The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Michael Wolraich's picture

    Mr. Robot

    By Michael Wolraich on Sat, 02/06/2016 - 11:55pm | Politics

    You know who I'm talking about. At first, I thought I was experiencing a deja vu. My wife thought there was a technical glitch. After the third repetition, she became convinced that he was suffering from a neurological condition. I just started laughing.

    This was was Rubio's Howard Dean scream. Not just because the performance was cringe-inducing and is destined to be endlessly rehearsed and enhanced on YouTube but because it cemented the perception that he's an automaton.

    He will survive the primary, and his campaign may carry on for some time, but in my opinion, Rubio is no longer a contender.

    And that blows the race wide open. Bush, Kasich, and Christie--who creamed Rubio tonight--are back in contention for the establishment vote, while Trump and Cruz duke it out for the insurgents. This contest will go all the way to convention.

     

     

    Topics: 
    Politics

    Comments

    It's Christie and Kasich, if only based on tonight's Establishment™ contenders, but they still pale against Trump. Cruz? Somewhere in between, I'd guess, though flailing among the voters in states to come that consider him creepily unelectable. Bush - in spite of recent debate successes - is gone.

    Who are the others again?


    by barefooted on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 12:33am

    IMOP, Christie finished Rubio, but he didn't do himself any good.  He has WAY too many problems of his own. Yes, he probably mortally wounded Rubio, but he really just pushed him aside for others. If Rubio isn't dead after this, Christie will finish him off next time.  It still won't help Christie, however, because he is crooked and EVERYONE knows it.  


    by CVille Dem on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 6:49pm

    That convention will be a demolition derby---"There can be but one...".

     

    PS The Rubio campaign would prefer that robot analogies reference Johnny Five, the far cuter and more anthropomorphic exemplar


    by jollyroger on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 1:05am

    No disassemble!


    by Michael Wolraich on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 1:16am

    Don't you think you're exaggerating a bit? Let's dispel once and for all with this fiction that Marco Rubio doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. Rubio came up with the four most remembered line in the debate. The three most remembered line in a two minute period. I think it wins the nomination for him.


    by ocean-kat on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 1:47am

    "Another county heard from..."


    by jollyroger on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 1:48am

    I'm also surprised you didn't call out Cristy for his terrible night. He couldn't even get the cliche right. Should have been "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, heh heh..... Can't get fooled again!"


    by ocean-kat on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 6:22am

    Well, let me say a couple of things. First of all, ocean-kat said earlier on that Senator Rubio knows exactly what he’s doing, like we have this senator that really knows. I disagree, respectfully, with ocean-kat. I think we have a senator who, as a senator, is totally incompetent, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

    (APPLAUSE)

    I think he has no idea what he’s doing. And our country is going to hell. So, I just want to say, we disagree on that. Is that okay?


    by Michael Wolraich on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 7:57am

    You insult automatons everywhere. Hurtful words. This will be the year of the drone. Tired of hearing "these are not the drones you're looking for". Finally yes, Mark IV RoboIO is the Cube Matrix, the Ru-Brick, the model we've been waiting for. Ave Caesar. Drone on - get it on, bang a tron. 


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 11:24am

    Bush, Kasich, and Christie

     

    Actually, I thought the strongest establishment contender to emerge from the last few days of coverage, (90 year old age notwithstanding) was Barbara (if you can get past the Katrina Superdome atrocity)

     

     


    by jollyroger on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 1:58am

    Another radical feminist plays the gender card


    by Michael Wolraich on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 8:02am

    Lookin' good, Bea Arthur!


    by Michael Maiello on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 11:30am

    90!!


    by jollyroger on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 1:26pm

    Well, when mothers make a point of saying how nice their children are, I always believe them.

    Except when they have already one spawn that started the country down a worm-hole.  And when that same mother is a evil spawn of satan herself. 

    But seriously, why shouldn't we believe her?  Oh.  Never mind. 


    by CVille Dem on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 7:14pm

    Rubio is empty headed.  He has been memorizing talking points from the beginning of his political career. When he runs out of them, he just repeats them.  I have watched this go on since the late 1990's.  He is a real puppet of the first order and makes a living doing it. 

    I do think he is at the end of his road career wise.  He would not of survived a second state wide election in Florida. A little more exposure and his numbers in the polls will flat line. 


    by trkingmomoe on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 5:00pm

    A friend of mine works with some wealthy Republican donors--California moderates, not Koch brother conservatives. He told me that they had met with Rubio and were unimpressed, said he was a lightweight, no substance.

    So I knew that, but I still bought into the hype of the "political natural" who could appeal to both insurgents and establishment. After that last debate in Iowa and his momentum there, I started to worry that his campaign was finally taking off. Fortunately, the lack of substance finally came out into the open for all to see.

    He was really the GOP's only hope to avoid a major schism. Now, I don't see how this ends well for them.


    by Michael Wolraich on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 5:41pm

    They may have to go with Kasich.  He's the only one to keep his powder dry.  So far.


    by Ramona on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 5:43pm

    Yeah. This mess is going on until Cleveland. And I would like to see a brokered Republican convention but, as the Mayor says in Animal House, "I don't want no drunken riot in my town."

    The post-Iowa spin was that the Republicans were doing well because conditions met one of their few paths out of their primary mess. (Trump didn't win, so can't collect trifecta of first three victories and become insurmountable; Rubio was identified as potential establishment standard bearer.) But the same result also matched the path the continuing chaos: Trump still had a chance to rebound, and Rubio might have finished behind another establishment type in New Hampshire. If Trump won, and Rubio finished fourth or lower in New Hampshire, then there was no predicting

    Now they're really on the endless Game-of-Thrones election path. Trump is now very likely to win New Hampshire (because the others have enough to do competing for second), and Rubio screwing up on the stump keeps the field wide open, both because Kasich and/or Bush might actually beat him in New Hampshire and because he just made it impossible for insiders to keep talking up his campaign acumen.

    The most chaos-inducing result for the Republicans in New Hampshire probably goes 1. Trump 2. Kasich 3. Bush 4. Rubio 5. Cruz. In that situation, and in a few other permutations close to that, all five of them have enough reason not to drop out of the race.

    The real problem for the Republicans is that all of their candidates really, really stink. And as the field narrows down, each of them gets more scrutiny. Sixteen crappy unpopular candidates is embarrassing. Eight crappy, unpopular candidates is actually an even bigger problem. Pretty soon they will be down to between three and five terrible, trashcan-fire-bad candidates, and that's when they realize that none of them is really workable.

    But the worst-case scenario isn't just one of these guys getting the nomination. Some of these clowns are capable, if they actually became President, of doing irreparable damage to the Republican Party.

     


    by Doctor Cleveland on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 9:56pm

    Eight crappy, unpopular candidates

     

    here they are:


    by jollyroger on Sun, 02/07/2016 - 10:18pm

    I turned it on, and promptly fell asleep. :( Darn is must've been a good watch!


    by tmccarthy0 on Mon, 02/08/2016 - 9:20am

    For those who ditched flash or don't have the stomach to watch Rubio's 'I will make America blah blah blah...again (like our last dumbass Republican Prez... Dubya..)' lying face, these are his actual words in contemporaneous order in his exchange with Christie:

    Rubio :  And let's dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. Barack Obama is undertaking a systematic effort to change this country, to make America more like the rest of the world.

    Rubio:  But I would add this. Let's dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. He is trying to change this country. He wants America to become more like the rest of the world. We don't want to be like the rest of the world, we want to be the United States of America. And when I'm elected president, this will become once again, the single greatest nation in the history of the world, not the disaster Barack Obama has imposed upon us........

    Rubio: Here's the bottom line. This notion that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing is just not true. He knows exactly what he's doing.

    Rubio:  .....We are not facing a president that doesn't know what he's doing. He knows what he is doing. That's why he's done the things he's done.

    CHRISTIE: There it is. There it is. The memorized 25-second speech. There it is, everybody.

    Particularly like the "That's why he's done the things he's done.", A Rubio add on that must have been triggered by a kernel panic in his embed code......


    by NCD on Mon, 02/08/2016 - 1:23pm

    I predicted all of this awhile ago.

    http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/metamorphosis-terrorism-19686

    This Cuban Anchor Baby would awaken someday and discover that he was a bug!

    Only this bug does not wish to hide his new identity!

    (At least Marco is not the son of a backer of Fidel!

     


    by Richard Day on Mon, 02/08/2016 - 2:28pm