lesser-of-two-evils:

"You know, I've always said I will endorse the nominee," said Paul. "I think it's almost a patriotic duty of anyone in Kentucky to oppose the Clintons, because I think they're rotten to the core, I think they're dishonest people, and ultimately I think we have to be concerned with what's best for Kentucky."

Paul cited Clinton's recent comments about eliminating coal jobs as reason enough for Kentucky voters to oppose her.

The libertarian-leaning Republican isn't wrong about Clinton's awfulness. But Trump-- a thin-skinned lunatic who peddles conspiracy theories, encourages violence and censorship, prefers big government, and loathes the free market-- is just as bad, and arguably much worse, including and especially from a libertarian perspective.

There is virtually no issue where Trump's views align with libertarianism (his continued support for eminent domain, a policy that virtually no one else in the GOP or libertarian movement supports, is perhaps the best example of this). And while it's true that some conservatives can be counted on to advance libertarian positions on a handful of issues, this doesn't apply to Trump, because he isn't even a conservative. He's a member of the authoritarian populist right-- a segment of the population that shares nothing in common with libertarianism.

Paul knows all this, of course. To his credit, he was one of the first Republican presidential candidates to stand up to Trump on the debate stage. (Trump, demonstrating his remarkable lack of self-awareness, responded by mocking Paul's hair.) I presume that at this point, Paul thinks it's best for his political future if he doesn't burn any additional bridges with Trump people.

He may wish to reconsider that, however. A whole host of influential, thoughtful Republicans are refusing to support Trump. Paul Ryan has declined to back Trump (at least "for now," he said). Mitt Romney will not endorse Trump. National Review writers are openly considering voting for likely Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson. Republican strategist Mary Matalin has officially switched her party identification to Libertarian.

Given that conservatives and Republicans can't bring themselves to vote for Trump, it would be a little bizarre for the nation's most well-known libertarian-leaning Republican politician to endorse the least libertarian GOP nominee since Richard Nixon.

Last week Bobby Jindal also joined the lesser-of-two-evils Trumpist Society. "I do think he'll be better than Hillary Clinton, I don't think it's a great set of choices. If he is the nominee, I'm going to be supporting my party's nominee. I'm not happy about it ... but I would vote for him over Hillary Clinton." He must have a very low opinion of Hillary. Before dropping out of the presidential race he told Republican voters that Trump is an "unserious and unstable narcissist" with "no understanding of policy." Jindal was cutting: "He's full of bluster but has no substance. He lacks the intellectual curiosity to even learn." But now he's fit for the White House? OK. Jindal penned an OpEd for the Wall Street Journal on his new found Trumpism yesterday. "I was one of the earliest and loudest critics of Mr. Trump," he claimed. "I mocked his appearance, demeanor, ideology and ego in the strongest language I have ever used to publicly criticize anyone in politics. I worked harder than most, with little apparent effect, to stop his ascendancy. I have not experienced a sudden epiphany and am not here to detail an evolution in my perspective... I think electing Donald Trump would be the second-worst thing we could do this November, better only than electing Hillary Clinton to serve as the third term for the Obama administration’s radical policies. I am not pretending that Mr. Trump has suddenly become a conservative champion or even a reliable Republican: He is completely unpredictable. The problem is that Hillary is predictably liberal... I do not pretend Donald Trump is the Reaganesque leader we so desperately need, but he is certainly the better of two bad choices. Hardly an inspiring slogan, I know. It would be better to vote for a candidate rather than simply against one."

At least the #NeverTrump crowd doesn't have to eat crow while bending over backwards to find something good to say about him. Jeb Bush-- like the other Bush's won't vote for him, let alone campaign for him. I'd bet that in the privacy of a voting booth he'll vote for Hillary, the more dependable conservative in the race. Jeb never veered away from reminding Republican voters that Trump is "not qualified to be president" as well as "not the Commander-in-Chief we would need to keep our country safe" and just "an actor playing the role of the candidate for president" who is "one part unhinged and one part foolish." He also publicly called him "a jerk" and "misinformed at best" who "doesn't believe in the greatness of our country." For his part, Trump said he doesn't want Bush's endorsement, although he has been blasting Bush and Graham for not honoring their pledge to support the winner of the primary. I sometimes guess duty to country must trump duty to Reince Priebus.

Lindsey Graham won't vote for him either and how could he, after calling him "a nut job" and a "race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot" who is "ill-suited for the job" and "a loser as a person." He accused him not just of being "unfit to be commander-in-chief" but of "helping the enemy of this nation," empowering radical Islam" and "undercutting everything we stand for." Like most Americans Graham thinks Trump "doesn't have a clue about anything" and that Trump in the White House "would lead to another 9/11." Graham likes Clinton and sees eye to eye with her on foreign policy and on the military and I know for sure he's looking forward to voting for her.

Romney hasn't run against Trump-- though many people are urging him to, as a third party conservative-- and he's sticking by his judgment that Trump is "a phony" and "a fraud" who "lacks the temperament to be president" and is "playing the American people for suckers." Trump, he doesn't hesitate to tell people is "very, very not smart" when it comes to foreign policy.

Cruz, Fiorina and Kasich haven't announced their intentions towards Trump yet, although it might be galling for Kasich to walk back his comment about Trump having "created a toxic atmosphere, pitting in group against another and name calling." I guess for a VP nomination, though...

No one was more allied with Trump for most of the campaign more more personally vitriolic about him than Cruz, who harbors more disdain and sheer hatred for Trump than anyone else who ran, calling him "a pathological liar," "utterly amoral," "a bully," "a narcissist at a level I don't think this country has ever seen," and "a sniveling coward." He told the country that Trump "will betray you on every issue across the board," while being "out of his depth" and "intricately involved in the corruption of Washington for 40 years." How do you pivot away from that? I wouldn't be surprised if he waits a week or two and shows us exactly how.

The Red State Model

Republican venture capital billionaire Bruce Rouner invested $26 million out of his own pocket and raised far more than that from 9 other right-wing oligarchs like sociopathic billionaire and Rahm Emanuel ally Ken Griffin, to buy the Illinois governorship in 2014. Democratic ineptitude and corruption-- with a little nudge from Rahm Emanuel-- helped Rauner, another close ally of Emanuel's, defeat Democratic reformer Pat Quinn. Within a month of taking over, Rauner had moved to defund unions and taken over $4 billion in state funding out of higher education, Medicaid, state employee pensions, public transit, and local government support, while starting work on cutbacks to end funding for infrastructure projects and programs that address GOP bugaboos like domestic violence, public transit service, Child Care Assistance, homeless youth, autism and immigrant integration.

Soon after, Rauner announced he wanted to put an emergency manager in charge of the Chicago Public Schools, a tactic commonly applied in neighboring Michigan by another multimillionaire Republican Governor, Rick Snyder. Unlike Snyder, however, Rauner has a Democratic legislature to contend with. The Illinois House has 71 Democrats and 47 Republicans and the Illinois Senate has 39 Democrats and 20 Republicans. It's served as a partial check on Rauner. In Michigan the story is very different. Although the state voted for Obama both times-- 57-41% in 2008 and 54-45% in 2012-- and reelected Democrat Debbie Stabenow 59-38% in 2012 and elected Democrat Gary Peters 55-41% in 2014, Republicans have effortlessly outmaneuvered corrupt and inept Democrats in gerrymandering up the state so that the legislature consists of a Republican-controlled House (61 GOPers to 45 Dems) and a Republican-controlled Senate (27 Republicans to 11 Democrats). In 2010 when Michigan Republicans elected "one tough nerd" governor, over a pathetically weak Democrat, the stage was set for Republican one-party rule in a pretty Democratic-leaning state.

Like Rauner, if Michigan's Rick Snyder stands for one thing, it is running government like a business. Modeling himself on Koch/ALEC-owned Scott Walker next door, Snyder immediately went after unions and immediately started appointing emergency managers to override democratically-elected local governments-- entirely in black areas. Although Republicans in the House did all they could this week the help Snyder and Michigan Republicans shirk responsibility for the catastrophe in Flint, as early as January, the New York Times was already connecting the dots between Snyder's overthrow of democracy and what ensued in his state.

Public outrage over the tainted water in Flint and the decrepit schools in Detroit has led many people to question whether the state has overreached in imposing too many emergency managers in largely black jurisdictions.

In the cases of both Flint and the Detroit Public Schools, governance was under the jurisdiction of the governor, rather than local officials closer to the ground.

In Flint, emergency managers not only oversaw the city-- effectively seizing legal authority from the mayor and City Council-- but also pressed to switch the source of the financially troubled city’s water supply to save money.

In Detroit, the schools are on the brink of insolvency after a series of emergency managers dating to 2009 repeatedly failed to grapple with its financial troubles, while also falling short on maintaining school buildings and addressing academic deficiencies. The current emergency manager for the schools, Darnell Earley, previously served in that role in Flint.

Residents of majority-black cities have long cried foul over the practice. They argue that it disenfranchises voters and violates a deeply felt ethos of American democracy that allows for local representation. They also say emergency management gives influence to what is now a mostly white, Republican leadership in Lansing, the state capital. And they worry that in their decisions, emergency managers are more concerned with fiscal discipline than public health.

“Tell me what race dominates in those communities that get emergency managers?” said Hubert Yopp, the mayor of Highland Park, Mich., which is 93 percent black and in past years has had an emergency manager. “People have a very real reason to question what that’s about. It would be one thing if the emergency managers worked with the local governments to make things better. But it’s about having dictator power in the city. The locals have no say.”

...In 2011, when Mr. Snyder took office, he and the Legislature agreed to grant more sweeping powers to emergency managers, but opponents succeeded in repealing the law in a statewide referendum a year later. Mr. Snyder and lawmakers promptly passed another law, which allowed more options for cities and schools in fiscal distress-- including emergency managers.

“They’ve chosen this policy, and this is the outcome,” said Jim Ananich, a Democratic state senator whose district includes Flint. “We have poisonous water flowing through people’s faucets. In the Detroit Public Schools, they have overcrowded classrooms and rats. Unfortunately, the emergency managers in these communities have been failing.”

Mr. Ananich said the law allowing emergency managers should be “reviewed and repealed quickly.”

“It’s been a failed project,” he said. “There’s absolutely no accountability with the government. They are trying to circumvent local democracy and say, ‘This one individual knows best.’”

...Marcus Muhammad, the new mayor of Benton Harbor, Mich., whose population is 89 percent black and which had been under emergency management, said the managers had been a “horrific experiment” that left the city defending itself against lawsuits filed over actions they had taken.

“I have said that a different strategy and a different law should be put in place to help distressed cities,” he added. “Not to poison democracies, poison water, poison communities.”

There is no other outcome possible from conservative governance than what we've seen in Michigan. The nature of conservatism is authoritarian, anti-democratic, anti-human and above, corrupt. Friday, writing for New York, Eric Levitz castigated the GOP for what their ideological social experiments have done to Louisiana and Kansas, a topic we have discussed regularly here at DWT, most recently after a GOP debate in which Li'l Marco, not yet aware that he was a well-coiffed walking corpse, claimed, with a straight face, that "conservatism is about ideas." Rubio, another third-rate puffed up Republican hustler incapable of critical thinking, was wrong; conservatism is about looting. Levitz is calling for accountability, specifically in Kansas and Louisiana, and wonders why the presidential debates never veered towards questions about how doctrinaire and crackpot conservative governance has driven the two states towards bankruptcy. He suggests that voters "demand that Donald Trump, John Kasich, and Ted Cruz explain why their tax policies won’t fail America in the same way they’ve failed the people of Kansas."

In 2010, the tea-party wave put Sam Brownback into the Sunflower State’s governor’s mansion and Republican majorities in both houses of its legislature. Together, they implemented the conservative movement’s blueprint for Utopia: They passed massive tax breaks for the wealthy and repealed all income taxes on more than 100,000 businesses. They tightened welfare requirements, privatized the delivery of Medicaid, cut $200 million from the education budget, eliminated four state agencies and 2,000 government employees. In 2012, Brownback helped replace the few remaining moderate Republicans in the legislature with conservative true believers. The following January, after signing the largest tax cut in Kansas history, Brownback told the Wall Street Journal, “My focus is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, 'See, we've got a different way, and it works.'"

As you’ve probably guessed, that model collapsed. Like the budget plans of every Republican presidential candidate, Brownback’s “real live experiment” proceeded from the hypothesis that tax cuts for the wealthy are such a boon to economic growth, they actually end up paying for themselves (so long as you kick the undeserving poor out of their welfare hammocks). The Koch-backed Kansas Policy Institute predicted that Brownback’s 2013 tax plan would generate $323 million in new revenue. During its first full year in operation, the plan produced a $688 million loss. Meanwhile, Kansas’s job growth actually trailed that of its neighboring states. With that nearly $700 million deficit, the state had bought itself a 1.1 percent increase in jobs, just below Missouri’s 1.5 percent and Colorado’s 3.3.

Those numbers have hardly improved in the intervening years. In 2015, job growth in Kansas was a mere 0.1 percent, even as the nation’s economy grew 1.9 percent. Brownback pledged to bring 100,000 new jobs to the state in his second term; as of January, he has brought 700. What’s more, personal income growth slowed dramatically since the tax cuts went into effect. Between 2010 and 2012, Kansas saw income growth of 6.1 percent, good for 12th in the nation; from 2013 to 2015, that rate was 3.6 percent, good for 41st.

Meanwhile, revenue shortfalls have devastated the state’s public sector along with its most vulnerable citizens. Since Brownback’s inauguration, 1,414 Kansans with disabilities have been thrown off  Medicaid. In 2015, six school districts in the state were forced to end their years early for lack of funding. Cuts to health and human services are expected to cause 65 preventable deaths this year in Sedgwick County alone. In February, tax receipts came in $53 million below estimates; Brownback immediately cut $17 million from the state’s university system. This data is not lost on the people of Kansas-- as of November, Brownback’s approval rating was 26 percent, the lowest of any governor in the United States.

Louisiana has replicated these results. When Bobby Jindal moved into the governor’s mansion in 2008, he inherited a $1 billion surplus. When he moved out last year, Louisiana faced a $1.6 billion projected deficit. Part of that budgetary collapse can be put on the past year's plummeting oil prices. The rest should be placed on Jindal passing the largest tax cut in the state's history and then refusing to reverse course when the state's biggest industry started tanking. Jindal's giveaway to the wealthiest citizens in the country's second-poorest state cost Louisiana roughly $800 million every year. To make up that gap, Jindal slashed social services, raided the state’s rainy-day funds, and papered over the rest with reckless borrowing. Today, the state is scrambling to resolve a $940 million budget gap for this fiscal year, with a $2 billion shortfall projected for 2017 ...Louisiana can no longer afford to provide public defenders for all its criminal defendants. Its Department of Children and Family Services may soon be unable to investigate every reported instance of child abuse. Education funding is down 44 percent since Jindal took office. The state’s hospitals are likely to see at least $64 million in funding cuts this year.

What has happened to these states should be a national story; because we are one election away from it being our national story. Ted Cruz claims his tax plan will cost less than $1 trillion in lost revenue over the next ten years. Leaving aside the low bar the Texas senator sets for himself-- my giveaway to the one percent will cost a bit less than the Iraq War!-- Cruz only stays beneath $1 trillion when you employ the kind of “dynamic scoring” that has consistently underestimated the costs of tax cuts in Kansas. Under a conventional analysis, the bill runs well over $3 trillion, with 44 percent of that lost money accruing to the one percent. John Kasich’s tax plan includes cutting the top marginal rate by more than ten percent along with a similar cut to the rates on capital gains and business taxes. Even considering Kasich’s appetite for Social Security cuts, his plan must rely on the same supply-side voodoo that Kansas has so thoroughly discredited. As for the most likely GOP nominee, even with dynamic scoring, his tax cuts would cost $10 trillion over the next ten years, with 40 percent of that gargantuan sum filling the pockets of Trump’s economic peers.

If any of these men are elected president, they will almost certainly take office with a House and Senate eager to scale up the “red-state model.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said of Brownback’s Kansas, “This is exactly the sort of thing we (Republicans) want to do here, in Washington, but can’t, at least for now.” Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s celebrated budgets all depend on the same magical growth that has somehow escaped the Sunflower State.

Do you know anyone who votes for Republicans who who doesn't vote at all? Have a talk with them. Or chip in $5 or $10 to the campaigns of people ready to fight them... by tapping the thermometer:

Marco Rubio In Kansas: "Conservatism Is About Ideas"

In Kansas tonight Little Marco came in a distant third (16.7%) behind Cruz (48.2%) and Herr Trumpf (23.3%). He won 6 delegates to Cruz's 24 and Herr Trumpf's 9. Trumpf called on him to drop out of the race. Early in the day, Rubio was in Overland, Kansas with spectacularly failed Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback Friday, campaigning against Herr. Watch the video above and listen to him explain how, exactly, Republican governance works. But people in Kansas-- just like people in Louisiana and Michigan-- know first hand how Republican governance works. The kind of Republican Party economic orthodoxy espoused by Rubio and Cruz-- and implemented by Gov. Brownback-- has destroyed Kansas' economy, just as Bobby Jindal's crackpot approach to Louisiana governance has wrecked his state's economy. What Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has done to implement the "principles" of Republican governance has done even worse to his state, actually destroying the very lives of its citizens! Friday, Rachel Maddow addressed Rick Snyder's implementation of doctrinaire Republican governance and how that has impacted his state. The segment is somewhat long but worth watching all the way through because it isn't just about Michigan and not even just about Little Marco... it's about Republican governance in general:



Last night Little Marco also came in third in Louisiana, but didn't win any delegates. He was at 11.2% to Trumpf's 41.5% and Cruz's 37.8%. Friday, writing for the Washington Post, Chico Harlan reported that Bobby Jindal's application of Republican precepts to government in Louisiana forced the state to gut spending for it's university and deplete its rainy-day funds. "It had cut 30,000 employees and furloughed others. It had slashed the number of child services staffers, including those devoted to foster family recruitment, and young abuse victims for the first time were spending nights at government offices. And then, the state’s new governor, John Bel Edwards (D), came on TV and said the worst was yet to come."

Edwards talked about "the extent of the state’s budget shortfall and said that Louisiana was plunging into a 'historic fiscal crisis.' Despite all the cuts of the previous years, the nation’s second-poorest state still needed nearly $3 billion-- almost $650 per person-- just to maintain its regular services over the next 16 months. Edwards  gave the state’s lawmakers three weeks to figure out a solution, a period that expires March 9 with no clear answer in reach."

Louisiana stands at the brink of economic disaster. Without sharp and painful tax increases in the coming weeks, the government will cease to offer many of its vital services, including education opportunities and certain programs for the needy. A few universities will shut down and declare bankruptcy. Graduations will be canceled. Students will lose scholarships. Select hospitals will close. Patients will lose funding for treatment of disabilities. Some reports of child abuse will go uninvestigated.

...Many of the state’s economic analysts say a structural budget deficit emerged and then grew under former governor Bobby Jindal, who, during his eight years in office, reduced the state’s revenue by offering tax breaks to the middle class and wealthy. He also created new subsidies aimed at luring and keeping businesses. Those policies, state data show, didn’t deliver the desired economic growth. This year, Louisiana has doled out $210 million more to corporations in the form of credits and subsidies than it has collected from them in taxes.

...“This was years of mismanagement by a governor who was more concerned about satisfying a national audience in a presidential race,” said Jay Dardenne (R), the lieutenant governor under Jindal and now the state’s commissioner of administration. Dardenne said Jindal had helped the state put off its day of reckoning in a way that mirrored a “Ponzi scheme.”

Kansas is not just what Republican governance creates but what Koch brothers-controlled Republican governance creates. It's a one-party state, with no Democrats in federal office or in statewide office. The state Senate has 31 Republicans and 9 Democrats and the state House has 97 Republicans and 28 Democrats. Sam Brownback's Kansas, which was supposed to be the GOP's tax-cut paradise can no longer pay its bills-- which is, after all, what happens when you cut taxes for the rich the way Ayn Rand told the GOP to. In 2012 Brownback signed a massive tax cut into law, arguing that it would boost the state's economy. Eventually, he hoped to eliminate individual income taxes entirely. "Our place, Kansas, will show the path, the difficult path, for America to go in these troubled times."

Kansas is now hundreds of millions of dollars short in revenue collection, its job growth has lagged the rest of the nation, and Moody's has cut the state's bond rating. "Governor Brownback came in here with an agenda to reduce the size of government, reduce taxes, and create a great economic boom," says University of Kansas professor Burdett Loomis. "Now there's been a dramatic decline in revenues, no great increase in economic activity, and we've got red ink until the cows come home."

…Brownback's tax cut proposal came as Kansas's revenues were on an upswing. Spending cuts and a one-cent sales tax passed by Brownback's Democratic predecessor had combined with economic growth to give Kansas a surplus. Now, Brownback argued, his tax cuts would lead to even more success. "I firmly believe these reforms will set the stage for strong economic growth in Kansas," he said.

The governor proposed to cut income taxes on the state's highest earners from 6.45 percent to 4.9 percent, to simplify tax brackets, and to eliminate state income taxes on most small business income entirely. In a nod to fiscal responsibility, though, he proposed to end several tax deductions and exemptions, including the well-liked home mortgage interest deduction. This would help pay for the cuts.

Yet as the bill went through the state Senate, these deductions proved too popular, and legislators voted to keep them all. The bill's estimated price tag rose from about $105 million to $800 million, but Brownback kept supporting it anyway. "I'm gonna sign this bill, I'm excited about the prospects for it, and I'm very thankful for how God has blessed our state," he said.

Democrats, and some Republicans, weren't buying it. "It bankrupts the state within two years," said Rochelle Chronister, a former state GOP chair who helped organize moderate Republicans against Brownback's agenda. And the House Democratic leader, Paul Davis, laid down a marker. "There is no feasible way that private-sector growth can accommodate the price tag of this tax cut," he said. "Our $600 million surplus will become a $2.5 billion deficit within just five years." In return, Brownback's administration claimed the bill would create 23,000 jobs by 2020, and would lead 35,000 more people to move to Kansas.

After the cuts became law, it was undisputed that Kansas's revenue collections would fall. But some supply-side analysts, like economist Arthur Laffer, argued that increased economic growth would deliver more revenue that would help cushion this impact.

Yet it's now clear that the revenue shortfalls are much worse than expected. "State general fund revenue is down over $700 million from last year," Duane Goossen, a former state budget director, told me. "That's a bigger drop than the state had in the whole three years of the recession," he said-- and it's a huge chunk of the state's $6 billion budget. Goossen added that the Kansas's surplus, which had been replenished since the recession, "is now being spent at an alarming, amazing rate."

Kansas has to balance its budget every year, so when that surplus runs out, further spending cuts will be necessary. The declining revenues have necessitated extensive cuts in state education funding, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Moody's cut of the state's bond rating this May was another embarrassment. And the economic benefits Brownback promised haven't materialized either. Chris Ingraham wrote at Wonkblog that Kansas's job growth has lagged behind the rest of the country, "especially in the years following the first round of Brownback tax cuts."

…Brownback's approval rating has plummeted-- in a recent poll by PPP, his 33 percent was actually lower than Barack Obama's 34 percent approval.

This is what Little Marco was proposing to bring to the whole country-- which is also what Ted Cruz is proposing to bring to the whole country and what Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are pushing on the whole country from their perches as the leaders if the House and Senate. Want to help save the country? Tap the thermometer below:

Hillary Voted For The Bill That Resulted In The Deepwater Horizon Spill, Bernie Voted Against It

BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill killed 11 workers and gushed oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days (around 210 million gallons), the granddaddy of all marine oil spills. It may still be leaking. The oil ruined beaches in Louisiana and Florida, wrecked fishing industries and tourism, devastated wildlife populations and continues to cause serious illnesses among children along the coasts. The economic consequences were well over $100 billion. BP paid a big fine. Were there any consequences for the politicians who oversaw all this? Certainly not for Bobby Jindal, who went on to be elected governor of Louisiana. And, truth be told, not for any elected officials on any level. But when a Bernie supporter put out the chart below, mentioning how Hillary had been one of the senators to back off-shore drilling-- but not in her state, "not in the Finger Lakes" and "not off Long Island" she said on the floor of the Senate-- there were Hillary backers who challenged the assertion. Richard Champion, a scholar at the University of Iowa, looked into it for us.

by Dr. Richard Champion

From PolitiFact: In 2006, [Bernie Sanders] was part of the House minority that voted against then-Louisiana Rep. Bobby Jindal’s Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act. Clinton supported that bill’s companion in the Senate, the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (GOMESA) of 2006.

Here's is Hillary Clinton's statement on her vote for the GOMESA bill: Long and short of it: "[W]e need to expand domestic oil and gas production."

Now, it's pretty to difficult to sort through the byzantine oil leasing records. It would be nice to find a government list of leases opened up by the passage of the GOMESA bill, but it "seems" very likely that Lease Sale 206, from which the explosion of Deepwater Horizon came, was the result of GOMESA. Also, you have this Mother Jones article (they're usually pretty good) that sets the timeline:

The Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, which was signed by George W. Bush that December, gave states a cut of offshore oil royalties in exchange for opening up 8.3 million acres of the western Gulf to drilling, including 5.8 million acres that had previously been set off-limits by Congress.

...In March 2008, Bush's interior secretary, Dirk Kempthorne, announced the first sale of an oil lease under the new law. On the block that day was also Lease Sale 206, the parcel that BP snatched up and later converted into a fountain of oily havoc.

Now to be fair to Clinton, the "nice" thing about GOMESA was that it resulted in much more revenue sharing between the oil companies and the surrounding states in exchange for opening up large sections of the Gulf for drilling. Mary Landrieu, in her failed reelection bid last year, often touted her work for the passage of GOMESA.

To make this relevant to the current presidential race, is fits well with Bernie Sanders' "new" pitch that he has been right all along (for decades, really) while Hillary made politically expedient votes, possibly angling for campaign donors, only to flip to oppose all this drilling in 2015 to remove space between her and Sanders. Clinton was among a minority of Democratic Senators to vote for the bill.

As for Sanders, he voted both against Bobby Jindal’s Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act bill, which GOMESA was based upon, and the bill's final passage, where it was bundled with a bunch of other bills in the Tax Relief and Health Care Act which he was one of only 45 House members to vote against.

To complete Hillary's flip-flop, from that PolitiFact article: "Clinton split with Obama this August after he gave oil companies permission to drill in the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea, tweeting: "The Arctic is a unique treasure. Given what we know, it's not worth the risk of drilling."

Updated version... whoever makes these might think about adding in that Bernie says anyone who covered up the tapes of the police shooting in Chicago (Rahm Emanuel) should resign, while Hillary, of course, expressed complete confidence in one of the most corrupt men to ever sit in a congressional seat (Rahm Emanuel). Yeah, yeah, I know... she'll be calling for Rahm to resign too someday (or asking him to join her staff... you never know with her).

How Long Before David Vitter Is Hawking Pampers In TV Ads?

If you've been following the Louisiana gubernatorial election even superficially, tonight's results probably didn't come as a surprise. Conservative Democrat John Bel Edwards has been leading perverted Republican David Diapers Vitter all along. And once the jungle primary was over, it all started getting worse and worse for runner-up Vitter. Tonight, with all precincts counted, Edwards beat Vitter 56-44%. In Orleans Parish Edwards beat him 81,900 (87%) to 12,748 (13%) and in Vitter's own Jefferson Parish Edwards won 49,902 (51%) to 48,633 (49%). It was a bad night for David Vitter.

Louisiana is indeed one of the reddest states in the country at this point. In 2012 Romney beat Obama 1,152,460 (58%) to 808,496 (41%) and took a mere 10 parishes out of 64. In Livingston Parish just east of Baton Rouge Romney got 45,488 votes to Obama's 7,448-- that's an 84-14% landslide. Romney did even better in Cameron parish-- 87-11%. And last year Lousiana voted out long-time Senator Mary Landrieu for the relatively unknown Republican Bill Cassidy, 712,379 (56%) to 561,210 (44%), giving that seat to a Republican for the first time since 1883. Landrieu took only 15 of the state's parishes. Vitter did worse than any Republican since the GOP ran KKK Grand Dragon David Duke in 1991.

The last gubernatorial poll before the polls opened today, from Market Research Insight, showed what every other poll has show-- that Louisiana voters had had it with Vitter. The poll predicted Edwards would beat Vitter anywhere from 54-39% to 47-42%.

Early voting gave a good clue as to how today would go. Around 268,000 people voted before today and more than 140,000 of them were Democrats, a bad sign for Vitter. It got even worse today, worse (for Vitter) than even the polls were predicting.

Vitter has been telling the media that if he lost it would be primarily Bobby Jindal's fault, presumably because the Republican governor, disliked by 70% of the voters, had made the GOP toxic. That isn't totally fair since Edwards has made sure that this election would be all about Vitter's character. Nevertheless, this morning Dave Weigel, writing for the Washington Post pointed out that Jindal actually was working against Vitter, who he hates.

In Louisiana, it's an open secret that Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) concluded a years-long blood feud with Vitter by ending his presidential campaign on Tuesday.

"You can't get anyone to admit it, but it's what everyone thinks," said Julia O'Donoghue, the state politics reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "We spent two days talking about refugees and then two days talking about Jindal. Those first two days were the only ones in the runoff when John Bel [Edwards, the Democratic nominee] was on defense."

The timeline is simple. On Sunday, news broke that a Syrian refugee's passport was found with one of the suspects in the Paris terrorist attacks. Within a day, Vitter was up with a TV ad accusing Edwards of wanting to work with President Obama-- whose toxicity Vitter had previously tried and failed to pour on the Democrat-- and let in refugees. At the final gubernatorial debate on Monday, Vitter pressed the issue. He intended to drive it home all week.

Then, on Tuesday, Jindal used a mid-day Fox News interview to end his presidential campaign. That had a direct effect on what Louisiana's press corps could cover. "There really aren't that many of us," noted O'Donoghue. Instead of spending Wednesday covering the gubernatorial race, the media covered Jindal and his failed presidential bid, and it kept covering him as he suddenly proposed a fix to the $500 million budget gap that had helped drive down his popularity in the state. The news of Vitter heading back to his day job and introducing a bill to staunch the refugee flow was buried.

Vitter's campaign, which did not respond to a question from The Post, had to scramble. Instead of following its plan for Thursday-- four press events, all on refugees-- he had to downsize. As Buzzfeed's John Stanton reported, one of the events was moved from outside of the Catholic Charities’ refugee assistance office to the steps of the capitol in Baton Rouge. Most of the questions were about the budget hole, a more immediate issue for the next governor than the settlement of refugees.

Asked if Vitter's campaign had been considered in the decision to quit the White House bid, Jindal spokesman Kyle Plotkin responded with a flat "no." But Jindal had refused to endorse Vitter, and even while he spoke about barring refugees from the state, he gave no cover whatsoever to Vitter's message-- which included a factually dodgy story of a refugee going "missing," even though he was quickly located and committed no crimes. "Republicans could lose the governor’s office because of Senator David Vitter’s badly damaged brand," Jindal strategist Curt Anderson told NBC News reporter Kasie Hunt.

Weigel missed one piece in his story, which seems to bolster his point. According to a Trump twitter attack on Jindal, the day before pulling out of the race, Jindal plopped down the required $1,000 to appear on the New Hampshire ballot.

Vitter, who isn't well-liked in the Senate (other than by Ted Cruz), was judged by the GOP establishment unable to win re-election to the Senate in 2016. Tonight he said he won't even try. So who will? Probably Congressmen Charles "Lord Boustany" Boustany and John Fleming and state Treasurer John Kennedy from the GOP and possibly New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, a former state rep and then two-term Lt. Governor, Mary's brother, and therefor son of the legendary Moon Landrieu, from the other side of the aisle.

How Badly Will GOP Anti-Latino Presidential Campaigns Hurt Their Party In Congressional Races?

Latino Decisions released a new poll yesterday that sought to gage the reaction of Hispanic voters to the tenor of the Republican presidential campaign and how the GOP candidates talk about Hispanic-Americans. The survey included only registered voters and the short version os that "hostile rhetoric from Republican presidential candidates gives Latino voters a strong, negative impression of the Republican Party. The sense that Republicans are hostile to the Latino community has significantly increased since the 2012 election."

Despite Trump's claims that he will "win the Hispanics," the information from actual Hispanics don't bear that out. When asked if Trump's statements that "Mexico is sending immigrants who are drug dealers, criminals and rapists to the United States" and his vow to "deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants" including "any U.S. born children who have undocumented parents" and to build a large wall across the entire U.S.-Mexico border, 68% of participants said Trump has given them a "very unfavorable" impression of the Republican Party and another 12% said that they came away with a "somewhat unfavorable impression" of the party. That's 80%.

When asked to describe how the Republican Party feels about Latinos today, 45% said it was hostile, 39% said the GOP doesn't care about Latinos and just 16% said the GOP truly cares about Latinos. This is significantly worse as you can see from the chart below than how Latinos perceived the GOP in 2012, when Romney lost the Latino vote by a very wide margin. In fact, when Latino failed to impress Latino voters only 18% said they felt the GOP was hostile towards them. Today that figured has more than doubled to 45%.

In order of unfavorability this is how the Hispanic voters rated the Republican candidates

• Trump- 71%
• Cruz- 40%
• Rubio- 40%
• Bush- 37%
• Fiorina- 28%
• Carson- 17%

Only Bush and Carson had favorables exceeding-- in both cases, narrowly-- their unfavorables, with Bush at 42% favorable and Carson at 25% favorable (although most of respondents either had no opinion of Carson or had never heard of him-- 58%).

The states polled were Florida, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, Georgia, New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, and Michigan, which are not just presidential battleground states but congressional battlegrounds as well. Combined, these 14 states have right around 4 million Latino registered voters. Most of them-- Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, New Hampshire and North Carolina-- have competitive Senate races and all of them have competitive House races.

Let's take a look at a sprinkling of House races where the Latino vote is expected to be decisive to the reelection efforts of Republican incumbents.

CO-06- Mike Coffman was reelected in 2014 with 141,221 votes (52%) against Andrew Romanoff, a very imperfect candidate with a mixed and confusing record. Although Obama had won this suburban Denver district two years earlier with 52%, Romanoff only managed 42.9% despite it being a D+1 district where 17% of the voters are Latino and where 36.2% of the newly eligible voters are Asian, Latinos and naturalized immigrants. This year Colorado Democrats have a much stronger candidate in state Senate Minority Leader Morgan Carroll, a progressive with widespread support.

NV-04- Cresent Hardy beat Democratic incumbent Steven Hosford last year in a very tight, very low-turnout race-- 63,435 (48.5%) to 59,800 (45.8%). Most of the voters live in Clark County, especially in North Las Vegas and the surrounding suburbs. The district is 30% Hispanic and, district-wide, Democrats have a 46-33% registration advantage. Obama won NV-04 in 2008 with 56% and in 2012 with 54%. The likely Democratic nominee is Blue America-endorsed Ruben Kihuen, a member of the state legislature since 2006 and, more recently the state Senate's Democratic Whip, and an immigrant himself, as a child, from Guadalajara.

IA-03- David Young is a Republican freshman who managed to get into office because of DCCC incompetence in 2014 and a weak opponent. This year the southwest Iowa district, which includes Des Moines and Council Bluffs and which gave Obama wins in both 2008 (52%) and 2012 (51%), has a heated primary with 6 Democrats looking to take on the extremely vulnerable Young. Although just 5% of the voters are Latino, 15.4% of newly eligible voters are Asian, Latino and naturalized immigrants.

FL-27- is a majority Hispanic district (75%) where Obama won against McCain with 51% and against Romney with 53%. The district gets bluer by the day and would be a natural takeover spot for the Democrats except for one problemo-- well, 2 actually: Debbie WassermanSchultz and Steve Israel who adamantly protect their conservative Republican crony Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, usually by sabotaging plausible Democratic challengers early in the process and guaranteeing that Ros-Lehtinen never has a serious election. This year, for example, when you go to the website of the two "challengers" the first thing you see on David Cruz-Wiggins' is a quote: "I am a poet obedient to Christ." He is an anti-Choice/anti-LGBT walking freak show with no business running as a Democrat-- but perfect for the Debbie Wasserman Schultz/Steve Israel sabotage plan. The other Democrat, Frank Perez, is a military candidate with no issues or policy positions on his childish website, just a few paragraphs about his time in the military. There is no District 32 in Florida. 84% of newly eligible voters in this district are Asian, Latino and immigrants. Apparently they will have to wait until Debbie Wasserman Schultz is defeated before they can get a serious candidate against Ros-Lehtinen. I just spoke to a major figure in the Miami Democratic Party who told me that neither will probably be able to pay the fees required to get on the ballot.

Beyond these districts, the bigoted and hateful Republican presidential campaign rhetoric is likely to help progressives win seats across the country, from Suffolk County on Long Island, where Peter King is in jeopardy out to California where Lou Vince is running against anti-immigrant wing nut, Steve Knight, in a newly blue district. Latino voters are lalso ikely to play key roles in electing Blue America-backed Senate candidates in Florida (Alan Grayson), Maryland (Donna Edwards) and Wisconsin (Russ Feingold). If you'd like to help our Senate and House candidates, all on one page, you can do that here. Or by tapping on the thermometer:

A tiny and basically unrelated footnote: Not many people noticed he was running for president but Louisiana's super-unpopular governor (disapproval there is around 70%), Bobby Jindal, dropped out this afternoon. His greatest moment was when he called called Trump "a carnival act," as well as "unstable," & "a narcissist."

His likely successor as governor, John Bel Edwards, on hearing the news, said "The people of Iowa and New Hampshire have come to know what we know: Bobby Jindal's failed policies, the ones that would be continued and expanded by David Vitter, are about promoting self interest over the common interest."

This week's UMass poll found that Jindal's voters (around 1%) will be split 3 ways:

• Dr. Ben 66%
• Fiorina 31%
• Rubio 3%

The kiddie table is going to be even lonelier next time. I guess they could let Lindsey Graham and George Pataki back in. Bye-bye, Piyush...

How Will The Republican Establishment Get Rid Of Trump When They No Longer Need Him To Get People To Pay Attention To Their Primary Race?

If Trumpy falters, there's worse waiting in the wings

The GOP establishment is drooling over Jeb's tax plan to enrich the very rich,  and they are horrified by Trump's nod toward economic populism. Derailing Trump's campaign-- rather than waiting for him to self-destruct-- is becoming more and more of an establishment obsession. Third-rate GOP media consultant Liz Mair, recently fired by the flailing Scott Walker campaign, tries telling them how to do it. Her advise to the Deep Bench:

• Focus on moving an anti-Trump message to where low-information voters actually get their information (O'Reilly)
• Focus attacks on Trump’s support for single-payer and socialized medicine systems
• Focus attacks on his business record
• Raise the religion point with appropriate audiences
• Call a spade a spade, like he does
• Don’t replicate the policies, replicate the tone (provided that you plausibly can)
• Don’t be a politician. Be a human
• Do you have non-political experience? Talk about that
• Go after your other rivals, not just Trump
• Remember, what is a concern today probably won’t be in three months time

They're setting some of the congressional hounds on Trump, like Walker supporter Reid Ribble (R-WI) and Jeb supporter Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), but their critiques of Trump are like farting in the wind. Jeb's attacks on Trump-- based on reason-- have been ineffective. So now the GOP will deploy the bottom-of-the-barrel candidates, who have no chance to be president but could get an appointed position in a Republican administration, to try to muddy up Trump in the language low-info zombified Fox viewers can understand.

Can Bobby Jindal play a 12-year-old asshole as well as Trump? He said Trump "looks like he's got a squirrel sitting on his head." Thursday Jindal opened up on Trump, not necessarily because he was hoping Trump would attack back and give him some attention that could turn around his failed campaign-- that's just hopeless-- but to ingratiate himself with whomever emerges as the GOP candidate after Trump is hacked to bits by the GOP establishment. In his rant he tried using "carnival act," "insecure," "narcissist," "egomaniac," "substance-free," "weak," "shallow" and "unstable" to tar Trump. Did anything stick?

"Donald Trump," he raged to a tiny, nearly empty room at the National Press Club, "is for Donald Trump. He believes in nothing other than himself. He's not for anything, he's not against anything... everyone knows it to be true." And then, to show he's in touch with the zeitgeist, he added, "Just because a lot of people like watching Kim Kardashian, we wouldn't put her in the White House either." Jindal also hinted Texas fascist Ted Cruz, Trump's only ally among the contenders, is just as bad as Trump by enabling him.

Although almost no one was in the room when he unloaded, Fox-- which definitely had been tipped off in advance-- had a camera rolling and broadcast the diatribe live, including the crowning zinger:

"Donald Trump's never read the Bible. The reason we know he's never read the Bible, he's not in the Bible."

Even Glenn Beck got in on the action:

I’m telling you, dealing with Donald Trump is like dealing with a third grader. And I’m not dealing with a third grader anymore because the world is on fire. You want to come on the show, great. You don’t want to come on the show, great. I don’t really care… Enough of the third grade politics. Grow up, Donald Trump. Grow up.

And you can probably guess who Rick Perry's parting shot was aimed at as he ended his campaign yesterday: "We can secure the border and reform our immigration system without inflammatory rhetoric, without base appeals that divide us based on race, culture and creed… Demeaning people of Hispanic heritage is not just ignorant, it betrays the example of Christ. We can enforce our laws and our borders, and we can love all who live within our borders, without betraying our values."

Yesterday right-wing nut and former congressman David McIntosh, currently head of the Club for Growth, blamed the Trump phenomenon on Boehner and McConnell. It sounds like he and Jindal had been put up to it by the same political operatives out to get Trump.

The Donald Trump Show should be a wake-up call to establishment Republicans in Washington. Let’s face it-- at its core the Trump phenomenon is an expression of deep anger and frustration at Washington’s lack of leadership.

Less than a year ago, conservatives, libertarians, and independents gave Republicans a majority in the Senate and their largest House majority in more than 80 years. They trusted Republicans who campaigned on the promise that a Republican majority would at least put up roadblocks to the Obama agenda.

Voters fully expected this Congress to take real steps to rein in spending with a transparent appropriations process, and to preserve the modest spending caps established under sequestration. They believed Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) a year ago when he said tax reform was “in the realm of doable.”

Yet today, we’ve not only seen none of the above-- it’s actually gotten worse. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said recently that tax reform will have to wait until at least 2017. Rather than cut spending, this Republican Congress has cut deals with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to try to create $9 billion in new mandatory spending, and voted for a Medicare bill that adds more than $100 billion to the deficit over the coming years. Boehner still wants to resuscitate the Export-Import Bank, an example of the worst of government cronyism and the first federal agency to be put out of business in years. And, both McConnell’s Senate and Boehner’s House are expected to bust through established spending limits this fall with a massive spending bill that will likely be passed with a lot of Democrat votes, over the objections of many fiscal conservatives in both chambers.

Is it any wonder that the conservatives, libertarians, and independents who elected this Republican Congress are rallying behind the angry voice of Donald Trump? They’re even willing to overlook Trump’s far left positions: single-payer universal health care, a massive tax increase, anti-trade policies, and eminent domain to allow developers to seize private property. None of those are conservative, pro-growth positions.

Trump has made it clear that he’d be happy to use the massive power of government to force U.S. businesses to do what he believes is best for the country. That’s not economic freedom and it’s not a path to opportunity. He’s even recently rejected a flat tax in favor of the progressive tax rates that liberals applaud as part of their class warfare rhetoric.

Trump is not a conservative. He’s a showman who loves to talk about himself and who knows how to attract a crowd. And he’s tapped into the frustration of average Americans who have been saying for years that the country’s on the wrong track. They elected Republican majorities to change that course, or to at least begin bending its trajectory back toward less spending and smaller government. But now it’s clear that Boehner and McConnell have failed to even take up the fight with Democrats to do this. So millions of Americans are rejecting Washington wholesale and turning to the loudest anti-Washington voice they can find.

The irony, of course, is that, as Trump says, he’s been in the business of buying and selling politicians for years, and he boasts of how he’s manipulated the laws to ensure his own financial success. Trump is all about making himself great, but he’s now cloaked that scheme in pro-American, anti-Washington rhetoric. His so-called policies will not fix health care, lower taxes, or shrink government. But many Americans, who are completely and rightfully disillusioned by Washington Republicans, are willing to take a risky gamble on the unknown, rather than settle for the ongoing frustration of the known.

Boehner, McConnell, and the rest of establishment Republicans now own this mess. The 2016 presidential cycle started out, and still has, some of the best, pro-growth, conservative candidates that we’ve seen in many years; candidates with actual plans to end Obamacare, cut spending, and do real tax reform.

Unfortunately, those good candidates and their good proposals are getting drowned out by the Donald Trump Show. And, unless Republican leaders in Congress use the next four months to do the people’s business, to finally put up a strong fight against Obama, and to vote on a clear fiscally conservative agenda, they will be totally abandoned by the people who gave them the gavel, and they will be overwhelmed by more of the Trump tidal wave.

Before running away with his tail between his legs, Ben Carson tried taking on Trump as well-- also based on his lies about faith. Watch:



In case you think that Carson's "the reasonable one" among all the clowns and freaks, think again. Being soft-spoken doesn't make him reasonable, or even sane. He told GOP voters, as Right Wing Watch's Brian Tashman put it,

that the science of evolution is a sign of humankind’s arrogance and belief "that they are so smart that if they can’t explain how God did something, then it didn’t happen, which of course means that they’re God. You don’t need a God if you consider yourself capable of explaining everything." He claimed that "no one has the knowledge" of the age of the earth "based on the Bible," adding that "carbon dating and all of these things really don’t mean anything to a God who has the ability to create anything at any point in time."

Carson also claims Christians in America are facing widespread persecution and are "being bludgeoned into silence," and argued that Obamacare will lead people to lose their health coverage-- even though the opposite is happening. He said he has "prayed to God that he will expose even to people of low information what is going on. Sometimes things have to be so blatant, it’s like hitting them over the head with a two-by-four, before people wake up." Well, that would be his and Trump's (and Huckabee's and Cruz's) audience, all right.

The new Quinnipiac poll for Iowa released early yesterday morning shows Carson creeping up on Trump, and already beating him among GOP women-- and, ironically, among college-educated Republicans. College-educated Republicans should get beyond the misleading soft-spokenness. Quinnipiac reported:

Carson gets a 79 - 6 percent favorability rating and likely Republican Caucus-goers say 88 - 4 percent that he is honest and trustworthy, and 85 - 5 percent that he cares about their needs and problems. Voters say 76 - 11 percent that he has strong leadership qualities and 72 - 14 percent that he has the right temperament and personality to handle an international crisis.