My favorite story from the South Carolina campaign got leaked today.  The Daily Beast broke the story of a secret meeting between Ted Cruz and Ben Carson that took place in a closet.

According to the story, Ted called the meeting in hopes that he could patch things up with Ben after totally screwing him in Iowa.

It’s a good thing that Ted called the meeting with Dr. Carson because face it, Ted needs to have his head examined.

The meeting, which took place in a storage closet across from a bathroom at the convention center on Thursday, ended with Carson saying “we agree to disagree.”

“We disagree on accountability and culpability,” is how Carson put it, according to Osborne.

Secret Service members were guarding the door and simply said to a Republican operative in the hallway: “Yeah, they’re in that closet.”

It is unclear if there were lights inside of it.

That right there is an image that shakes my aesthetic foundation.

The meeting was supposed to last 5 minutes.  It didn’t.  It went on for 20 – 25 minutes.  Of course that was partly due to Carson’s sloooooow speech and Cruz’s continually saying, “eh?”

By all reports, it did not go well for Cruz.

After Carson spoke at the convention, and saw Cruz in the hallway again, Cruz didn’t even look at Carson, according to the latter’s campaign.

“There was a political play there and it didn’t work for them,” a Republican operative close to the campaign told The Daily Beast. “The meeting didn’t go as well as Cruz wanted it to go. Carson had a smile on his face and was looking right at him.”

Yeah, if you can’t beat Ben Carson at a closet talking contest, you’re probably not going to do too well with Putin.

For whatever reason, results from Nevada are lagging at this time, still.  As most of those votes are from Clark County, it is likely that Hillary’s lead will not diminish.

At this point of the game it’s still difficult to cull meaning from Nevada, because the only splits I’ve seen have been from entrance polls, which indicate that Bernie overwhelmingly got people under 30 and, oddly, Hispanics by a small margin.  But if the Hispanic vote was skewed younger, those two data points could be related.  How did Hillary win, then?  Women.  Women turned out and women went for Hillary.

I caution you these are from unreliable ENTRANCE poll splits, if we get better indicators, I will share them.  Overall, this does NOT change the view of the Dems we looked at last week; March 1 is still the watershed.

As for SC, Bush underperformed after spending all his money, so he had no narrative and no cash.  End of Story.  For the remainder, the discussion we had earlier also still obtains: Trump’s hard ceiling will win disproportionately large amounts of delegates unless and until the field narrows to 2, at which point he’s vulnerable, or 3, in which case he could be denied the nomination on the first ballot.

In the broader narrative, I believe the Fall of the House of Bush signals the definitive end of the muscular welt-politik, uber-capitalist wing of the Party as the driving force.  The Lindsay Grahams are now about to move on to the “eminence grise” phase of their careers, prior to their permanent gigs on the ash heap of history.  Marco pretends to that mantle, but lacks the strength to wear it well, or to make it stick beyond – maybe – holding the coalition together long enough to get the nomination.

Funny: in a non-gerrymandered, post-Citizens United world, moderate Republicans might have stood a chance to save the soul of their party.  But they sold their political birthright for a mess of electoral pottage.  They never Esau it coming.

~Primo

Bubba is running for reelection as Democratic County Chairman.  Since some of y’all donated to the Help Hazel Keep People in Front of the Polls Campaigning for Bubba Fund, I thought you’d like to see Hazel tonight with her friend Sharon. Sharon’s husband, Ruben, is the local very popular constable. Davis, Reynolds and Bubba Bankston are running as a team.

And there was Nevada and South Carolina.  Damn, ya’ll,  Donald Trump is running for President.

John Kasich, the guy you thought wasn’t part of the Clownmobile, stands as living proof that whatever the Bozos have is contagious.

Katich is proposing a damn federal agency to “push Christianity” on the Middle East.

Governor Kasich failed to give his federal government agency a theocratic name, but he does know that its only purpose and mission is to “promote the Jewish- and Christian-based belief system to four regions of the world: China, Iran, Russia and the Middle East.”

Holy war?  Holy crapamole.

Kasich thinks everyone in the Middle East will become Americanized if the government will just “beam messages around the world about the freedoms Americans enjoy! It means freedom, it means opportunity, it means respect for women, it means freedom to gather, it means so many things.”

Y’all, George W Bush has invaded Katich’s brain.  Hell, at least it’s the first invasion he’s ever won.

Thanks to Chloe Bear for the heads up.

Well, Primo finally paid the ransom so I’m home again.

While I was gone, the Texas Board of Education made national news again.  Texas Republicans are running a woman for the State Board of Education who has things all figured out.

Republican Mary Lou Bruner, of Mineola, worked for 36 years in East Texas schools as a teacher, counselor and educational diagnostician.  And the diagnosis is fruitcake.

She loves Facebook.

“I’m not ashamed of anything that I have ever said,” Bruner said, noting she plans to bring to same zeal to the state board, speaking her mind even if she’s outvoted. “If I’m on the State Board of Education, I’m going to speak up for the things that I believe because I have a First Amendment right.”

Imagine her shock when she finds out that her First Amendment rights also come with consequences.  Like being called crazy.

She is strongly supported by the GOP conservative stalwarts in Texas.

Mary Lou also believes that baby dinosaurs were on Noah’s ark, the New World Order is trying to reduce the world’s population by two-thirds and they probably have their eye on you, school shootings are the results of teaching evolution, Democrats killed JFK because he wasn’t liberal enough, elementary age students in public school are being shown nude pictures to encourage them to experiment with sex, and that’s before she even has her morning coffee.

So, if you hate little children, Mary Lou is your candidate.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

The Godfather Part III is terribly underrated, I think, because most of us just can’t get past Sofia Coppola. One of my favorite double easter eggs in it is the character of Michael Corleone’s press agent.  His name is Dominic Abbandando and he is the grandson of Don Vito Corleone’s oldest friend and first consiglieri, Genco Abbandando.  That’s one egg.  But the actor who plays him is Don Novello, better known as Father Guido Sarducci  from SNL.  I find it engagingly priceless – and nostalgic – when he spits out the line, “You think you know better than the Pope?”

Don Hairleone thinks he does.

The Donald intends to join all the other great wall builders of history – like Chinese Emperors and East German Communists – in order to Make America Great Again.

But how great is America if we have to cower behind a wall? That’s not greatness.  That’s cowardice.

And, according to the Pope, that’s not Christian, either.

~Primo