There was something called the Florida Freedom Summit held over the weekend. I had not heard of this group before but have learned that any outfit which has the words ‘freedom’, ‘family’, or ‘liberty’ in its name can usually be predicted to be made up of extreme right wing nut jobs and this one seems to fit the bill. Two candidates for the Republican nomination who have staked out positions critical of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) spoke at the meeting and they got very hostile receptions when they criticized the Dear Leader SSAT.
To his credit, the combative Chris Christie did not flinch but engaged with the people jeering him.
Christie fed off the animated crowd, fueling more boos as he challenged audience members’ reactions to his remarks.
“The problem is, you want to shout down any voice that says anything different than what you want to hear. You can continue to do it, and believe me — believe me, it doesn’t bother me one bit,” Christie said before pivoting to Israel.
…With each disruption, the New Jersey Republican fired back until he left the stage at the conclusion of his remarks.
“You can yell and boo about it as much as you like, but it doesn’t change the truth. And the truth is coming. The truth is coming, and all of you need to understand: America needs better than what we’ve had. And it never makes America a better place, whether it’s on a college campus in an Ivy League or whether it’s in an auditorium in Orlando, for us to be booing and shouting down opinions we don’t agree with,” Christie said.
Asa Hutchinson is more low-key but he too did not flinch from laying down some harsh truths to the crowd.
Hutchinson didn’t face immediate blowback from the crowd, but once he broached Trump’s legal challenges, the audience erupted into intense booing for over a minute. He pointed to his experience as a federal prosecutor, and even as the crowd roared, Hutchinson attempted to speak over them until he finished his point.
“I can say that there is a significant likelihood that Donald Trump will be found guilty by a jury on a felony offense next year. That may or may not happen before you vote in March. And it might not make any difference to you,” he said. “But it will make a difference for our chances to attract independent voters in November. It will make a difference for those down-ticket races for Congress and Senate. And it will weaken the GOP for decades to come.”
Of course, all this may have had little impact on the audience. This likely being a Christian crowd, they may be familiar with the biblical passage Matthew 13:15.
“For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.”
They will ignore Jesus’s words because he is obviously a woke lefty.
But I wonder, as more and more Republicans start hammering away at SSAT, how long they can continue to stop their ears.
“Your boos mean nothing. I’ve seen what makes you cheer.” Rick Sanchez
Chris Christie is in this campaign just to mock Trump. He is in this campaign because he backed Trump in 2016 but didn’t get a job in the Trump administration. He knows he has no chance of winning but pure spite is enough for him. If things work out he will likely angle for a job in the next GOP administration claiming he was providing cover to whoever wins by being the one to take Trump on directly.
Chris Christie needs to put his money (or at least whatever is left of his sacred honor) where his mouth is, and join the Democratic Party. It won’t get him nominated for President, but at least it will show he’s really willing to stand up to all that insanity, instead of just shouting and mocking ineffectually from the inside.
It is a weird world when Chris Christie and Mitt Romney are some kind of… moral beacons. At least in relation to the recessive MAGA crowd.
@4:
A simple harmonic oscillator is right every 2π/ω.
The article I read reported that Christie said “Your anger against the truth is reprehensible.” It won’t make much difference to the MAGAt crowd, but is still a sane response coming from a republican.
In 2016, some analysts said that Clinton was a poor choice because she had huge negatives. Some people liked her, especially compared to her opponent, but a whole lot of people ranged from “don’t care for” to “actively hate”. TFG is now in that same situation, only trebled. While everyone points to his diehard fans, I cannot remember any major party candidate in the last 50 years who so much of the electorate absolutely hates, and with impressive vigor. Even the people who don’t necessarily hate him are at least tired of him and want him to go away. At this point, I suspect that a sizable portion of the electorate would literally vote for an old dog over TFG. The old dog wouldn’t do anything good, but at least he wouldn’t be actively making things worse, while constantly talking about how great he is.
jimf @#7
Well according to the latest polls, Trump is ahead of Biden in key states. So it seems that there’s a whole lot of stupid people who don’t give a shit about democracy and believe the lies and half truths about Biden’s age problems and the economy. Assuming that the poll is anywhere close to correct which is a big assumption.
@8 Jean
Polling a year out from an election? Not so much. And yes, “a big assumption”. Don’t forget, poll after poll said Clinton would be president in 2016. I am not saying it will be a walk, but I trust current polling as much as I trust TFG.
@9:
The value of poll data “a year out from the election” depends entirely on whether you’re trying to answer the question “who will win the next election?” or “are there stupid bigots in America?”
This likely being a Christian crowd, they may be familiar with the biblical passage Matthew 13:15.
There is fairly good evidence that Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christians don’t read much of the bible. Unless it is a very commonly quoted passage, I’d say the odds are not good.
Yet again I’ll say it -- does anyone at all remember 2015? It wasn’t just one or two Republican mavericks “hammering away”, it was the entire party, every single one of them, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, EVERYONE. And to paraphrase Newt from “Aliens” -- it didn’t make any difference. It’s bizarre to still see people pontificating about how doomed Trump is, persisting in the teeth of eight YEARS of evidence in believing that the rules that apply to everyone else are a reliable guide to how he’ll do.
And yes, poll data a year out is about as much use as a weather forecast a year out. But forget poll data -- the main message that everyone with two braincells to rub together needs to get is VOTE!!! This is not and never will be a foregone conclusion unless Trump is literally DEAD (and maybe not even then?). Don’t put it past him to beat Biden from a prison cell. Don’t put it past him to beat Biden even if Biden’s in perfect health (for an 82 year old) and Trump has literally had a stroke. Don’t take ANYTHING for granted because in doing so, what you’re doing is relying on TRUMP VOTERS to act rationally. Think hard about that, then fucking VOTE. Complacency put Trump in the White House once, don’t let it happen again.
@12
Yes, every sane person needs to get out and vote. If they don’t, the insane ones will rule. My point is that with his negatives, beating TFG is for the Democrats to lose. And certainly, they have shown that they are capable of such. I would add, though, that the thing that put TFG in the WH in 2016 was the Electoral College, one of the most undemocratic parts of our Constitution, and which neither party seems much interested in changing (for Repubs, it’s obvious because it’s pretty much the only way they can win now, seeing that only once in the past 30 years did their candidate win the popular vote).
So… complacency put Trump in the White House, just like I said. I didn’t just mean -- didn’t even mainly mean -- complacency on the part of voters thinking “I don’t need to bother, there’s no way that clown is beating her.” I meant complacency on the part of the Dems and Clinton personally feeling like they’d got it in the bag and could get away with, for example openly describing a huge swathe of the electorate as “deplorable” and similar, and not even bothering to campaign in certain areas.
Compare and contrast Clinton with Mitt Romney. It was BIG NEWS when it came out that at a private event, Mitt Romney had confided, when he thought there were no cameras running, to a bunch of millionaire donors that he figured 47% of Americans were a bunch of freeloaders. The crucial thing here is that although what he said was on its face reprehensible, he at least had the sense not to say it in public. It was only his bad luck that it turned out someone was taping him.
Clinton, similarly, lambasted her opposition’s supporters thus: “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it.” Here’s the difference though -- that dumb, complacent FUCK said that OUT LOUD IN PUBLIC at a campaign fundraiser where SHE KNEW SHE WAS ON CAMERA.
And when she lost, she blamed other people.
Note: I didn’t hate Clinton. If I’d been unfortunate enough to live in the US in 2016, I’d definitely have voted for her. I do fucking hate her for losing to Trump, of all people.
@13 jimf: The Democrats would love to change the electoral college. They just can’t, it would require an amendment to the constitution which has to be approved by the same Republican states that would lose power in the presidential vote. It’s borderline impossible to do and such a narrowly political issue that it rarely gets talked about.
A scheme to go around this by having states change the state law so that their electoral votes go to whoever wins the national popular vote is being worked on. This is within the limits of state law and if enough states support it then it amounts to popular vote wins.
@sonofrojblake; your misogyny is very well known. You’re not fooling anyone by saying you don’t hate her. And what she said about Trump’s camp was 100% true--they’re as deplorable as TFG. And they weren’t voting for her anyway, so that didn’t lose any votes.
Hillary Clinton had 2.9 million more votes than TFG. She won the popular vote despite Putin’s interference in the election, despite Comey’s shenanigans at the very last minute for purely political reasons (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/comey-announced-reopening-clinton-email-probe-days-election/story?id=54470601), and various lesser stupidities like Bernie Sanders’ camp refusing to vote for anyone but him even though never earned enough votes to be on the ballot and Seven electors who were pledged to vote for either Clinton or Trump defected to other options, like Colin Powell, Bernie Sanders and “Faith Spotted Eagle.”
Because of a quirk in the electoral college, Trump ended up the winner, but he didn’t actually win the popular vote.
@SailorStar:
My preferred choice for Dem candidate in ’15 was Elizabeth Warren. I’m ALL about the misogyny. Moron.
You weren’t fooled by me saying I don’t hate her?
Hmm.
You don’t English very good, did you?
Here’s what I said:
1: “I didn’t hate her” -- note the use of something we doctors call “the past tense”, which humans use when they’re describing something that happened in the past.
2. “I would have voted for her” -- this clearly describes one of the outcomes of my NOT hating her IN THE PAST.
3: “I do fucking hate her” -- this is something called “the present tense”, which humans use when they’re describing something that’s happening now. Me hating Clinton is something that is happening now. I’m a little baffled why you’d say nobody is fooled by me saying the opposite, when I didn’t say the opposite. Perhaps you can explain a little more clearly?
4: “because she lost to Trump” -- this is the explanation for my hatred of her. It’s got precisely fuck all to do with her gender and everything to do with her entitled arrogance and complacency that put that fucking orange criminal in the White House for four years.
You are clearly one of the idiots for whom ANY criticism of ANY woman for ANY reason, no matter how clearly reasoned and deserved, is automatically labelled “misogyny”, because after all what other possible reason could anyone have for disliking ANY woman? How easy it must be being you.
Furthermore: yet another one of the horde of bleating crybabies who reliably come out of the woodwork whenever the Sainted Hillary is criticised to repeat in shrill tones the canard “but she won the popular vooooooooooooooooooooote!”, as if that had any fucking relevance to anything.
Clinton entered a competition whose rules she understood perfectly well, rules she agreed to abide by, rules that were perfectly good enough for her predecessor AND her husband -- and SHE LOST. Lefties justifiably love ridiculing Trumpistas who can’t get over the fact that The Donald lost in 2020, but fuck me am I sick of lefties who can’t get over the fact that Clinton lost in 2016. I mean they didn’t storm the Capitol but fuck is that a low bar or what?
@17 sonofrojblake: I’ve only discovered Freethought Blogs in the past year, but your misogyny shines bright and strong. Your tantrums now show it--“the hit dog howls”. You’re not an American, and going back through the archives, I see nothing about you supporting Warren (who wasn’t even running in 2016).
@17: I’m a guy. Unlike you, I know women are human beings. Also unlike you, I live in reality, and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by an overwhelming amount despite Putin, the women-haters and incels, and the “St. Bernie or DIE” folks, who were happy to see the country blow up because their preferred candidate who wasn’t even a Democrat didn’t make it to the Democratic ballot.
You can’t handle that, so you froth and carry on like a stuck pig. We see you, dude.
We discussed this on August 4th, and you’ve no more evidence of misogyny now than you had then.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2023/08/02/the-next-trump-indictment-drops/#comment-5218842
Well, your lack of competence or success in googling is hardly my fault. And yes, she wasn’t running, because it was Clinton’s turn, dammit. She WAS being discussed as a potential candidate, but the fix was in for Clinton, as I suspect Warren knew well. /shrug/
Can you acknowledge that in the reality we both live in, winning the popular vote doesn’t mean shit? I’m not denying she won it, because hey, I DO live in reality. But for some reason you keep on and on and on hammering the point that she won the popular vooooooooooooooooooooooote as if it MATTERED… and in the reality I inhabit, it doesn’t. How’s the weather in YOUR reality?
As for frothing up and carrying on… well, you keep reliably turning up and bleating about the popular vooooooooooooooooooooote -- so we see you, too, fanboi.
And in any case -- yes, I froth and carry on like a stuck pig. I’ll own that. Yes, I’m fucking annoyed. I’m still fucking annoyed. Trump being in the White House was her fault -- go on, tell me it wasn’t. She could have beaten him -- or don’t you think so? She should have beaten him. I don’t think she’d have been a great President, but she’d have been better than ANY of the no-marks the Republicans expected to field against her (low bar, I know).
Tell me you think she could have beaten Trump, because if you think that, we agree.
Tell me you think it was someone else’s fault she didn’t, and there we’ll part ways.
Finally, tell me why you think her gender is in ANY way relevant and name ONE other female politician I’m this angry with simply because she’s female.
(Hint: make sure you’re comfortable defending the records of:
-- Liz Truss
-- Suella Braverman
-- Priti Patel
-- Theresa May
-- Nadine Dorries
and make sure you can explain why my hatred of them is qualitatively different than my hatred of:
-- Alexander “Boris” Johnson
-- David Cameron
-- “I agree with Nick” Clegg
-- Michael “had enough of experts” Gove
-- Dominic Cummings).
Or just answer the question I’ve asked before: is ANY criticism of ANY woman for ANY reason just automatically misogyny to you, regardless of the objective evil of their opinions and actions?
Partially true, partially false. You only need enough states to pass individual state constitutional amendments that require the state electors to vote for the candidate that wins the nationwide majority.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
Here’s the thing, saying “the Democrats would love to change the electoral college” doesn’t appear to be true when they don’t even mention it. Just because something might be an uphill climb doesn’t mean that you should cede the territory to the opponent(s). I am not saying that they should funnel a bunch of money to it, but how much does it cost for members of the party to at least mention it when they’re interviewed on the Sunday shows? It needs to be out there in the public consciousness. It’s like the so-called Social Security shortfall. There was a simple solution to this presented by the CBO over ten years ago, namely, lifting the limit on the Soc Sec deduction. They should have been hammering away at this every chance they got. Heck, I’d give odds that the average American doesn’t even know that there is an upper limit on it, because most Americans never make that much. They don’t realize that Soc Sec “tax” is regressive because it hits low wage earners harder than high wage earners.
@SailorStar:
Is this misogyny? It’s a yes/no question.