Tag Archives: John McCain

Well, I’ll be dipped …

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Dear old Dad had a saying he would use whenever he was mortified, surprised, confused or amazed.

“Well, I’ll be dipped in sesame seeds,” he would say.

Tonight, my dad is being dipped and covered in ’em. I don’t have any other way to describe the news out of South Carolina that TV celebrity/real estate mogul Donald J. Trump has rolled to another Republican Party presidential victory.

The fight is on at this moment for second place. The combatants are U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida.

I’ve admitted already, but it’s worth another admission, a confession, a mea culpa: I was wrong about Trump’s staying power. Many times along the way I thought he’d said something that would doom him.

It started with his denigration of Sen. John McCain’s status as a Vietnam War hero. “He’s a hero because he got captured,” Trump said. “I like people who aren’t captured, OK?”

There would be many other instances of profound crassness. None of them mattered in the eyes of those who continue to support this guy.

I am no longer going to make such predictions as they relate to Trump.

This campaign has become a case study in weirdness.

The insults keep piling up — right along with the victories this individual keeps winning.

He’s two-for-three at the moment. Cruz won the Iowa caucuses, barely. Trump rolled to victory in New Hampshire and appears to be rolling in South Carolina.

If the Republican National Committee still harbors any hope of stopping Trump, of denying him the party’s presidential nomination, my advice is simple and straightforward.

Y’all have to get real busy. Like right now!

Oh, and Dad? Wherever you are, I’m just as baffled as you might be.

 

What’s in a name?

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Social media provide a wonderful — but occasionally maddening — forum for passing around silly quips and observations.

This one came across my Facebook feed the other day.

It noted that President Obama’s critics have been fond of referring to him as “Barack Hussein Obama.” Yet one of those critics doesn’t get the same treatment by his foes who could refer to him as “Rafael Eduardo Cruz.”

To be fair, I don’t recall hearing Texas Republican U.S. senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz use the president’s full, given name when referring to him. Maybe he did. Whatever …

I have heard the president make plenty of fun of his own name.

During two appearances with Republican rivals at the Al Smith Dinner in New York City — which is a political ritual of sorts, bringing opponents together for a night of fun and bipartisan fellowship — Obama cracked jokes about his name.

In 2008, he said he got his name from “someone who never thought I’d run for president.” Referring to a line that Republican nominee U.S. Sen. John McCain had used in a debate with Sen. Obama, he joked, “Barack is actually Swahili for ‘that one.'”

In 2012, while running for re-election, the president noted something in common with his GOP foe, Mitt Romney. “We both have unusual names,” he said, noting that “Mitt” is Romney’s middle name. “I wish I could use my middle name,” the president quipped with feigned wistfulness, again to huge laughter.

What’s the connection between Obama and Cruz? They both have faced — and are facing — equally ridiculous questions about their eligibility to seek the presidency.

What’s the lesson here?

It might rest in that old saying about something being “sauce for the goose … and the gander.”

 

Lee Atwater’s home state: dirty tricks thrive there

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Lee Atwater has been dead for some time, but his legacy lives on.

The late Republican Party operative — a South Carolina native — was known as an aggressive campaigner. He was so aggressive, in fact, that many observers called him “dirty,” “mean-spirited,” “cheap.”

The GOP presidential dog-and-pony show is heading into the Palmetto State, where it appears to be quite likely that the nastiness that has punctuated the party primary campaign just might get whole lot nastier.

Oh, I remember some of the recent history relating to South Carolina.

Dirty tricks await the candidates

Perhaps the most memorable hatchet job occurred in 2000, when U.S. Sen. John McCain, fresh off his Republican primary victory in New Hampshire, ran into a dirty-trick buzzsaw.

Someone floated a bogus rumor that Cindy McCain — wife of the former Vietnam prisoner of war — had a “drug problem.” Then came another falsehood, that Sen. McCain had fathered an African-American child out of wedlock.

McCain blamed the dirty tricks on Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s campaign. It rankled McCain so badly that at one GOP debate that year, McCain told Bush to “take your hand off” the senator’s arm.

Lee Atwater was known as a tough-as-nails operative. He died of cancer in 1991. Wherever he is today, I’m quite certain he’d wish he could return to take part in what is likely to become a bloodbath.

It’s the South Carolina way.

So much for southern gentility.

 

Torture returns to the political debate arena

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It’s back. Torture has made its return as an issue being discussed by presidential candidates.

Donald J. Trump has dredged it from the has-been issue pile, saying something about how he would order the waterboarding of bad guys in order to get information from them.

Don’t do it, says someone who knows a thing or three about torture.

I prefer to stand with the expert on these things. That would be U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who lost the presidency in the 2008 campaign to fellow Sen. Barack Obama.

What’s a bit ironic, of course, is that McCain and Trump would be at loggerheads over this issue. Why the irony? You’ll recall that one of Trump’s initial insults was tossed in McCain’s direction when he said that the senator is a war hero only because he got captured by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War and that he (Trump) preferred people “who weren’t captured, OK?”

Here they are again. McCain has long opposed the use of waterboarding as an “enhanced interrogation” technique. He calls it torture, which he believes breaks faith with American principles.

What does McCain now about torture? More than most Americans ever will know, and certainly far more than Donald Trump knows about it.

McCain’s five-plus years as a captive after being shot down during the Vietnam War included many years of torture: beatings, solitary confinement and the communists’ various versions of “enhanced interrogation.”

When the senior senator from Arizona calls a particular act a form of torture, well, I am inclined to believe him.

I am doing so in this particular exchange.

He’s right as well to suggest that the information gleaned from waterboarding has been sketchy at best and has not provided nearly as much actionable intelligence as has been suggested.

Sen. McCain isn’t speaking as some soft-pedaling, squishy, politically correct liberal. He speaks as someone who’s been straight to hell and back.

 

So very wrong about Campaign ’16 . . . so far

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I’ve said it more times than I can remember, which is that I’m wrong far more frequently than I am right.

My political prognostication skill has been exposed for what it is: shaky . . . at best.

Thus, I am prepared to acknowledge how wrong I’ve been about the current campaign for the presidency. My wrongness tracks along both parties’ trails.

First, the Republicans.

Donald J. Trump’s candidacy has withstood the candidate’s own serious shortcomings as a presidential aspirant, let alone his actual ability to govern.

Never in a zillion years did I think he’d still be in this campaign — let alone leading the GOP gaggle of candidates — after the countless insults he has hurled along the way.

Sen. John McCain’s valor during the Vietnam War doesn’t make him a hero? The ridiculous back/forth with broadcast journalist Megyn Kelly during the first presidential debate? His assertion that he’ll build a wall along our southern border and force Mexico to pay for it? His revealing Sen. Lindsey Graham’s cell phone number? His proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States? His assertion that he witnessed “thousands of Muslims cheering” the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11?

OK, I’ve left some of ’em out.

Despite all that, this guy continues to lead the pack.

Anger among GOP voters? That’s what is moving this man forward? If that is the case, then the Republican Party “base” is lost its sanity.

During President Obama’s State of the Union speech, I tried to imagine Donald Trump standing at that lectern offering high-minded, soaring rhetoric designed to lay the groundwork for how he intends to govern. Imagine him as well standing on the steps of the U.S. Capitol next January offering his inaugural speech to the nation as its 45th president.

All I hear coming from this guy are blustering, blistering insults.

Is that really what we want in the next president of the United States? Our head of state? Our commander in chief?

Now for the Democrats.

I once thought Hillary Rodham Clinton’s nomination was a shoo-in. She had it locked up. Nothing, or no one, would derail the Hillary Express on its way to the nomination and to the White House.

Then came Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist with a campaign theme that has resonated with his party’s base. Break up the big banks, de-fang the Wall Street power brokers, spread the wealth around, lift up everyone’s wages and reduce the income gap between the very rich and the rest of the country.

Republicans have made a lot of hay over Benghazi, which has become a form of political shorthand that means: Clinton lied about what she knew about the attack on the U.S. consulate in that Libyan city. There’s a congressional select committee that’s still looking for something to torpedo Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, Sanders — the independent U.S. senator from Vermont — is drawing huge, enthusiastic crowds. He’s ahead by a good bit in New Hampshire, the site of the nation’s first primary vote and is now virtually tied with Clinton in Iowa, which is about to kick off the voting with its caucuses.

Do I believe Hillary Clinton will be denied the nomination? No. But it sure ain’t the coronation I thought it would be when this campaign began.

Let me add, too, that I do not believe Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. I have some faith — although it’s been hammered — that the Republican Party brass comprises reasonable, intelligent and sane men and women who understand the consequences of nominating someone whose main skill lies in his ability to insult anyone who disagrees with him.

I don’t like acknowledging how wrong I have been.

Still, I feel better now for saying so out loud.

 

Tough talk rises from GOP debate

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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said the following at the latest Republican Party presidential debate Thursday night.

Frankly, it’s a hoot.

“Mr. President, we’re not against you. We’re against your policies,” Christie said. “The American people have rejected your agenda and now you’re trying to go around it. That’s not right. It’s not constitutional. And we are going to kick your rear end out of the White House come this fall.”

This is the guy who told a constituent to “sit down and shut up!” when the constituent — for whom Christie works in New Jersey — had the temerity to issue a critical statement at a public event. I’m trying to imagine myself telling any of the bosses for whom I worked to “sit down and shut up!”

It’s the kind of rhetoric that seems to endear him to many within the GOP.

But the idea that the Republican presidential nominee, whoever he or she is, will kick the president’s “rear end out of the White House come this fall” misses a fundamental point.

Barack Obama isn’t on the ballot. The U.S. Constitution places term limits on him. The 22nd Amendment says a president can be elected twice to the office. That’s it. Two and out, man.

Barack Obama was elected in 2008, winning 365 electoral votes while capturing more than 10 million more popular votes than Republican nominee Sen. John McCain; he was re-elected in 2012 with 332 electoral votes, while defeating GOP nominee Mitt Romney by nearly 5 million popular votes. He needed 270 electoral votes to win both times. His Electoral College majorities in both elections were substantial.

So, have “the American people rejected” the president’s agenda?

Seems to me — and I’m just tossing this out from the Flyover Country peanut gallery — that the president’s agenda played pretty well in the past two presidential elections.

The president is going to leave the White House a year from now on his own terms. He isn’t going to get his rear end “kicked out” of the place.

However, the tough talk that Christie — not to mention the other GOP hopefuls who debated the other night — sounds good to those who want to hear it.

If only it were true.

 

Time to get back into the game

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That was a nice break from the presidential political campaign.

It’s now over.

High Plains Blogger has been pretty quiet for the past few weeks on the goings-on related to the Democratic and Republican campaigns for the White House. The intent was to stay quiet during the Christmas holiday. I had given thought to maintaining the moratorium through New Years Day. I admit it: I can’t do it.

So, I’ll be getting back in the game.

* * *

The Iowa caucuses are coming up, followed quickly by the New Hampshire primary.

Donald J. Trump continues to lead the GOP pack, although for the life of me I remain baffled to the max as to what’s going on with Republican voters. I keep hearing and reading things about how Trump has changed the rules of the campaign. How he’s rewriting the playbook.

The more offensive he is toward his primary foes, the better it goes for the guy. I thought he was toast at the very beginning when he denigrated Sen. John McCain’s heroic service during the Vietnam War. Good grief, the list of insults has grown beyond my ability to remember them all.

But … by golly he remains at the top of the heap.

The Democrats? It’s still Hillary Clinton’s contest to lose (although I’ve never quite understood that phrase; I’ll just use it anyway, because it’s what pundits keep saying).

I’m going to be watching and waiting for Trump to say the one thing that sends his campaign into the crapper. It might not be a single utterance, though, that dooms his weird campaign. It might be an accumulation of things that will dawn on GOP primary voters when they finally get the chance to cast actual ballots.

They’ll need to ask: Is this the guy we really and truly want to nominate to become the 45th president of the United States of America?

If it’s going to be Trump, well, as Hillary Clinton herself as said: Fasten your seatbelts.

 

 

So long, political predictions

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My days as a political prognosticator are long gone.

I have been given several hints that I’m no longer able to predict political outcomes. They occur every time a prediction turns out to be, umm, wrong!

Not everyone has gotten the message, apparently, that I’m through making these predictions.

My wife and I were shopping for groceries the other day. I’m standing in the aisle with our shopping cart and a gentleman walks by, stops, looks at me and out of the blue asks: Does Trump have a chance?

I don’t know this gent. Never seen before in my entire life. My wife believes he recognized my picture from the days I wrote for the Globe-New here in Amarillo.

Man, the guy’s got a memory and a half; I left that gig more than three years ago!

My answer? Normally, I’d say “no.” But this is no ordinary election year.

And that brings me to why I’ve given up predicting anything.

Donald Trump continue to lead the pack of Republican presidential contenders/pretenders. And for the ever-lovin’ life of me, I don’t know why.

He denigrated John McCain’s Vietnam War service and declared he was a war hero only because he was captured by the North Vietnamese, who held him captive for more than five years and beat him within an inch of his life — on multiple occasions.

That did it, I said at the time. Trump is finished.

But oh-h-h-h no! There would be more.

He imploded at that initial GOP candidate joint appearance at the question posed by Megyn Kelly of Fox News about his views of women. Then he made that hideous remark about Kelly spewing blood “from her whatever.” That would do it, right? Hardly.

Then he poked fun at fellow Republican candidate Carly Fiorina’s appearance. Everyone in the country knew what he meant when he wondered whether anyone would vote for someone “with that face.” Trump said he was talking about her “persona.” Sure thing, Donald.

One more? Sure. How about when he said most recently that if Ivanka Trump weren’t his daughter, “I’d be dating her”? Who … on God’s Earth talks about their children like that?

There are other incidents. I dare not call them “gaffes,” because many among the Republican faithful seem to love this guy in spite of his serial tastelessness.

The McCain statement should have done him in. So should his remark about Kelly, or his quip about Fiorina, or his hideous reference to his daughter.

I was certain we would witness the end of this guy’s so-called “candidacy.”

Silly me. I was wrong, but I take small comfort in that other observers were wrong, too.

That’s how wacky this election cycle has gone.

Actions and statements that used to pass as committing political suicide have now become some kind of weird badge of honor.

How in the world do you ever hope to predict an outcome based on what you hear from the likes of Donald Trump?

That’s why I no longer won’t even try.

This is no normal election season.

 

 

Sen. Cruz just isn’t ‘likeable’

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Readers of this blog know that I’ve spent a good bit of time over the past couple of years writing unflattering things about U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

I don’t apologize for any of it.

George W. Bush the other day more or less climbed on board with many of the rest of us when he said of the junior Republican senator from Texas, “I just don’t like the guy.”

The former president was speaking at a private fundraiser in Denver on behalf of his brother, GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush, against whom Cruz is competing for his party’s nomination.

Ah, likeability.

Mr. President, I don’t like him either.

I’ve struggled a bit to say precisely why I dislike Cruz. I’ve never met him; forgive me for saying this, but I have met President Bush and I find him amazingly likeable.

Cruz, though, presents a different situation. Maybe he’s a terrific fellow — in private. The public version of Cruz, though, is remarkably unlikeable.

He blew into the Senate in 2013 and immediately began hogging lots of TV time. The mainstream media love the guy. He’s what the media describe as “good copy.” He was everywhere, making pronouncements on this and that, speaking of the venerable Senate institution as if he’d been there since The Flood. The young man seems to lack any self-awareness of how it looks to some of us who have watched him pontificate about the Senate and his new colleagues.

He’s managed to antagonize even his fellow Republicans, such as John McCain, who chastised Cruz for questioning whether Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel — a fellow Republican, former senator and a combat veteran of the Vietnam War — was sufficiently loyal to the United States of America. He’s called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and liar.

It’s all about Cruz.

Then he launched that presidential campaign of his barely a year after becoming a senator. I get that he’s not the first rookie congressional politician to reach for the brass ring. Barack Obama did it. JFK did, too. Heck, you even could say George W. Bush did, too, after serving only a term and a half in the only elective office he’d ever held — Texas governor — before being elected president in 2000.

It’s Cruz’s brashness, though, that seems so … umm … unlikeable.

Bush had it right when he blurted out to the political donors that he doesn’t like Sen. Cruz.

Does it matter that a president is likeable?

It matters to me. How about you?

 

That’s how you encourage hatred, Donald

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Donald Trump was handed a gold-braided chance last night to declare once and for all that President Barack Obama is as American as he is.

He didn’t. Instead, Trump — who was fielding questions at a so-called “town hall” meeting in New Hampshire — chose to allow a questioner to level a hateful attack on the president … and on Muslims.

Think, then, about this man — Trump — becoming president of the United States.

He fluffed the question not because of some careless inattention, but — I happen to believe — he actually believes the nonsense that continues to fly around out there, that the president really isn’t “one of us.”

This is just one more in a lengthening list of disgraces that Donald Trump has brought to the Republican Party primary presidential campaign.

The exchange went like this:

“We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims,” the man began. “We know our current president is one.”

“Right,” Trump said.

“You know, he’s not even an American. Birth certificate, man,” the man continued.

Trump laughed and said, “We need this question?”

Then came the clincher:

The man in the audience said: “But anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That’s my question: When can we get rid of them?”

Trump’s hideous answer? “We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things,” Trump responded. “And you know, a lot of people are saying that, and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We’re going to be looking at that and plenty of other things.”

Looking at what? Finding ways to get rid of Muslims? Is this entertainer/politician considering ways to rid the nation of millions of American citizens who happen to belief in a faith other than Christianity?

What the … ?

Sen. John McCain, while running for president in 2008 against then-Sen. Obama, got the same kind of question during a town hall. His response was to shut the questioner down and declare flat out that his opponent is a “patriotic American” and a fine public servant.

Donald Trump has disgraced himself yet again.