The Phony Campaign

2015-08-23 Update

Our arbitrary criterion for inclusion (2% or higher probability of becoming president at the PredictWise prediction market) says we must bid farewell once more to the hapless Martin O'Malley. So:

Query String Hit Count Change Since
"Jeb Bush" phony 1,720,000 -1,700,000
"Hillary Clinton" phony 411,000 -2,000
"Donald Trump" phony 336,000 -36,000
"John Kasich" phony 197,000 -7,000
"Joe Biden" phony 160,000 +1,000
"Bernie Sanders" phony 131,000 +4,000
"Scott Walker" phony 124,000 +3,000
"Marco Rubio" phony 105,000 +2,000

What went down in Phonytown this past week? Let's see:

  • The RantPolitical site features a rant by Mark Twain (but probably not the famous one; the report of the famous one's death was not an exaggeration): "Hillary Clinton’s Phony Agenda Will Further Destroy America’s Economy". Well sure:

    Hillary Rodham Clinton mocks and ridicules the Confederate flag to position herself as a phony goddess of liberty. She contemptuously ridicules 299,521 Confederate dead and 200,000 armless and legless Confederate veterans who haunted barber shops and street corners until the 1940s. She belittles those long dead to serve her power binge. Four died needlessly in Benghazi because of Hillary. It’s now, always and forever all about Hillary. “Race is still a problem in America,” bitches Hillary. Where are the low income projects, and where’s the gangsta rap from Yukon Denalis within 20 miles of Hillary’s Chappaqua, N.Y. felony personal server home?

    I am not sad to see the Confederate flag go, but (on the other hand) nobody should fool themselves that the motive behind Hillary's every thought, word, and deed is compassion for the downtrodden. As Mr. Twain indicates: it's about her power lust.

  • Ex-Congresscritter Allen West reacts to the leaked video of Hillary's meeting with "Black Lives Matter" activists. Intro:

    I’m pretty sure those of you reading this have long known Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is nothing if not a big fat phony. Her campaign talking points are taken straight from the Democrat Book of Pandering. Adding insult to injury, Mrs. Clinton’s delivery of said talking points is as wooden as the paper on which they’re printed.

    Video of the encounter at the link. West encourages viewers to pay "special attention to the Democrat candidate’s facial expressions and body language." West can stand it, can you?

  • Matthew K Burke collects the "Top Ten Reasons Why Jeb Bush Is NOT A Conservative". Just ten? Well, it's a round number. Here's #3:

    Jeb Bush’s dad famously said “Read my lips, no new taxes,” but went on to be the Rockefeller Republican that he was, raising taxes which ultimately cost him his re-election and resulted in giving America — Bill Clinton (not to mention his wife). Jeb Bush is flexible enough in his phony conservativism to not make the same mistake. He won’t pledge to not raising taxes, period. Is there any conservative in America who thinks taxes are possibly too low. Yes, there is one — Jeb Bush.

  • Kimberly A. Strassel of the WSJ provides a useful service for us libertarian-leaners, using Ohio Governor John Kasich an example:

    As the nation goes about mentally categorizing the crowded Republican field, here’s one way to divide the arena: small-government reformers and big-government surrenderists. That debate is at the center of a bigger GOP meditation on how to better appeal to the poor and minorities. Mr. Kasich has emerged as the most eloquent and compelling spokesperson for the go-big camp.

    Also falling on the big side, in Strassel's view: Santorum, Huckabee, Rubio, and (to the extent you can dig any coherent policy views out of the morass), Trump. Curiously left out of her indictment: Jeb (see above), Scott (Bucks-for-the-Bucks) Walker.

  • This week's award for unintentional hilarity goes to Chris Tognotti writing at Business Insider: "Bernie Sanders' campaign is facing a major danger"

    Oh no! What is it?

    These may be the boom times for Team Bernie, but there's still a bit of trouble in paradise. On Monday, a Sanders interview ran in the New York Times Magazine, conducted by longtime political journalist Ana Marie Cox. One of her questions sent Sanders and some of his supporters into a tizzy: “Do you think it’s fair that Hillary’s hair gets a lot more scrutiny than yours does?”

    Read the whole thing for Bernie's answer to this lamely-framed question, the resulting Twitstorm, and (above all) Tognotti's deep-thinking analysis about What It All Means. Basically: Sanders' failure to insufficiently genuflect to current progressive theology on race and gender is completely problematic.