Tag Archives: GOP debate

The GOP in Colorado, Out-Played by the Royals.

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterI’m committed to this thing. I swear it. But when the 2015 Republicans debate it’s a tough choice. Baseball or group psychosis? This crowd puts on a show more like “Jersey Shore” without the spray-on tans and tattoos (although who really knows?) than a stale civics class. You know something genuinely weird and over-the-top will happen. It’s practically guaranteed.

So yeah, a guy feels kind of conflicted. On the one hand the World Series (with my second favorite team, the Kansas City Royals). On the other hand, Mike Huckabee and the rest of the scenery-chewing crew? I mention Huckabee, the minister, because he fears that after Barack Obama the country we’ll be leaving to our children will be nothing more than “charred ashes”? So you see the dilemma. Grit and hustle or apocalyptic fantasy? Which will be more entertaining?

The Royals are simply too much fun to watch to spend anything more than commercial breaks with the Republicans, allegedly debating economic policies last night in Boulder. Maybe I just got lucky, though. Because between every inning when I flipped back to CNBC — the business network blistered by Ted Cruz for being another miserable example of running dog liberal loathing of freedom, motherhood and unfettered capitalism — something gloriously nutty was going on.

One time Ben Carson was defending his tax plan, which, being a super-Christian, is really more like a tithe, you see. 10% from everyone. You’re down to your last dollar? The Lord wants a dime. When moderator Becky Quick, who is kind of cute besides being pretty up on her facts, pointed out the multi-trillion dollar debt this alone would ring up, Carson, the scientist who believes in neither evolution or climate change and isn’t an economist either, calmly said that wasn’t true. And besides, he said, his real plan, a flat-tax scheme with no “deductions or loopholes”, would be closer to 15% … which as Quick correctly asserted would still be multi-trillion.

Now, I love a good flat-tax fight. And I think just about everyone other than John Kasich, who decided shouting was the go-to strategy for a Mile High debate, hyped some variation on “cleaning up the tax code”, which of course is TrickleDownSpeak for, “Give Me and My Sugar Daddies More Room to Roam”. (My favorite response to the flat-tax/”no deductions” spiel: How many restaurants — run by “hard-working Americans” — would go out of business the next day if everyone and their dog wasn’t deducting “business lunches” from their returns?)

During another break in the action, with Johnny Cueto mowing down the Mets, I caught Trump being asked about some shot he took at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Naturally, Trump flat-out denied he ever said anything of the sort AND accused the moderator (and by extension all of the press) of making it up. The problem with that being that the quote came off his own website.

At this point in RepublicanLife I’ve waay overworked the image of fact-checkers “melting down”. Gotta come up with something new. But even in snippets between innings, last night’s talk with all those numbers and Carly Fiorina, whose voice produces a strange, twisting contraction in my groin area, still selling the triumph of her Compaq-Hewlett-Packard merger/tenure, smoke had to have been billowing from Google’s search engines. You know thousands scoring at home were furiously looking for how any of the plans hyped put more cash in the pockets of “hard-working” Americans than “Wall Street bankers”.

And, before I cut back to the Royals’ big fifth inning rally, I had to wonder: Was I the only one baffled by the likes of Fiorina (of the $23 million golden parachute fame after laying off 30,000 “hard-working Americans”), Jeb Bush, Cruz and all these other boot-strappers railing against the ruling class? Would someone like to do a search on how many of these populists are either living off either their own family’s tax avoidance scams/investment earnings or those of some Daddy Warbucks puppet master? I mean, (I ask again), “Who buys this act?”

With the Royals in full command I caught one other fascinating moment. It was one where Mike “charred ashes” Huckabee I thought was actually making sense. Somehow he got on to the big drivers of health costs in America, citing diseases, specifically cancer and diabetes (i.e. obesity) and how, by God, we have to do something! So OK, no Republican is ever going to propose anything so French and outrageous as using taxpayer money to fund research to eradicate diseases that kill taxpayers. That would be rank Socialism. But still, as far as he went, Huckabee was actually making a valid point. Maybe the first in his tortured career.

But it was the reaction from the audience that fascinated me. The crowd had cheered wildly when Marco Rubio, (and Lord how I hope he’s the slick and sweaty suit they eventually push forward), took his obligatory shot at the liberal media. “Yeah baby! You tell ’em, Marco! Those bastards always calling us crazy and saying we’re detached from reality! Bias! Don’t tread on me! Watch the contrails! Where’s my gun?” It was like that was what they came for. Screw all this decimal point stuff.

And cancer and diabetes.

To Huckabee’s little speech … nothing. Crickets. “WTF does THAT have to do with the liberal media and Hillary Clinton leaving the USA! USA! USA! in charred ashes? Get back on the bus, man! You’re sounding crazy!”

Which is to say, not crazy enough.

In stark contrast to the Republicans, the Royals are winning because they almost never strike out.

GOP Debate #2: Sobriety is Your Enemy

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterI watched the whole thing. Do I get an award? A ribbon? Another half dozen stiff drinks?

Actually, anyone who played the buzzword bingo drinking game during last night’s three-hour Chicken Little FearFest/GOP presidential debate would have blown a .55 by the 30-minute mark.

“Terrorists”. Glug.

“Limited government conservative”. Glug.

“Ronald Reagan”. Glug.

“They want to kill us.” Glug.

“Repeal”. Glug.

“On the first day.” Glug

“Radical liberal … .” Glug.

“Strongest military the world has ever seen.” Glug.

“Ronald Reagan.” Oh what the hell, finish the bottle.

Consensus thinking, the specialty of TV punditry depending on who their target consensus group is, seems to see Carly Fiorina as the big winner, and, once again, Donald Trump as the clear loser, a word he reserves only for less “really, really rich” others. Personally, I doubt that Trump will suffer much in the opinion of the really, really white and pissed-off crowd that has loved him up so much this summer … unless the vibe gets out that he is in fact not a “winner” but somehow, a loser.

As the rankest of amateur socio-psychologists, I maintain the view that “Trump people” regard themselves as losers, victimized losers to be sure, but bona fide entitled, exceptional Americans dealt a foul, unfair hand by “multi-nationals”, Hollywood liberals, Muslim presidents and assorted other uppity (pick your sub-group). As a consequence they seek out associations with “winners”, which in their mind is anyone who is on TV a lot, has gobs of dough and can call everyone else playground names with impunity.

But that “winner” thing is kind of like a digital TV signal. In other words, it is really great until you walk one step further and it’s gone. If Trump’s “winner” vibe cracks, which I think is inevitable, his true believers will jump ship in a split second, turn and truly believe in the next guy/gal who, like muttering Steve at the end of the bar, can call someone a horse-faced skank and make the rest of the midday crowd snort and cackle.

The Fiorina thing is actually kind of interesting. Clearly, the tri-corner hat paranoids aren’t interested in “insiders”. (And God help me, when Jeb Bush tries making the case for himself as an “outsider” how do you not just douse your self with gin and light a match?)  Fiorina may be the ultimate personification of the sociopathic corporate Dragon Lady and like Mitt Romney, the face (sorry) of the “entrepreneurial class” that has bayoneted the dreams of Trump’s white nationalist crowd. But she is a woman, and she is without question built to prosecute and endure a long, gruesome campaign. Her prospects for a match-up with Hillary Clinton strike me as far better than anyone else on the stage last night, including Jeb! (no last name, please.)

In fact, in a twist of irony, a rise in Fiorina’s fortunes, (including but not limited to the one she grabbed as part of her Hewlett-Packard golden parachute), might be an asset to Ms. Clinton. The theory being that with a Fiorina ascendancy Democrats would have to stop and seriously assess how many women-who-just-want-a-damned-woman voters they’ll lose if the Republicans, for chrissake, beat them to the punch with a gal on the top of a national ticket.

Other than that last night had a weird familiarity. Like dangerous, nonsensical characters in a recurring dream, I couldn’t get past the sense of having suffered through all this many times before. For instance, I suffered what I think was a brief seizure when Scott Walker again claimed to have balanced Wisconsin’s budget AND, having gutted the state’s college system to pad over that pesky $2.2 billion deficit, stared into the camera and touted his commitment to education as the key to “real job growth”, (glug).

Lord, I despise that guy beyond anything rational.