Tuesday Open Thread [11.24.15]

IOWA—CBS News/YouGov: Clinton 50, Sanders 44, O’Malley 5
NEW HAMPSHIRE—CBS News/YouGov: Sanders 52, Clinton 45, O’Malley 3
SOUTH CAROLINA—CBS News/YouGov: Clinton 72, Sanders 25, O’Malley 2

IOWA—Quinnipiac: Trump 25, Cruz 23, Carson 18, Rubio 13, Paul 5, Bush 4, Fiorina 3, Huckabee 2, Christie 2, Santorum 2, Kasich 1

Cruz is going to win Iowa, then watch out.

“Republican elites are panicky about the durable dominance of Trump (and to a lesser extent Ben Carson) in the presidential race. They are right to worry, but I don’t feel much sympathy. Trump is a problem of their own creation,” Dana Millbank writes.

“Trump gets ever more base in his bigotry — and yet, with few and intermittent exceptions, rival candidates, party leaders and GOP lawmakers decline to call him out. So he continues to rise, benefiting from tacit acceptance of his intolerance.”

“For months — years, really — Republicans have averted their gaze from Trump’s attacks on women, Hispanics and immigrants. Now the racism becomes more overt — and still, he goes unchallenged.”

Gerald Seib: “A quick look back at American history also shows the phenomenon is neither unprecedented nor inexplicable.”

Donald Trump told GQ that it is extremely unlikely he would use nuclear weapons as president. Said Trump: “I wouldn’t be nuking anybody. I will have a military that’s so strong and powerful, and so respected, we’re not gonna have to nuke anybody.” He added: “It is highly, highly, highly, highly unlikely that I would ever be using them.” That is not enough highlys for me. That fact that he thought about it and imagined a situation where he would use them is disqualifying.

Donald Trump “has, over the last few days, been road-testing a new criticism of Hillary Clinton — that she is too low-energy to be president,” the New York Times reports.

Said Trump: “Somebody like Jeb, and others that are running against me — and by the way, Hillary is another one. I mean, Hillary is a person who doesn’t have the strength or the stamina, in my opinion, to be president. She doesn’t have strength or stamina. She’s not a strong enough person to be president.”

I guess he forgets the 11 hour grilling she had in front of the Benghazi Committee. I doubt the Donald can calmly and intelligently answer questions for 11 hours straight. He can’t handle more than a 2 hour debate.

New York Times: “At rallies these days, Mrs. Clinton criticizes the Republican presidential candidates for their economic policies (‘Our economy does better with a Democrat in the White House’); she knocks their foreign policy approaches and says their positions on immigration and women’s issues would set the country ‘backwards instead of forwards.’”

“What she does not do is mention her main Democratic primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont…. She is now acting as if she were no longer running against one rival, Mr. Sanders, but 14: the Republicans who are still preoccupied with cutting down one another.”

Benjy Sarlin: “Let’s not sugarcoat what’s going on. The GOP frontrunner is spreading hateful falsehoods about blacks and Muslims.” You are still sugarcoating it.

Trump is lying. And he is a racist. And he is a Nazi. The media must say all those things to his face and to their viewers repeatedly for now on, until such time as Donald Trump apologizes, withdraws or dies.

The great paradox: Americans hate government but want it to do alot, and are quite satisfied with what it is doing generally. Pew Research surveyed 35,071 Americans between June and September of 2014 and compiled information about their religious and political beliefs. And they found out a lot, which will cover in full, but first:

Notice that a majority of the American public supports the government playing a major role in a wide range of areas and issues. And when asked about whether or not the government is doing a good job in each of those areas (rather than the more general question about overall trust in government), the ratings are relatively high. Of course there are some differences on how Democrats and Republicans rate government performance in these areas. Here’s what Pew found.

One of Pew’s findings was that white Christians no longer constitute a majority in this country. That is why the GOP is freaking the fuck out.

The New York Times:

In the Republican field, Mr. Trump has distinguished himself as fastest to dive to the bottom. If it’s a lie too vile to utter aloud, count on Mr. Trump to say it, often. It wins him airtime, and retweets through the roof.

This phenomenon is in fact nothing new. Politicians targeting minorities, foreigners or women have always existed in the culture. And every generation or so, at least one demagogue surfaces to fan those flames. […]

This isn’t about shutting off Mr. Trump’s bullhorn. His right to spew nonsense is protected by the Constitution, but the public doesn’t need to swallow it. History teaches that failing to hold a demagogue to account is a dangerous act. It’s no easy task for journalists to interrupt Mr. Trump with the facts, but it’s an important one.

The media has utterly failed in its job.

The Washington Post:

These are not random errors. All of them appeal to the basest instincts in supporters; they reinforce fears and prejudices. All of them, Mr. Trump knows by now even if he did not know when he first stated them, are false, but he does not care. The amplification of the lies is accompanied by growing intolerance in his campaign, with Mr. Trump praising supporters for beating a protestor, crudely denigrating anyone who challenges him and penning reporters into designated zones so that they cannot speak with his followers. And all of this matches the brutality of his policies: mass deportation of longtime U.S. residents, torture of foreign detainees, expulsion even of refugees who are here legally.

The New Jersey Star-Ledger:

Donald Trump must apologize to Muslim Americans and to Jersey City for his untrue, divisive and reprehensible comments perpetuating an old rumor we thought had rightly died.

By repeating – and indeed embellishing – this hateful rumor, Trump once again ratchets up the ugliness in the current political climate.

Thousands and thousands of people in Jersey City did not cheer the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Period. End of story. There is no need to continue to “fact check” his words.

Ryan Cooper at The Week:

As of August, Trump had most of the ingredients for a fascist movement: the victim complex, the fervent nationalism, the obsession with national purity and cleansing purges, and the cult of personality. He was missing the organized violence, a left-wing challenge strong enough to push traditional conservative elites into his camp, support for wars of aggression, and a full-bore attack on democracy itself. He’s made much progress on all but the last one.