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A man drove a truck through a crowd of protesters as tensions over the Dakota Access pipeline escalate.

Al Gore and Hillary Clinton appeared side-by-side in a Miami campaign stop that framed the climate-change challenge in an unusually optimistic light.

“Climate change is real. It’s urgent. And America can take the lead in the world in addressing it,” Clinton said. She focused on the U.S.’s capacity to lead the world in a climate deal and as a clean energy superpower in a speech that mostly rehashed familiar policy territory.

Clinton ran down her existing proposals on infrastructure, rooftop solar, energy efficiency, and more, though she omitted the more controversial subjects, like what to do about pipeline permits, that have dogged her campaign.

Though Clinton and Gore largely framed climate change as a challenge Americans must rise to, they didn’t miss an opportunity to jab at climate deniers.

“Our next president will either step up our efforts … or we will be dragged backwards and our whole future will be put at risk,” Clinton said.

Besides Donald Trump, Florida’s resident climate deniers Marco Rubio and Rick Scott got special shoutouts.

“The world is on the cusp of either building on the progress of solving the climate crisis or stepping back … and letting the big polluters call the shots,” Gore said.

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A man drove a truck through a crowd of protesters as tensions over the Dakota Access pipeline escalate.

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Median Voter Theorem Crushes the Competition in 2016

Mother Jones

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Has anyone noticed that old-school political science was thoroughly vindicated this year? Sure, Donald Trump is a cretinous demagogue who shouldn’t be allowed within a thousand miles of our nuclear codes. But political science has nothing to say about that. What political science does say is that voters tend to elect candidates who are closer to the center.

And they did. Trump’s bottomless ignorance and lying aside, he was a populist candidate who was fundamentally more centrist than modern tea-party ultras like Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. On the Democratic side, despite all the drama, Hillary Clinton ended up beating Bernie Sanders pretty handily. Of the serious candidates with real backing, the two most centrist candidates ended up winning.

How about that?

POSTSCRIPT: Obviously Jeb Bush is the big hole in this theory. Well known, great credentials, lots of money, plenty of party backing, relatively centrist, and…he went nowhere. Of course, the median voter theorem doesn’t guarantee that the median voter will like any candidate who happens to be fairly centrist. In the end, it turned out that Jeb was just a terrible campaigner.

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Median Voter Theorem Crushes the Competition in 2016

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The John Kasich-Ted Cruz Alliance Is Already Unraveling

Mother Jones

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On Sunday night, it finally happened. Just before 11 p.m., the campaigns of Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz released matching statements promising to work together to stop Donald Trump from clinching the Republican nomination before the convention. The agreement they struck was that Kasich would stop campaigning in his neighboring state of Indiana, to give Cruz a chance to catch Trump there, and Cruz would stop campaigning in his neighboring state of New Mexico, as well as Oregon, in the hopes of boosting Kasich there. Anti-Trump voices had been calling for candidates to work together for months (Cruz trampled over Marco Rubio’s frantic appeal for help in Florida); the alliance was a sign that reality had set in.

But one thing missing from the agreement was any indication that Kasich and Cruz would actually tell their voters in Indiana, New Mexico, or Oregon, to support the other guy. And sure enough, while eating at a diner in Philadelphia on Monday morning, Kasich decided to pour water on the whole plan. Would the governor, a reporter asked, tell his supporters in Indiana to vote for Cruz? No, Kasich said. “I’ve never told them not to vote for me; they ought to vote for me.” He explained that the deal had nothing to do with strategic voting—it was only about whether to campaign or not campaign. Sounds like a strong alliance!

This is the most passive-aggressive thing Kasich has done since the last time someone tried to make a deal with him:

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The John Kasich-Ted Cruz Alliance Is Already Unraveling

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Even Ted Cruz’s Best Friend in the Senate Is Campaigning for Rubio

Mother Jones

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Ted Cruz has many enemies in the United States Senate, and only one pretty good friend: Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who, like Cruz, is a tea party darling. So it must have been welcome news in the Cruz camp when Lee came to South Carolina this week to hit the campaign trail with Cruz. (Remember, Donald Trump has been knocking Cruz as an unlikable, nasty guy, and pointing out that not one of his Senate colleagues has endorsed him.)

There was just one catch: Lee was campaigning with Cruz, but he wasn’t endorsing him. In fact, hours before Lee gave a speech introducing and praising Cruz at a barbecue joint in Easley, South Carolina, Lee hailed Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida at a CrossFit gym in nearby Greenville, where he told an audience of conservatives, “I don’t know anyone in Washington who knows the Bible quite as well as Marco Rubio does.”

For now, Lee is undecided about whom to support in the Republican presidential primary and apparently playing the field. (He told reporters in Easley that he would endorse someone, sometime.) That has put him in an awkward position as a supporter of two competing candidates currently locked in a fight about who is or isn’t a scoundrel. Even more awkward was that Lee delivered essentially the same speech for both Rubio and Cruz: a historical allegory about the lessons of the Boston Tea Party and the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

As Cruz tries to maintain second place in the South’s first primary state, he has brought in a few reinforcements. Reps. Steve King of Iowa and Louie Gohmert of Texas (known for coining the term “terror babies“) joined him to talk up Cruz’s anti-immigration bona fides. But Rubio, who is fiercely challenging Cruz for second—both trail Trump in the polls—has greater local support and is traveling the state with the “cavalry.” That’s what Republican Sen. Tim Scott calls the South Carolina lawmakers in Rubio’s corner: Gov. Nikki Haley, Rep. Trey Gowdy (of Benghazi committee fame), and Scott himself. Scott and Gowdy, who each display a half-decent comedic repartee at Rubio campaign events, teamed up for a radio ad on Rubio’s behalf.

In a street fight like this, Cruz could use more prominent allies. But he couldn’t even get his buddy Lee to go all the way with an endorsement.

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Even Ted Cruz’s Best Friend in the Senate Is Campaigning for Rubio

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Chris Christie Tells Iowans That Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio Are Liars

Mother Jones

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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential campaign never really caught steam. In Iowa, he’s barely registering in the polls, and in New Hampshire (seemingly friendlier territory) he’s generally in sixth place. So with the first votes fast approaching, he’s settled on a strategy of attacking the non-Trump frontrunners, particularly Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, as dishonest politicians who are lying to voters.

At a town hall at the University of Iowa early Saturday morning, Christie devoted much of his stump speech to lambasting Cruz and Rubio for dissembling when it comes to their stances on immigration reform. “Here’s my only problem with Sen. Rubio and Sen. Cruz: they won’t tell you the truth,” Christie warned the Iowans, noting their equivocation on the immigration issue during Thursday’s GOP debate. “They stood there and tried to tell you that what you saw and what you heard, you didn’t see and you didn’t hear. That they didn’t change their positions at all. Sen. Rubio in particular.”

Christie led up to his attacks on Rubio and Cruz by making it clear that he actually doesn’t mind the traditional flip-flopping on issues that you see politicians make over long careers. “That’s ok, isn’t it? Isn’t it ok for thinking, breathing adults to change their mind,” Christie said. “I can tell you that the things I felt and believed in my 30s, a lot of those I feel differently about now that I’m in my 50s. I’ve had a life, had a lot of experiences, learned a lot of things. Hopefully, for god’s sake, we don’t stay static from the time we’re in our 20s and 30s to the time we’re in our 60s.”

But that’s not what Rubio and Cruz were up to, Christie said. It was switching positions without an honest reckoning, a disqualifying credential for a presidential candidate in Christie’s estimation. “The thing that disturbed me, the thing that I think is instructive about that moment in the debate,” Christie concluded, “is if they’re not going to tell you the truth about that, what else are they not going to tell you the truth about?”

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Chris Christie Tells Iowans That Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio Are Liars

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Marco Rubio Is Using a Convicted Felon to Help Him Win Florida

Mother Jones

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Earlier this month, when Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) named his top campaign representatives across Florida, he tapped a conservative activist named Clyde Fabretti as one of the leaders of his presidential effort in Orange County, a key district that includes Orlando. But Fabretti, the co-founder of the West Orlando Tea Party, has a sketchy background that might not reflect well on Rubio’s campaign: He is a convicted white-collar criminal with a history of questionable business dealings and associations with fraudsters. Most recently, Fabretti’s name surfaced in an ongoing lawsuit by investors in a tea-party-related media startup who claim he played a role in a company that allegedly defrauded them. And records show that the 67-year-old activist may have committed voter fraud by registering to vote and casting ballots in Florida elections when his criminal record rendered him ineligible to do so.

In 1997, Fabretti pleaded guilty to a single federal felony count of conspiracy to commit income tax evasion, bank fraud, mail fraud, and failing to file tax returns. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison and three years of probation. He was also ordered to pay more than $200,000 in restitution.

According to the federal indictment, Fabretti used his then-wife Susan, who worked for him, to execute an elaborate scheme to defraud First Union Corporation, the banking giant that eventually merged with Wachovia and later Wells Fargo. Prosecutors charged that in 1990 Fabretti provided his wife with false documents inflating her income and assets, which she then used to obtain a loan to buy a five-bedroom, eight-bathroom mansion in Oakton, Virginia.

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Marco Rubio Is Using a Convicted Felon to Help Him Win Florida

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The Rubio-Cruz War Has Begun

Mother Jones

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The simmering tension between Republican presidential rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz has finally bubbled over.

On Tuesday morning, top advisers to each candidate pounded the other with the best ammunition at their disposal. The Rubio campaign slammed Cruz for a weak national security record, while a pro-Cruz group unveiled a vicious ad targeting Rubio on the issue that could become his greatest weakness in the Republican primary: immigration.

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The Rubio-Cruz War Has Begun

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Are We Allowed to Say That Marco Rubio Is Lying About His Tax Plan?

Mother Jones

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I’ve written a couple of posts about Marco Rubio’s debate tiff with John Harwood, which revolves around the question of how the poor and the middle class fare under Rubio’s tax plan. Harwood wanted to know why it was so much better for the rich than the middle class, and Rubio responded by saying his plan would help the very poor a lot.

In other words, Rubio declined to answer the question and instead answered a different one. But today Dylan Matthews digs into this a bit and concludes (surprise!) that Rubio’s plan probably doesn’t even help the poor all that much:

How is Rubio helping the poor so much? Well, Rubio’s plan would replace the standard deduction and personal exemption with a $2,000 credit ($4,000 for couples)….But Rubio’s proposal, as originally laid out, is not a plain old credit. It’s a fully refundable credit. Think about that for a second. Rubio’s original proposal would give any household in America $2,000 or $4,000, no questions asked. It was a basic income. It was a massive increase in the welfare state of a kind that no Democratic candidate, including Bernie Sanders, is proposing.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that when I asked his team about this, they insisted that this was a mistake, and the credit was in fact much more limited. “Rules would be tailored to ensure that our reforms would not create payments for new, non-working filers,” a Rubio aide told me in April.

It’s unclear what exactly that means….Here’s the problem, though: The Tax Foundation assumed that Rubio had proposed a basic income….Given that Rubio will not, in fact, create a massive new welfare program, this finding is pretty dubious.

How about that? Rubio misled the Tax Foundation into concluding that his plan would help the poor, and for some reason he’s never gotten around to correcting the error. In fact, he’s been aggressively touting the Tax Foundation analysis to “prove” that his plan helps the poor. He even accused John Harwood of misrepresenting his plan on national TV even though he knew perfectly well that he was the one misrepresenting his plan. If I were the Tax Foundation, I’d be pissed.

Still, I’m sure this was all an honest mistake on Rubio’s part, and he’ll rush to give the Tax Foundation updated information now that he realizes what he’s done. Right? He’s an honest young man, after all.

Right?

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Are We Allowed to Say That Marco Rubio Is Lying About His Tax Plan?

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The GOP Candidates React to the Supreme Court’s Obamacare Ruling

Mother Jones

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In a 6-3 ruling, the US Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans buying insurance on the federal health care exchange can receive subsidies through the Affordable Care Act, essentially upholding one of the most critical aspects of the law. The ruling is a major blow to Republicans who have spent years trying to tear down the law, and a political win for Democrats and President Obama. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton seemed pleased:

The GOP candidates, meanwhile, took to Twitter to blast Obamacare and the Supreme Court’s ruling:

Jeb Bush:

Ted Cruz:

Marco Rubio:

Rick Perry:

Mike Huckabee:

Carly Fiorina:

Scott Walker:

And then there’s Donald Trump, talking about Miss Universe:

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The GOP Candidates React to the Supreme Court’s Obamacare Ruling

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Marco Rubio Is a Moron

Mother Jones

Here’s the latest from Florida wunderkind Marco Rubio:

Marco Rubio Struggles With Question on Iraq War

Under a barrage of questions from Chris Wallace of Fox News, Mr. Rubio repeatedly said “it was not a mistake” for President George W. Bush to order the invasion based on the intelligence he had at the time. But Mr. Rubio grew defensive as Mr. Wallace pressed him to say flatly whether he now believed the war was a mistake. Mr. Rubio chose instead to criticize the questions themselves, saying that in “the real world” presidents have to make decisions based on evidence presented to them at the time.

“It’s not a mistake — I still say it was not a mistake because the president was presented with intelligence that said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, it was governed by a man who had committed atrocities in the past with weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. Rubio said on “Fox News Sunday.”

A moment later, as Mr. Wallace tried to pin him down on his view, Mr. Rubio began to reply, “Based on what we know now, I think everyone agrees — ” but Mr. Wallace cut him off before he finished the thought.

“So was it a mistake now?” Mr. Wallace asked.

“I don’t understand the question you’re asking,” Mr. Rubio said.

The truth is that I don’t care about Rubio’s actual position on the Iraq War. The guy’s trying to run on a platform of more-hawkish-than-thou, and that’s pretty much all I need to know. Most of the time he sounds like a ten-year-old trying to sound tough in front of the older kids.

But I’m seriously beginning to wonder if he has a 3-digit IQ. After Jeb Bush’s weeklong debacle trying to answer this question, every Republican candidate ought to have their own answer figured out. And not just figured out: by now their answers ought to poll-tested, cut down into nice little soundbites, and so smoothly delivered you’d never even know this was a tricky issue in the first place.

But no. Rubio sounded like this question came as a total surprise. Seriously, Marco? This guy does not sound like he’s ready for prime time.

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Marco Rubio Is a Moron

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