The GOP Clown Car Rolls On
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On the campaign trail with the most
dishonest, bumbling and underqualified pack of presidential
candidates in history |
By Matt Taibbi |
Rolling Stone |
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Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is one of
the few "plausible" establishment candidates in the GOP primary.
Illustration by Victor Juhasz |
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Not one of them can win, but one must.
That's the paradox of the race for the 2016 Republican
presidential nomination, fast becoming the signature event in
the history of black comedy.
Conventional wisdom says that with the primaries and caucuses
rapidly approaching, front-running nuts Donald Trump and Dr. Ben
Carson must soon give way to the "real" candidates. But behind
Trump and Carson is just more abyss. As I found out on a recent
trip to New Hampshire, the rest of the field is either just as
crazy or as dangerous as the current poll leaders, or too
bumbling to win.
Disaster could be averted if Americans on both the left and the
right suddenly decide to be more mature about this, neither
backing obvious mental incompetents, nor snickering about those
who do. But that doesn't seem probable.
Instead, HashtagClownCar will almost certainly continue to be
the most darkly ridiculous political story since Henry II of
Champagne, the 12th-century king of Jerusalem, plunged to his
death after falling out of a window with a dwarf.
Just after noon, Wednesday, November 4th. I'm in Hollis, New
Hampshire, a little town not far from the Massachusetts border.
The Hollis pharmacy is owned by Vahrij Manoukian, a Lebanese
immigrant who is the former chairman of the Hillsborough County
Republican Committee. If you come into his establishment looking
for aspirin, you have to first survive dozens of pictures of the
cannonball-shape businessman glad-handing past and present GOP
hopefuls like Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rudy Giuliani.
Primary season is about who most successfully kisses the asses
of such local burghers, and the big test in Hollis today is
going to be taken by onetime presumptive front-runner Jeb Bush.
Despite its ideological decorative scheme, the Manoukian
pharmacy has some charming small-town quirks you wouldn't find
in a CVS. There's a section of beautiful handmade wooden toys,
for instance. There's also a pair of talkative parrots named
Buddy and Willy perched near the cash registers.
While waiting for the candidate to arrive, I try to make
conversation.
"Who are you voting for this year?"
"Hello," says Willy.
"Is Jeb Bush going to win?"
"Rooowk!" the bird screeches, recoiling a little.
It seems like a "no." Bush comes in a moment later and
immediately hears the birds squawking. A tall man, he smiles and
cranes his head over the crowd in their direction.
"Whose dog is that?" he cracks.
Technically, that is the correct comic response, but the room
barely hears him. For Bush, Campaign 2016 has been a very tough
crowd.
It's hard to recall now, but a year ago, it appeared likely that
Bush would be the Republican nominee. He had a lead in polls,
and some Beltway geniuses believed Republican voters would favor
"more moderate choices" in 2016, pushing names like Mitt Romney,
Chris Christie and this reportedly "smarter" Bush brother to the
top of the list.
Moreover, the Bush campaign was supposed to be a milestone in
the history of post-Citizens United aristocratic scale-tipping.
The infamous 2010 Supreme Court case that deregulated political
fundraising birthed a monster called the Super PAC, also known
as the "independent-expenditure-only committee." This new form
of slush fund could receive unlimited sums from corporations,
billionaires and whomever else, provided it didn't coordinate
with an active presidential campaign.
Decrying the "no-suspense primary" and insisting, "It's nobody's
turn," Bush announced his candidacy on June 15th. But he and his
Super PAC, Right to Rise, had been raising money all year long.
Fifteen days after his announcement, on July 1st, the books
closed on the first six months of Right to Rise's backroom
cash-hoovering. Bush was already sitting atop an astonishing
$103 million. That was about 10 times the amount of the
next-biggest GOP Super PAC, Christie's America Leads fund.
A hundred million bucks, a name that is American royalty, and
the apparent backing of the smoke-filled room. What could go
wrong?
Only everything! Before his official announcement even, Bush
iceberged his candidacy when he crisscrossed the country in
mid-May tying his face in knots in a desperate attempt to lay
out a cogent position on his brother's invasion of Iraq.
During a remarkable five days of grasping and incoherent
answers, in which Bush was both for and against the invasion
multiple times, it became clear that this candidate: (a) doesn't
understand the meaning of the phrase "knowing what we know now,"
and (b) doesn't know how to cut his losses and shut up when
things go bad. People began to wonder out loud if he really was
the smarter brother.
The real disaster was the second debate, when he decided to go
after the other "plausible" establishment candidate, Florida
Sen. Marco Rubio, and ended up getting beaten to gristle
onstage. He was reduced after that episode to admitting, "I'm
not a performer." He headed into his New Hampshire trip with
reporters pronouncing his campaign "on life support."
The operating theory of the Bush campaign is that there's still
a massive pot of donor cash, endorsements and support the
Republican Party elders must throw to someone. But can Bush
remake his candidacy in time to re-establish himself as a
plausible vessel for all of that largesse?
In Hollis, there is little evidence of a remade Bush candidacy.
His stump presentation is surprisingly half-assed. He tries to
get over with lines like, "We've had a divider-in-chief – we
need a commander-in-chief," which are so plainly canned that
they barely register, even with a crowd jacked up for any
put-down of Obama.
Worse, he issues one of the odder descriptions of the American
dream you'll ever hear from a Republican.
"We need to create a society," he says, "where we create a
safety net for people, and then we say, 'Go dream the biggest
possible dreams.'"
I look around. Did a Republican candidate just try to sell a
crowd full of New Hampshire conservatives on a government safety
net?
He has one near-excellent moment, when answering a question
about Syria and Russia. "I don't want to sound bellicose," he
says. (Why not? This is the Republican race.) "But my personal
opinion is, we're the United States of f— of America. They
should be more worried about us than we are about them."
Bush could have become an instant YouTube sensation if he'd
completed his thought and said, "We're the United States of
Fucking America," but he couldn't do it. That's just not who he
is.
Who is he? Minus the family imperative, Bush is easily imagined
as a laid-back commercial lawyer in some Florida exurb, the kind
of guy who can crack dirty jokes while he runs a meeting about a
new mixed-use development outside Tallahassee.
He doesn't seem at all like a power-crazed, delusionally
self-worshipping lunatic, and that's basically his problem. He
doesn't want this badly enough to be the kind of effortless
sociopathic liar you need to be to make it through this part of
the process.
Toward the end of his speech, for instance, the pharmacist
Manoukian puts the Jebster on the spot. The local apothecary has
a proposal he's been trying to make state law that would give
drug dealers special status.
"They would be like child molesters, always being registered,"
he says. He wheezes excitedly as he details his plan to strip
dealers of all social services. I don't think the plan involves
using hot irons to brand them with neck tattoos, but that's the
spirit.
The reporters all flash bored looks at one another. People like
Manoukian are recurring figures on the campaign trail,
particularly on the Republican side. There's always some local
Junior Anti-Sex League chief who asks the candidate in a town
hall to endorse a plan for summary executions of atheists or
foreigners or whoever happens to be on the outs that election
cycle.
Bush absorbs the pharmacist's question and immediately launches
into a speech about the dangers of addiction – to prescription
drugs! Through the din of screeching parrots, Bush talks,
movingly, I think, about his "precious daughter" Noelle's
problems with prescription pills.
"There are some bad actors," he says. "You have people who
overprescribe, people who are pharmacy shopping, doctor
shopping..."
Everything he just said is true, but Manoukian, as he listens to
this diatribe, looks like someone has hit him with a halibut.
Does Bush know he's talking to a pharmacist?
Trump would have killed a moment like this, delivering some
dog-whistle-ready line about gathering up all the dealers by
their hoodies and shooting them into space with all of the child
molesters. Who cares if it makes sense? This is the Clown Car.
But Bush has no feel for audience. He doesn't know how to play
down to a mob. Nor does he realize how absurd he sounds when a
Lucky Spermer scion like himself tries to talk about his
"small-business" experience (his past three "jobs" were all
lucrative gigs with giant companies that had done business with
Florida when he was governor). Despite all this, Bush doesn't
seem crazy, nor even like a particularly disgusting person by
presidential-campaign standards, which probably disqualifies him
from this race.
Lynn Cowan, a Hollis resident, agrees. She thinks Bush comes
across as a reasonable guy, but she also thinks his
reasonableness is probably crippling in the current political
environment.
"It's to his detriment," she says. "And it's sad that we've
reached a point where these politicians can't even be on the
level."
A few hours later, Nashua, New Hampshire. Rubio strides onstage
to a roaring young crowd at the Dion Center of Rivier
University. He is like a cross of Joel Osteen and Bobby Kennedy,
jacketless with a red tie and shirtsleeves. He is short but
prickishly good-looking, all hair and teeth and self-confidence.
He's the kind of guy that no group of men wants to go to a bar
with, both because he spoils the odds and because he seems like
kind of an asshole generally.
There are young women in the crowd looking up at him adoringly,
like a Beatle. It's a sight one doesn't often see in
presidential politics, but even more seldom on the Republican
side, where most candidates are either 500 years old or belong
to religions barring nonprocreative use of the wiener. Rubio
plainly enjoys being an exception to the rule.
His speech is a total nothingburger, full of worn clichés about
America being an "exceptional country," where people are
nonetheless living "paycheck to paycheck" and wondering if
"achieving [the American dream] is still possible."
But he's so slick, he could probably sell a handful of cars at
every speech. His main pitch is his Inspirational Personal
Tale™. As he's told it, he's the son of refugees from Fidel
Castro's Cuba (actually, they left Cuba before Castro, but
whatever) who rose from nothing to reach the U.S. Senate, where
he was eventually able to draw a $170,000 paycheck despite a
brilliant Office Space-style decision to not quit, exactly, but
simply not go to work anymore. Which is pretty sweet.
Actually, that last bit isn't openly part of his stump speech.
But if you listen hard enough, you can hear it. Rubio has
announced that he isn't going to run for re-election to the
Senate, where he recently cast his first vote in 26 days and
spoke for the first time in 41. He said he didn't hate the work
but was "frustrated" ("He hates it," a friend more bluntly told
The Washington Post).
In addition to the stories about laying down in the Senate, old
tales about Rubio's use of an American Express card given to him
by the Republican Party when he was in the Florida House began
swirling again. The stories are complex, but the upshot is that
Rubio once used party credit cards to spend $10,000 on a family
vacation, $3,800 on home flooring, $1,700 on a Vegas vacation
and thousands more on countless other absurdities.
Couple those tales with the troubling stories about his
financial problems – the Times learned that he cashed in a
retirement account and blew $80,000 on a speedboat he probably
couldn't afford – and the subtext with Rubio is that he is
probably both remaining in the Senate and running for president,
at least partly, for the money.
A debt addict with a burgeoning Imelda Marcos shopping complex
was pretty much the only thing missing from the top of this GOP
field. Yet he looks like the party's next attempt at an
Inevitable Candidate.
It's easy to see why. Rubio storms through his stump speech in
Nashua, blasting our outdated infrastructure with perfect timing
and waves of soaring rhetoric. We have outdated policies in this
country, he says. "We have a retirement system designed in the
1930s. We have an immigration and higher-education system
designed in the 1950s. Anti-poverty programs designed in the
1960s. Energy policies designed from the 1970s. Tax policies
from the Eighties and Nineties..."
The punchline is something about needing to burn it all to the
ground and remake everything into a new conservative Eden for
the 21st century. "An economic renaissance, unlike anything
that's ever happened," he gushes.
I raise an eyebrow. Any vet of this process will feel, upon
seeing Rubio in person, a disturbance in the campaign-trail
force. He checks all the boxes of what the Beltway kingmakers
look for in a political marketing phenomenon: young, ethnic,
good-looking, capable of working a room like a pro and able to
lean hard on an inspirational bio while eschewing policy
specifics.
A bitter Bush recently pegged Rubio as a Republican version of
Obama, a comparison neither Rubio nor many Democrats will like,
but it has a lot of truth to it. The main difference, apart from
the policy inverses, is in tone. 2008 Obama sold tolerance and
genial intellectualism, perfect for roping in armchair liberals.
Rubio sells a kind of strident, bright-eyed dickishness that in
any other year would seem tailor-made for roping in
conservatives.
But this isn't any year. It isn't just our energy, education and
anti-poverty systems that are outdated. So is our tradition of
campaign journalism, which, going back to the days of Nixon,
trains reporters to imagine that the winner is probably the
slickest Washington-crafted liar, not some loon with a reality
show.
But in 2016, who voters like and who the punditocracy thinks
they'll swallow are continuing to be two very different things.
In the Clown Car era, if reporters think you're hot stuff,
that's probably a red flag.
Concord, New Hampshire, the Secretary of State's office, morning
of November 6th. I'm waiting to see Ohio Gov. John Kasich
officially register as a candidate for the New Hampshire
primary.
In another election, Kasich might be a serious contender, being
as he is from Ohio, a former Lehman Brothers stooge and a
haranguing bore with the face of a dogcatcher. He exactly fits
the profile of what party insiders used to call an "exciting"
candidate.
At the moment, though, he's a grumpy sideshow to Trump and
Carson whose main accomplishment is that he hogged the most time
in the fourth debate (and also became the first non-Trump
candidate to be booed). Kasich in person seems like a man ready
to physically implode from bitterness at the thought that his
carefully laid scheme for power might be undone by a flatulent
novelty act like Trump.
Surrounded by reporters in the Concord state offices, Kasich
seethes again about the tenor of the race. "I think there are
some really goofy ideas out there," he says.
I've driven to Concord specifically for this moment. I want to
ask Kasich if maybe this is the wrong time in American history
for someone pushing cold realism as a platform. It's a softball
– I think he might enjoy expounding upon the issue of America's
newfound fascination with "goofy" politicians.
"The people with the goofiest ideas are at the top of the
polls," I say. "Do you think maybe being the sane candidate in
this race is disqualifying?"
Kasich doesn't smile. Instead, he shoots me a look like I'd just
dented his Mercedes.
"No," he hisses.
The candidacy of Carly Fiorina, with its wild highs and lows,
has exposed the bizarre nature of this primary season. She was
in Nowheresville until midsummer, when she attracted the notice
of Trump. At the time, reveling atop the polls in full pig
glory, Trump told Rolling Stone that America wouldn't be able to
take looking at Fiorina's face for a whole presidency. In the
second debate, Fiorina responded, "I think women all over this
country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said."
Fiorina in the same debate implored Hillary Clinton and Obama to
watch Planned Parenthood at work. "Watch these tapes," she said,
staring hypnotically into the screen like a Kreskin or a
Kashpirovsky. "Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its
heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says, 'We have to
keep it alive to harvest its brain.' "
It was a brilliantly macabre performance, and, according to
some, it won her the debate. Even by this race's standards, a
tale of evil liberal women's-health workers ripping out the
brains of live babies rated a few very good days of what they
call "earned media," i.e., press you don't have to pay for.
Of course, Fiorina's claim that she had actually seen a video of
someone trying to harvest the brain of a fetus with its legs
kicking turned out to be false. Her story matched up vaguely
with one video that included a description of a fetus having its
brain removed, but no such footage existed, as fact-checkers
immediately determined.
Called on her fib by Fox's Chris Wallace, Fiorina doubled down.
"I've seen the footage," she insisted. "And I find it amazing,
actually, that all these supposed fact-checkers in the
mainstream media claim this doesn't exist."
The week after that appearance with Wallace on Fox News Sunday
was her best week in the polls, as she reached as high as 11
percent in some, tying for third with Rubio. She'd clued in to
the same insight that drove the early success of Trump: that in
the reality-show format of the 2016 race, all press attention is
positive, and nobody particularly cares if you lie, so long as
you're entertaining.
America dug Fiorina when she was a John Carpenter movie about
bloodthirsty feminists harvesting baby brains. But when she
talked about anything else, they were bored stiff.
On a Thursday night in Newport, New Hampshire, Fiorina is
laboring through her monotone life story of corporate promotions
and "solving problems." It's like watching a thermometer move.
"Wouldn't it be helpful," she asks, "to reduce the 73,000-page
tax code to three pages?"
I chuckle. Even by Clown Car standards, a three-page federal tax
code is a hilarious ploy, right up there with Carson's
10-percent biblical tithe and a giant wall across the Central
American isthmus. On the way out of the event, a few reporters
are joking about it. "Three pages is good," one deadpans. "But
I'd like to see her fit it on the label of a really nice local
IPA."
Polls have suggested that Fiorina, Carson and Trump were all
fighting over the same finite slice of Lunatic Pie (the Beltway
press euphemistically calls it the "outsider vote"), a
demographic that by late September comprised just north of half
of expected Republican voters. That means that for Fiorina to
rise, Trump or Carson must fall.
The problem is that after a late-summer swoon, Trump's support
has stabilized. And Carson has taken campaign lunacy to places
that a three-page tax code couldn't dent. Forget about winning a
primary: Carson won the Internet.
Traditionally, we in the political media have always been able
to finish off candidates once they start bleeding. The pol
caught sending dick pics to strangers, lying about nannies,
snuggling models on powerboats, concealing secret treatments for
"exhaustion," or doing anything else unforgivably weird is
harangued until he or she disintegrates. The bullying is
considered a sacred tribal rite among the Beltway press, and
it's never not worked.
Until this year. Trump should have been finished off half a
dozen times – after the
John-McCain-was-a-wuss-for-getting-captured line, after the
"blood coming out of her wherever" bit, after the "Mexicans are
rapists" episode, etc.
But we don't finish them off anymore. We just keep the cameras
rolling. The ratings stay high, and the voters don't abandon
their candidates – they just tune in to hate us media smartasses
more.
Enter Ben Carson. Reporters early on in the summer thought he
was a Jerzy Kosiński character, a nutty doctor who had maybe
gotten lost on the way to a surgical convention and accidentally
entered a presidential race. In the first debate, he looked like
an amnesiac who might at any moment reach into his pocket, find
a talisman reminding him of his true identity, and walk
offstage.
Then he started saying stuff. First there was that thing about
using drones on immigrants crossing the border. Then people
began picking apart old stories he'd told, like that a Yale
professor in a psych class called "Perceptions 301" had once
given him $10 for being honest (nobody remembers that class), or
that he'd helped hide frightened white high school students in a
lab in Detroit during race riots (nobody remembers that,
either).
Everyone who's ever been to an American megachurch recognizes
the guy who overdoes the "before" portion of his evangelical
testimony, telling tall tales about running with biker gangs or
participating in coke orgies (this is always taking place
somewhere like Lubbock or suburban Topeka) before discovering
Jesus.
As some ex-evangelicals have pointed out, Carson fits this
model. He claims in his autobiography, Gifted Hands, that he
once tried to stab someone named "Bob," failing only because he
accidentally hit a belt buckle. Also, he told reporters decades
ago that as a youth he attacked people with "bats and bricks"
and hammers. The hammer victim was apparently his mother.
In Gifted Hands, none of this stuff seems any more real than the
book's other inspirational passages, like the one where as a
college student he prays to God about being broke and gets
immediate relief as he walks across campus. "A $10 bill lay
crumpled on the ground in front of me," he wrote (the magical
$10 bill is a recurring character in Carsonia).
Soon, reporters were interviewing childhood friends, who were
revealing what is clear if you read between the lines of
Carson's book, which is that he was probably never anything but
a nerd with an overheated imagination. "He was skinny and
unremarkable," a classmate named Robert Collier told CNN. "I
remember him having a pocket saver."
Carson lashed out at reporters for doubting his inspirational
tale of a homicidal, knife-wielding madman turned convivial
brain surgeon. "I would say to the people of America: Do you
think I'm a pathological liar like CNN does?" he said.
This bizarre state of affairs led to stories in the straight
press that were indistinguishable from Onion fare. "Ben Carson
Defends Himself Against Allegations That He Never Attempted to
Murder a Child," wrote New York magazine, in perhaps the single
funniest headline presidential politics has ever seen.
Next, BuzzFeed reporters unearthed an old speech of Carson's in
which he outlined a gorgeously demented theory about the
Egyptian pyramids: They were not tombs for Pharaohs, but rather
had been built by the biblical Joseph to store grain. The latter
idea he accepted after discarding the obvious space-aliens
explanation.
"Various scientists have said, 'Well, you know there were alien
beings that came down and they have special knowledge,'" he
said. "[But] it doesn't require an alien being when God is with
you."
Scientists were quick to point out all sorts of issues, like the
pyramids not really being hollow and therefore really sucky
places to store grain. Then there was the fact that the
Egyptians wrote down what the pyramids were for in, well,
writing.
The pyramid story sent the Internet, which specializes in
nothing if not instant mockery, into overdrive. Carson quickly
became perhaps the single funniest thing on Earth. The Wrap ran
a piece about Carson being "mocked mercilessly" on social media,
where other "Carson theories" quickly developed: that the Eiffel
Tower was for storing French bread, brains were actually a
fruit, and peanut butter can be used as spermicide, etc. The
whole world was in on it. It was epic.
Poor Trump now had to concede that someone else in the race was
even more ridiculous and unhinged than he was. The campaign's
previously unrivaled carnival expert/circus Hitler was reduced
to sounding like George Will as he complained somberly – and
ungrammatically – about the attention the mad doctor was
stealing away from him.
"With Ben Carson wanting to hit his mother on head with a
hammer, stabb [sic] a friend and Pyramids built for grain
storage," Trump tweeted sadly, "don't people get it?"
By the end of the first week of November, Carson did not
experience, upon close scrutiny, an instant plunge in the polls,
as previous front-runners-for-a-day like Rick Perry or Herman
Cain had in years past. Instead, he remained atop the polls with
Trump, having successfully convinced his followers that the
media flaps were just liberal hazing of a black man who
threatened leftist stereotypes. And so the beginning of the
long-awaited "real race" stalled still another week.
Trump commented during a rally in Illinois: "You can say
anything about anybody, and their poll numbers go up. This is
the only election in history where it's better off if you
stabbed somebody. What are we coming to?"
We are coming to the moment when Trump is the voice of reason,
that's what. |
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