Fear and loathing at the GOP debates

Fear and loathing at the GOP debates

by digby

I wrote about the debates on Salon today:

Unfortunately, I woke up this morning with a hangover of epic proportions and the feeling that I’d been abducted by aliens and taken to a foreign planet. Let’s just say that spending three hours with Republican politicians and Fox News pundits and anchors wasn’t nearly as much fun as I thought it would be.

Let’s recap.

We started off the first debate in a jovial mood, laughing and joking about the “Kids Table Debate” and commenting on the very weird fact that they held the thing in the empty auditorium before the main event. It was quite clear that Roger Ailes and Fox put all of 5 minutes into planning that debate, obviously hoping they could make it so embarrassing that the lower tier would drop out and save everyone from the humiliation in the future.

Virtually everyone watching agreed that it turned out to be Carly Fiorina’s afternoon. She sounded prepared and crisp, although she didn’t really say much of anything, which is often the hallmark of a winner as far as the TV pundits are concerned. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry weirdly seemed to call the 40th president Ronald Raven, but other than that he got through it without forgetting anything important. Former Senator Rick Santorum recycled his 2012 debate appearances, and current Senator Lindsay Graham pretty much did what he does every Sunday on the pundit shows: He screamed hysterically about how we’re all going to die. Former Governor George Pataki talked about some stuff he did in New York once, and there was some guy on stage named Gilmore nobody had ever heard of. All of them made it quite clear that if they become president we will be going to war immediately.

The candidate who made the biggest impression, although hardly a good one, was Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal who boldly announced that he would immediately break the law upon assuming office:

“Planned Parenthood had better hope that Hillary Clinton wins this election, because I guarantee you that under President Jindal, January 2017, the Department of Justice and the IRS and everybody else that we can send from the federal government will be going into Planned Parenthood.”

In the spin room later, he said he’d put OSHA and the EPA on them as well. Even Richard Nixon was more discreet about his beliefs that the president could use the executive branch agencies for political purposes. […]

The main event, meanwhile, started out as crazy as we could have hoped, with Donald Trump refusing to promise that he wouldn’t run as an independent, and the allegedly independent Rand Paul immediately sniping at him like a fishwife for not being a Real Republican.

Megyn Kelly accused Trump of waging a war on women by calling them “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.” Trump explained he only meant Rosie O’Donnell and the audience cheered wildly. (Because of course they did.) That was pretty much the end of the excitement.

Nobody really knows how Trump did. The normal rules of politics don’t seem to apply to him, so although he didn’t seem as commanding on the stage as his fans may have hoped, you just never know. For what it’s worth, if my local news was any guide, Trump was triumphant. “He stood his ground and apologized for nothing.” Online polls like this one have him winning by a mile, although it’s always possible that he’s paid people to vote in the same way he paid them to attend his campaign announcement

All the same pundits who said Trump was finished after the McCain remarks said tonight’s performance finished him off for real. Someday they’re bound to be right. The polls will tell the tale.

The rest of the field was more easily critiqued. Many pundits declared the big winner of the night to be John Kasich, who seemed to have some of the edginess and informal affect of Trump and Christie, but with a friendly face, a good resume and a slightly distinctive philosophy. The positive impression he gave may have been colored by the fact that the debate was in Ohio and the audience was packed with his followers screaming like he was a member of One Direction every time he opened his mouth. But the positive reaction was there nonetheless.

I have long thought that on paper Marco Rubio makes the most sense on paper and he made his case immediately, all-but declaring that Hillary Clinton is an old bag and I’m young, handsome and Latino to boot. Well, perhaps he was a tiny bit more subtle than that:

I would add to that that this election cannot be a resume competition. It’s important to be qualified, but if this election is a resume competition, then Hillary Clinton’s gonna be the next president, because she’s been in office and in government longer than anybody else running here tonight.

Here’s what this election better be about: This election better be about the future, not the past. It better be about the issues our nation and the world is facing today, not simply the issues we once faced… If I’m our nominee, how is Hillary Clinton gonna lecture me about living paycheck to paycheck? I was raised paycheck to paycheck. How is she — how is she gonna lecture me — how is she gonna lecture me about student loans? I owed over $100,000 just four years ago.

If I’m our nominee, we will be the party of the future.

Actually, that’s not true. Kasich and Jeb have been around just as long as Clinton, but who’s counting? And speaking of Jeb, he and Scott Walker duked it out all night for the title of most boring man on earth. There is literally nothing to say about either of them beyond the fact that Walker announced he has a wife and two kids and rides a Harley; and Bush weirdly declared that “in Florida, they called me Jeb, because I earned it.” Okay.

Read on for more highlights …