Pun Salad

Some minor movement in the phony hit counts over the past week, but not enough to change our overall standings:

• Scott Walker has dropped below our arbitrary criteria for inclusion (longer than ten-to-one odds at betfair), but we'll leave him in for now. Because this story, at Reason, about Walker's hands-off approach to the recent investigation of a police shooting of a mentally ill individual seems possibly relevant. Author Ed Krayewski comments:

  While at least Walker didn’t back a decision he wasn’t versed in, it’s disappointing the potential presidential candidate isn’t taking the opportunity to own a piece of legislation that could, implemented properly, do a lot in bringing accountability to police violence. Owning it would require getting involved.

  Any chance Walker could be tiptoeing around this to avoid offending anyone? Or is it that he doesn't (for all I know, correctly) see his current role as Governor as appropriate for involvement?

• Salena Zito examines Elizabeth Warren's claims to be a "populist":

  … [N]ot unlike her past claims of Native American ancestry — she appears to be only about 1⁄32nd populist in heritage.

  Ouch. Instead, Ms. Zito claims, Sen. Warren is a solid "progressive". (A question-begging label I despise, but anyway…) As a matter of history, progressives and populists have had a mutual contempt, and little common ground.

• Indispensable Jim Geraghty takes a look at the Hillary squad pushing nasty opposition research about the very-long-shot candidacy of Jim Webb. (Not the songwriter, the one who used to be a Virginia Senator.) Why? Geraghty's analysis is insightful, and (since Hillary's the current betting favorite to win the White House) more than a little scary.

  […] Hillary’s allies’ making a ludicrously early and unpersuasive effort to shop dirt on long-shot Jim Webb doesn’t look so unexpected. It’s just what the Hillary 2016 campaign is going to be: paranoid, needlessly nasty, and making unnecessary enemies.

  And why should her Presidency be any different?

• And what about our current leader in the phony standings, Jeb Bush? Who also widened his phony lead on Hillary? Fine. Here's a recent story about how carefully Jeb is demonstrating his connection to ordinary Americans:

  Jeb Bush’s flirtation with running for president in 2016 will take the former Florida governor to the familiar and lush stomping grounds of the Bush political clan: Greenwich [Connecticut].

  Does anything say "wealth and elite privilege" like Greenwich, CT? Jeb could make Mitt Romney look like a True Man of the People.