Winnowing

Monday morning update: #7, Jim Gilmore is out, leaving the two outliers (Cruz and Trump,) the three "establishment lane" candidates (Bush, Kasich and Rubio) and the one who will really never be president (Dr. Ben Carson.)

I've updated the list below.

Original Post:
Two more Republicans have abandoned their bids to become President, Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie. I've updated my list:

Declared (and still in the race) GOP Candidates

1. Ted Cruz (March 23) 
2. Marco Rubio (April 14)
3. Dr. Ben Carson (May 3) 
4. Jeb Bush (June 15)
5. Donald Trump (June 16) 
6. John Kasich (July 21)

Officially Not Running
Rob Portman (Dec 2, 2014)
Paul Ryan (Jan 12, 2015)
Mitt Romney (Jan 30, 2015)
Rick Snyder (May 7, 2015)
John Bolton (May 14, 2015) 

Mike Pence (May 20, 2015) 

Bob Ehrlich (August 4, 2015)

You're Fired!: Candidates Who Have Dropped Out
Rick Perry (June 4 - Sept. 11)
Scott Walker (July 13 - Sept. 21)
Bobby Jindal (June 24 - November 17)
Lindsey Graham (June 1 - December 21)
George Pataki (May 28 - December 29)
Mike Huckabee (May 5 - Feb 2)
Rand Paul (April 17 - Feb 3)
Rick Santorum (May 27 - Feb 3)
Carly Fiorina (May 4 - Feb 10)
Chris Christie (June 20 - Feb 10)
Jim Gilmore (July 30 - Feb 14) 

Days until Election Day: 266

More Awkwardness

Final update, on March 15: I've been away from the blog for a few weeks and didn't keep my list up-to-date. You can see the complete list here.

Update: I've added #11, below. Note that we're now halfway to complete awkwardness.

Original post:
I'll have a longer Bach post soon, for now, here's the latest awkwardness:

20. Jake and Vienna, after the break-up (link)
19. Trista's fantasy suite confession (link)
18. Ali leaves Kasey on a glacier (link)
17. Kelsey's amazing story (link)
16. Justin gets busted for having a girlfriend (link)
15. Bad boy Bentley bails (link)
14. Chris Harrison confronts Rozlyn (link)
13. Clare tells off Juan Pablo (link)
12. Frank tells Ali he has feelings for his ex-girlfriend (link)
11. Ashley's freakin' onion (link)
10.
9.
8.
7.
6.
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.

Updating The List

Wednesday afternoon update: CNN is reporting that Rick Santorum is suspending his campaign later today. 

Original post: 
The people have spoken, at least a couple hundred thousand of them, and the Iowa caucuses are in the history books. Voters got to vote, of course, and the results are fascinating, but in addition, pundits and political scientists often say that one of the functions of the early state primaries and caucuses is "winnowing," or to put it another way, getting unloved candidates to face reality and go back to living their regular lives. 

Tuesday morning Mike Huckabee started that process, with the announcement that he is suspending his campaign; today Rand Paul called it quits. (Is the state of Kentucky regretting letting itself be talked into a caucus instead of a primary? Probably.) Conventional wisdom based on what I've been reading since Monday's caucuses is that the campaigns of Dr. Carson, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum and Jim Gilmore are over in all but name too. 

On the Democratic side, Martin O'Malley has suspended his campaign too, leaving Hill and Bern to slug it out in New Hampshire and who knows how many more primaries down the road. Current polls are predicting a big win for Bern in next Tuesday's NH primary but the state has a history of supporting the Clintons, both Hill in 2008 and Bill way back in 1992.

Here's how my GOP list looks as of now:  

Declared (and still in the race) GOP Candidates

1. Ted Cruz (March 23) 
2. Marco Rubio (April 14)
3. Dr. Ben Carson (May 3) 
4. Carly Fiorina (May 4) 
5. Jeb Bush (June 15)
6. Donald Trump (June 16) 
7. Chris Christie (June 30)
8. John Kasich (July 21) 
9. Jim Gilmore (July 30) 

Officially Not Running
Rob Portman (Dec 2, 2014)
Paul Ryan (Jan 12, 2015)
Mitt Romney (Jan 30, 2015)
Rick Snyder (May 7, 2015)
John Bolton (May 14, 2015) 

Mike Pence (May 20, 2015) 

Bob Ehrlich (August 4, 2015)

You're Fired!: Candidates Who Have Dropped Out
Rick Perry (June 4 - Sept. 11)
Scott Walker (July 13 - Sept. 21)
Bobby Jindal (June 24 - November 17)
Lindsey Graham (June 1 - December 21)
George Pataki (May 28 - December 29)
Mike Huckabee (May 5 - Feb 2)
Rand Paul (April 17 - Feb 3)
Rick Santorum (May 27 - Feb 3)

Days until Election Day: 278

Ick

Issue dated February 15, 2016


Just ick.

The Donlad?

A teeny weeny typo on the home page of people.com this morning. You can see it here, I'll check back later to see if it gets fixed. For the record, most of the time, People's typos never get corrected.

Update: it's fixed. #EditorsAreImportant

The Donald Is Back

On Twitter, at least, and Politico has taken down their clock. Here's what Trump is tweeting this morning:

My experience in Iowa was a great one. I started out with all of the experts saying I couldn't do well there and ended up in 2nd place. Nice

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2016

Because I was told I could not do well in Iowa, I spent very little there - a fraction of Cruz & Rubio. Came in a strong second. Great honor

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2016

The media has not covered my long-shot great finish in Iowa fairly. Brought in record voters and got second highest vote total in history!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2016

I will be talking about my wonderful experience in Iowa and the simultaneous unfair treatment by the media-later in New Hampshire. Big crowd

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2016

I don't believe I have been given any credit by the voters for self-funding my campaign, the only one. I will keep doing, but not worth it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2016

Sarah Being Sarah

Tuesday morning update: Sarah's endorsement didn't help enough, because The Donald came in second in the Iowa caucus, just barely ahead of Marco Rubio who was third. Trump's concession speech was uncharacteristically gracious and even more surprising, as of 9.00 central time Tuesday morning, he hasn't issued forth with any wisdom on Twitter. Politico's having some fun with that, posting an "Hours since Donald Trump last tweeted" countdown clock on their homepage. Check it out here.

Update: One more link, to a story at The Daily Beast, just because I like the headline: "Sarah Palin freaks out on Today Show over PTSD question." Read it here.

Original post:
Sarah Palin was on the Today show this morning, and to quote the New York Daily News, it did not end well. She started by taking credit for Ted Cruz's election to the Senate, then told him to stay there: ("I wanna keep him in the Senate...") When asked if Donald Trump is the godly candidate Iowa evangelicals are looking for, she used a lot of words to avoid having to say no, complete with air quotes: ("I hope voters aren't trying to find the most Christian-y, godliest candidate out there...")

Finally, when asked about her comments blaming President Obama for her son's PTSD, she said she came on the show to talk about the Iowa caucuses and had been promised that she wouldn't be asked about "her kids." Then she launched into her trademark victim/martyr mode, saying "But as things go in the world of media, you guys don't always keep your promises, evidently."

As things go in the world of media, it's getting a lot of coverage, evidently:

"Sarah Palin flips out on Today" New York Daily News
"Sarah Palin: I didn't lay PTSD at the foot of the president" Washington Times
"Sarah Palin's 'Today Show' interview just got really awkward, really fast" Mashable
"Sarah Palin explodes after 'Today' anchors force her to explain why she blamed Obama for her son's arrest" Raw Story
"Sarah Palin denies saying the thing she said" Gawker

Even People magazine got into the act, with a story at people.com: "Sarah Palin denies blaming Obama for son's PTSD in heated Today interview:" 'What did I say that was offensive?" (Read it here.)

And, for the record, Matt Lauer pushed back about that promise: "There were no specific promises made about content of the interview, only that this would be your first interview since you endorsed Donald Trump."