If the Republican Party were capable of embarrassment, this debate season would have already turned it redder than John Kasich’s forehead.
Each debate has had its own pre-debate where each of the candidates who are losing so badly they aren’t in the main debate ends up getting as much as or more time to talk than the poll leaders. The real debate is half-filled with candidates who together barely equal half the support of the frontrunner, who happens to be an anti-vaxxer, birther whose popularity was sparked when he called Mexicans “rapists.”
Somehow, it got worse Wednesday night… actually in the aftermath of Wednesday night.
Conservatives in a herd, which is the way they prefer to do things, accused CNBC — a channel that exists to pretend the stock market is the economy and was the place where the Tea Party movement began as a commentator demanded mass foreclosures — of liberal bias. The Republican Party has now suspended its February debate with NBC over “gotcha” questions.
There were some questions framed to put the candidates on the defensive — but they were far more tame than Megyn Kelly spending two minutes calling Donald Trump a misogynist on Fox News or Anderson Cooper turning into Joseph McCarthy against Bernie Sanders on CNN.
CNBC’s debate was as substantive as any other GOP debate, and provided the first useful questions about the candidates tax plans, which are generally insane.
So now we have a conservative movement who spends much of their emotional energy mocking a culture of participation awards and political correctness, handing out every candidate a trophy that says “You won because you tried!” and demanding their debate be held in a safe space where they get trigger warnings if someone is going to point out their tax plan gives trillions to the rich while asking millions of workers to work longer, which will guarantee that many laborers will work till death.
We need to need to hear more about these plans and feed the real competitors tougher questions.
It’s time for Republicans to buck up and realize a primary is a bootstrap rodeo.
If you have under 5 percent, no debate.
You say you need Carly Fiorina in there because you like having a woman yell at Hillary Clinton?
Fine. I’m for Affirmative Action too.
That’s six people on stage. More than enough,
And if the other candidates want to keep campaigning and find some sort of support building, they can join the adults when they hit 5 percent. Otherwise, you gotta go back home and worry about punishing the middle class there.
Like this guy:
[Scott Walker photo by Gage Skidmore | Flickr]
