Tuesday Open Thread [4.8.14]

This New Yorker cover is awesome.

Caption this:

Looks like I was right yesterday when I said someone had flipped on Christie. I was just wrong on who had flipped. Instead of Kelly, it appears that David Wildstein has flipped.

“Bad news for Chris Christie — and very good news for the citizens of New Jersey: Esquire has learned from sources close to the Bridgegate investigation that David Wildstein, the former Port Authority operative who helped plan and execute the Great Fort Lee Clusterfk, is now cooperating with Paul Fishman, the federal prosecutor investigating the soon-to-be-ex-governor and his minions for criminal conduct. Fishman has also increased the number of investigators at work on the case, and has begun presenting evidence and witnesses to a grand jury in Newark.”

Jeb Bush is getting a lot of pub recently. Hell, even he is speaking about illegal immigration being an act of love rather than a crime, which should eliminate him as a contender for the GOP nomination. But establishment types are talking him up because he is all they have right now. Christie is gone (see above). The rest of the bland midwestern governors stand no chance against Hillary, and that is assuming they all win reelection (and some of them won’t). So who is left besides Ted Cruz and Rand Paul? Jeb Bush. But don’t get your tickets for Clinton v. Bush II: The Sequel just yet. Ben Smith:

“The notion that Jeb Bush is going to be the Republican presidential nominee is a fantasy nourished by the people who used to run the Republican Party. Bush has been out of a game that changed radically during the 12 years(!) since he last ran for office. He missed the transformation of his brother from Republican savior to squish; the rise of the tea party; the molding of his peer Mitt Romney into a movement conservative; and the ascendancy of a new generation of politicians — Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, among them — who have been fully shaped by and trained in that new dynamic. Those men occasionally, carefully, respectfully break with the movement. Scorning today’s Republican Party is, by contrast, the core of Jeb’s political identity.”

The GOP nominee will be Rand Paul.

KENTUCKY–US SENATE–Public Policy Polling: Alison Lundergran Grimes (D) 45, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) 44, with another 12% still undecided.

MAINE–GOVERNOR–A new Public Policy Polling: Mike Michaud (D) 44, Gov. Paul LePage (R) 37, Eliot Cutler (I) 14.

FLORIDA–GOVERNOR–Sunshine State News: Gov. Rick Scott (R) 45, Charlie Crist (D) 44

FLORIDA–GOVERNOR–Public Policy Polling: Crist (D) 49, Scott (R) 41