How panicked are mainstream Republicans that there's a real possibility Donald Trump (R-Trump Towers) might actually get the GOP nomination for President of the United States? Mike Murphy is a highly-regarded Republican operative, and the other day he gave an interview to Bloomberg Politics on the subject.
"He's dead politically," Murphy said. "He'll never be president of the United States, ever." Harsh words by a notable Republican about their leading candidate for president. But that's the very point that he wanted to address. And so he continued -- "By definition I don't think you can be a front-runner if you're totally unelectable. I think there's an a priori logic problem in that," And I think that that's an utterly insane comment to make. Logic so twisted that it's not a priori in the slightest, but something a pretzel would reject for being too convoluted. Oh. I forget to mention one thing. While Mike Murphy is trying to re-define language until "up" is "down, it's worth noting that in his day job, he's the head of a pro-Jeb! Bush super PAC Right to Rise USA. So, he might be a wee bit biased in his defining moment. And showing his concern. The reality, of course, is that a front-runner is not someone who is "totally electable." By simple, basic definition, a front-runner is someone who is...well, in front. Being a front-runner doesn't mean you have to win every single election in the future, or even the next election up the ladder. It means you're leading the race of the election you're in. And right now, the race is to get the Republican nomination for president. Because Republicans are pretty much the only ones who can vote in these Republican primaries. Unlike the general election when you have pesky opponents from another party. In 1964, Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) didn't stand a chance of being elected president. He not only was running against a sitting-president who was carrying on the legacy of his predecessor, a martyred president, but he was so far-right reactionary as to be totally out of step with the country. And so he got swamped in the general election in one of the biggest landslides in American history. Is Mike Murphy suggesting that during the Republican primaries, Barry Goldwater wasn't the front-runner?? Or that when Sen. Goldwater actually got the GOP nomination, he wasn't at that moment the party's front-runner? Because, after all, by Mr. Murphy's very own a priori logic, Barry Goldwater was unelectable and therefore couldn't be a front-runner. But if Mr. Goldwater was unelectable and therefore not the front-runner, who on earth was???!! I don't think when it comes time to go into a voting booth and cast a ballot that, in the end, Donald Trump will get the Republican nomination for president. Having said that, I'm no longer saying that there is no way he'll get it. There is a way. He could get the nomination. And that way is because the rest of the candidates at this point are so profoundly weak that there is a challenge for anyone to overtake him. I think that ultimately someone will -- though at this point it appears like that can only be Jeb! Bush or Marco Rubio, and both are seriously flawed. (And no, it won't be Dr. Ben Carson. I will say that there's no way he can get the nomination) -- but someone else getting the nomination is not remotely a guarantee. But whether or not someone else does get the GOP nomination, with all due respect to the logic of Mike Murphy, Donald Trump not only is the Republican front-runner...he has been the front-runner for the past three months, and will likely continue to be in the foreseeable future. Unless Dr. Ben Carson, who right now is only 5 points behind in the latest CNN poll, overtakes him. At which point, the good doctor will be the Republican front-runner. Regardless of what Mike Murphy and his logic try to tell you.
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A disappointing end to a stunningly wonderful, unexpected year, finishing with 97 wins and the 3rd best record in all of baseball. And then the post-season. Okay, 107 years now without a World Series, but...hey, wait 'till next year. Here's huge Chicago Cubs fan Eddie Vedder on the day earlier this year when Hall of Famer Ernie Banks passed away, reminiscing briefly about being on stage with Ernie two years ago at Wrigley Field for a Pearl Jam concert, and then singing the wonderful song he wrote about his team, "Someday We'll Go All the Way." There is a understandable outrage in Israel over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu giving a speech Tuesday night and saying that Hitler only wanted to expel Jews, but was convinced by the Mufti of Jerusalem to "burn them." Just not political opponents of Mr. Netanyahu, but historians and even some members of his own party -- and even German Chancellor Andrea Merkel -- have lambasted the Prime Minister for rewriting the reality of history. Like the fact that Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf" three years before meeting with the Mufti Husseini. Or that 33,771 Jews were killed at Babi Yar months before Hitler and the Mufti met. Or that a million Jews had already been killed by the time the two met.
Most interpretation of Netanyahu's speech is that he was trying to use the Holocaust as a way to inflame anger at the Palestineans, since the Mufti was a Palestinean leader and considered by some a founder of the state. A spokesman for German chancellor, Angela Merkel, “All Germans know the history of the murderous race mania of the Nazis that led to the break with civilization that was the Holocaust,” Steffen Seibert said. “I see no reason to change our view of history in any way. We know that responsibility for this crime against humanity is German and very much our own.” Netanyahu has tried to backtrack his statement a bit, by trying to explain what he was supposedly trying to say, not to exonerate Hitler, but point out the support and importance of the Mufti. But it's hard to misinterpret the Prime Minister's words when they say, clear -- "Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jew." Yeah, the guy just wanted to expel them, that's all. Perhaps include a sack lunch and a gift certificate for use in some other country. And this is the man, Benjamin Netanyahu, who the Republican Party invited to address Congress over the objections of White House. The man who conservatives listen to for advice on the Middle East. Here are several articles with reactions within Israel and elsewhere. This is from the Israeli paper, Haaretz. Click here for an article in The Guardian from London. And this is from the New York Times. We wait and see how the continuing reaction within Israel effects politics within that country and Mr. Netanyahu's future. Perhaps not at all. Perhaps significantly. Whether you think Edward Snowden is a hero or traitor, you're likely to be amused by this interview. It came on Headline News Network when host Yasmin Vossoughian has guest Jon Hendren on to discuss whether Mr. Snowden should be allowed on Twitter or blocked. This is a lesson in remembering to pay attention to what your guest is saying, since in today's parlance, Ms. Vossoughian gets trolled. Big time. Now, it's possible that she's just so taken aback by him seemingly going off the rails that she made the snap decision to play it cool and let things pass. It's possible, too, that she understood that he's speaking metaphorically, in his description of Edward Snowden's plight compared to a fictional movie character, also named "Edward S." Maybe, too, she simply zoned out hearing another "Edward S." name, though Jon Hendren only references that once. The rest of the time he's just being...er, "descriptive." More likely though, since there's absolutely nothing in her reaction -- not a body twitch or head shake or blink, let alone convulsion -- to show that she grasps that anything abnormal is being said that she's listening to someone in the control booth in her earpiece, or is just totally focused looking for her next question and not remotely listening. That's because, as metaphoric as Mr. Hendren may be, it's pretty clear that he knows he's intentionally going off into the ozone with his references and pushing the concept of metaphors into another level of the ether. I have a certain sympathy for an interviewer trying to listen to a voice in her earpiece (if that's what happened) or trying to focus on the next question, having once been a similar situation. But only a "certain" sympathy, since listening to both the control booth and guest is part of the job. And having your questions prepared ahead of time is basic Journalism 101. (In my situation, I had prepared questions and asked them all, at which point I opened the floor to the audience of reporters and expected them to ask some follow-ups...but not one person did. So, I was stuck with keeping the interview going and nothing left to ask, struggling to pay attention to the guest, while all the while trying desperately to think of a next question.) What I have less sympathy for is when a purported journalist repeatedly keeps asking supposedly probing questions based on what "some people say." That's okay in a very limited scope, but for the most part -- especially when you keep doing it -- you should reference who at least some of those "some people" are. After all, "some people say" we should wear aluminum foil hats to protect us from Martian rays attacking us. Who the "some people" are is important. "Some people" by itself, over and over, isn't. And when done enough, it sort of suggests you haven't done your homework and don't have a very big clue what you're talking about. Which, alas, sort of comes clear as this interview progresses. Of course, a larger question is why Jon Hendren is on HNN to discuss Edward Snowden in the first place is anybody's guest. He's a known figure on "Weird Twitter" and has also been described as a "Twitter comedian," which is hardly a small subset of the public, nor one generally considered to be a qualification for government policy expertise. Then again, given that Jon Hendren's Twitter name is "@fart," I'd think that should raise red flags from the moment you contacted him to appear, even ignoring his status on "Weird Twitter." What could possibly go wrong with that? Well, here's what could -- I've been posting videos of some made-for-TV musicals from back in the 1950s and 1960s, and here's one with a quite impressive pedigree. It's from 1966, called Evening Primrose, and has a score written by none other than Stephen Sondheim. And it stars...Anthony Perkins. While somewhat of a surprise, this actually wasn't Perkins' first attempt at a musical -- he'd previously starred on Broadway in Greenwillow, written by Frank Loesser, which I've posted video from. Beyond just these two, though, the show if further intriguing by having its book by James Goldman, who wrote the play (and movie) The Lion in Winter, as well teaming up with Sondheim again a decade later for Follies. And co-starring opposite Anthony Perkins is Charmian Carr, who most people know from her movie performance the year before as 'Liesl' in the Oscar-winning movie of The Sound of Music. The story of Evening Primrose is decidedly offbeat, though "odd" might be a better word. A disillusioned man accidentally comes across a secret society of people who live in a department store and quickly falls in love with their leader's young maid, though unaware that there might be some sinister underpinnings of this secret world. Most notably that once you decide to become a part of it, you don't leave. This is the song that Perkins sings with Carr, "Take Me to the World." By the way, there's another bit of interesting history with this show. Seven years later, Perkins and Sondheim teamed up to write the screenplay for the mystery-thriller, The Last of Shiela in 1973. And I'm wondering if this production of Evening Primrose is where they met. Incidentally, the iMDB database shows that a remake of the movie is in development.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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