GOP’s “deep bench” for 2016 is now in splinters

[DonViejo]

GOP’s “deep bench” for 2016 is now in splinters

Down goes McDonnell. And Christie. And Cruz. The media’s fondest 2016 GOP fantasy is coming completely undone

JOAN WALSH

Last time I saw former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, he was sashaying around Tampa, Fla., in 2012 as though we’d see him again, big time, in 2016. Elected with Chris Christie in that 2009 statehouse rebuke to President Obama, he’d been a rising star, tapped to make the 2010 GOP State of the Union reply and an opening night convention address in Tampa. He made sure to shake my hand as I replaced him in the shared CNBC/MSNBC makeup cubby off the convention floor. Good times. Now McDonnell’s only thoughts of 2016 are making sure he doesn’t spend it in prison, as he fights public corruption charges for taking an estimated $165,000 in gifts from a grifting donor.

Meanwhile his class of 2009 buddy Chris Christie looks at McDonnell and has to worry: the wheels of justice turn slowly, but they turn, and they are inexorably turning now for Christie – lots of them. Between the genuine George Washington Bridge retribution scandal involving his closest aides, and newer charges that his lieutenant governor threatened to use Sandy aid as payback if Hoboken’s mayor blocked a Christie donor’s development deal, the New Jersey governor is vulnerable on more fronts than McDonnell ever was, though to be fair, investigators aren’t in Christie’s kitchen – not yet, anyway.

So concern-troll Hillary Clinton all you want, Beltway pundits. You’re missing the only 2016 story that matters, and not surprisingly, it involves a lot of you. The mainstream media fantasy of a remarkably “deep bench” of 2016 contenders for the GOP was never founded in reality – but such a bench, if it ever existed, is surely in splinters today.

That “deep bench” metaphor, by the way, seems to have come directly from Mitt Romney’s V.P. vetter Beth Myers, although you had to ask, then and now: if the GOP bench was so deep, how did they wind up with Paul Ryan, who couldn’t even carry his home state of Wisconsin? (More on Ryan in a moment.)

-snip-

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/23/gops_deep_bench_for_2016_is_now_in_splinters/

[Scuba]

1. They've still got this guy, a proven winner ....

A successful fundraiser ...




A protector of the priviledged ...




Who's loyalty is unquestioned ...

[DonViejo]

2. According to Joan Walsh, he's finished too...

... let’s look at Gov. Scott Walker, who’s getting a little play now that Christie is tumbling. Walker is a charisma-free Koch brothers toady who has more in common with Christie than alleged statehouse pragmatism: his own ethically challenged aides, back in Milwaukee. Three Walker associates were convicted in an earlier probe into campaign finance violations; last October, a new investigation began. Walker was named one of the nation’s “worst governors” by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. He is not ready for the glare of a national campaign.

[Scuba]

3. I wish that were true, but Koch money buys a lot of ink.

[yellowcanine]

4. And the other Scott, Rick Scott. Splintered bench indeed.

[calguy]

5. Their "deep"bench

Is in DEEP Shit!!!