Oct 24th

It was an interesting morning of channel surfing; CNN and CNBC, predictably, were chortling about Hillary Clinton’s remarkable performance yesterday, At the same hour Fox News had a therapist and a commentator discussing, with the anchor, whether or not the facial photos of advertising models should be altered. One of the women maintained that these photos should not be retouched because that gave young women a false sense of what constituted beauty. It was a good point but hardly competitive with news of a 200 MPH hurricane coming ashore in Mexico, Trump dropping well below Ben Carson in Iowa (I guess his “little cracker” comment was hard for some evangelicals to digest.), Hillary moving ahead of Bernie in Iowa and a variety of other concerns. Each network has its own interesting priorities.

We have seen a number of candidates drop out of the Presidential race. Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb are gone from the Democratic contest; many would unkindly claim that they were never in it in the first place. On the Republican side we have a number of “dead men walking.” Jeb Bush is reducing staff salaries and otherwise cutting back. There are other competitors who are facing troubles; Governor Christie of New Jersey is facing a lawsuit from Ebola nurse Kaci Hickox whom Christie had arbitrarily held for three days in a deluxe tent fearing she would contaminate people; this was in spite of her testing negative for Ebola and also against the advice of the medical community which declared that she was not a risk. When she threatened to sue him for his high-handed behavior Christie told her to “get in line.” Now she has.

There are more “also rans” in the Republican stable. There is Bobby Jindal who is not very popular even in his home state of Louisiana. His poll numbers are still visible but it must be very difficult for him to raise money to continue his campaign. Governor Kasich of Ohio is so unpopular with the Republicans that he can’t even get invited to major Republican events in his home state. Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Marco Rubio are positioning themselves to grab the leavings if/when Trump or Carson falter. Regarding Carson, it is clear that he is the favorite of the Iowa evangelicals, but how can anyone take seriously a man who claims that if the Jews just had guns there would have been no holocaust. Of course he is also persuaded that evolution is an invention of the devil designed to discredit God…and some people want him to be President of the United States.

Carly Fiorina deserves a few remarks too; you know that she did not pay off all of the folks who worked on her Senate campaign against Senator Boxer until it was clear that she was going to run for the Republican nomination. When one of her advisors was asked about that little oversight he said, “We didn’t win that campaign so why should those people expect to get paid.” Spoken like a true Republican!