<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Well, it&amp;#039;s never too early for a little 2016 beat-sweetening, I reckon. The gang at Tiger Beat On The Potomac are just the latest kidz jockeying for seats at the cool table in the cafeteria the next time around. Yesterday, there was an equally torrential downpour of obsequious drivel from Buzzfeed, from which I expect better than this, regarding the relaunch of &amp;quot;Bobby&amp;quot; Jindal. Apparently, &amp;quot;Bobby&amp;#039; became a political giant \u2014 again \u2014 by riding the Good Ship Goodhair all the way to the bottom of the soundless sea. Jindal endorsed Perry early on in the GOP primaries, at a time when Republicans were stampeding toward the Texas governor, convinced that he would be the nominee. But if Jindal&amp;#039;s initial endorsement was unsurprising, his unwavering fealty - expressed to the bitter end \u2014 impressed many in Perry&amp;#039;s camp. &amp;quot;Anything we asked of him, he was there,&amp;quot; said one former Perry campaign official. &amp;quot;When the tide was high and when the tide was low, he was a loyal soldier.&amp;quot; You may recall that the tide was high for about 11 seconds, and then the Perry campaign went out with it and never was seen nor heard from again. But that isn&amp;#039;t the most high-larious bit of call-me-maybe stenography in the piece. Two Republicans close to Perry even said the Texan would likely forego a second presidential race - which he is said to be actively mulling - if it meant running against his friend, Jindal. &amp;quot;They have quite a good relationship ... It might be a deterrent,&amp;quot; said one.  Rick Perry is considering running for president again? This is an idea that&amp;#039;s occurred to anyone outside of Rick Perry&amp;#039;s admittedly vacant brainpan? This is an idea that you actually want out there in public? Sucking up to a theocratic loon like &amp;quot;Bobby&amp;quot; Jindal four years in advance of a presidential election is one thing. Worshipping at the crypt of Rick Perry&amp;#039;s career is quite another. Leave stuff like this to the professionals, kid. And Allen and VandeHei are at the top of the heap, bucko. Look at how the masters do it and be amazed. Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan are &amp;quot;remaking&amp;quot; each other by giving speeches at the Jack Kemp Foundation annual dinner \u2014 which is to say, giving speeches to an audience of very wealthy conservative people who already agree with them on everything they are going to say. And neither one of them is going to give that audience a single thing that the audience doesn&amp;#039;t expect. Reaching out to academics and think tanks to build Rubio&amp;#039;s network, the senator and his staff developed a two-year reinvention project and an &amp;quot;upward mobility agenda,&amp;quot; including programs like early childhood education, school choice and incentives for entrepreneurs. Those are some of the proposals he&amp;#039;ll test-drive at the Kemp Foundation dinner, where he&amp;#039;ll receive the group&amp;#039;s second leadership award. The first winner: Paul Ryan. Rubio also plans new ideas on immigration, aimed not at broad citizenship but at creating a bigger Hispanic middle class. &amp;quot;The answer,&amp;quot; Rubio will say in his after-dinner remarks, &amp;quot;is not to make rich people poorer. The answer is to make poor people richer.&amp;quot; If he makes the sale in countless such appearances over the next two years, he&amp;#039;ll begin a formal presidential campaign shortly after the midterm elections of November 2014, Rubio sources tell us. In other words, Rubio, in an attempt to prove he&amp;#039;s not a flash-in-the-pan lightweight, has reached out to the wingnut welfare crowd to validate the banalities in which he has trafficked for his entire public career. (His whole keynote speech in Tampa was about an &amp;quot;upward mobility agenda.&amp;quot;) But the real masterwork is how our two heroes start polishing the zombie-eyed granny-starver&amp;#039;s apple for him. Ryan, 42, will kick off his own drive to redefine the party - and himself - as the pre-dinner keynote speaker before 300-plus conservative faithful on the same stage, detailing his thinking on how people of all classes can rise up economically and improve socially. Top Republicans tell us Ryan tried to push his ideas for a more creative &amp;quot;war on poverty&amp;quot; during the presidential campaign but was muzzled by nervous Nellies at Mitt Romney&amp;#039;s Boston headquarters who didn&amp;#039;t see an immediate political payoff. So Ryan seethed when the &amp;quot;47 percent&amp;quot; tape emerged, convinced that the impact was worse because the campaign had no record on issues relating to inclusion or poverty, exacerbating the out-of-touch image that the hidden camera cemented. My god, that is all my balls. Ryan&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;concern&amp;quot; for the poor is the political equivalent of buying indulgences. It certainly is not reflected in either of the phony &amp;quot;budgets&amp;quot; he has proposed and passed. It certainly is not reflected by any major legislation he&amp;#039;s ever proposed. It certainly is not reflected in any obvious change in what he fundamentally believes. It doesn&amp;#039;t matter what Top Republicans are whispering anonymously. Paul Ryan has believed in the philosophy behind the &amp;quot;47 percent comment&amp;quot; his entire political career, and he has acted out of its spirit every step of the way. The mistake the Romney campaign made was not failing to listen to Paul Ryan, it was in picking him in the first place. He was taken out for a spin on the national stage, outside the cocoon that had been created for him by the easily conned courtier press, and he failed miserably. Paul Krugman took him apart. Joe Biden laughed at him. The country found him, well, less than compelling. But Politico is always a seller&amp;#039;s market for magic beans, so here we go. Imagine the kind of self-delusion it takes to concoct, let alone submit for public consumption, the following sentence: Suddenly, even Sean Hannity seems hungry for some change. I hate that campaign already. It is not too early for that. Bartender, a double Prestone, and see what the suckers in the backroom will have. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a16855/politico-marco-rubio-paul-ryan-makeovers-120412/>