Slow News Days = IP Expansion

Have you ever noticed that on the days where there is no real news, the crap stuff seeps in more readily? This is not to say that on a good news day there is quality stuff out there, but when the NSA is poking into our business, at least the big three plus the cable news nets pay a modicum of attention to issues that… I don’t know… matter.  

And speaking of the NSA, just a quick story: When my husband deployed to Afghanistan in 2001 I was left behind on Fort Drum, the Army’s 10^th Mountain Division (Climb to Glory!). Since this was the very first “real world” deployment in a long time, even experienced Army wives didn’t know what to do and I was far from qualified to understand anything. I pretty much just stood there and looked confused. Of the precious few pieces of advice I was given: The mail will be slow, “JAG” was not just a bad TV show and you needed them to fill out paperwork, and your phone calls would be monitored. Thus, when we were talking 14 times a day, my sister and I got into the habit of saying “hi” to those we referred to as the ‘men on the phone.’ Sometimes we gave them recipes because we’re friendly like that. So this NSA stuff? Sort of old hat. Hello again, my men-on-the-phone friends! Hope you liked that Yankee Pot Roast recipe we spoke about a decade ago. Somebody remind me to add a salutation now in my outgoing e-mails to the nice people at Verizon and at Fort Meade. Moni and I have a killer salmon recipe for you! Perhaps a poor choice of words….

Now back to the Invisible Primary.

Last week seemed to be all about my gal Hillary, whose activities seemed to be continuously and unimaginatively described as: “Fueling speculation of a 2016 run.”  She rather coquettishly leapt ontoTwitter, describing herself as “wife, mom, lawyer, women & kids advocate, FLOAR, FLOTUS, US Senator, SecState, author, dog owner, hair icon, pantsuit aficionado, glass ceiling cracker, TBD…” and set the Twitter-sphere afire with loads of new followers jumping onto the bandwagon with alarming alacrity. She also spoke at the newly re-named “Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation” where she talked about early childhood education, always a decent issue upon which to campaign (the children is learning).  So she’s getting good press, but all readers of this blog know that the media spotlights are hot things and coverage is capricious. Thus, the news that HRC is slipping a bit in the polls was both newsworthy and unsurprising at the same time.  Ah, media attention: You fickle, fickle lady. The reason for the slip in the polls concerns, of course, the Benghazi affair which conservatives have locked onto like… conservatives onto the Whitewater Affair circa 1993. Huh. Anyhoo, a no less vaunted publication than Commentary has seized this moment to pile on and released this little nugget of joy about Hillary’s piss-poor performance at State, alleging not only did she cock up Benghazi, but under her watch the whole ambassadorial corps was riddled with sex scandals, a different type of cock up if you ask me (zing!). Suffice it to say, Hillary takes the media lead this week in our Invisible Primary, if only because of her seemingly road-block coverage of her Facebook-style “selfie” pictures. Oh, and by the way FLOAR stands for First Lady of Arkansas, so get your head out of the gutter.

Moving on to another relative of another past-POTUS (actually, two past POTUSES. POTI?), a warm welcome back to the IP to Jeb Bush, who spoke last week to the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual bacchanal (just kidding!) in Washington. Jeb, trying to get in front on this immigration issue, said the following: “Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population. Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity.” This truly bizarre statement brought out the funny from (never thought I’d say this) Sarah Palin, who remarked to the conference the next day: “I think it’s kind of dangerous territory . . . to want to debate this over one race’s fertility rate over another. And I say this as someone who’s kind of fertile herself.” Basically, Chris Cillizza in the WaPo had a nice piece here about the establishment vs. hard right kerfuffle in the GOP that is worth perusing if you haven’t already. This out-in-front strategy of Jeb’s is fodder for “will he or won’t he” 2016 speculation, but since his mom put the kibosh on it we can move along…

… to Chris Christie, who remains a media darling thanks to a crap-ton of press  he has garnered following the death of NJ Sen. Frank Lautenberg. Calling a special election for October brought mixed reviews, but the Governor barreled through to “slow jam” the news with Jimmy Fallon, share an acclamatory stage with Bill Clinton, and then watch as his Gallup poll numbers rise to make him the most popular IP 2016 contender of the moment. Christie is on top right now as he walks towards his own 2013 gubernatorial re-election bid. He’s stealing a play from Hillary herself from the time that she ran for her Senate re-election in 2006: Raise a truck-load of money, spend bupkis, and keep the campaign cash in your war chest. You know. Just in case another election just happens to come your way. Maybe in 2016?

Oh, who knows. Wait. I know someone who might: Hey, NSA! What do you think?

OK, OK. Go back to keeping us safe for democracy or whatever. Really: I love your work. Have you lost weight? Hope you enjoyed that Yankee Pot Roast.

Big hugs to the men on the phone,

Ali

Heritage, CPAC, and Stolen Underwear

            One of my favorite friends from college was Scott. He was (and likely remains) outrageously funny, smart, and sarcastic, and we lived in the same dorm for two years running. Our second year, having abandoned his loutish roommate, he moved all of his belongings into our second floor lounge and squatted there until the custodians locked him out of the room, but that’s a totally different story for another day. Scott came to St. Lawrence University from the Deerfield Academy boarding school, a tradition-rich WASP haven in New England whose motto is “Be worthy of your heritage.” We got several weeks into our first semester at SLU when Scott copped to the fact that he couldn’t do laundry, so we tromped downstairs to the basement of Reber Hall (rut roh!) where I meticulously explained the nuances of Tide and bleach. He had a look on his face that basically said: Isn’t this what we pay people to do? but I endeavored on. I was expounding on an astonishingly wide variety of underwear folding techniques when I stumbled upon a pair of his boxers that had the Deerfield motto and crest on the front, and on the tush was written: “Where the hottest party is the Grand Old Party.” 

            So I stole Scott’s underwear.

            Look, I was a Government major from DC, Reagan was in office, and this just killed me. All of my tee shirts and printed clothing read leftie things like: “Experts agree! Meese is a pig!” so finding something that was so gung-ho Republican was both totally different and really funny. I still have the boxers, and take them out when I’m feeling blue and need a laugh. This may be one of those boxer weeks, actually.

            Anywho, I was reminded of Scott’s underwear after my star-student Antonio sent me this cartoon about the future of the GOP in regards to the Invisible Primary. The Republican Party may very well remain the hottest at Deerfield but they seem to be losing their way off-campus, in no small part to their steadfast devotion to their own heritage. Since the cartoon references yet another Bush (that would be Jeb), we will begin with him and then get to the other members of the Sonnenkinder (that one’s for you Adam Rapp!).  

            We’ve heard a whole bunch from Jeb Bush lately, thanks to the release of his book “Immigration Wars” and the ensuing press tour that landed him on the Sunday morning chat shows. Since it seems fairly straight-forward that one I.P. technique is to write a policy book and hawk it to hell, Jeb was asked repeatedly about his 2016 prospects which brought this rejoinder to David Gregory of NBC: “Man, you guys are crack addicts. You really are obsessed with all this politics.” Umm… Jeb? Did you miss the briefing about what the Sunday morning shows are about? Because I have it filed away on my computer in my “patently obvious” file, right next to the documents titled “Congressmen want to be re-elected” and “Chocolate is delicious!” Back to his book, which is on immigration: His TV sales pitch led to a slew of headlines about whether or not his new immigration stand makes him more in-line with the GOP, a flip-flopper, or a back peddler. But this really was subtext for the big question about his 2016 intentions, and he added fuel to the fire by saying he would not rule anything out. Crack addicts indeed.

            Moving on to CPAC, since the conservatives arrive in DC this week for their annual bacchanal, the conference program is out and the speaking times have been listed by The Atlantic right here. Sen. Ted Cruz gets to speak for the longest amount of time (33 minutes) and after that, my girl Sarah Palin is allowed 16 minutes. Trump, Jindal, Paul, Perry, Rubio, Walker and Ryan each get just over 10 minutes each. I’m not sure if this means too much, but it does give insight to who the cool kids are on the right wing of the GOP. And only at CPAC does Donald Trump count as “cool.”And... Sarah Palin gets more time than the rest of those folks? Really? Moving on....

            Speaking of Sen. Rand Paul, his filibuster last week (the 9^th longest in history, apparently) garnered much I.P. attention, not only because he kept the floor for so long but also because he got great press because of it. Even though a few Republican stalwarts (Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham most notably) criticized the effort as “ridiculous,” Paul gained a ton of support from the likes of House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and GOP strategist Steve Schmidt among others. We already knew that Paul the Junior has his eye on the 2016 prize and would lean forward into any spotlight, but as my favorite Uncle, Larry the Libertarian, notes: What made this special was the boost that Paul got from social media. According to the WaPo, Twitter was on fire with more than a million Tweets. Nicely noted, Uncle! It was this social media attention that brought what our marvelous Nicholas noted to be even more Senate attention from another I.P. favorite, Marco Rubio. Much jockeying for attention, Invisible Primary candidates! Well played!

And so now we double back to the conundrum facing the Grand Old Party: Being worthy of your heritage is not the same as being accessible to the electorate. That seems to be the biggest problem facing the Republicans as they march towards 2016. As Bill O’Reilly noted on Election Night (in terms far more crass than this) you can no longer win an election with just the WASP establishment behind you. You can bet your Gin & Tonics that the lack of ethnic diversity will be problematic for a party that is struggling to re-define itself, since Rubio and Jindal are the two clear exceptions to the white-guy rule seen in our I.P. front runners. But that said, into this void comes a bit of intellectual diversity where Paul in particular doubles-down on the libertarian strain of conservatism. We see this attention to the far right in the CPAC run-down, which (as noted) very specifically excludes a more moderate Chris Christie. Don’t yell at me – I know the “C” stands for “Conservative,” but still. The right wing of the Republican Party is hoping to add a little heat to the GOP.

Long live the Deerfield boxers.