Some Headlines that reveal the state of near panic of the GOP about their presidential candidate front-runners:
“Time for GOP panic? Establishment worried Carson or Trump might win” by Phillip Rucker and Robert Costa of the Washington Post.
Then there’s Maggie Habermans’s New York Times article, “Donald Trump Asks Iowans: ‘How Stupid’ Are They to Believe Ben Carson?”
At Politico Ben White describes the latest Trump meltdown in “What Trump’s bizarre Iowa tirade looked like up close.”
From “The Note: Trump Gone Wild” by Michael Barone at ABC News

–‘HOW STUPID ARE THE PEOPLE OF IOWA TO BELIEVE THIS CRAP’: On a contentious day in the GOP race, frontrunner Donald Trump didn’t shy away from calling out his rival “in second place” Ben Carson, asking the 1,500 Iowans in the crowd today about Carson’s “pathological stories” in his book and saying “How stupid are the people of Iowa to believe this crap?” Trump focused on a story from Carson’s books where he writes about stabbing someone with a knife, ABC’s JOHN SANTUCCI and JOSH HASKELL note. “It hit the belt. And the knife broke. Give me a break,” Trump told the crowd at Iowa Central Community College. Trump then stepped away from the podium and demonstrated what Carson stabbing a friend in the belt would look like. “He hit the belt buckle? Anybody with a knife wanna try it on me? Believe me it ain’t gonna work,” Trump said…

“Panic in the GOP elite! Is this a job for Mitt?!?!?” by Joan McCarter at Daily Kos, who notes,

The fact that Donald Trump and Ben Carson are still around and are still sucking the oxygen out of the primary race is causing real panic among Republican elites. All their hopes that either of the two would self-destruct are not materializing, because no matter what these guys say, people seem to like it, and that makes it very difficult for another candidate to try to destroy them. What’s more, there’s not a lot of time to do something about it.

So how long can a political party remain competitive when its front-runner generates such headlines?
I’ve got to believe that Trump’s teflon is going to wear thin, very thin, before too long, when the GOP field narrows and his egomaniacal rants are no longer enough to carry the day in the polls. When that moment comes the power of the GOP establishment will kick in hard, as John McQuaid writes at Forbes:

The establishment’s sprawling networks of politicians, campaign personnel, donors, interest groups, and Fox News may be “paralyzed” right now, but they still hold powerful cards in the nomination fight, most yet to be played. So make no mistake. At some point, we will be bidding farewell to Donald Trump and Ben Carson.

But Trumpism may not go away from the GOP so quietly. As Fareed Zakaria notes: “A poll this week found that half of Republican voters think Trump is the presidential candidate best able to handle the immigration issue — almost five times the share any other candidate received.
Whether he wins or loses his party’s nomination, however, every day Trump can be called a “front-runner” helps brand the GOP as a chaotic circus — no matter who finally drives the clown car.

From Greg Sargent’s Plum Line post, “Here’s Hillary Clinton’s big 2016 challenge, in one chart”:

The new poll, which was commissioned by Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund and conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, shows that members of the Rising American Electorate — minorities, millennials, and single women — are significantly less tuned in to next year’s election than GOP-aligned voter groups are.
The poll has some good news for Democrats. The survey, which was taken in four key battleground states — Colorado, Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin — suggests that in those states, the demographics do favor Dems. That’s because the poll finds that RAE voter groups — who helped drive Obama’s wins — now make up a “majority or near majority of the vote” in all those states. The poll also finds Dems leading in Senate races in two of those states and tied in two others.
But members of the RAE are insufficiently engaged in next year’s election when compared to Republican-aligned voter groups:

Sargent adds, “Unmarried women, minorities, and particularly millennials are less interested in next year’s voting than seniors, conservatives, and white non-college men are. Non-college women — a group the Clinton camp is reportedly eyeing as a way to expand on the Obama coalition — are also less interested.” However, “If Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, and the prospect of electing the first female president seems increasingly within reach, you could see engagement kicking in much more substantially. (It will be interesting to see how non-college, unmarried, minority and millennial women respond.)” Further,

But Greenberg’s pollsters are sounding the alarm now, warning that Democrats need to take more steps to tailor their message towards boosting the interest level among these voters. As Stan Greenberg outlines in his new book, America Ascendant, the key to engaging these voters is two-fold. It isn’t enough to simply outline bold economic policies to deal with college affordability, child care (universal pre-K), workplace flexibility (paid family and sick leave), and so forth, though those things are crucial. What’s also required to engage these groups, Greenberg argues, is a reform agenda geared to reducing the influence of the wealthy, the lobbyists, and the special interests over our politics. Today’s new poll suggests the same.

The reason is that “many Americans don’t believe government can or will actually deliver on those policies.” However, writes Greenberg, “when voters hear the reform narrative first, they are dramatically more open to the middle-class economic narrative that calls for government activism in response to America’s problems.”
Sargent notes that Clinton’s campaign has embraced the need for reforms to reduce the political influence of the wealthy in politics. It’s important that other Democratic candidates do so as well — down ballot as well as presidential candidates.

At HuffPo, senior polling editor Mark Blumenthal has a review article discussing Stanley Greenberg’s new book, “America Ascendant,” which calls for a new progressive era to address “revolutions that are changing America, changing politics, changing culture, changing economics.” Blumenthal interviews Greenberg (audio of full interview here), and shares some of his observations, including:

Greenberg argues in the book that these revolutionary changes, including a population that is growing younger and more racially and culturally diverse, will lead to a period in which America will be “exceptional again.” But he believes that renewal will require a period of sustained political reform, comparable to the Progressive Era at the turn of the 20th century, and the defeat of the “counter-revolution” being waged by the modern Republican Party.
The book, based in part on years of Greenberg’s polling and focus groups, also looks at the profound “downside” to this time of change: stagnating wages, an endemic cost-of-living crisis, a perceived end to “middle class dreams.” These “deep contradictions,” as Greenberg describes them, have produced pessimism about the future and great skepticism about leaders in Washington, including President Barack Obama.

As for the Republican party and its future, Blumenthal notes:

While Greenberg counsels Democrats to advocate “very bold policy changes,” he also believes that a Republican “implosion” is now underway in the GOP presidential primary.
The Republican Party, as Greenberg describes it, is “a rural, white, married, evangelical, religious party in a country that’s becoming less married, more secular, more urban.” The “furious counter-revolution” the party has waged for a decade to keep the “new American majority” from governing, he said, has “alienated the Republican Party from the country.”
He sees the evangelical and tea party blocs as “driving the base of support” for presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson, and believes they could ultimately boost support for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Greenberg is also ready to declare former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush “gone” as a presidential aspirant. “There’s no place for Bush in the Republican Party,” he said. Bush has positioned himself as a “more electable” candidate. But Greenberg pointed out that he “presents himself as the most conservative on choice issues, which makes him unacceptable to [GOP moderates], the one group of voters that might have voted for a moderate establishment candidate.”

In the interview Greenberg acknowledges that a “shattering loss” for the GOP in 2016 could strengthen Republican moderates and make their party more competitive later on. “For now, however,” concludes Blumenthal, “Greenberg sees the GOP’s counter-revolution on a collision course with the demographic trends reshaping the American electorate.”

Former political editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Tom Baxter catches Mitt Romney in a classic Republican screw-up/walkback and puts it in context of the GOP’s increasingly schitzy framing of Obamacare and Medicare expansion:

Paying tribute to a departed friend last week, Mitt Romney stumbled into the sort of gotcha moment that causes former supporters of the 2012 Republican standard-bearer to flinch.
“Without Tom pushing it,” Romney said of businessman Tom Stemberg, “I don’t think we would have had Romneycare. Without Romneycare, I don’t think we would have Obamacare. So, without Tom a lot of people wouldn’t have health insurance.”
Realizing he had trampled into a sacred cow, Romney quick backtracked and issued a standardized denunciation of Obamacare. But Romney is not alone in his gotcha.
“I was personally against the Affordable Care Act… But we lost, folks,” Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley said recently in a speech to a group of seniors. “We lost. And we lost in court. So what we have to do now is move past that, take the resources we have available and try to improve the quality of life for the people of Alabama and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
Pressed later to say whether he was moving toward accepting the Medicaid expansion at the heart of the Affordable Care Act, Bentley gave a response that is the perfect reflection of Republican ambivalence on this subject:
“You know I wouldn’t say nudging toward it,” said Bentley. “But we are certainly looking at that; not right now. We are not at that stage right now.”
That’s the picture from the hinterlands, where a collapsing rural healthcare system and a disproportionate share of the uninsured are making it progressively harder to hold the line on the Medicaid expansion. Mitt Romney said no more than the truth: without a movement toward something like the Affordable Care Act, a lot more people today would be without health insurance. Those who still aren’t tend to be in states which have held the line against this movement, riddled with problems though it may be.

Democratic candidates should make more of all this GOP talking tough about Obamacare coupled with caving on Medicaid expansion — yet another gift from the bottomless well of Republican double-talk.

In his Wall St. Journal column, “The New Democratic Coalition: The party has moved to 41% liberal from 21% since 2000, but seeks a unifying candidate,” William A. Galston writes:

The Democratic contenders for 2016 are dealing with a party that has shifted left in the 14 years since the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency. In 2000, according to an October report from the Pew Research Center, 43% of Democrats identified themselves as moderate, 27% as liberal and 24% as conservative. In 2015, 41% of Democrats think of themselves as liberal–a 14-point jump. The moderates’ share of the party dropped to 35%, the conservatives’ to 21%. Half of the Democrats who participate in the 2016 nominating process are likely to be liberal.
The candidates will be vying to lead Barack Obama’s Democratic Party. Pew researchers find that 61% of Democrats who say they may vote in the primaries and caucuses will be more likely to support candidates who offer plans similar to those of the Obama administration. Only 12% would be less likely to do so. By 45% to 19%, these Democrats say that they will be more, rather than less, likely to support a candidate who wants to expand trade agreements. On this issue, surprisingly, there is no disagreement between liberal and moderate/conservative Democrats.

Galston also notes that the Pew survey shows significant, but unsurprising differences between “liberal,” “moderate” and “conservative” Democrats in their attitudes toward breaking up the big banks and the Iran deal. With respect to the poll’s findings on attitudes toward bipartisan compromise, Galston explains:

The second large contrast between the parties is especially telling. Among possible Democratic primary participants, 60% say they are more likely to favor a candidate who wants to compromise with Republicans. Only 41% of possible Republican participants would be more likely to favor a candidate who wants to compromise with Democrats. Democrats are weary of unending partisan strife; Republicans are gearing up to intensify the battle…Among these Democratic respondents, candidates who espouse a more unifying approach to the presidency are likely to hold the advantage over partisan warriors.

In addition, Galston says, “According to a Pew Research Center study published in June 2014, 56% of voters overall preferred candidates who are willing to compromise; only 39% wanted leaders to stick to their positions, come what may.” But he cites public skepticism about the prospects for political leadership actually pursuing greater bipartisan unity, and concludes, “In these polarized times, the candidate with the most credible response to this challenge is likely to be the next president of the United States.”

From the Select Committee on Benghazi Minority Site:
Instead of taking concrete steps to enhance the safety and security of our diplomatic corps overseas, the Select Committee on Benghazi continues to squander millions of dollars and has nothing to show for it other than a partisan attack against Secretary Clinton and her campaign for president.

$4,816,375 and counting as of 8:50 a.m. 9/23/15 – SPENT BY THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON BENGHAZI TO DATE*
(*Based on actual expenditures publicly reported here and then forecasted using the most recent month’s average daily expenditures.)
This calculation does not include the costs of: the independent Accountability Review Board; the eight previous reports by seven Congressional committees; the time, money, and resources consumed by federal agencies to comply with Select Committee requests; or the opportunity cost of not spending this money elsewhere, like improving security for our diplomatic officers abroad.
The Select Committee on Benghazi has been investigating for 533 Days, which is longer than the investigations of Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, Iran-Contra and Hurricane Katrina.

The Benghazi Research Center estimates that costs to the taxpayer could exceed $20 million when all is completed.
Think also of all the expenses incurred by the media in covering this nothingburger — time and money that should have been used to illuminate real issues and policies for the benefit of Americans.

The following article by Jennifer Granholm, former Governor of Michigan, Senior Adviser, Correct The Record and Senior Research Fellow, UC Berkeley’s Energy and Climate Institute is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Surprise! If you’ve been paying federal taxes for the past few years, then you’ve been funding a Republican hit job against Hillary Clinton. The House Select Committee on Benghazi’s investigations have bilked — in total — around $4.7 million in taxpayer dollars for their relentless, shameless, fact-free pursuit of damaging the Clinton campaign. When the Republicans take aim at “waste, fraud and abuse” they should set their sights on their own Benghazi Committee, shoot it, and put it out of our misery.
Today, Hillary Clinton will finally testify before the committee and its right-wing chair, Trey Gowdy. Still don’t believe that the committee is nothing more than a partisan smear campaign? Try these top ten facts on for size.
10. Ten is the number of congressional committees that have participated in Benghazi investigations over the years–contributing to 9 of the 11 different published reports on those tragic events. None of the investigations have found any evidence of wrongdoing by the administration.
9. Nine is the number of months since Chairman Trey Gowdy’s partisan committee has held its last public hearing. Gowdy has preferred to shroud his investigations in secrecy–so he and his staff can selectively leak information to the press and gin up damaging stories.
8. Eight is the number of current or former close Clinton confidants interviewed by Gowdy’s committee–as opposed to only 4 interviews with representatives from the Department of Defense. I wonder why Gowdy thinks Hillary Clinton’s personal assistant knows more about the incidents at Benghazi than DoD?
7. Seven is for seventy thousand–roughly the number of documents that the State Department has handed over to the Benghazi Committee for review. Remember that the cost to taxpayers isn’t just what the Committee itself spends–it’s what other agencies have to spend to meet their absurd, partisan demands. Estimates suggest the State Department has had to spend upwards of $14 million responding to congressional investigations into Benghazi.
6. Six is for the six thousand dollars in donations that Trey Gowdy just had to return to organizations linked to a shadowy anti-Hillary Clinton PAC – whose treasurer used to serve as the treasurer for Gowdy’s own political committee. What a coincidence!
5. Five is for the number of permanent House committees (including the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs!) that have spent less taxpayer money in 2015 than Trey Gowdy’s Benghazi Committee.
4. Four is for the four years that Hillary Clinton served this country as Secretary of State–a tenure of accomplishment that has been praised by Democratic and Republican officials alike. Four is also for the four seconds it took after Hillary Clinton announced her presidential campaign for the Republican National Committee to begin to try to take her down.
3. Three is the number of Benghazi Select Committee press releases between March 4th and October 8th that don’t specifically mention Hillary Clinton. Twenty-six press releases DO mention these things. Remember when Trey Gowdy told us his committee wasn’t focused on Hillary?
2. Two is for the two Republicans in the House of Representatives – Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Representative Richard Hanna — who admitted that the Benghazi Committee was set up intentionally to bring down Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers.
1. One is for the one man who is behind this whole witch hunt–Trey Gowdy– funded and supported by the Koch Brothers. Over the course of his shameful, multi-year smear campaign, Gowdy has gone from a mere two-term Congressman from South Carolina to a right-wing darling. He’s been discussed as a future Majority Leader, Speaker of the House, Supreme Court Justice, Vice President, even President of the United States. Ain’t politics grand?

This over-the-top title, “Jeb Bush is completely toast: Donald Trump and Jake Tapper just ended all White House dreams” is actually supported by a fairly persuasive argument by Salon.com’s Amanda Marcotte. An excerpt:

…The blunt fact of the matter is that Clinton was Secretary of State when Osama Bin Laden was killed, and George Bush was president when Osama Bin Laden killed 3,000 Americans. Is Jeb Bush betting that Clinton is somehow too good to run campaign ads contrasting the picture of her in the situation room while American troops killed Bin Laden with pictures of his brother reading My Pet Goat while 3,000 Americans lost their lives to Bin Laden? She might be. Outside groups that are supporting her might not be. Either way, that’s not a bet I’d take, especially if Republicans keep flinging the word “Benghazi” around to express their belief that Democrats–and women–are incapable of keeping us safe.
Bush has clearly come up with his talking point to evade this issue, which he trotted out on CNN. “Does anybody actually blame my brother for the attacks on 9/11?” he asked, clearly hoping you’d think anyone who brings this up is basically a 9/11 Truther. The problem, for him, is there is a huge gulf between blaming George Bush for what happened and pointing out, accurately, that he didn’t keep us safe. The problem is that Jeb Bush keeps conflating the two.
…Bush’s answer to this problem, to try to make 9/11 about the aftermath, isn’t going to help him much. That’s because the aftermath was the failed Iraq War, which had nothing to do with 9/11. Imagine what Clinton could do with that. If Bush runs, expect her to repeatedly remind people that George Bush was too busy starting irrelevant wars to deal with Bin Laden, but that the Obama administration, with her as Secretary of State, actually got the guy who did this.

‘Never say never,’ as the saying goes, and there are no guarantees that crazy can’t happen in any election. But if Bush can somehow win the presidency after all of this, it will likely require the least attentive electoral majority in U.S. history.

House Select Committee on Benghazi
Democratic Staff Report: Results of Interviews Conducted by the House Select Committee on Benghazi:
No Evidence to Support Top Republican Allegations About Secretary Hillary Clinton
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report has been prepared on behalf of the Democratic Members of the House Select Committee on Benghazi to summarize the results of 54 transcribed interviews and depositions conducted by the Select Committee. The report concludes that none of the witnesses substantiated repeated claims that Republican Members of Congress and presidential candidates have been making about former Secretary.
Politicization of Benghazi Select Committee
When Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy admitted on national television that Republicans have been using millions of taxpayer dollars to damage Secretary Clinton’s campaign for president, he crystallized in one moment the ground truth of this investigation. One week later, a self-described “conservative Republican” investigator publicly revealed that he had been fired from the Select Committee’s staff in part because he wanted to conduct an objective investigation and refused to go along with Republican leadership plans to use the Select Committee to “hyper focus on Hillary Clinton.” Then, last week Republican House Member Richard Hanna admitted during a radio interview: “This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton.”
Chairman Gowdy has denied these criticisms, stating: “I cannot say it any plainer than stating the facts, the Benghazi Committee is not focused on Secretary Clinton.” He has also argued that, “instead of listening to someone else’s words, why don’t you look at our actions?”
In fact, these remarkable and repeated Republican admissions are consistent with the actions of the Select Committee to aggressively target Secretary Clinton, while abandoning plans to conduct a more thorough, fact-based investigation of the attacks….
…Many of the Republican accusations [against Secretary Clinton] share common features: they claim Secretary Clinton took personal and knowing action to endanger the lives of the four Americans killed in Benghazi, they are based on no evidence or evidence that is unsubstantiated or distorted, they use extreme rhetoric that has no basis in fact, and they often make a direct link to Secretary Clinton’s bid for president.
For example, Carly Fiorina stated that Secretary Clinton “has blood on her hands,” Mike Huckabee accused her of “ignoring the warning calls from dying Americans in Benghazi,” Senator Rand Paul stated that “Benghazi was a 3:00 a.m. phone call that she never picked up,” and Senator Lindsay Graham tweeted, “Where the hell were you on the night of the Benghazi attack?”
In stark contrast to these baseless political attacks, the 54 individuals who have now been interviewed by the Select Committee have identified:
• no evidence that Secretary Clinton ordered the military to stand down on the night of the attacks;
• no evidence that Secretary Clinton personally approved or ordered a reduction of security in Benghazi prior to the attacks;
• no evidence that Secretary Clinton pressed the United States into supporting the United Nations campaign in Libya under false pretenses;
• no evidence that Secretary Clinton or her aides oversaw an operation at the State Department to destroy or scrub embarrassing documents; and
• no evidence that Secretary Clinton or any other U.S. official directed or authorized the U.S. Mission in Benghazi to transfer weapons from Libya to another country.
The evidence obtained by the Select Committee also corroborates previous testimony to Congress indicating that Secretary Clinton was deeply engaged during and after the attacks and took action to ensure the safety and security of U.S. personnel, even as intelligence assessments of the attacks changed more than once during this period.
Read the report HERE

At WaPo’s The Daily 202 James Hohman and Elise Vlebeck present a persuasive round-up arguing that Clinton won the first Democratic Debate. An Excerpt:

..This morning’s clips are, by far, the best Clinton has enjoyed all year. From nonpartisan reporters to thought leaders across the spectrum, there was a near consensus that Hillary won.
The Post’s Karen Tumulty, in an A1 analysis, says that Hillary’s self-assured performance “showed that she remains the person to beat.”
…Liberal activist Van Jones on CNN: “Hillary Clinton was Beyoncé. She was flawless.”
Conservative Post columnist Charles Krauthammer on Fox News: “She was competent. She wasn’t afraid. She was aggressive.”
New York Times columnist Frank Bruni: “I never doubted that Hillary Clinton had many talents. I just didn’t know that seamstress was among them. There were moments … when she threaded the needle as delicately and perfectly as a politician could.”
New Republic senior editor Brian Beutler: “Clinton staked out the sweet spot between aspirational and pragmatic politics, when she dubbed herself ‘a progressive, but … a progressive who likes to get things done.'”
Vox.com editor-in-chief Ezra Klein: “Clinton reminded a lot of Democrats that they want her debating the GOP nominee next year.”
Mother Jones Washington editor David Corn: “HRC folks should hope for a Clinton-Bush general. Compare her performance to his.”
The Atlantic’s James Fallows: “HRC had her best two hours of the past two years.”
The Boston Globe’s Annie Linskey highlights Clinton’s disarming sense of humor: “During a commercial break, it took her longer to return to the stage from the bathroom, a fact she attributed to her gender. ‘It takes me longer,’ she said. When asked late in the debate what would distinguish a Clinton presidency from the current administration, she answered simply: She’s a woman.”
Post columnist Dana Milbank: “Clinton was a head shorter than her rivals when they lined up on stage for Sheryl Crow’s version of the National Anthem. … But after that moment, she towered over them.”
The Fix’s Chris Cillizza: “Clinton was confident, relaxed and good-natured. … She also smartly turned at least three questions into broad-scale attacks on Republicans, effectively playing the uniter role for the party — and winning a ton of applause in the process.”
New York Times political correspondent Jonathan Martin: “Strong night for Hillary – will calm Dem nerves & tamp down Biden buzz. She helped herself a good deal, was elevated by comparison.”
“Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd: “Clinton was easily the most polished and prepped candidate on stage. Wasn’t even close. But Sanders isn’t going anywhere.”

Hohman and Vlebeck did an impressive amount of work in putting together their case for a big Clinton win and show why the post still rules the MSM when it comes to political coverage. They have other insights to share in their Daily 202 post, which is likely to be the most widely-read take on the first Democratic presidential debate.