The Phony Campaign

2015-05-17 Update

[phony baloney]

When it comes to picking which white male Democrat is less unlikely to become the next president, the Predictwise guys seem to have a difficult time choosing between Martin O'Malley and Joe Biden.

But this week, it's O'Malley, with Biden dropping off our 2% probability screen. So:

Query String Hit Count Change Since
2015-05-10
"Jeb Bush" phony 1,460,000 +693,000
"Martin O'Malley" phony 640,000 -
"Hillary Clinton" phony 382,000 -8,000
"Rand Paul" phony 162,000 -8,000
"Marco Rubio" phony 108,000 +3,000
"Scott Walker" phony 95,000 -3,800
"Elizabeth Warren" phony 90,000 +14,800

  • At least part of Jeb Bush's uptick in phony hit counts is no doubt due to his mis-response to Megan Kelly's “Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the [2003 Iraq] invasion?" This has caused tedious replays of that debate, with the usual suspects dusting off old assertions about what "we" did know then.

    Knowing what we know now, I personally would have advised Franz Ferdinand to have had a little better security in Sarajevo; I would have recommended that Hoover veto Smoot-Hawley; that internment of Japanese-Americans was kind of a bad call; as was the decision to launch Challenger; we shoulda let Lee Harvey Oswald rot in Minsk; and …

    Well you get the point. The only thing phonier than Jeb's answer to the question was the question itself.

    On the other hand, now that the standard has been set, I eagerly await: "Mrs. Clinton, knowing what we know now, would you have married Bill?"

    Not holding my breath on that, though. Because the media's double standard in posing gotcha questions is pretty phony too.

  • NPR—yes, frickin' NPR—wrote perhaps the funniest campaign story this week, compiling "The 13 Questions Hillary Clinton Has Answered From The Press" since announcing her candidacy weeks ago. Sample:

    NBC's Kristen Welker caught up with Clinton outside her very first campaign stop at an Iowa coffee shop:

    "You lost Iowa in 2008. How do you win this time? What's your strategy?" Welker asked.

    Clinton's reply, as she walked toward an open van door: "I'm having a great time. Can't look forward any more than I am."

  • Politico reports on its polling of "insiders" in both parties. This gem:

    Seven in 10 Republicans said Clinton spends too little time campaigning. “But when she does, she is so horrible, dull, scripted and phony that the Hillary juggernaut should create plans to build a soundproof Rose Garden in Brooklyn,” said a Granite Stater.

    Disclaimer: That wasn't me.

  • Howie Carr writes in the Boston Herald: "Now even Barack agrees Elizabeth Warren is phony":

    For once I agree with Barack Obama — he’s calling out the fake Indian as a liar, and who knows more about speaking with a forked tongue than Mr. If-You-Like-Your-Doctor-You-Can-Keep-Your-Doctor?

    In case you haven’t been following the inside-the-Beltway inside baseball, the moonbats have convened a circular firing squad over this Pacific Rim trade legislation that’s before the U.S. Senate.

    Granny rips President Soetoro, he blasts back, the pajama boy senator from Ohio accuses Moochelle’s better half of sexism, the president of NOW seconds those remarks, Obama’s flack says the senator should apologize …

    This is like the old Iran-Iraq War. Isn’t there some way they can all lose?

  • We haven't had a lot about Marco Rubio here, but this story about his relationship with his wife Jeannette covers a period when their premarital relationship was on the rocks:

    "I went clubbing, and I liked it," he wrote in his memoir, An American Son.

    One night he ended up at a South Beach club that pumped foam into a room of sweaty, writhing dancers. "I looked down at my shoes. They were perfectly white," Rubio recounted. "The foam had somehow bleached the color out of my cheap and obviously fake leather shoes. … I left the club and found the nearest pay phone."

    Feeling like a phony, he called Jeanette, then a cab. They married three years later. Her extrovert husband jumped on stage with the wedding band, 200 people watching, and sang Sinatra's My Way.

    "Senator Rubio, knowing what we know now, would you have gone clubbing in fake leather shoes?"

  • Finally, your tweets of the week, first from Hillary:

    And Rand Paul's response:


Last Modified 2019-01-08 2:18 PM EDT