1862

Which is cool and all, but that has never worked in the Iowa Caucus, as Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean can strongly attest.

1863

How would they know, as no candidate in history had ever gotten this kind of coverage by the media?

Trump literally has called news programs and been allowed to speak on air, essentially completely on his own terms. He basically gets free campaign advertising.

1864

Indeed. This is potentially the dumbest statement ever made by someone who has a remote chance to be the USA president. He does not want people thinking about 9/11 or his brother’s actions in response to it.

Mainstream media is totally right on this one. It is a mission accomplished moment.

1865

Because we know the voter demographics of the Iowa caucuses, thanks to Anne Selzer among others.

We know that the Democratic Caucuses are likely to be interesting, and may be very competitive. So you won’t have frivolous cross-over voters.

Thus, we know that the Iowa GOP tends to skew very old and very religious, and that they tend to get their news from Fox News (which isn’t yet a big Donald friend) and traditional media.

Donald Trump is polling very well in Iowa. 8 years ago, Barack Obama began a surge of strong polling in Iowa in the fall of 2007.

In both cases, it seems likely that for both candidates, getting people who perhaps normally don’t participate in their party’s respective caucuses to the polls is of the highest importance. Obama’s GOTV in Iowa in 2008 was legendary, spearheaded by the guy who pulled off the Kerry upset in 2004 there.

How does Trump:

  1. recognize these non-participators and find them, and
  2. get them to the caucuses

without infrastructure? Right now folks like Carson, Bush, and Walker are locking up folks who control lots of Republican votes in that caucus. If Trump doesn’t start moving, he’s going to find himself struggling to make his polling numbers translate to caucus numbers. Still has time, but if he’s serious, he needs to stop shilly-shallying around.

1866

One wonders how negative the campaigning will get in Iowa and New Hampshire as we close in on the primaries…

1867

Live in Iowa, just saw the first attack ad on TV attacking Trump this past week. It was pretty strong, and not attached to any candidate (i.e. "paid for by the Strength in Truth All American Patriot blah blah blah.)

1868

The thing with a Trump supporter saying that Obama was “obviously” a Muslim continues to roll its way through the news cycle. If you missed it, you can watch it here, but basically some doofus stood up at a Trump Q&A session, said a bunch of easily-disproven stuff about the POTUS, and Trump didn’t do anything to correct the guy.

The reactions have been fairly predictable: Democratic pundits and candidates have howled out for apologies, while most GOP candidates have tried to remain quiet, or at least not to get pulled into the issue. And there really isn’t any good outcome for a Republican candidate to speak out about it: either they risk looking like a race-baiter, or they piss off the 45%+ of primary voters who apparently actually believe that Obama is a “secret Muslim”.

However, there have been some interesting responses. Christie, Graham and Bush all came out and said that if they were in a similar situation they would have gone the McCain route and corrected the questioner.

But I have to say that some of the other candidate responses were pretty decent. I personally think that Santorum is scum, but I appreciated his exasperation at being continually asked about what he would have done:

And that’s true on the face of it. But of course the larger problem is that apparently something close to half the loyal GOP electorate can’t get past the President’s non-Anglo name and/or skin color, and these are the same people that the Republican candidates are counting on getting them to the White House.

1869

Look, it’s not the Republicans’ fault that libtards are so easily offended by outright lies. More desperate pearl-clutching from the Left.

1870

I have to disagree with Santorum. If you are standing right there and one of your supporters spouts nonsense or blatant lies, you have to correct them. It’s not about defending Obama. It’s about not looking like you support nonsense and lies. If you say noting you are tacitly agreeing.

1871

THIS! By accepting, or remaining quiet on nonsense (see also: climate change, Benghazi, vaccinations), you are tacitly condoning and encouraging more nonsense. When someone says an easily disproved lie at one of your events, a lie you damn well know a portion of your base believes, it is incumbent on you to correct it. Failing to do so is you approving of that message.

1872

Yes. Of course they’re tacitly agreeing because they need the votes of the moron block they themselves have created. If Fox News didn’t spout this kind of garbage from their crazy hosts and pinhead pundits all day it would only be the pure nutter fringe that supported such notions, and the candidates could easily reject them. But since so many millions of voters actually believe these ludicrous notions due to drinking from a media firehose of filth, the candidates naturally have to pander to them. I’d say they were all political whores except that would be demeaning to sex workers. They’re 21st century politicians, and that’s damning enough.

1873

ut the idea that somehow … we have to go out there and anytime someone says something that offends the press that we have to correct it. I think that’s, that’s part of the problem here.

This is the most recent angle being played by the extreme nutjob right, and frankly it’s bullshit.

Saying we need to get rid of Muslims, or that Obama is a Muslim, is not simply something that “offends the press”.

Those are things which should offend ANYONE with a brain, a respect for America’s values, or an understanding of history.

This is the thing that makes me increasingly dissatisfied with the state of the right in America. The fact that criticism of anything, seemingly regardless of how insane or ignorant, out how obviously deserving of criticism it is, is just hand waved away as though it’s merely a fictional construct of the media. (I won’t even get into the ultimate hypocrisy of the constant pairing of this with fabricated outrage at things like edited planned parenthood videos)

This refusal to acknowledge anything and just pretend like it’s all some grand conspiracy of the media is why the party just continues to go over the rails.

1874

You know who else didn’t correct people when they shouted that we needed to get rid of a whole ethnicity?

/Godwin

1875

You don’t even want to know what’s happened over the last few days to conservative columnist David French and his wife, then.

1876

I’ll bite. What happened?

1877

Google him, hit his twitter feed, and you can see the article for yourself. I’ll decline to link here since I don’t much care for his politics, but still he doesn’t deserve the vitriol he’s gotten from the ‘cuckservative’ crowd. I hate myself for even typing that word, ugly ignorant people.

1878

He and his wife are white. They have two children of their own, but they also adopted an Ethiopian baby. Which, good on them. That child’s life will be hopefully altered very much for the better now.

At any rate, as a conservative, he’s apparently run afoul of the nativist (which is the polite term), know-nothing (less-polite), overtly racist white pride segment of the party. They are incensed that he’d betray his whiteness by…well, you can figure it out.

What seems new to me in this is the boldness. These are folks who didn’t use to speak their thoughts for public consumption. They hid in the shadows and maybe didn’t even participate in politics.

Now? They’re Republicans, and proudly so, and angrily defending racial purity.

Here’s what French wrote yesterday. Apparently things got worse last night.

1879

I suppose they’re like apostates now, ten times the hatred compared to the actual opposition. But for me the really embarrassing thing is this guy French apologizing for Trump and comparing him so favorably to Coulter.

1880

Of course, I care more about the actual nonsense and lies, e.g. the vaccination and climate myths they are spouting, but the pandering to the people who believe the racist crap is pretty bad.

1881

I appreciate that viewpoint, but it also would seem to me to be a factor of today’s everything-is-recorded environment.

In the past if someone at a town-hall had put forth something obviously crazy (“What do you plan to do about the Lizard People!?”), the candidate would sort of semi-politely refuse to engage and move on to the next question (“I believe in a strong US Military. Who’s next? You in the hat.”). Not answering a dumbass question was rarely news unless it was a question that the candidate SHOULD be answering. Nowadays all those interactions are recorded no matter what.

I grant you that these questions (at least some of them) are ones being pushed or tacitly supported by the GOP or Tea Party operatives, and as such are a little different than a “lizard person” level of crazy.