Cruz is basically responsible for Boehner losing his speakership, so I wouldn't call him disinterested.
Not that I'm doubting him on this. I find it sort of interesting that nobody who isn't a widely acknowledged asshole could even get past the first rounds of a processes that is for all intents and purposes just a popularity contest.
It's unfair to generalize, but I'm wondering what we're eventually going to find out about John Boehner.
You mean because of the general pattern of Republican Speakers or just general Ohioan stuff?
4: The first one.
Non-politician Ohioans are salt of the earth generous folk.
I really can't think of anything remotely like that quote by a politician (even a retired one) about a member of his own party. Maybe something from the nineteenth century.
I would think -- if John Boehner thinks he's the devil then he can't be all bad -- except that what I have heard from Cruz's own mouth has convinced me that he is.
8: That sort of slander is beneath you, neb.
Am I recalling correctly a Simpsons bit from the early days, where you catch the tail end of a Paul Harvey broadcast saying, "And that little boy that nobody liked grew up to be... Roy Cohn. And now you know the rest of the story."? I think it was Roy Cohn, could've been McCarthy. Anyway, it's amazing that the joke works even better with Cruz.
9.2 is sort of answer to 6 also. At least, I bet you could find members of their own party saying awful things about Cohn and McCarthy.
Also, you can probably find truly horrible quotes from various southern Democrats talking about various more liberal northern Democrats.
9.2: Yes, and it's one of my favorite out of nowhere jokes from the Simpsons as well.
From what I know Boehner is widely known to be a raging alcoholic and heavy smoker, so if something does come out it'll probably be along those lines/caused by that rather than the normal white collar crime and/or sex cime stuff.
Yeah, I've heard there are DUIs hidden somewhere, but that may just be chatter.
Given his age and general level of privilege alone I wouldn't be surprised by that. The "after 5 PM there's no point in contacting him for work related stuff he's at the bar" stories make it almost a certainty that he drives drunk a bunch, though whether or not there's any arrest record for it is a different matter.
You know who else was universally hated?
I was going to say "your mom," Flip, but that might actually be true.
How about a thread for gaming out the general election as Clinton vs. Trump?
14: Would he even feel the need to cover up a DUI? That is probably just "one of you" credentials in Ohio.
Cruz is acting with such desperation now, because in the next Republican primary he has competition in the "shameless fraud" department from Tom Cotton, the Harvard BA and Harvard JD who claims he ain't too familiar with that there fancy city water is.
Truly, I might hate Tom Cotton more than I hate Ted Cruz.
Ulysses Grant insisted on receiving a ticket, and was from Ohio, but they didn't have breathalyzers then.
Wow, 24 honestly makes my head hurt just thinking about it.
I hate Tom Cotton more than I hate Cruz, but that's because I'm here in Arkansas, where he's fucking up our lives more.
Come on down to the NC General Assembly and I can show you people who make Ted Cruz look like Paul Wellstone.
Dead and moldering? I might take you up on that.
This thread got to me to wonder if #NeverTrump didn't fail specifically because by the time it got going Cruz was the only plausible alternative or if it didn't failed for general failure of the Republican Party reasons.
31: I think Pierce is on target here:
"He was the only one of the 17 (!) original presidential candidates--that vaunted Deep Bench about which we heard so much--who acted on the self-evident fact that it was a passel of unelectable lightweights and has-beens. He was the only one who (correctly) perceived that the Republican National Committee was an empty shell presided over by the emptiest suit in American politics, obvious anagram Reince Priebus. He was the only one who (correctly) perceived that the universe of sugar daddies and interest groups and intellectual chop-shops that make up modern conservatism was such a tangle of opposing gravimetric forces that it was dangerously unstable. In short, He, Trump looked out at the Republican primary process the way that a particularly sharp carny looks down from the top of the hill and sees a village full of nothing but suckers. The show's leaving town now and nobody from the village has bus fare home."
I think that gives Trump a bit too much insight and planning. He just has a great instinct for the basest common denominator of what people want to hear, has no shame, and is unique in the field of 17 that he's giving the middle finger to the donor class.
I always figured Trump campaign had more in common with The Producers than just the Nazi thing.
Mine aren't exactly novel insights, but they are hitting me with full force as it becomes more clear that Trump is going to win on the first ballot.
I'm not sure what word could be considered analogous to "blasphemous" but without any religious connotation, but that's the word I want to use in response to 28.
33: Well "planning" might be strong, but I think he correctly recognized that there was nobody of significance running against him. And if you think about the order in which he picked off opponents, I think he also correctly assessed that, frex, Cruz,whom he went easy on early, would pose no threat late.
there was nobody of significance running against him
What would that even mean to Trump? Someone richer or more famous or that polled higher. I think that's all.
It would mean someone with more charisma than he has, or someone he couldn't bully.
I wonder how Trump would have assessed his chances against GWB.
No, I don't think Trump deliberately thought through his chances against the candidates, but I do think he has a very good innate sense of whether he is more or less personally powerful than each.
LOL at "obvious anagram Reince Priebus".
I BURP IN REECE'S
You and Buttercup have been exactly right for this whole election. So nice to be on the relay team.
Boehner is widely known to be a raging alcoholic and heavy smoker
He was certainly drunk and smoking a cigarette the time I met him, but then he was standing outside a bar so that was hardly a surprising condition to find someone in.
Apparently his brand is Camel Ultra Lights, which has got to be one of the more embarrassing brands to be addicted to.
Maybe you should give him a bouquet of American Spirits.
w/r/t the little boy that nobody liked: Yeah, that's Roy Cohn. https://frinkiac.com/meme/S05E01/790906/m/IC4uLmFuZCB0aGF0IGxpdHRsZSBib3kKIHdob20gbm9ib2R5IGxpa2VkIGdyZXcgdXAKIHRvIGJlIFJPWSBDT0hO
someone he couldn't bully.
Dingdingding. It's pretty commonplace to say that GWB had a certain emotional intelligence, and I think he would have known exactly how to handle Trump's gibes. Not in a way that would be appealing to us, of course ("Please proceed, Governor"), but in a way that would have deflated Trump in the eyes of his supporters.
I mean, isn't the fundamental test of a bully that he knows whom to bully and whom to suck up to and/or leave alone? I think he sized these guys up on a gut level, and saw his chance to go for it in a relatively serious way. Hell, the early outrageous statements can even be viewed as testing the waters--"If I say this, will it hurt me?" All that stuff happened so early on that, had he actually suffered blowback, he could've taken his ball and gone home without much bruising to his ego. "I gave it a shot, but those clowns couldn't handle the truth. They're not good enough to have me as President."
48 is really pretty good.