Bring out the clowns: The Republican debate
MIAMI – There are so many Republicans vying for the party’s presidential nomination they couldn’t fit them all on the same stage. There are seventeen so far–more than three basketball teams worth of politicians. Talk about a party with no consensus on who should lead it.
The solution Fox News came up with to the numbers dilemma was to put on the ten with the highest poll numbers during prime television viewing time and the other seven during a less-watched slot.
The proliferation of candidates hardly produced a diversity of ideas. All the candidates mouthed the same tired GOP dogmas. Lower taxes. Less government. A more muscular U.S. foreign policy. Dump Obamacare. Ditch the agreement with Iran.
The movies were all the same, only the soundtracks were different. The headline in the Wall Street Journal captured it well: “Debate Sharpens Style Divide.”
Style. Donald Trump, for one, didn’t temper his abrasive style one bit. Indeed, in this debate he topped himself. The leading candidate in the polls by a good margin was his same bombastic, offensive, sexist, asinine self.
That a candidate of Trump’s ilk could be leading the race in one of the nation’s two leading political parties speaks volumes of the depths to which the GOP has descended. We knew that already, but Donald Trump’s success puts an exclamation point on the whole thing. Despite it all, an overnight poll showed Trump still leading the pack after the debate.
In the shadow of Trump’s grotesquely outsized ego and extremism, many of the other candidates struggled to capture the limelight and not end up sounding like wimps. Jeb Bush, the favorite of the Republican establishment, which has supported his candidacy to the tune of $100 million, had an especially hard time. Although Jeb is even more conservative than his brother on class and economic issues, he has not displayed the requisite zest for immigrant bashing to please the Tea Party types and other immigration hard-liners in the GOP. So while Bush’s fiscal policies are music to the one percent crowd that makes big donations, you can’t win the Republican nomination with just the fat cat vote.
On the other hand, Governor Scott Walker and Senator Marco Rubio, another pair of rock-ribbed right-wingers, performed decently according to Republican standards, but neither looks ready to break away from the pack. Nor thus anyone else, including Governor Chris Christie, who also got good reviews from influential conservative pundits.
Among the second team, Carly Fiorina impressed some commentators. If for no other reason, the fact that she is a woman in a field otherwise made up entirely of men in suits makes her stand out. But Fiorina, a former top computer executive who was ultimately forced out of her job, has zero political experience.
After the debate, Trump provided more evidence that he is the biggest clown in the Republican circus. During the debate, Megyn Kelly, one of the Fox News moderators had asked Trump to explain past derogatory remarks he had made about women, such as calling them “fat pigs.” Trump dismissed the question, which he said was stupid. Later, on an appearance on CNN, Trump described Kelly as looking so mad “‘blood was coming out of her eyes and from wherever else.”
Nobody missed the obvious reference to a woman’s menstrual cycle and the effect this allegedly may have on mood. Trump denied he meant to refer to hormones but nobody believed him.
The comment was so outrageous, even for Trump, that the organizer of an upcoming conservative event in Atlanta quickly disinvited Trump, saying he had given the candidate a lot of latitude when he crossed lines with blunt talk, but not this time because he had crossed a line of decency.
There was much hypocrisy in the selective Republican backlash. Trump had already crossed the line of decency many times before, especially with his vicious comments about Mexican immigrants. But the difference was not a question of decency but a question of politics, as subsequent comments by a frustrated Jeb Bush revealed: “Give me a break. Insulting 53 percent of voters? Do we want to win?”
During the debate itself, Trump gave plenty of proof that he isn’t worried about wrecking the chances of a Republican victory in 2016 when he refused to rule out running as a third party candidate. That would be a gift on a silver plate for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.
Few people believe Donald Trump will ultimately be the Republican candidate, but lots of Republicans are worried he is showing the ugliest side of the GOP. And if Trump ultimately comes out on top of the Republican hornets’ nest, he won’t win the general election.
The real threat to Democrats’ holding on to the White House post-Obama comes from the likes of Scott Walker and Marco Rubio. Their track record shows that they are more consistently and broadly reactionary than Donald Trump, but Scott Walker’s folksy manner and Marco Rubio’s pretty face and articulate speech sooth voters’ fears. Beneath these candidates’ silk gloves, however, lie chained fists that would more effectively destroy anything remotely progressive that has been achieved in the last eight years–or perhaps the last one hundred years–than Trump ever could.
They say clowns are the saddest people. Perhaps. What I know for sure is that it would be the saddest day in America if either of these two clowns makes it into the White House.
