The Phony Campaign

2015-05-03 Update

[phony baloney]

The geniuses at PredictWise have judged Martin O'Malley with a 2% shot of being our next president, which is good enough to welcome him back to our phony table. And he slides into a comfortable third place, behind Jeb and Hillary:

Query String Hit Count Change Since
2015-04-26
"Jeb Bush" phony 760,000 -219,000
"Hillary Clinton" phony 419,000 -25,000
"Martin O'Malley" phony 304,000 ---
"Rand Paul" phony 179,000 -16,000
"Joe Biden" phony 142,000 -2,000
"Marco Rubio" phony 113,000 -10,000
"Scott Walker" phony 109,000 -3,000
"Elizabeth Warren" phony 79,200 -3,800

Not in the PredictWise table at all: Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Bernie Sanders.

  • Kevin D. Williamson reminds us what Elizabeth Warren's inflamed Wall-Street-vs.-Main-Street rhetoric boils down to: getting into bed with lobbyists, dispensing billions of dollars worth of favors to those with the right political connections.

    And, if you are paying attention, you should expect that from Senator Warren, too. She is not what she pretends to be.

    For another data point, see her support for the Export-Import Bank.

  • Okay, Ted Cruz doesn't show up in our table (yet?), but Mickey Kaus's analysis of his shifty position on immigration is worth a read for those who think he's above all the phoniness. In 2013 he proposed a "middle ground" amendment to the "Gang of Eight" immigration bill that would grant amnesty and work permits to illegals but no "path to citizenship".

    But now Cruz claims his amendment was designed to fail, a parliamentary trick to demonstrate that advocates were only interested in eventual citizenship for illegals.

    But as near as anyone can tell, that's not something Cruz was saying back in 2013. Mickey speculates:

    The really annoying thing about Cruz is the air he gives that he’s so smart, he’s figured it all out and everyone else hasn’t. He gave that impression to the NYT in 2013. His team gives that impression […] now. But if you combine those two impressions you’re left with the sense that Cruz is hiding the ball, trying to please everyone at the expense of clarity, like any standard pol.

    I like Cruz, but I try to avoid the illusion that he walks on water.

  • As stated, Mike Huckabee is not on PredictWise's radar at all. But Allahpundit observes that he's making moves to announce on Tuesday, and notices some … differences between 2016 and his previous candidacy in his announcement video:

    What’s missing from this vid, though? It’s got plenty to offer the blue-collar Republicans whom Huckabee’s targeting — promises of wage growth, a solemn vow to protect America’s unsustainable entitlements, and a little saber-rattling at ISIS and other jihadi menaces. But … not a word about gay marriage, abortion, or religious liberty. The furthest he goes is noting that he’ll “lead with moral clarity” and that comes as a lead in to foreign policy.

    I thought Huckabee was a nice, decent guy back in 2008, but (like many conservatives and nearly all libertarians) thought he would have made a disastrous president. Seems to have his phoniness credentials down pat, though.

  • What? No Hillary this week? Fear not:

    You know Hillary Clinton’s voice, right? I mean, you know it. It’s just so loud and annoying. Or maybe it's like a nagging wife. Or inauthentic—that phony Southern accent! Those flat Midwestern vowels! Whatever it is, her voice is burned into your brain.

    But that's just the lead paragraph of "Why Do So Many People Hate the Sound of Hillary Clinton's Voice?" at The New Republic, a purportedly science-based look at the speaking styles of various candidates. (There are sciencey graphs with "percentiles" and "Hz" on the axes, so that's not as implausible as it could be.)


Last Modified 2024-01-22 9:48 AM EDT