Making Fun of the Clown Car of Republican Candidates

Ted Cruz quotes

1. “‘Net neutrality’ is Obamacare for the Internet”

In November of last year, after President Barack Obama announced his support for “net neutrality,” Cruz had no choice but to come out against it, tweeting “Net Neutrality’ is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.”

2. “Instead of nominating a health professional, he nominated someone who is an anti-gun activist”

In an interview with Candy Crowley, Cruz claimed that the president’s pick for surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, wasn’t qualified because of statements he had made about the Second Amendment.

3. Obama just a “social worker” who wants to put ISIS “on expanded Medicaid”

In an appearance on Fox News’ Hannity, Cruz complained that United States military leaders were taking too many cues from the president. “It’s not our job,” he said, “to be social workers in Iraq and put them all on expanded Medicaid. It is our job to kill terrorists who have declared war on America and who have demonstrated the intention and capability to murder innocent Americans.”

4. “It is the job of a chaplain to be insensitive to atheists”

Speaking at a home schooling convention, Cruz said that “we have never seen an administration with such hostility to religious faith. Last year, there was a chaplain in the Air Force up in Alaska who wrote in a blog post the phrase ‘There are no atheists in fox holes.’ He was ordered by his supervising officer to take it down. I guess it was deemed insensitive to atheists. I kind of thought it was the job of a chaplain to be insensitive to atheists.”

5. “I didn’t threaten to shut down the government”

After leading the GOP charge to shut down the government, Cruz repeatedly claimed that he had nothing to do with the GOP shutting down the government.

6. “I will renounce any Canadian citizenship”

After speaking to Donald Trump about a possible run for the White House, Cruz admitted that he was born in Calgary, Canada. However, he told The Dallas Morning News that “I will renounce any Canadian citizenship. Nothing against Canada, but I’m an American by birth and as a US senator I believe I should be only an American.”

7. “I expect them to start quartering soldiers in people’s homes soon”





At the 2013 Values Voter Summit, Cruz said Obama was intent on violating the entire Bill of Rights. “You look at our Constitution, you look at our Bill of Rights, this is an administration that seems bound and determined to violate every single one of our Bill or Rights,” he said, adding “I don’t know that they’ve yet violated the Third Amendment, but I expect them to start quartering soldiers in people’s homes soon.”

8. “Gay marriage” leads to Christianity becoming “hate speech”

In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Cruz said that “if you look at other nations that have gone down the road towards gay marriage, that’s the next step of where it gets enforced. It gets enforced against Christian pastors who decline to perform gay marriages, who speak out and preach biblical truths on marriage, that has been defined elsewhere as hate speech, as inconsistent with the enlightened view of government.”

9. “I am a very, very proud wacko bird”

Responding to a statement by Senator John McCain that his opposition to immigration reform made him a “wacko bird,” Cruz to CBS News that “if standing for liberty and standing for the Constitution makes you a wacko bird then I am a very, very proud wacko bird.”

10. “I have never seen a Hispanic panhandler”

On Fox News Sunday in 2012, Cruz told host Chris Wallace that, “in my life, I have never once seen an Hispanic panhandler. In our community, it would be viewed as shameful to be out on the street begging.”

11. “Your world is on fire!”

At an event in New Hampshire last week, Cruz said “the Obama-Clinton foreign policy of leading from behind — the whole world is on fire.” When a little girl replied, “the world is on fire?” Cruz responded by saying, “Yes! Your world is on fire!”

12. “Green Eggs and Ham”

During his “filibuster” of the Affordable Care Act, Cruz took time out to read his daughters a bedtime story. “I don’t get to read it that often because I tell them, ‘Go pick the books you want to read and I read it to them,’” Cruz said on the Senate floor. “But since tonight, girls, you aren’t here, you don’t get to pick the book, so I get to pick Green Eggs and Ham.”

The clown car...

If they're unanimous in their support of the pipeline, we can call them the Keystone cops:

Next we’ll hear Richard Simmons is running for the Republican party, he fits right in the clown car!

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal responded with humor Monday when asked about controversy over a portrait that depicts the Indian-American governor with light skin.

“You mean I’m not white?” he joked at a Christian Science-Monitor breakfast.

The portrait in question, which shows Jindal with skin shades lighter than it actually is, attracted widespread ridicule on Twitter, including questions like “Who’s the white guy?” A spokesperson for the governor accused bloggers discussing the Jindal’s skin color in the portrait of “race-baiting” last week, and Jindal described the uproar as “silly” on Monday.
“I think the left is obsessed with race,” Jindal said Monday. “I think the dumbest thing we can do is to try to divide people by the color of their skin…. This is nonsense. We’re all Americans.”

Jindal, a potential contender for the GOP’s 2016 presidential nomination, has been an outspoken critic of thinking in racial terms. In a 2013 Politico op-ed, he decried the “age of hyphenated Americans.”

“It’s time for the end of race in America,” he wrote. “Now that would be progress.”

– Additional reporting by Zeke J. Miller

They are going to need two clown cars.
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Remember back when the Republican National Committee felt that the 2012 primary season was a terrible mess of too many candidates and too many debates, all of which badly spiraled out of control and ended up ruining Mitt Romney's chances of winning the White House? That was an actual thing the RNC got bugged out about, and that they've gone to great lengths to avoid repeating in 2016.

But today, they've unleashed an online presidential straw poll on the world, and boy howdy, it's like they haven't learned a thing.

As the Weekly Standard reported this morning, there are 36 names on their straw poll. Thirty-six! It's like they swung a stick backstage at CPAC and included everyone who got whacked. It would actually be easier for me to tell you who is not on the list than it would for me to list all the people they've included. Basically, not making the cut are 1) Michele Bachmann, 2) John McCain and 3) Democrats.

The people who have acknowledged that they are running for president, or who are running and just haven't made it official because of various campaign finance reasons, have all made the list. That would be eight names (Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker), which is a pretty good size for a straw poll. You'd think that it might be useful for the RNC to know where their voters' early sympathies realistically lie, right?

But wait! There are a bunch of people currently huddled near the sidelines of the GOP nominating contest who could join this mix in the next few months or so. That would take us to 14 names with six plausible additions (Chris Christie, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum). And there was a time when New York Rep. Peter King insisted he was going to jump in, so we'll include him. And because I'm feeling really plucky today, we'll throw George Pataki on the pile as well. That's 16 people. Surely this is enough?

No, not by a long shot. Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, the living embodiments of the flashes-in-the-pan that the RNC wanted to avoid gaining attention this time out, are on the straw poll. Sarah Palin, who would lose badly, is on the straw poll. Ron Paul is on the straw poll. I mean, what if you think Rand Paul is just "aiiight"? What if you want someone older, who's published more controversial newsletters? The RNC has got you covered, for some reason.

Also on the straw poll:

Mitt Romney: a guy who's already declined to run.
John Thune: a guy who didn't run in 2012 because his wife, smartly, didn't want to be ridiculed in sexist fashion by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.
Tim Pawlenty: a guy whose most memorable moment as a presidential candidate was that time he quit being a presidential candidate.
Donald Trump: a sack of wet shoes left outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
There is also a guy named "Mark Everson" on this list, of whom the Weekly Standard's Michael Warren says, "Who's Mark Everson, you ask? Beats me." (He is a "former IRS commissioner." Come on, Michael, it's right there beneath his name.)

As Warren goes on to point out, the makers of this online poll didn't want to alienate any participant, and so they've given everyone the option to write in a candidate. So, here's hoping that the winner of this year's prestigious RNC Straw Poll is "Weedlord Bonerhitler."

Great post, Edgar.

But I just gotta do this. I hope you understand it is to say "amen" to your comments:

I think he would very much like it to be about skin color. Distracts from his Old Time Religion.

This isn't really appropriate to this thread, but I'm hoping you'll know who this person is (I don't). This picture sort of underlined for me the disconnect between the ruling 'class' and the people they are elected to represent.

Renee Ellmers - U.S. Representative for North Carolina's 2nd congressional district

Oddly for a person with my left side politics, I don't really like calling opposite type politicians clowns. Some fair portion of them - I take it - have worked out what they think about things, something all of us interested in the sturm und drang of politics, and why it matters, do. In my longish life I've held opinions that make me almost reel now, re this and that in politics and religion and social matters. Some running for office may be using manipulators from any quarter, but I think a lot start out actually caring.
So, I don't hate all these people, while they more or less cause me despair now.

Trump is different.

Buffoonery on parade. Embarrassing, while a kind of comic relief. But running for president? Tacky city.

As long as they are beholden to teabagger policies I will call them down in any way I can.

I will say what I said in another thread where Trump's bid was mentioned:

I'm not saying don't call them clowns (thunderclouds forfend!), just that I don't routinely make that association, much as I disagree with individuals. I'm no tea bag, but I can understand having a different background, not being me.

I can't get there with Trump.

In his announcement comments, he said that he would build a "very high wall" across the southern United States (read that "border with Mexico")...and he would get Mexico to pay for it. He tells us we can mark his words on that.

My guess: He envisions his name emblazoned on the wall!

Neil Young
7 mins ·
Yesterday my song "Rockin in the Free World" was used in a announcement for a U.S. presidential candidate without my permission.
A picture of me with this candidate was also circulated in conjunction with this announcement but It was a photograph taken during a meeting when I was trying to raise funds for Pono, my online high resolution music service.
Music is a universal language. so I am glad that so many people with varying beliefs get enjoyment from my music, even if they don't share my beliefs.
But had I been asked to allow my music to be used for a candidate - I would have said no.
I am Canadian and I don't vote in the United States, but more importantly I don't like the current political system in the USA and some other countries. Increasingly Democracy has been hijacked by corporate interests. The money needed to run for office, the money spent on lobbying by special interests, the ever increasing economic disparity and the well funded legislative decisions all favor corporate interests over the people's.
The Citizens United Supreme Court ruling is proof of this corruption as well as are the proposed trade deals which would further compromise our rights.
These Corporations were originally created to serve us but if we don't appropriately prioritize they will destroy us. Corporations don't have children. They don't have feelings or soul. They don't depend on uncontaminated water, clean air or healthy food to survive. They are beholden to one thing - the bottom line.
I choose to speak Truth to this Economic Power. When I speak out on corporations hurting the common man or the environment or other species, I expect a well financed disinformation campaign to be aimed my way.
Such is the case with the reaction to my new album The Monsanto Years, which covers many of these issues. I support those bringing these issues to light and those who fight for their rights like Freedom of Choice.
But Freedom of Choice is meaningless without knowledge.
Thats why its crucial we all get engaged and get informed.
That's why GMO labeling matters. Mothers need to know what they are feeding their children. They need freedom to make educated choices at the market. When the people have voted for labeling, as they have in Vermont, they need our support when they are fighting these corporate interests trying to reverse the laws they have voted for and passed in the democratic process.
I do not trust self serving misinformation coming from corporations and their media trolls. I do not trust politicians who are taking millions from those corporations either. I trust people. So I make my music for people not for candidates.
Keep on Rockin in the Free World.
Neil Young