Love this from Richard Burr:
King Hussein thought they were funny…
Math post. Feel free to ignore.
That’s a good point so I performed a regression analysis on the prices a PredictIt for the last 24 hours for Bush, Cruz, Rubio, and Trump. I also computed the 95% confidence interval for the slope of the trendline for each candidate to see if we could confidently pick out a signal from the noise.
Candidate Trend CI lower CI upper
Bush -0.021 -0.051 0.008
Cruz -0.145 -0.189 -0.102
Rubio -0.094 -0.161 -0.027
Trump 0.210 0.145 0.275
It looks like Trump is really trending up, Bush is staying even, and both Cruz and Rubio are trending down.
Those are great, thank you!
It’s hard to pick a favorite, what with Cruz promising precision carpet bombing and Trump “closing down parts of the Internet,” but for sheer simple cluelessness it probably has to be this one:
CHRISTIE: “When I stand across from King Hussein of Jordan and I say to him, ‘You have a friend again, sir, who will stand with you to fight this fight,’ he’ll change his mind.”
He’s been dead for 16 years, so that’s going to be an interesting meeting.
I caught this and yes, I also cringed. I told a friend that I couldn’t believe Christie displayed 1950s-style sexism in his first 4 sentences of the night.
That story has been updated to show that the leaders of the committee said there would be no investigation.
That was an excellent set of rebuttals; thanks for posting that.
Any news on the next Benghazi investigation?
I thought Bush seemed the least insane, followed by Rubio. The rest of the lot seemed focused more on developing an amorphous emotional appeal to certain elements of the electorate and less on appearing competent–they seem to be under the impression the majority of the Republican base is incapable of reason. Assuming there is any sanity left in the GOP, I will be surprised if the nom doesn’t go to Bush or Rubio.
Bush seemed to me to be the wiser adult in the room, and I think he actually did as good a job as can be done with Trump. Responding to Bush’s criticisms with prepubescent grimaces and smirks doesn’t mean Bush was wrong, it just means Trump is cool with coming off as a smug child. Rubio seemed to have his wits about him as well, but was on the sane side of the line between confident and maniacal. They all pandered a bit, but at least some of what Bush & Rubio said seemed to have been their own thoughts.
Carly Fiorina. Swearing up and down, even after being directly debunkified, that this General named Keane was forced into retirement by Obama. Only problem being, he resigned in 2003. Wait a sec, I’ll bring Rubio in to explain the math.
There’s a rumor floating about that Carly Fiorina has a detachable vagina, and she removes it at night to soak in vinegar. I don’t know how these things get started,
Did you hear about Carly Fiorina’s detachable vagina?
Huh. I’ve never really pondered this before, but: consider a weird counterfactual where it’s George W. Bush on the same debate stage with Trump; remember that guy, back when he was running for President? Come at him and he’d get confrontational fast, but in an upbeat and confident manner – and all with a regular-guy vibe, and a sense of humor, like he was amiably dishing out common-sense replies.
Yeah, we know now how that worked out – but I’m just talking about what he did in the debates; how would he have done, in real time, against Trump?
Sure, my point isn’t that it was a gotcha question, or unfair to Trump. My point is that a) debating details about how to prioritize legs of the nuclear triad is pointless in a Presidential context, but b) it was still scary that Trump seemed to have no idea what the Triad was.
It was sort of a weird moment that I honestly think Rubio handled pretty well (even if it’s not going to help him with Republican primary voters.) Hewitt asked a question that required the answerer to explain the terms he used to the audience. Why would he do this? Either he somehow forgot that his question needs to makes sense to the entire national audience, not just the person he’s asking the question to, he somehow doesn’t have a good sense of what knowledge his audience is likely to have, or he thinks this is an opportunity to show off how smart he is (I know what the nuclear triad is! I know what the Quds force is! Good for you, Hugh. No one gives a fuck.)
Yeah, but you gotta cut her some slack, after the terrific job she did at HP!
Fiorina is the best thing to happen to women in American politics since Meg Whitman. 
First debate where I saw a bit of it on TV. Kasich is just a goofy guy. Go back and watch him as he comes out, if I didn’t know what he looked like, I would have thought a disabled individual had strolled out there, grinning ear to ear. He also has some of the strangest hand motions I’ve ever seen in a public speaker. He’s like Will Ferrell playing in the sequel to Step Brothers where his character runs for president. He’s also annoying as shit, he babbles on endlessly and nearly zero people care about what he says.
Rubio was taken out last night. He’s done. He just isn’t a bright individual, and Cruz was finally able to bring that out. He’ll hang around because he is the Neoconservative favorite, but he just doesn’t have it.
Christie just reinforced my opinion of him being an all-around disgusting individual. Bush and Carson were complete nonentities.
Wait, Kasich came out? I don’t think even that would convince me to vote for him.
I watched the GOP debate. I listened as they talked about fear, and how much danger we are in, and how weak and bad our country and government is??? To protect us the candidates proposed to incarcerate US citizens with out due process, eavesdropping on everybody, shutting down the border, shutting down the internet, killing entire families, carpet bombing countries, mas deportations interment of people and becoming a walled society where we shut out the rest of the world!.. This sounds like a case where the cure is much worse than the disease!!!.. For over two hundred years America has fought against countries who adopted the very same policies that these leaders are proposing!!! After last night I do not consider Isis as America’s biggest threat, I see the leaders of this great country is America’s biggest threat and the fear mongering men they have become to lead… Strength leads by examples not by fear, watching these guys insult each other and the democrats, I wonder where these madmen and their followers are leading our country???