Third GOP debate tonight as Carson rises, Trump and Bush falter

The Republican candidates for president will gather Wednesday for their third debate amid fresh volatility in an already chaotic race, with Ben Carson surging past Donald Trump in Iowa and one-time front-runner Jeb Bush under pressure to prove he's still a viable candidate for the GOP nomination.

We'll hope for fireworks, but the two guys going in opposite directions are pretty low energy.

The soft-spoken Carson has been a low-key presence in the first two GOP debates, but the retired neurosurgeon is likely to get more attention from moderators — as well as his fellow candidates — after a series of preference polls show him atop the field in Iowa.

Trump has already shown he's eager to take on Carson, jabbing him for his speaking style and raising questions about his Seventh Day Adventist faith.

"We'll see how Ben holds up to the scrutiny," Trump said Tuesday on MSNBC.

Sounds like fun.  As Jeb spent the weekend here in Houston with the clan, and they all spent the weekend on the phone dialing for dollars, most of us see a ship with its ass high up in the air.

Meanwhile, Bush will be grasping for momentum after one of the most trying stretches of his White House campaign. Slower-than-expected fundraising has led Bush to slash spending and overhaul his campaign structure, and he's voiced frustration with the way the unusual race has progressed.

If the election is going to be about fighting to get nothing done, he says, "I don't want any part of it."

Cya!

Early on in the campaign, he tapped his father's campaign finance network, and they gave ... but now, they've given to the limit, and he's not collecting new donors. The base of the party has turned its collective back on him. His cash flow is an ebb tide; in the third quarter fundraising period, he spent nearly as much as he took in, and has a pittance, given the realities of modern campaign financing, left on hand.

This is what happens you place too much emphasis on the viability of a candidate by virtue of how much in campaign funds they can raise.  Remember that the committee on endorsements for the HGLBT Caucus made this mistake, and was overruled by their membership.

On Friday - the news day when these people hope no one is looking - Bush announced a major evisceration of the campaign. Mass firings of staff members, and a 40 percent cut in payroll, including funds for travel ... and if you can't travel as a candidate, you're not a candidate; you're just a guy on TV with an exclamation point after your name on the campaign posters you can no longer afford to print.

Bush's fall is no surprise, and neither is Trump's, really.  That they are being eclipsed by a low-talking, sleepy-eyed, real black brain surgeon who seems blissfully unaware of Godwin's Law is.

While Carson is unknown to many Americans, he's built a loyal following with tea party-aligned voters and religious conservatives. His campaign has started running new television advertisements in early voting states that center on his experience as a doctor and highlight his status as a political outsider.

Carson has raised eyebrows with his incendiary comments about Muslims and references to Nazis and slavery on the campaign trail, rhetoric he's made no apologies for. His standing in early states has only appeared to strengthen with each controversial comment.

Carson's biggest weakness may be his glaring lack of specific policy proposals. The issues listed on his campaign website are vague, including a tax plan that calls for a "fairer, simpler, and more equitable" system. On foreign policy, he's said, "all options should remain on the table when dealing with international bullies," such as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Carson could be pushed Wednesday on domestic policy, with debate host CNBC promising to focus on economic issues, including taxes and job growth.

With Trump after him, with his fairly glaring lack of communication skills, I don't see this as being a good night for the doctor.  As usual I'll be watching Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz for their abilities to pick up the pieces from Carson, Trump, and Bush when it becomes more apparent that they are losing causes.  With respect to Rubio...

The Florida senator’s campaign high command probably couldn’t have planned their candidate’s trajectory to this point any better. Actually, they did plan it, and they’re right where they want to be: still out of the harsh spotlight that comes with being the frontrunner but right in striking distance as the race heads into the final three months before Iowa. Rubio’s formula for these debates is incredibly simple: deliver his talking points with ease and style, crack a few jokes and flash that easy grin, and avoid squabbles with other candidates. One problem this time: Jeb Bush may be looking for a fight.

With respect to Cruz...

Cruz has been waiting a long time now for Trump and Carson to implode so he can snatch up their supporters. He can wait a while longer. He’s got plenty of cash. But of anyone in the field, he has the greatest incentive to sow doubt among conservatives about Carson’s conservative credentials. Iowa is fertile ground for Cruz, and he won’t want Carson to get too much momentum there.

I won't care much what any of the rest do or say unless it's crazy enough to make social media waves, and I'll be watching a lot more of the second game of the World Series anyway.

Update: Here's the full schedule from Mediaite.

Reading the turnout tea leaves on the mayor's race

First, this hit my mailbox yesterday.

Campos has already whined about it, so I'm just posting to let him know that an English-speaking household received it.  As he notes, the CWA, whose name is on it as sender, is supporting Sylvester Turner, and the "Vote 'No' on Adrian Garcia" piece -- which for the record is not possible; one cannot 'no' on a mayoral candidate, only for some other one -- is indeed designed to do what Turner wants it to do.

"For me, it doesn’t matter who’s in second or third," Turner said after shaking hands at a retirement community on the city's southwest side. "My deal is on November the third, I want to make sure that we’re No. 1 and that No. 2 is so far behind that it really doesn’t matter."

He's not shaking off Bill King, however, and that's the fellow all the pundits are predicting will join the former state representative in the runoff, based on the surging early vote in certain parts of town.

"We're seeing heavy early voting turnout in places like the west side and Clear Lake (which are traditional Republican strongholds)," Stein said. "We're also seeing heavy early voting turnout in African-American precincts." [...] "I assume that's due to two things: the mayor's race where Sylvester Turner's a very prominent black (candidate) and a very large number of African Americans voting for controller and at large (council seats). So I think they're moving the early vote. Any candidate who knows who their base is likes to get their vote out early."

Why conservative black voters wouldn't be turning out for Ben Hall, who has sold himself as the candidate most strongly against HERO, is part of Stein's predictive analysis based on his previous poll -- which I castigated but which has been verified to some degree by later polling -- in which he raved about King's surge, and does so again.

Meanwhile, polling has indicated Republican voters have been breaking for King over Steve Costello, who's also angling for GOP votes. So a high turnout at traditionally Republican polling places like the Trini Mendenhall Sosa Center on Houston's west side, is good news for King, Stein said.

"There were so many undecided Republican voters who were breaking in our poll very clearly towards Bill King," Stein said. "That would be a real indication that he's likely to be in the runoff."

This is the safe bet (a black Democrat, long the front-runner by every measure, and a white Republican) and we'll just wait to see if these professional prognosticators are right.   I am hoping they are wrong, and so do the supporters of Costello and Garcia, too.  Both of those last two have had their troubles.

“No question, he simply failed to respond to this, and voters penalized him accordingly," said Bob Stein, a Rice University political scientist who predicted last week that Garcia would continue to be haunted by the slide through Election Day.

[...]

"... Costello, I think, is just not able to win support from the base Republican vote that's out there that he should have been able to win as a three-term incumbent councilmember."

Down the ballot, if King makes the runoff and you have two At Large Republicans -- Michael Kubosh and Jack Christie -- in runoffs with Democrats, that December dynamic (Turner vs. King) may help them stay in office.  Both may avoid the runoff altogether if HERO is indeed driving scads of fearful, angry conservatives to the polls.  If two Democrats -- Turner and Chris Bell, Turner and Garcia -- move on to the final round, then the fortunes of those two AL CMs change entirely; Republicans without a mayoral hopeful stay home for the holiday voting.  Those two races, AL 3 and AL 5, are what I'll watch on Election Night.  Their outcomes will determine whether Democrats have a good night or not (and we may be castigating liberal non-voters again on the morning after).

Who else is helped by continued strong turnout among white conservatives and African American voters?  Perhaps Chris Oliver in AL 1, Andrew Burks and Eric Dick in AL 2, and Laurie Robinson in AL 3 4, all with a measure of name recognition and some with elected experience.  Who's hurt?  Maybe the white progressives: Lane Lewis in AL 1, incumbent David Robinson in AL 2, Doug Peterson in AL 3, and even not-Caucasian Philippe Nassif in AL 5.  GOTV efforts need to be energized now for these campaigns.

Still, the electorate for Houston municipal contests has historically skewed old, white, and Democratic, so if there's any trend left to discern, it's whether that one holds or gets revised after this election.

I'm watching things closely, just like you.

Update: Texas Leftist bemoans the missing millennial vote.

Update II: An email from the Turner campaigns ups the ante.

More than 15,000 people who haven't voted in a mayoral election in years have already voted early in this election.

We don't know why they're voting this time around, but we do know that makes this election unpredictable.

They're zombies, and they're voting against HERO, because they don't like heroes of any kind.  So for God's sake, get out there and cancel them out -- I mean, their votes.