Yes, the general consensus is “train wreck.”
The moderators, the general consensus is, were fools. They took their job to be adversaries, demonstrating the awfulness of the GOP field, rather than pursuing the job they had been assigned, asking questions that would help Republican voters identify which candidate they wished to support based on policy positions and overall sensibility.
Sample question: “Mr. X, my research shows you’re dumb as a bag of rocks. How do you respond?”
Which, of course, was counterproductive. Once it became clear that that’s what their game was, and candidates called them on it, those same candidates felt an awful lot freer to counter back, and even when the moderators’ accusations were credible, they had lost their credibility in the eyes of the candidates and the audience. Hence, Trump was able to escape a confrontation over a policy paper by his campaign on immigration that he seemingly hadn’t read, and Carson was able to wiggle out of an endorsement of a shady supplements company, to the approval of the audience.
And Chris Christie was able to score some points by calling them on the foolishness of asking about fantasy football in a debate that was supposed to focus on substantive economic issues.
I still like Chris Christie, by the way, for being the first candidate to address the issue of Social Security, though I’ve accepted that he’s simply too tainted by his embrace of Obama in ’12, and the appointment of a Democrat to a vacant Senate seat.
Other impressions of candidates:
Very disappointed that, where for the Democrats it’s a bidding war of who’ll promise the most generous new government spending (free college! free daycare! paid parental leave!), for the Republicans it’s a bidding war of who’ll cut taxes the most, with a mantra that the tax cuts will unleash economic growth so they’ll pay for themselves. I’d say that any candidate who promises an unrealistic tax plan is ruled out, but that leaves pretty much no one.
And sorry, Carly, you can’t boil the tax code down to three pages — it’s easy enough to say, “pay tax on your income according to these tax brackets,” but the trick is that you need to define income, and that’s not easily done when you move beyond wages to investment income and self-employment income of various kinds, or even benefits-in-kind, though, to be sure, there are lots of improvements possible in getting rid of all manner of special tax credits.
Though I have to give Fiorina credit — she got her speaking time by taking it for herself, jumping in at every possible lull rather than waiting to be called on. I suppose, in a way, this was just another way in which the moderators were screw-ups, not running a tight ship, and, at some point, she just started repeating herself, with her mantra of “there are lots of good ideas out there on [name of issue], but we need a leader who has the ability to get the job done.”
Kasich went into the debate portraying himself as the realist, and, let’s face it, he’s got a good resume, but right now he just comes off as an a**. And you can tell that he’s a left-leaning Republican by the fact that he didn’t get a single dopey confrontational from the moderators.
Rubio talked a good game on H1-B visas, saying that “of course” companies would be required to advertise jobs first and pay at above-market rates, and be banned from the program if they didn’t comply, but according to my twitter feed last night, he sponsored legislation that contained no such provisions. He’s still the most likely candidate but I have deep reservations on this issue.
Entitlements? Everyone boiled it down to “we have to make some common-sense changes for the younger generation,” but I didn’t see any substance here. (Remember, the Jane Plan is still out there for any candidate who wishes to adopt it.)
And Cruz? The gold standard? And there were other similar flaky bits, that were simply overshadowed by the moderators’ “cage match”, as Cruz called it. The moderators hoped to show the GOP as a bunch of fools, but their approach simply meant that viewers ultimately were far more likely to tune out these flaky bits because they’d discredited themselves.
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