Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Rusty Not So Fierce.*

*Updated, September 16, 2:50 am. Boy, I bird-pumped on this one. The "Club for Growth" super-PAC has made a $1 mil TV buy in Iowa, not a $20 mil buy. It's two spots. That's Rusty growling barely audibly, not "Fierce Rusty." It's Jeb Bush's PAC that plans the $20 million buy and that's not going to insulate Bush from the heat of the blowback. I've corrected the article.

 A conservative political action committee has begun a tentative foray into the Trump wars by buying $1 million of air time in Iowa to attack Donald Trump as a false conservative with a very liberal "record," i.e. positions, I guess since Trump has no record. It is a politically shrewd move for the PAC because when individual candidates have criticized Trump they've gotten scorched by blowback. All Trump could blow back to this was "They asked me for a million dollars once and I refused!" Not much blowback there, but not much blow at $1 million.

If it forces Trump to put some of his own skin in the game it will be doubly shrewd. Early on, when Trump first started going north in the polls, I read that his advisers were urging him to spend some money (He's "very rich.") to capitalize, so to speak,--All of his rise has been due to free media.--but Trump resisted because although he likes playing with money a lot he likes playing with other people's money most. I just don't think $1 million is going to get any more of a response from than on Twitter. If there is one truest true maxim in American politics it is, "Let no attack go unanswered." $1 million even in the Iowa media market seems to little to test Trump's cojones, as they say south of the border, to see if he will put his money where his mouth is.

Smaller story but I'm sure you'll be fascinated, a woman painted a portrait of Trump using her menstrual fluid. Yes, that is gross and I didn't connect the drops of fluid at first but it boomerangs a theme Trump started by his comments after a debate in which one of the moderators, a Fox (intended) named Megyn Kelly, I think, had been unfair to him, questioning him so aggressively that, Trump said, she had blood coming out of her eyes, her mouth, "her..."

Rusty: Fierce!