“He’s filling the government with Muslims”: Hanging out with Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Rand Paul i

[DonViejo]

“He’s filling the government with Muslims”: Hanging out with Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Rand Paul inside New Hampshire’s wacky GOP 2016 cattle call

Nineteen potential presidential candidates convened in New Hampshire this weekend. Here's how it all went down

JIM NEWELL

New Hampshire voters are famously spoiled. If any given person only gets to talk to a candidate two times before primary day, it’s considered an insult, a snub. Most people would tire of the never-ending exposure to pandering primary candidates, showing up at their diners or Chick-fil-As or sports bars for folksy conversations with “everyday folks.” This isn’t even counting the bombardment of television ads, set to commence soon, as candidates “seriously considering the possibility of running for president,” as Jeb Bush puts it, make it official. But they love it up here. One attendee at an event this weekend was handing out business cards. The occupation? “Registered New Hampshire Voter.”

The official candidates — Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz — gathered at Nashua, New Hampshire’s Crowne Plaza hotel this Friday and Saturday for the First in the Nation Republican Leadership Summit. The summit also featured unofficial candidates who are almost certainly running but can’t quite say so yet for legal/fundraising reasons: Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina, and Mike Huckabee, to name a few. You also had your for-pretend candidates, like Donald Trump and Lindsey Graham. Beneath them are the YOLO candidates, like former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, former New York Gov. George Pataki, and former U.N. ambassador John Bolton. All here. Former Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich occupies whatever tier is beneath Gilmore and Pataki, and he was here, too. At the very bottom of the pile is this guy. Here.

New Hampshire Republicans are not the same as Iowa Republicans. They’re blunt and talk fast and are in no way intimidated to ask a governor or senator or ambassador whatever’s on their mind, in a shrewd, distrusting what’s your angle here? sort of way. There’s a libertarian bent to the state’s conservative politics and, by and large, no one wants to waste any precious time talking about, say, gay marriage.

This is not to say that the conservative die-hards in New Hampshire don’t have their own quirks. The ones in attendance at the FITN summit, at least, care a lot about ISIS establishing beachheads on the continent and the scourge of “illegals.” If you were wondering last fall why New Hampshire GOP Senate candidate Scott Brown kept going on about ISIS fighters crossing the southern border to infect Americans with Ebola, a few conversations at the Crowne Plaza in Nashua would make it quite clear. There’s a paranoid style to New Hampshire politics.

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http://www.salon.com/2015/04/20/hes_filling_the_government_with_muslims_inside_new_hampshires_whacky_gop_2016_cattle_call/

[DirkGently]

1. This quote was ... interesting?

“What do you think about the War on Terror within?” She asks? Obama has been “filling the government with Muslims. He is filling the State Department with the Muslim Brotherhood.” It gets worse. This woman has also heard that Barack Obama is “amassing tanks and artillery weapons” to stage a revolution “in the streets.” He may have several four- and five-star generals who are going along with this. And then there’s the–

[DetlefK]

2. That's an ill omen for the GOP for the upcoming presidential debates.

They live and think inside a bubble.

What happens when John "bomb'em" Bolton starts talking about ISIS training-camps in Mexico? Or how ISIS' establishment of a Caliphate will force every single Muslim to obey them? (Despite ISIS having no support on that whatsoever outside from SOME islamic extremists.)

What happens when Jon Huckabee gets to show his christian extremism?

What happens when Chris Christie starts talking about making hard decisions because we just have to gut Social Security to save it? (His conservative opponent being Huckabee in that.)

What happens when the great young, latin hope of the GOP, Marco Rubio, reveals that his ideas are same-old-same-old?

When Ted Cruz gets asked to elaborate on his plan to collect a flat-tax without an agency that collects taxes?



I have a feeling, secretly the Republicans are looking for the next Mitt Romney: A generic Republican with name-recognition but without controversial ideas.