The Perry bump

Rick Perry dropped out of the Presidential race Friday sending a seismic shock all the way to... well alright he registered less than one percent support in the last CNN poll so that's really not even a ripple.  But every little bit helps if you're Bobby Jindal. And this looks like it was.. a very little bit.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose campaign for president has been mired in financial troubles, announced Friday that he’s leaving the race, prompting kind words between him and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Appearing at the conservative Eagle Forum in St. Louis, Missouri, Perry told the crowd he considers Louisiana among the pioneers, along with Texas, of the “limited-government/freedom state.” He contrasted that with states like California and New York, which he sees as “government-run welfare states.” (Note: Louisiana’s mention there was an ad-lib and doesn’t appear in Perry’s prepared remarks.

It's not surprising that Perry would give parting props to Jindal. The two have shared resources, staff, a commitment to the power of big prayer rallies,  as well as a political philosophy based on blatant unabashed pay-to-play cronyism... which is what Perry actually means when he talks about that "limited-government/freedom state" thing.

Stephanie Grace alluded to that in passing in a Friday column about this week's Trump vs Bobby slap fight.

Voters around the country might not notice, but his pronouncements on his record in Louisiana regularly irk his own constituents. That’s particularly true of his claim to have been a good shepherd of the state budget, which was balanced on paper this year with a hefty helping of smoke and mirrors. At the Press Club on Thursday, Jindal called Louisiana’s budget a “great example” for Washington, even as politicians back home gird for yet another round of big midyear cuts.

That's not quite precise enough, though.  Jindal isn't trying to impress "voters around the country" right now. He's going after movement conservatives. Such voters, in Iowa as well as in Louisiana, don't really care about fiscal responsibility.  What they care about is "limited government" in the specific sense that they think government gives poor and/or non-white people too much stuff and should stop doing that. Breaking the state budget is a particularly effective way to accomplish "limited government."

Every year's budget brings another crisis by design where lawmakers are forced to make "tough choices" resulting in cuts to education or hospitals or retirement benefits for state employees.   And then Jindal can take that on the campaign trail and boast about how he "reduced the size of government." Of course the billions of dollars given away to oil companies and Hollywood South grifters never really gets reined in somehow but, remember, fiscal responsibility is not the point of  "limited government."

That's how Rick Perry ran Texas, it's how Bobby Jindal ran Louisiana, and it's why Perry recommends Jindal's model now as he bows out. The problem for Bobby is it's also how Scott Walker did things in Wisconsin. Remember, 2016 is The Year Of The Shitty Governor which is one reason Jindal has had so much trouble standing out in this field.  And it's why the Perry bump, if such a thing exists, probably won't be worth much.

Bandwidth

Monday night tens of people tuned in to CSPAN to see the Republican Presidential candidates play an exhibition warm-up forum prior to Thursday night's prime time debates. Fans were disappointed to learn that Donald Trump would not be there. But, because this was a pre-season game, it only makes sense that team GOP rested their starter in order to avoid injuries.

Much like an NFL exhibition, this event did not challenge any of the candidates with direct regular season competition as much as it provided a controlled environment for individual evaluation.  Hard core fans will probably want to watch the game film here. But keep in mind, this was also muck like an NFL exhibition in that it's very difficult to say what, if anything, of value was learned.

Each candidate was given about a minute or two on stage to answer what appeared to be pre-arranged questions suited to his or her favorite talking points. After all 14 participants had rotated in, they were called back for a second, very similar, round but with 30 seconds added for "closing statements."

This was a heavily scripted performance of each candidate's standard stump schtick.  But it's worth at least observing how well they pull that off on stage. So, there were a few notes worth scribbling down, or tweeting out, or whatever I did. Here are those.

Given that the substance is staged boilerplate, I guess the thing we're looking for first here is style points. Sadly, everyone was pretty bland. The only candidates who distinguished themselves did so in the negative sense.

For example, Lindsey Graham's description of his trade policy, "Clinched fist or open hand. You choose," sounded weird the first time he said it. By the third repetition it started to sound almost dirty. Rick Perry didn't forget any list items or anything. But he did squirm in his chair a lot and generally look goofy. Ben Carson seems half asleep when he speaks and holds his "Gifted Hands" awkwardly. Ted Cruz was tangibly creepy but that's nothing new.

The most disappointing presentation by far was from presumed contender Marco Rubio who just isn't very good at talking. Rubio, like the two other Senators who participated, was beamed in via satellite link but was the only one of the three who couldn't figure out that he needed to wait on the delay to avoid talking over the host.  He also stumbled over his own words a few times and looked very much like he needed a glass of water.. which is kind of a problem when people are specifically watching for that.
 
Almost all of the candidates wanted to talk about "border security." Rick Perry began by saying he once "looked the President in the eye" and told him that Texas would secure the border if the feds would not. And then, according to Perry, Texas went ahead and did that so I don't really know what he's complaining about now.

Other Republicans talked more effectively about "border security" in relation to the version of economic populism many of them will try to sell this year.  John Kasich, Rick Santorum, and Lindsey Graham all talked about the effects of immigration on wages in the US.  Although they also spoke in favor of "guestworker" programs which apparently don't hurt anybody. (oops!) It's interesting also that all of these "free traders" have spent their careers supporting agreements like NAFTA, and now the TPP and TTIP which demolish fair labor and environmental standards across international borders but have no shame in demagoguing against their deleterious effects.

But hypocrisy is a given on the campaign trail.  This is how Chris Christie can declare, "The war on drugs has been a failure" the same week that he also said this.

"If you’re getting high in Colorado today, enjoy it," Christie, a Republican presidential candidate, said during a town-hall event in the early voting state of New Hampshire, according to Bloomberg.

“As of January 2017, I will enforce the federal laws,” he added.

Christie, who has long opposed recreational marijuana and said early this month that he has never tried pot, has stated that unlike President Obama he would not selectively choose which federal laws to enforce.

It's also how  Ted Cruz can, with a straight face, rail against "career politicians in bed with special interests" while this is going on.

Senator Ted Cruz’s standing in many national polls may be middling, but Friday brought fresh evidence as to why he should not be underestimated: The Texas Republican is a magnet for big donors.

How big? Toby Neugebauer, an energy investor, donated $10 million to Keep the Promise II, a “super PAC” supporting Mr. Cruz.

The donation represents one of the largest amounts given by a single donor to a Super PAC so far this campaign cycle and demonstrates the potential influence that individuals can have upon a presidential election and with a senior lawmaker.

Mr. Neugebauer, the son of Representative Randy Neugebauer, Republican of Texas, is the co-founder of Quantum Energy Partners and has been an active investor in the oil and gas sectors, overseeing billions of dollars of assets.

There were other knee-slappers.

"Libertarian" Rand Paul seemed pretty adamant that the government has a right to summarily execute you as long as it says you are a "terrorist."

Scott Walker says it's important that climate change policy is "balanced" against the needs of industry which seems like a totally legitimate way to go about things given the circumstances.

George Pataki is also running for President.

Of course our friend Bobby Jindal was there too.  He comported himself pretty well, in fact. This was not a repeat of his infamous State of the Union response which I think we should all just stop talking about now.  Bobby has improved his presentation at least to a level where it is no longer laughable.

I'm less impressed with his improvement than Oyster seems to be, though. Jindal will always come off as a nerd and a phony.  But we've elected nerds before. (Think George H. W. Bush) And certainly we've elected phonies. (Think every President ever.) So there's no reason to dismiss Bobby Jindal's campaign based on style. One poor impression he made on TV six years ago does not mean he isn't to be taken seriously now.

The things he says are ridiculous too but no more ridiculous than any of his opponents' offerings listed above. Monday night Jindal coolly recited some of the pet phrases he's been honing during his many trips to Iowa and New Hampshire.

"I'm tired of talkers. We need doers."

"We need to get off of the path towards socialism."

"American Dream" vs. "European Nightmare"

You may have heard these before.  Have you heard this new one yet, though?

“We need a doer, not a talker,” he said in his valedictory. “We can’t afford four more years of on-the-job training.”

And, he assured the audience, he has the “bandwidth” and “backbone” to get the job done.

“We’ve had seven years of a great talker,” he said. “Let’s elect a doer.

“Let us believe in America again.”

What on Earth could that "bandwidth" thing possibly mean, we asked Twitter. Twitter responded, convincingly enough.

@champsuperstar @skooks it means he can handle a lot of things at once. It's common lame business jargon.

— Larry (@LarryLarmeu) August 4, 2015

In other words, Bobby is going for that "Geek Appeal" again. 

But as long as Bobby is talking about his "bandwidth" maybe one or two local Iowa or New Hampshire reporters would like to take it as an opening to ask him why he has so much while his state has so little. 

Louisiana was set to receive an $80 million federal grant to expand broadband access in North and Central Louisiana. I know, for an absolute fact that, behind the scenes, Mary Landrieu’s staff worked diligently to ensure Louisiana had an opportunity, and I’m not at all surprised that Senator Landrieu has been so vocal about this issue. You see, last week, the Commerce Department rescinded the grant because Louisiana couldn’t get its act together. More specifically, Governor Jindal and his administration couldn’t get their acts together

Of course it won't make much difference.  Bobby will simply say that, because the $80 million in broadband access for the poor was coming from the federal government and not a private cable operator, that he was really giving us "freedom" instead of bandwidth and isn't that better anyway.  It won't hurt Bobby with Republicans to have to say that.

In fact, it will be right in step with Scott Walker's claim that "freedom" is better than a union job with full benefits or George Pataki's claim that "patient empowerment" is better than actual health care. This is the meat they're all serving this year. These are the lies you tell if you want to be the Republican nominee And Jindal tells them every bit as well as or better than the rest of them.   

Just ignore him

When Bobby Jindal agreed to (probably) launch his Presidential campaign with a "prayer rally" on the LSU campus next month sponsored by an organization of violently anti-gay conspiracy-theorist theocrats he obviously did this in order to provoke a reaction.

Well now he will get one. 

A backlash is brewing over a prayer rally scheduled for LSU’s Pete Maravich Assembly Center next month featuring Gov. Bobby Jindal.

A Change.org petition created by an LSU alumnus urging LSU to not allow the event on campus has gotten nearly 1,000 signatures since Friday, and students are organizing a protest of the prayer rally, dubbed “The Response” because of its anti-gay ties.

It's probably a smarter course of action to just ignore Jindal's "rally."  That seems to be what Republican primary voters are doing  and it's working out just fine that way.  Everybody hates Bobby already. Why waste time and energy yelling at him for this desperate, phony and unoriginal stunt.

The event’s timing plays into Jindal’s possible political aspirations and appears to be ripped from the playbook of Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Jindal is expected to announce whether he will run for governor in the coming months. In recent weeks, he’s made multiple appearances on Fox News, traveled to Washington, D.C., for GOP events and policy speeches (including a trip that had him out of state on Election Day) and continued to ramp up interest in a possible presidential campaign. This week, he traveled to Iowa to speak to the Polk County GOP holiday party.

Perry faced a similar backlash over his association with the event and AFA’s involvement, though it doesn’t appear to have stuck. Perry, who leaves office next month, remains popular in his home state, though he didn’t win the GOP nomination for president.

Perry and Jindal are very close and tend to share advisers and staff and ghostwriters and such. So it's not surprising to see that the Jindal for Prez campaign is going to look an awful lot like Perry's did in 2012. 

Oh and, for the record, the "similar backlash" Perry's prayer meeting engendered didn't make a dent in his campaign. The mainstream press hailed it as "bold" and "positive." The difference, though, is the national press at the time more or less assumed the Governor of Texas would be a default front-runner and rushed in to give him all the attention he could want.  The Governor of Louisiana, on the other hand, is desperate to get noticed.  A protest is only going to help him do that.

Messing with Texas

This was a pretty funny Lewis Black segment.  But I wish he would have taken the half second necessary to point out that these are actually Perry for President commercials and not just acts of random weirdness.
 

This car is running out of clowns

Once again the coveted Jindal endorsement is up for grabs.

Perry will hold a press conference at 11 am in North Charleston, South Carolina, where he is expected to announce he will drop out of the Republican primary for president, ending a campaign that began in mid-summer.

Because I feel obligated to take a guess at this

The big shocking revelation I just made up would be I think Huntsman will overtake Paul tonight in New Hampshire. Other than that, I got nothing.

Mitt: 32%

Huntsman: 22%

Paul: 20%

Santorum: 12%

Newt: 10%

Perry: Hello, I'm actually on this ballot too, I think.


Update: Looks like I may have overestimated the Huntsmania.

Iowa Post-Mortem

I stayed up just late enough last night to watch a furnance-faced Mitt Romney speed read through a speech like a coked up version of the guy who recites the legalese at the end of a 30 second radio ad for a car dealership. Except, unlike the ad guy, Mitt was really bad at it. At one point he attempted, for whatever reason, to add in a few lines from America The Beautiful but ended up slurring something about "amber waves of rain" before getting on to the MSRP part.

Mitt's a pretty wooden actor so it's difficult to know if he was exultant or just pissed but there can be little doubt he wanted the room to know he was excited. And why shouldn't he be? Here's Mitt leaving Iowa with an ever-so-slight 8 vote win over Crazy Hopeless Alternative Candidate Of The Week Rick Santorum which entitled him to.. well actually just 13 of 25 delegates.

But, on the other hand, Iowa was supposed to be the phase of the primary where the turbulent anti-Mitt imperative coalesced around a spokesperson with a legitimate chance at denying him the nomination. Instead it flirted with a series of laughably non-viable alternatives in a desperate game of spin-the-bottle which happened to be pointing at Santorum on the day the caucus was held.

Don't worry. It won't stay there long. Santorum's "victory" speech was maybe even funnier than Romney's. Not only did he have to suddenly pretend that he had been doing and saying things in Iowa all this time that anyone had paid any attention to, but he had to do it with that icky smirk on his face. You know the one that says to the world this is a man deeply conflicted over whether to be a corrupt douche or a sanctimonious weirdo from one minute to the next? Yeah that one. Expect to hear a lot more about that between now and the time Santorum becomes completely irrelevant again. Probably Saturday.

Meanwhile former Crazy Hopeless Alternative Candidate Of The Week Michele Bachmann is finally out. For a while last night it wasn't clear what she was going to do. At one point she said "I am not a politician" and then moments later insisted to supporters that she was not dropping out of the political campaign she had been engaged in since last summer. And then today she's gone.

But if last night's results are any indication no one will notice. Bachmann's poor performance, most perturbingly, screwed up my projected numbers. Because Bachmann, Roemer, Huntsman, and the remnants of Herman Cain couldn't combine for more than 5% of the total, there was far more Crazy vote out there to spread between Santorum and Paul than I expected. Also note that even though 123,000 Iowa Republicans is a ridiculously small number of voters for us to be giving all this attention to, it is also a record high turnout for a GOP caucus. More highly motivated Crazy Caucus Goers than at any time in history were on hand last night, they were less divided than they could have been if Bachmann still pulled any interest at all, and, even still, Mitt finished first.

So Bachmann's departure shouldn't affect Mitt's ability to fend off the Crazy vote in future primaries. And now that Rick Perry has apparently decided not to go back to Texas and secede from the race, the Slightly Less Crazy Anti-Mitt vote he split with Newt in Iowa will probably split again in South Carolina.

Restless GOP voters may not have much confidence in Mitt but the rest of their field is a mess. And now, because of the long experience in Iowa, they know it. I'm sure there's still some time left for one half-hearted feint at a stand in South Carolina but after that, don't expect there to be much sport left in this race.

Excellent news for Mitt (really)

Ron Paul Is Now the Republican Frontrunner

If we go into the caucuses with Paul as the crazy candidate of choice and Gingrich on the wane, it's entirely plausible that Mitt can show relatively well as a "second choice" candidate. The theory being that since all of the crazy candidates are now past their moments, most caucusers who are denied the one crazy candidate they choose first won't just grab the next crazy available but will shrug and go to Mitt. Even if many do go for Crazy #2 it's difficult to imagine there being much consensus on who that is which also is a situation that looks good for Mitt. The other possibility is a late coalescing around Perry as Crazy #2 which could still happen.

Newt-ered

Now that so many so-called establishment conservatives and self-appointed Tea Party spokespersons are coming out of the woodwork to clobber Newt from all sides, do we still think he's got a legit shot at becoming the GOP nominee?

Also here's Moseley's latest bit of handicapping which once again emphasizes the likelihood of "surprises" even going so far as to suggest that those of us who continue to expect the utterly unsurprising result of Mitt as the nominee go put some money down on it at Intrade. I'm guessing $10,000 is the standard ante there.

Actually Intrade is kind of a goofy toy. It reflects the volatile conventional groupthink that has fed the boom-and-bust GOP primary cycle. And, although, political junkies love to cite it in discussions like this, it's important to remember that this is precisely what makes it a pretty crappy predictor of results. Don't get me wrong. It's a lot of fun to play with. Although I should say my favorite new toys this election season are these mouse-over sliding poll average graphics at TPM.

Anyway, suffice to say, Intrade is great but it's no Punditbook.

One point of clarification I should make about the GOP Primary so far is that I've always thought Mitt was going to be the nominee, not because of some conspiratorial "rigging" of the system but because I just always thought he was obviously the only candidate without huge fatal flaws. (This is not to say that he doesn't have huge flaws, just not huge fatal flaws.) So the boom-and-bust game the press has been playing of "let's pretend crazy candidate X has a shot this week" has been grating on me.

Anyway, getting back to Mark's latest column, he describes, there, a couple few scenarios for the way things can play out in the coming months including this one.

Alarmed at Gingrich’s surprising ascent, the conservative establishment torpedoes Gingrich before the Iowa caucus. Another “non-Romney” candidate takes his place. In my mind, Perry fills the bill here, because he has the money to buy himself a second look and a talented staff who can attempt to reinvent him. Perry rebrands himself as the “faith” candidate who will best protect us from gays in the military, and the secular culture’s war on Christmas.

And darnnit if that isn't exactly what Perry's campaign is shooting for this week... albeit in typically self-destructive Rick Perry fashion.

Still, it would appear there is room on the right for Perry to stake a claim. And, of course, there's plenty time left for Perry to shoot himself in the foot a few more times too.

Welp,

It's been fun, Rick Perry. I would have said let's get rid of Ubeki beki beki stan stan but that's me.



Broken record says once more: This whole process is just a goofy farce to keep us mildly entertained until Mitt gets nominated. It always was.

Boring

Zogby has Cain at 45% and Perry (who, incidentally I don't mind telling you, I was correct to think would fizzle faster than Rudy! 2008 once people saw him in action) all the way down at 7% now.

What's boring, though, is that despite all of what we're supposed to believe is wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth on the part of "real conservatives" and just as much despite all the "LOOK OUT FOR THE CRAZY EVIL BACHMANN-PERRY-SANTORUM MONSTER UNDER YOUR BED" scaremongering coming from the Obama apologists, the GOP nominee is going to be Mitt Romney and was always going to be Mitt Romney. And if you don't or didn't get that at any point, you've never known how to pay attention.

Horse race update

So bored with this. I know there's a Republican debate tonight and I admit that I've been entertained by the ones I've seen so far but I'm probably not gonna watch this one. I decided a few months ago that Romney was always going to be the nominee and today more or less confirms that for me. Wake me up when the actual primaries start... whichever one of them decides to go first.

Meanwhile Bobby Jindal, despite having very quickly endorsed Rick Perry once he became a candidate, has been careful to keep sucking up to all potential Republican power brokers just in case there ends up being an opening in the Romeny Administration's Department of Something Called Volcano Monitoring or whatever.

Despite Jindal's protestations to the contrary, he's as likely to jump on up the ladder now as he ever was. Which means, then, that the increasingly bitter race for Lieutenant Governor could end up being a de facto race for Governor. In which case Jindal wants you to know that he is not trying to hand pick his successor here. No sir, no way. Or maybe he just doesn't want to look like he's doing what David Vitter wants.

Either way it's unfortunate since it basically leaves Kevin Costner, Sammy Kershaw, and Blaine Kern to do the anointing in his stead. As a system of government, that's not exactly strange women lying in ponds distributing swords but it's perhaps uncomfortably close.

Survival

Somehow, by God's grace perhaps, the offshore drilling industry has "economically survived" the dread moratorium. This plainly demonstrates that last summer's day of prayer in Lafayette was worth it after all.

Is it any wonder, then, that the Republican candidate who best understands the power of prayer is currently polling so well in Louisiana?