14 thoughts on “Bloggus Interruptus”

    1. Unfortunately, no, Boca Raton. Though nothing much is happening at the Cape while we’re here, AFAIK. Next launch (SpaceX) is toward the end of the month.

      1. Did find out by accident that the Fort Lauderdale Air and Sea Show is this weekend (got caught in after-show traffic driving up A1A from Miami yesterday). Trying to decide whether to spend money and fight crowds to go today. Supposed to be an F-35 flying in a civilian event, but just a heritage flight. Main attraction is the Thunderbirds, show finale.

  2. A little pot-stirring, then, while you’re tied up house-fixing..

    Paul Ryan the other day tried to gently make the point that conservatives in his caucus may require a bit of fence-mending before climbing on board the Trump Train.

    Trump’s response? He said conservatives aren’t really necessary to his plan for November triumph anyway. And a day later his surrogate Palin is threatening to primary Ryan.

    That must be some plan. That’s potentially tens of millions added to the current already-huge requirement for Dem-defector and never-voted-before types he’d need to dig up by November (plus of course Dem-loyalists he might persuade to stay home.)

    Looks to me like he’s overplaying his hand and risks persuading a lot of conservatives who otherwise would have eventually come around that a third party might be preferable after all.

    Now, maybe this is just a patented Trump maximal-opening negotiating gambit. But if not, if he’s serious, conservatives have to ask themselves: If it’s going to be a train-wreck anyway, why go to all the bother of starting a new party when they could still just Rules-Committee Trump out of the one they’ve already got?

    1. This is just a test to see who will have control of the party. It is not unusual for the Presidential candidate for the party to set the party and planks. Ryan just got his Speaker position and wants that power. As much as I’m not for Trump in the primary; I think Ryan is in the wrong here. He demands loyalty but offers nothing in return. Throw in the omnibus, and Ryan has lost clout. Trump’s mistake is thinking Palin is a good mouthpiece on this.

  3. The third-party thing, if it occurs, would be strictly a tactical Hail Mary play. The idea would be to get on the ballot in states where conservatives could make a better showing than either Trump or Clinton. Utah and Texas are probably the leading such possibilities and Texas has the second largest lode of Electoral College votes.

    Ballot access rules in the desirable states might make such a plan unworkable this late in the process. If this hurdle is surmountable, though, the conservative candidate, whoever it would be, might keep both Trump and Clinton from getting an Electoral College majority. The contest would go to the House, in that case, and neither Trump nor Clinton could reasonably expect to win there.

    Given that Clinton has huge weaknesses in some places that used to be reliably Democrat (West Virginia) or Democrat-leaning swing states (Pennsylvania), Trump might credibly keep Clinton from an Electoral College majority and the putative conservative third-party candidate might do the same for him.

    It’d be a heck of a dice roll, but there are a lot of Republicans who seem as though they might be up for such a project. Are there enough, in enough winnable states? Damfino.

    Interesting times.

    1. As you say, a conservative third-party bid aimed at actually winning would be a very long shot, one that would depend centrally on something hugely unlikely: That Trump actually could steal enough of the currently marginal-Dem states. (As someone pointed out recently, there are women living in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Also worth mentioning, all the dead people voting Dem in Detroit and Philadelphia.)

      My suspicion is that if Trump keeps up his current grenade-in-the-hot-tub approach to unifying the party, conservatives may conclude that hijacking their party right back via the Rules Committee is less risky than either accepting Trump or running third party.

      Who might they nominate then? I’d lean toward Rick Perry – conservative, with large-state executive experience and a track record of economic success in Texas, and frankly a far more steady reassuring persona than the alternatives. My suspicion is that after this last year, “steady” and “reassuring” would get a lot of votes this fall.

      Interesting times, indeed!

      1. Yeah, there are women living in Pennsylvania. And more than a few of them are married to coal miners and other people who make their livings in the energy industry, like frackers and people who benefit directly from fracking. Hillary hasn’t just declared war on coal miners, she’s also out to ban fracking. That’s going to cost her in places that used to be Democrat slam-dunks. The outcome of this election is hardly a foregone conclusion for anyone. To the extent the Dems think they’ve already got things in the bag, they’re likely to get blindsided.

    2. My first reaction was “No!”

      My second was “Well, who would they run? Ryan?” As I’ve said here before, I’m willing to vote for Trump. I don’t like Ryan much, but I will admit he looks to me to be a better choice.

    3. National Review and some other conservative sites have run articles backing similar plans. The most amusing was the idea of having Romney win Utah, and only Utah, to throw the election to the House. As if anyone can not only predict the outcome of the election at this point, and get it right down to a state, but that the House would somehow do something as insane as picking someone who didn’t even run.

      I pointed out that if they get it to the House, the House could simply violate some rules, thus creating a Supreme Court case. Then the court could pick George W Bush because the 22nd Amendment only prohibits a person from being elected to a third term; it says nothing about being appointed or assuming the office as part of succession rules. But if we’re going to engineer a victory for GW Bush, why not go all the way? They could appoint Reagan again. Sure, he’s dead, but that’s just a minor speed-bump. We still have his DNA – plus animatronics and CGI. A cyborg clone of Reagan is the obvious path forward.

      Failing that, I say we go with Jennie Eisenhower, who was created by combining the DNA of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, or at least cross her genes with one of Reagan’s kids to create a more perfect conservative candidate for the 2048 election.

      Meanwhile, in the real world, the Republican party couldn’t come up with a politician that could beat a carnival barker in a political debate.

      1. I have to admit, the have-Romney-win-Utah thing was even more of a stretch than any of the full third-party scenarios.

        Counter-hijacking the Republican party, on the other hand, has been off the table not because the Rules Committee couldn’t do it – it clearly can – but because it looked like a cure worse than the disease.

        This may well change over the next month or two.

        Keep in mind, Hillary couldn’t beat the average carnival barker in a political debate either. “Better than Trump or Hillary” is not a high bar to clear.

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