Sunday Morning Comin' Down: Carly Fiorina's Blood Libel

You will excuse me if I skip over Shuck Todd (Motto: "Still beatin' that dead horse boss!") using his time with Secretary Clinton this morning to shore of his Beltway cred by beating of dead horse of "Emailghaaaazi" for the umpteenth time and move on to the much more gruesomely a musing subject of Destroyer of Companies, Carly Fiorina, going all in on a modern version of the Blood Libel as her passport to the White House.

As I have written before, the Blood Libel --

...(also blood accusation) is an accusation that Jews kidnapped and murdered the children of Christians to use their blood as part of their religious rituals during Jewish holidays. Historically, these claims—alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration—have been a major theme in European persecution of Jews.

-- is one of oldest, ugliest, most profoundly dangerous lies in history.  Dredged straight from Middle Ages, when frenzied Catholic mobs, whipped up by monstrous slander, would torture and murder innocent Jews, it is also a lie the drips e-f-f-o-r-t-l-e-s-s-l-y from the lips of ghouls like Ms. Fiorina.

It is a lie which Ms. Fiorina defends aggressively against the pesky intrusion of facts and reality (h/t Heather at Crooks & Liars) -- 

-- and it is a lie which keeps Ms. Fiorina rising in the polls because, frankly, there is damn little difference anymore between the modern GOP base, and pig-ignorant Middle Ages yahoos who could be prodded into the worst kinds of atrocities over and over again by fear, bigotry and the Bible.

Of course you would not know any of this if, as part of your court-ordered community service, you had been forced to watch "Meet the Press" today.  In fact, just on the basis of the show's content, one would be hard pressed to figure out that America has two major and distinctly different political parties.  You see, at Shuck Todd's puppet show, there are no Republicans or Democrats at all.  There are no Liberals or Conservatives.  Instead it is the consensus of Mr. Todd's elite, Both Siderist panel that there exists in this country only an undifferentiated slab of humanity called "Murricans" who are also sometimes known as "voters" or the "electorate".  

And it turns out, "issues" do not matter to "voters" at all! 

"Voters" are entirely motivated by their "moods", and consequently it is not the job of elite, Both Siderist pundits to discuss whether some candidate is, say, lying through her fucking teeth or not. They are merely there to note the rise and fall of candidates based on how well they pander to the mood of the monolithic, non-party-affiliated "voter".

David Brooks explains (and yes, emphasis will be added throughout):

DAVID BROOKS:

Yeah, well [Hillary Clinton] was having a little more fun today. Sometimes she's campaigning like she's in Napoleon's march on Moscow, just like a trudge through the winter. This was a little more upbeat, a little more fun. But she's still in her own bubble. Not where the country is, but it's sort of in the Clinton bubble And finally, as Andrea said, she spent her entire political career on the defensive, whether it was the Rose law firm, whether it was Benghazi, whether it was her husband's shenanigans.

She's basically has a defensive posture. And that means she's erecting walls, not trusting people, and there's no romance. People, especially this year, they want a little romance, they want a lot of ideological action going outward. But she's on the defensive. And so that's the core problem. It's not the emails. Nobody's going to disqualify her as president because she used one server versus another. That's not a real scandal. It's her attitude.

See, according to David Brooks, Secretary Clinton's caution has nothing to do with the fact that she and her family have been hunted like wild animals for 20 years by Beltway vampires like David Brooks. That's all just a buncha stuff.

That happened.

In the past.

LaLaLaLaLa!

I mean, who really remembers what really happened anyway? And besides, facts are icky and make pundits like David Brooks look like cowards and frauds and hypocrites, so best stick to fun stuff like moods and attitudes.

And passion!

David Brooks and Shuck Todd explain:

CHUCK TODD:

David, where [Carly Fiorina] showed passion is not, like, she is not accepting any of the fact checks on this Planned Parenthood thing. And she really doesn't want to, you know, she's basically saying, "The details don't matter. You should be outraged."

DAVID BROOKS:

Yeah, well, to Andrew's point, it's not quite clear that reality matters to the electorate right now. And I think that's true with Trump, it's true with her, there are some people that are great campaigners, and some people that are actually good in reality. And so far the good in reality people are not doing so well in the polls.

...Fiorina does not accept the concept that she should answer these questions. She's on the offensive. She's throwing blows. No matter what you ask her, she's throwing blows to the Democrats. And she's just permanent offense.

CHUCK TODD:

Which may explain why she's getting a moment.

DAVID BROOKS:

And that's where the country is. That's the ethos of the country right now.

That's right -- David Brooks believes that wantonly lobbing the Blood Libel into the middle of a presidential campaign and then defending that disgraceful lie to the hilt is not the premeditated act of a professional swindler pandering to the worst instincts of the Republican party's depraved base...

...but merely "the ethos of the country right now."

Also this entire story line does not pair well with Mr. Brooks' fawning column from less than two weeks ago in which he proposed "The Marco Rubio-Carly Fiorina Option" so, uh, I guess he never wrote it.

Certainly none of his colleagues ever mentioned it.

Next -- and strictly from the point of view of grim amusement -- it was hella entertaining to see Mrs. Alan Greenspan (suddenly and far too late) try to grow a conscience --

ANDREA MITCHELL:

But let's face facts here. The facts are also that that fetus was from a Pennsylvania miscarriage. That fetus had nothing to do with Planned Parenthood. And Planned Parenthood does not get federal money for abortions, period. Abortions are 3% of their work. The rest is women's healthcare...

-- and then, as if realizing she was on the verge of violating the cardinal rule of Both Siderism by blaming Republicans for the behavior of Republicans, just as suddenly reverse herself midparagraph and smother her own argument in its crib:

ANDREA MITCHELL:

...Now that said, you're absolutely right. Carly Fiorina is in tune with the mood of the electorate. The electorate, actually in both political parties.

And just in case anyone in the Comcast Human Resources and Both Siderist Enforcement Bureau might have been listening and gotten the impression that Mrs. Alan Greenspan had just blamed Republicans for being Republicans, moments later she took a second, big bite of that turd to prove her loyalty to the corporation:

CHUCK TODD:

Is Hillary Clinton in tune with the mood of the electorate?

ANDREA MITCHELL:

Not so far. Not so far. She's not angry enough. She's not-- And it's hard for her to be angry because then you've got, you know, Donald Trump saying, "She's shrill," which is a sexist word,let's face it. But she has to get around that. But the anger, the passion is all on people going on the attack, whether it's, you know, whether it's Donald Trump, whether it's Carly Fiorina, or whether it's Bernie Sanders.

You know, both sides so pleeeeeease don't fire me!

And in case at this point you still were still clinging to any fancy-pants notion that this country has two, clearly delineated political parties, one of which is A) a deranged, paranoid, rage-drunk mob which B) just forced its Speaker toes-first through a wood-chipper, Shuck Todd swapped his Both Siderist framing hammer for a Both Siderist sledgehammer to drive such silly notions out of your damn fool Liberal head:

CHUCK TODD:

And by the way, and this is the mood. And this is the electorate that just forced John Boehner out of his job.

Eugene Robinson at least had the decency to be gobsmacked by the sheer enormity and bald-facedness of Ms. Fiorina's Blood Libel:

EUGENE ROBINSON:

Yeah, but I was actually floored by that though because she simply would not deal with the factual issue. She would not deal with the issue that she has misrepresented the facts about that video. And you correctly told her what the facts are. And she simply wouldn't deal with it. I don't think you can continue to do that on a specific issue time after time after time, because people are going to keep bringing it up until you acknowledge that well yes, these are the facts. She wouldn't even acknowledge that fact.

Which Mr. Brooks dismissed with a satisfied, moon-faced smirk.

DAVID BROOKS:

You seem to think the laws of gravity are applying this year. But so far, they haven't applied.

And which, in turn, led to this exchange:

CHUCK TODD:

Well, it's funny you say that--

EUGENE ROBINSON:

--I do forget, I do forget

CHUCK TODD:

Can I just tell you that Bill Kristol wrote this great column yesterday where he basically said, you know...

And that is the exact moment I turned off "Meet the Press".

Because it's just too damn much.

However, even after watching Shuck Todd's claptrap mudslide sweep away any pretense of journalism on Sunday teevee, I have to say that this week, for sheer, surreal Bizarro World impressiveness, nothing exceeded this exchange between Martha Raddatz and Newt Gingrich on "This Week...":

RADDATZ: You, of course, resigned the speakership in '99. What's different here?

GINGRICH: I'm not sure a lot is different. John and I both faced the fact that there was a hardcore group, sort of a minority of the party, who were prepared to cause total chaos. In my case, they had announced they would never vote for me for speaker, and I'd never get to win a smaller majority, I'd never get to the 218. And so you just have chaos in the House...

Let the record show that it was Newt Gingrich who fucking invented that "hardcore group, sort of a minority of the party, who were prepared to cause total chaos."

Let the record further show that Ms. Raddatz did not ask Newt! a single follow-up question to challenge the great, steaming dump he took on her desk.

Let the record also show that Ms. Raddatz did not roll her eyes and make the universal gesture for Giant Blowjob --

-- nor did she wallop Newt! upside his head with a folding chair.

And thus did Martha Raddatz absolve me from ever taking her seriously as a journalist again.

Today In "Both Sides Do It": Frank Bruni

Every aspiring Beltway pundit knows the Royal Road to fame and fortune is the Dave Brooks Highway, and yesterday it was Frank Bruni's turn to pop the top on the Both Siderist convertible and take a leisurely drive through the Safe Center of American punditry (h/t Alert Reader "IR" for calling this to my attention.)

It's really a very easy.

First, since the evidence of the Republican Party's dementia and nihilistic fanaticism is now overwhelming and absolutely unimpeachable, it is necessary to establish one's honest-broker pundit cred by acknowledging the existence of the rabid beast which is staring you right in the face:

...

One of our two major political parties is hostage to an extreme subgroup that won’t brook compromise, values theatrical protests over actual governing and is adolescent in its ideological vanity.

Of course Boehner couldn’t last: He’s an adult. And as Donald Trump’s perverse currency and a Republican nominating contest that’s often indistinguishable from a temper tantrum demonstrate, the qualities of maturity, steadiness and prudence aren’t in especially big favor right now with an animated, engaged and frighteningly influential segment of the Republican electorate.

 But then it is vital to pivot immediately to the safe harbor of Both Siderism by positing an equally vast yet mysteriously invisible Army of Dirty Hippies on the Left, which "journalists" ominously refuse to talk about:

...

I’m not saying that the Republican Party alone has wing nuts, disrupters, brats. Too often that’s the impression left by journalists ruing the G.O.P.’s unruly ways.

But Democrats over recent years haven’t been bedeviled by internal dissent and rendered dysfunctional to the extent that Republicans have. They’ve kept something of a lid on things and maintained a semblance of order.

See, it's all just tactics.  Both parties are equally crazy, uncompromising, vain, immature, perverse and tantrum-y.  It's just that the Democrats cover it all up better than the GOP.

Wow.

Who would have guessed that the Dirty Hippies were so powerful that they could be just as whiny, nihilistic, volatile and batshit crazy as the GOP while at the same time being such brilliant and disciplined tacticians that they can keep any actual evidence of their whiny, nihilistic, volatile, batshit craziness from leaking out into the real world?

Frank Bruni, that's who.  

Today In "Both Sides Do It": David Brooks

Confronted once again with absolutely unimpeachable evidence of the dementia and nihilistic fanaticism of his Republican Party,  America's Most Trusted Conservative Thought Leader and Humility Guru -- David Brooks -- drains the Both Siderist jug right down to the lees.

First, turning John Boehner's immolation-by-shoutycracker into an ethereally "beautiful" martyrdom:

DAVID BROOKS: ... And so there’s an element of uplift, and might as well do the right thing. And this specific act was the right thing. Paul Ryan called it a selfless act. And I think it really is a selfless act. It spares us from a potential government shutdown. It helps the institution. It helps his party from the fallout from a government shutdown.

And so I think it’s a beautiful act. Now, over the long term, the downside of Boehner was that he wasn’t that imaginative and the Republicans weren’t that aggressive in putting together a lot of policies, an alternative to Obamacare, a health care, a tax plan, whatever.

...

And, second, explaining away the absolutely unimpeachable evidence of Republican dementia and fanaticism as some institutional problem which affects both parties and for which everyone bears responsibility. Sure, his GOP may be a little bit more rough-housey in their tactics, but really this is a problem with both parties (emphasis added because it's my blog):

DAVID BROOKS: I think a lot is going to be the same, assuming Kevin McCarthy takes over.

He’s not that totally different than Boehner. He’s happy. He’s a happy guy. He’s a charming guy, right now a little more in favor with the very conservatives, but he’s still basically a reality-based politician. And he will understand how to try to do deals.

So, I think he will get a little bit of a breather. But the people who believe that they’re in office not to pass legislation, but merely to express their id are still there. And so that conflict will still be there.

And then, more structurally — Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution had a good piece today saying that the office of the speaker is weaker because there’s less earmarks, so they can’t give away pork projects to control people. The parties are weaker because of campaign finance. And there’s just a lot of free-spirited individualism in the House now.

And people can go off freelancing off on their own. And so the institutional power is a little weaker. So, even when a Democrat comes in, I think we’re going to see a lot more fractiousness.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Even when a Democrat comes in? You mean even…

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I mean, it’s different.

I think both parties are ideologically polarized. The Republican — some of the Republican Party doesn’t believe in politics. I think most of the Democratic Party does believe in politics. They’re the party of government. They believe in government.

And, so, in some sense, the Republican Party can get a little more extreme over tactics, but I think it will be hard for speakers in the future to control people, just because, if you have got a super PAC, if you got some independent expenditures, it’s hard to impose discipline anymore on the body...

To his credit, Mr. Brooks' political life-partner -- Mark Shields -- very gently called "bullshit" on the idea that this is some trans-party institutional problem:

MARK SHIELDS: Less gets done, Judy, I believe.

And could I be rude and just say that there are probably four dozen members of the House Republican Caucus who do not believe in government? And they are not — they have never accepted the responsibility of the governing party.

I mean, John Boehner accepted the fact that the Republicans are the majority party in the House and the Senate. Therefore, we have a responsibility to keep government operating, not to close it down, to fund it, to compromise, to get the votes necessary to pass the legislation required. And there are four dozen who say, hell no, if it does close down, great, that’s good, that’s what we’re here about...

To his ongoing shame, Mr. Shields never, ever, ever mentions that the reason this bullshit is on the teevee in the first place is that it keeps pouring unchecked out of the mouth-holes of astronomically remunerated Conservative hacks like David Brooks.

American political teevee would be immediately and radically improved by pairing hacks like Mr. Brooks with intelligent people who would verbally pistol-whip them until they cried like a toddler who just found out the stove was hot the hard way.

It would also be immensely entertaining.  

Which is why the whole, vast multi-billion-dollar machinery of American political teevee is designed to prevent that from ever happening.

Professional Left Podcast Episode #303

"I'm a great believer in people and their untapped potential."

-- Alfred Bester, writer

Links:

• David Brooks lectures other people on how to handle bigotry
• Journalism hits its "Flowers for Algernon" down-slope
• The Lathe of Heaven
• Volkswagon's Fraud
• Price gouging AIDS drug asshat gets more publicity than he bargained for

As His Batshit Chickens Come Home To Roost. Again.

It seems that, once again, the Pig People are starting to make it over the razor-wire surrounding the gated compound where David Brooks and his Beltway pals live and work and make up funny stories about the antics of imaginary hippies for the amusement of their wealth patrons.

But this time, the Pig People aren't breaching their defenses in onesies and twosies, but are pouring in by the thousands right through the main gate (apparently the compound guards can be completely flummoxed if you show up wearing both an "I Heart Reagan" tee-shirt and a Donald Trump hat.)

And so, as the leader of the Beltway syndicate, Mr. Brooks has been forced to once again implement the Village's emergency inner-perimeter defense protocol in which they all scramble down into a hidey-hole while Mr. Brooks pens a sternly worded editorial rewriting the Story of Modern Conservatism and disavowing all responsibility for the lunatics who are overrunning the place.

Regular readers will note that this is not the first or even the 51st time Mr. Brooks has broken out the wingnut whitewash to remake the depraved history of the movement and the political party to which he owes  every nickle of his personal wealth and every erg of his Beltway privilege.  For example, way back in 2011, one long-forgotten knave wrote this...

A certain member of the GOP's chickenshit Brain Caste has the fucking nerve to feign surprise.

Here is the key paragraph from David Brooks' latest 800-word embarrassment:

"But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative."

Here is how it would have read if David Brooks had a shred of honesty:

But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, Over the past 40 years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

The first version -- favored by every professional Beltway ball-washer in the media -- permits the David Brookses of the world to continue to play the role of the reasonable, detached witness, merely Observing-With-Alarm the final stages of the complete and completely unforeseeable (No one could have predicted...!) psychotic implosion of his Republican Party.

The second version -- the honest version -- puts Our Mr. Brooks (and the rest of his ilk) at the scene of the crime, squarely behind the wheel and driving the getaway car for the Party of God for virtually his entire adult life.

So while much of the rest of what Our Mr. Brooks has written is perfectly true

"The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no.
..."

The question remains, where were you, Mr. Brooks, when Reagan was instructing them that the government is always wrong, always evil? Where were you when the leaders of your Movement were teaching them that everyone not in the Movement was a Commie? That compromise was treason?

"The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities."

Yes, but where were you, Mr. Brooks, when the yahoo, bigot, militia-nuts and Fundy votes were being aggressively courted by your Party?...

And so we return now to the present day and find the actual history of American Conservationism once again trying to claw its way out of the memory hole where Mr. Brooks keeps trying to bury it. Which is why no one should be terribly surprised that Mr. Brooks has once again raided the limitless larder of his own personal dishonesty for another couple of bags of quick-drying Beltway feelgood with which to wall the monster back up for a little which longer.

Today's happy-clappy fairy tale begins one sunny afternoon a million years ago when God, Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln invented American Conservatism.  And from then until now, everything has been humming along just perfectly...

American free market and religious conservatives have traditionally embraced a style of nationalism that is hopeful and future minded. From Lincoln to Reagan to Bush, the market has been embraced for being dynamic and progressive.

Until suddenly, during the second term of George W. Bush...

During George W. Bush’s first term there wasn’t much difference between how Democrats and Republicans viewed the overall immigration levels.

...a Very Bad Thing happened.

Sadly, even the greatest minds of the Beltway cannot explain why the Very Bad Thing happened but suddenly and with absolutely no warning, people like Ann Coulter are ruining everything:

These commentators and candidates look backward to an America that is being lost. Ann Coulter encapsulated this attitude perfectly in her latest book title, “Adios, America.” This is the philosophy of the receding roar, the mourning for an America that once was and is now being destroyed by foreign people and ideas.

And, suddenly and inexplicably, the leading Republican candidates for president are goggle-eyed buffoons and demagogues:

Out of this backward- and inward-looking mentality comes a desire to exclude. Donald Trump talks falsely and harshly about Hispanic immigrants. Ben Carson says he couldn’t advocate putting “a Muslim in charge of this nation.”

Sigh.

Conservative public intellectuals like David Brooks have lovingly nurtured the monsters which have been growing in the belly of the GOP for thirty years.  The money was great, the perks were outstanding and what could be more fun for a Conservative social-climber like Brooks than punching hippies while pimping war for George W. Bush.

Living the dream, baby!

But now that the party is over, the booze is gone, hard light of day is roaring through the holes in the wall, and the bill for the orgy has come due, we find Conservative fair-weather heroes like Mr, Humility trying to sneak out the doggy door.

Now that the ogre babies have finally hatched out and are eating their host alive, their mommies and daddies are disowning them and calling them cruel names in the newspaper.



How very sad.

In Honor of the Pope's Visit

Getty Mandel Ngan

A reprint of my own, small contribution to the rarefied genre of papal tong twisters.

Ahem:

The pope procured a proper purple Papal paper stapler to staple proper purple Papal paper.

driftglass out

Blessed are the Conservative Christopath Bedwetters

For they shall pick up six to eight points in Iowa.

The Leader of Conservative Christopath Murrica welcomes the Pontiff to the United States --

I welcome @Pontifex to America & offer my apologies that @POTUS will not offer him the warm, respectful welcome he deserves #PopeInUS

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) September 22, 2015

 -- with the traditional wingnut gifts of bullshit, racism and demagoguery.

Since he no longer polls to the left of the decimal point, it is easy to forget how every single fucking day Mike Huckabee proves how richly he deserves to be tarred, feathered and dropped of somewhere in the middle of the 11th Century.

Jesus wept.

Rich Lowry: Whiny Liberal Whiner

Sure it can be maddening when you see that the only Liberals in the mainstream media are of the straw-man variety, and only manufactured and trotted out when the Beltway sages need to "Both Side" some Republican atrocity out of existence.

But it is also also liberating -- because no one knows or cares about what we say, we are free to be as honest as we wish.

Like for example, watching the same people who have spent their careers cowing the media into bending over for Conservatives on demand...

...suddenly hazzing an enormous sad because the media is bending over for the wrong Conservative.

Rich Lowry, sobbing his venom sacs dry in the pages of his own magazine:

The Media’s Stupid Trump Obsession

...

It's not just that Trump dominates the coverage himself. Whenever another candidate gets on the air, he or she is invariably asked questions about the latest controversies about Trump (and some candidates have foolishly played the game by attacking Trump to try to get attention). Pope Francis will be lucky not to be repeatedly asked about Trump's favorite Bible verse during his visit here.

The cable networks treat Trump campaign rallies like a car chase. They go to them live and follow them to the end. The rallies are considered theoretically newsworthy, although they are always the same -- Trump talks about his poll numbers, about building a wall and about Jeb Bush's low energy, over and over again.

Ben Carson should be considering suing for equal time. He, too, is an outsider who has struck a nerve and rocketed up in the polls, but he gets a fraction of the coverage of Trump. No one consistently live-broadcasts his events. No one badgers all the other candidates to address every little thing he says.

The difference is that Donald Trump rates. So the self-styled gatekeepers of our politics, who take themselves so seriously, are happy to slum it with him.

...

Bwahahaha!

Roger Ailes taught the world that ratings rule, but now it almost seems like Fox News contributor doesn't trust unfettered capitalism to separate what's important from what's boring and stupid.  

Stings like Hell when the media tells you and your little concerns to go pound sand because they want to go wall-to-wall with Week 35 of the "Ow My Balls!" marathon, doesn't it?

Also this -- "Ben Carson should be considering suing for equal time." -- is especially delicious.  Yes, Rich, Ben Carson might well have sued them for equal time...had Reagan, Bork and Scalia not conspired to drag the Fairness Doctrine down to the White House basement and shoot it in the head in 1987.

Welcome to Liberalville, punk.


UPDATE:  And of course the comments over at America's White Supremacist Journal of Record

are just as perfect as you would imagine:

Greyledge Gal
The reality show is that previously devoted Fox News viewers have finally had enough of Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina being shoved down our throats and are tuning over to CNN, NewsMax (and I even found myself watching MSNBC for the 1st time in years the morning after the debate) just to avoid it.

I have not made up my mind who I will vote for but I know it will not be Jeb Bush and it might be Donald Trump.


SeanR64
Sorry Rich. Illegal immigration is too important. Tell your D.C. contacts that we are going to go around them if we have to, but we are going to have something done. Trump IS YOUR FAULT Lowry so don't blame the media and don't blame us. Blame the Republican establishment.

NanNJ
Ummm, Rich...he's kind of a phenomena and that would be the media's job to cover him. You all should get over your envy of him. He's rich, good looking for a man his age and he's got the girl. Leader of the free world is just too much for you?

GWB2000
Rich, I clicked on your article because it had the word Trump in it.

redmist
How many stories are up right now about Trump on National Review? Hypocrite!

The Loyalty of Hungry Dogs

(Libertarian-for-hire and Nick-Gillespie-fashion-stunt-double, Liz Mair)

Why don't we cut you up into little pieces and feed you to your pooches, hmm? And then we'll see just how loyal a hungry dog really is.

-- The Joker, The Dark Knight

From CNN:

Ex-Scott Walker aide unloads on campaign in Twitter storm

Washington (CNN)-- A former Scott Walker aide offered her take on what went wrong with his campaign, minutes after it was reported that he was dropping out of the 2016 Republican race.

Liz Mair is a digital media strategist who was forced out of Walker's campaign the day after it announced her hiring because of her tweets blasting Iowa's role in the nominating process. On Monday, she offered a long list of Walker's mistakes via Twitter.

Among those listed in her series of tweets: "Misunderstanding the GOP base, its priorities and stances. Pandering. Flip-flopping. Hiring staff who did not know him well and did not understand his record or his reputation across all segments in Wisconsin. Allowing certain staff (ahem) to marginalize and cut off people in Walker's orbit who had got him to the governorship and kept him there."
...

Like most in her profession who dance back and forth between paid teevee pundit and hired gun, Ms. Mair is 100% loyal to her next paycheck and is more attuned to shifts in the wind than the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Leader of the Republican Field

Continues to get YOOOOGE mileage bootlegging Liberal blogger opinions from 10 years ago.

.@RichLowry is truly one of the dumbest of the talking heads - he doesn't have a clue!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2015

"@JimShellenback: @realDonaldTrump @EdwardChelednik @FoxNews I steer away from Fox now. Never thought that would happen."

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2015

I am having a really hard time watching @FoxNews.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2015

"@VickyBrush: Do what most of us are doing! Turn off @FoxNews! There is a major boycott going on with them, anyway. Problem solved!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2015

"@glendabelle_11: @FoxNews Fox has become a supporter of Liberals!They are Not supporting the GOP candidates-especially Trump! Quit watching

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2015

We are living in a Kurt Vonnegut novel.