New York Times:
Despite Chris Christie’s intense focus on winning New Hampshire, many local Republicans are not exactly enamored with the New Jersey governor. Interviews over the last month with dozens of current and former New Hampshire Republican Party town and county chairmen and chairwomen, officials and voters struck three consistent concerns about the Christie campaign’s chances here: the size of the field, his brushes with controversy at home and, perhaps most worrisome for his campaign, his personality.
“Christie has a forceful personality, but unfortunately, it’s a double-edged sword,” said Andy Seale, a former chairman of the Milford County Republicans. “The ‘tell it like it is,’ to be honest — he’s going to have to do a lot of convincing for folks to believe he’s really telling it like it is.”
Well, duh. He's an asshole, why would that sell in NH or Iowa or anywhere else? You think teachers (or anyone else who works for a living) in those states like being yelled at?
Chris Cillizza:
Trump's understanding of the media -- and what they can do for him -- is actually quite advanced. Here's a key passage from "Art of the Deal" explaining his approach:
I’m not saying that [journalists] necessarily like me. Sometimes they write positively, and sometimes they write negatively. But from a pure business point of view, the benefits of being written about have far outweighed the drawbacks. It’s really quite simple. If I take a full-page ad in the New York Times to publicize a project, it might cost $40,000, and in any case, people tend to be skeptical about advertising. But if the New York Times writes even a moderately positive one-column story about one of my deals, it doesn’t cost me anything, and it’s worth a lot more than $40,000.
More politics and policy below the fold.
The Hill:
Donald Trump’s explosive rise in the polls has come at the expense of every other GOP presidential candidate except for Jeb Bush and Scott Walker — who arguably have been helped by the businessman’s rise.
The media storm surrounding Trump is starving other candidates of oxygen — including major contenders such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has seen his polling numbers plummet 3.2 percentage points since Trump’s entry.
Bush, in contrast, has seen his support rise by 2.9 percentage points, while Walker gained 1.1 percentage points. Trump has risen by 14.6 percentage points since launching his campaign.
“Jeb and Walker are in the first tier and they are not going anywhere,” said GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak. “The problem is for those who are in the third tier trying to get into the second, or the second trying to get into the first.”
Mackowiak added that the sheer volume of attention being commanded by Trump has forced other contenders into using novel tactics or extreme rhetoric to garner media coverage.
He cited the examples of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) releasing a video of himself destroying his cellphone after Trump had given out his phone number at a public event, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) using a chainsaw and a woodchipper to destroy the tax code and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee alleging that President Obama was marching Israelis “to the door of the oven” through his deal with Iran on its nuclear program.
This
American Journal of Political Science article explains how to get Medicaid expanded. Well, indirectly.
We introduce experimental research design to the study of policy diffusion in order to better understand how political ideology affects policymakers’ willingness to learn from one another’s experiences. Our two experiments–embedded in national surveys of U.S. municipal officials–expose local policymakers to vignettes describing the zoning and home foreclosure policies of other cities, offering opportunities to learn more. We find that: (1) policymakers who are ideologically predisposed against the described policy are relatively unwilling to learn from others, but (2) such ideological biases can be overcome with an emphasis on the policy’s success or on its adoption by co-partisans in other communities. We also find a similar partisan based bias among traditional ideological supporters, who are less willing to learn from those in the opposing party. The experimental approach offered here provides numerous new opportunities for scholars of policy diffusion.
While the authors were looking at municipalities, I am assured they're working on a Medicaid paper as well. And watching other R Governors, and emphasizing that, is the ticket to success.
Hall of Famer John Smoltz on protecting young arms:
The pitcher, lamenting the growing number of MLB pitchers undergoing Tommy John, then made a plea to the parents of young baseball players:
I want to encourage the families and parents that are out there to understand that this is not normal to have a surgery at 14 and 15 years old. That you have time, that baseball is not a year-round sport. That you have an opportunity to be athletic and play other sports. Don’t let the institutions that are out there running before you guaranteeing scholarship dollars and signing bonuses that this is the way. We have such great, dynamic arms in our game that it's a shame we're having one and two and three Tommy John recipients.
So I want to encourage you, if nothing else, know that your children’s passion and desire to play baseball is something that they can do without a competitive pitch. Every throw a kid makes today is a competitive pitch. They don’t go outside, they don’t have fun, they don’t throw enough — but they’re competing and maxing out too hard, too early, and that’s why we’re having these problems. So please, take care of those great future arms.
He's not wrong about the numbers. According to research presented just earlier this month at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Annual Meeting, Tommy John surgery is occurring at higher rates among youth than previously believed. From 2007 to 2011, the study reported that 15 to 19 year olds accounted for over half of Tommy John surgeries, increasing at a 10 percent rate each year.
ABC:
Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who acknowledged hunting and killing Cecil, a beloved lion in Zimbabwe, is now the one being hounded on the Internet by protesters flooding his social media, creating online petitions and mocking him on parody accounts.
Over 273,000 tweets contained the trending hashtag #CeciltheLion on Twitter in the past 24 hours after the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, which is not part of the Zimbabwe government, alleged in a statement on Tuesday that Palmer paid $50,000 for the chance to kill Cecil the lion in early July. ABC News has not been able to independently confirm that figure.
Palmer responded later Tuesday, saying in a statement that he "deeply" regretted the pursuit of the early July hunt in Zimbabwe that "resulted in the taking of this lion." He added that he "had no idea" Cecil the lion was a "known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study. I hired several professional guides and they secured all proper permits. To my knowledge, everything about this trip was legal and properly handled and conducted."
But the Internet wasn't satisfied with Palmer's apology and descended upon on the Minnesota dentist on social media. Palmer's Facebook page for his dental practice, River Bluff Dental, was flooded with expletives directed towards him and death threats. The website was seemingly taken down Tuesday evening and was not up as of Wednesday morning.
Further news reports suggests he had to close his practice.
Sac Bee:
Thwarted in the Legislature, opponents of California’s vaccine mandate law have turned to the ballot box with a recall aimed at Senate Bill 277’s champion.
A campaign to recall Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, the pediatrician who carried the bill requiring full vaccinations for schoolchildren, has been cleared to advance to the signature-gathering phase. Proponents have until Dec. 31 to collect 35,926 verified signatures from the 436,318 registered voters in his district.
Crafted in response to a measles outbreak that began in Disneyland, SB 277 spurred a furious backlash from parents assailing a loss of child-rearing autonomy and insisting that vaccines are unsafe. As they lined up at hearings to testify against the bill, many vowed to make lawmakers pay at election time.
Their efforts to block the bill failed, with Gov. Jerry Brown signing it into law, but they are making good on the election threat. In addition to seeking to recall Pan, bill opponents are seeking to overturn the law via referendum.
“It is not so much about the vaccinations as it is about the defense of liberty,” said Katherine Duran, an Elk Grove stay-at-home parent who advocated against SB 277 and is helping to lead the Pan recall. “The government, as a creature of the people, doesn’t have the right to tell the people what they can and can’t put into their bodies.”
Dr Pan should be commended, not recalled. Keep an eye on this one.
In addition to the Euro crisis, and the greek crisis, Europe has an underappreciated refugee crisis. From NY Times:
They have reached Europe after often-treacherous journeys, usually across the Mediterranean. They have dodged the authorities as they made their way north toward their ultimate goal, Britain. But now, thousands of illegal migrants, refugees from war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, find themselves bottled up at one final choke point in northern France: the entrance to the Channel Tunnel.
Over two nights this week, their desperation and frustration flared to new levels as they tried in far larger numbers than normal to breach the security around the tunnel and hide themselves amid the trucks and freight being shuttled by rail from Calais to southern England.
The French police said there were about 2,100 attempts by migrants to gain access to the tunnel on Monday, and Eurotunnel, the company that operates the 31-mile English Channel crossing, put the number for Tuesday night at about 1,500.