The Morning Briefing: Caitlyn Is Easily the Greatest Jenner Since Bruce

Top O’ the Briefing

Jenner FTW In California?

Feliz Cinco de Mayo, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. You don’t want to know what I’m doing with this sombrero.

I am going to be awash in a sea of margarita specials today that I’m probably going to avoid. Check this space tomorrow to see how well my disciplined, monk-like approach worked.

This was about to be another Anthony Fauci rant leading off this morning. It’s been about two weeks since I featured America’s Worst Bureaucrat, after all. Irritation with Fauci is evergreen though, so I know I’ll be getting around to some more righteous indignation regarding him soon enough.

There was one story that had been sticking in my head for a couple of days already, I opted to go with that instead.

After Caitlyn Jenner released a very well-produced campaign ad at the beginning of the week I decided that would be the subject of my next column. As I was getting rolling yesterday, I saw that my friend and colleague Larry O’Conner had done a fantastic deep dive on Jenner’s candidacy. I made the executive decision to go ahead with my column anyway, taking a more irreverent approach.

Larry and I are both former Californians — conservative Californians — who still need Advil from all of the time we spent beating our heads against the wall trying to help the Republicans accomplish anything while we lived there. Larry lives back east now but still hosts a weekday radio show in Los Angeles. We are both aware of the unique and rare opportunity for Republican Caitlyn Jenner’s foray into the looming recall election provides.

The GOP in California has been a miserable failure when it comes to winning state offices. The party still does OK in a lot of municipal and county elections, but tends to get its butt kicked when it comes to things like the governor’s mansion.

Democrats so dominate at the state level that they don’t really have to campaign on anything substantive. They merely have to repeat a bunch of shopworn leftist platitudes to a numb, well-trained Democratic electorate and they’re in.

Here is the campaign ad that Jenner released:

Larry’s remarks were perfect:

This is a powerful message. In fact, it’s the winning message. I’ll go so far as to say that whoever emerges as the clear replacement for Newsom (could be San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, could be erstwhile candidate John Cox, could be yet-undeclared Richard Grenell) if they want to convince Californians that it’s time to stop the hemorrhaging, get rid of Newsom, and start to renew the Golden State to its former glory, this is the only message that will truly get the job done.

The fact that the message is delivered by a former gold medal olympian with an enormous social media following, huge name recognition, and access to a broad spectrum of media outlets and venues, especially those that would never care to talk to or feature a politician but will line up and beg for a Jenner interview makes Jenner a candidate that would appear to be absolutely formidable.

Larry goes deeper into the pros and cons of the messenger too, but that’s not my concern here. I want to emphasize that the California Republican Party doesn’t get many opportunities to accomplish anything at the state level because it’s incompetent and can’t create them for itself. The California GOP’s usual M.O. is to find a sacrificial lamb to run in two or three gubernatorial elections in a row. They’re living the high life over there if a Republican becomes Insurance Commissioner.

Yeah, this is a strange situation, but these are strange times, my friends. Like I wrote in my post:

Because God has a much, much better sense of humor than most people realize, California Republicans have been gifted with the candidacy of the most famous transgender Republican in the universe, and it’s happening in a state that lives, eats, and breathes identity politics. Trust me, Kamala Harris didn’t rise through the ranks there because people actually liked her.

We have to take our potential wins where we can get them here in Joe Biden’s America.

Allow Me To Introduce…

My good friend and fellow comedian Kevin Downey Jr. Kevin is our newest contributor and you can read his first column here. Kevin and I first met when we were touring the South Pacific while entertaining U.S. troops in 2010. We’d love to tell you some stories about that but neither one of us remember much of it. You gotta commit when you’re hanging out in bars with the United States Navy every night.

Everything Isn’t Awful

Reth Sam found his mother after 40+ years of being separated during the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. They last saw one another in a refugee camp & both believed the other had perished but were able to be reunited through the power of YouTube! Read more here: https://t.co/Pl8aIgZEuY pic.twitter.com/fZ8qjS6ZwQ

— Some Good News (@somegoodnews) May 4, 2021

Smells Like Onion

Major Biden In Trouble Again After Burying Antony Blinken In Rose Garden https://t.co/kyk0cYPAzp pic.twitter.com/Hk0J2nWBRF

— The Onion (@TheOnion) May 4, 2021