Month: December 2015

GOP Establishment Candidates Not Getting Much for Their Money

Buck Banks

$47.5 million

Amount the campaigns and allies for three establishment presidential candidates – Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and John Kasich – have spent combined $47.5 million on TV ads in the 2016 race so far, NBC News reports. “By contrast, the campaigns and allies for the three Republicans who have been leading or surging in the most recent polls – Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz – have spent just $2.9 million.”

GOP Suffering Trump Paralysis

Buck Banks

Some of the highest-ranking Republicans in Congress and some of the party’s wealthiest and most generous donors have balked at trying to take down Mr. Trump because they fear a public feud with the insult-spewing media figure. Others warn that doing so might backfire at a time of soaring anger toward political insiders. … That has led to a standoff of sorts: Almost everyone in the party’s upper echelons agrees something must be done, and almost no one is willing to do it.

— New York Times

Warren Won’t Endorse Clinton

Buck Banks

13

Women Democratic senators endorsed Hillary Clinton at a Capitol Hill fundraising event, the Washington Post reports. “But one particularly influential female Democratic senator didn’t join her colleagues: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — the anti-Wall Street crusader who was courted to run as the darling of very liberal Democrats — has not endorsed Clinton, nor has she promised she will.”

A Growing Tolerance for Lying

Buck Banks

There’s a good chance that if you’re reading this you don’t believe it. … It hasn’t exactly been a banner year for truth-telling in the 2016 election, with flubs, rumors, misleading stats and flat-out falsehoods uttered on the campaign trail and ping-ponged around the social media universe with regularity. But in many cases, furious fact-checking from the mainstream media has not only failed to prompt solemn apologies from the worst offenders — it’s made them stronger.

— Carrie Dann, NBC News