I did watch the debate on Saturday, you see — and even tweeted as a form of live-blogging/taking notes. But my Sunday consisted of church, trying to do some cleaning of my parents’ house (the fridge! oh, the fridge!), taking them to a matinee concert (the DSO’s tickets are a bargain compared to Chicago’s symphony), cooking dinner, and playing Hearts with the family. In any case, I still want to share my thoughts with you — the bottom line of which is, “I can’t believe people still support Trump after what he said!” but there are other bits here too.
The debate started with the usual explanation of how the process works — allotted time, how candidate and audience are notified, etc. — and my first wish was that, next time around, they’d just say, “after your allotted time is over, your microphone will be cut off.”
Right out the gate, the moderator asked the candidates their opinion on a successor to Scalia. Kasich gave a rambly answer which both called for Obama to nominate a bipartisanly popular nominee, and also to not nominate anyone. Rubio said it’s been 80 years since a lame-duck president appointed a SCOTUS justice. (Strictly speaking, the 80 years is applicable to cases where the Senate is held by the opposite party, and excludes Reagan’s nomination/the Senate confirmation of Kennedy because the process started the prior June with borking Bork.) Cruz must have said something similar because the moderator tried to pull a Candy Crowly and claim that he was wrong, and Cruz didn’t hesitate to pull out enough specifics to counter the moderator’s claims.
Carson is asked a question, and before he proceeds to give a fairly lame answer, he starts in again with his passive-aggressive “thank you for including me in the debate.” By the way, here’s a bit of trivia on Ben Carson and Detroit: on the way from the highway to Orchestra Hall, you pass by Ben Carson High School. He is (or was) a genuine hometown hero.
And then — one of the big moments of the debate — I don’t remember the question, but Trump again starts into “I was the only one to oppose the Iraq war; I knew it was a bad idea from the start.” And then “George W Bush is responsible for 9/11” — OK, that’s not a direct quote from Trump, but that’s my tweet at the time. I was shocked that, to a Republican crowd, he took the very Democratic mentality of blaming Bush for 9/11. I have never heard a Republican make that claim before! I’m not sure if this is a matter of tone-deafness, and thinking this is an angle to attack Bush with, or if he genuinely believes it and it just demonstrates that he has no true partisan affiliation other than the Trump Party.
The moderator started in with some questions pushing candidates their promises:
To Trump: “how will you fund your promises?” The answer: magic beans. OK, actually he claims we’ll “get jobs back from China,” and “save Social Security” by — you guessed it — fighting waste, fraud, and abuse.
To Cruz: “how can you be sure a VAT will reduce, not increase taxes?” — that is, addressing the concern that once you’ve introduced a wholly new way for the government to collect money, the government will be happy to increase rates on both forms of taxation, rather than keeping the lowered rates on income tax that were meant to be the gain from applying the VAT. Answer: magic beans. Well, actually, he doesn’t address this issue, but just repeats his usual claim that the VAT + a flat 10% income tax will spur economy growth.
To Rubio: What do you have to say about the fact that your highest tax bracket, 35%, is higher than the highest rates of any of your opponents with tax plan proposals? Rubio launches off into his proposal for high tax credits for parents, and alludes to his “parent penalty” concept, though it wouldn’t really make sense to a listener who didn’t know his plan.
The debate turns to immigration. Trump repeats that he’ll build a wall. Rubio is asked “how do you define amnesty?” which allows him to repeat his rationalization that “amnesty means forgiveness without consequence” but that his plan offers “forgiveness with a consequence” because there’ll be a fine. You buy that? Cruz calls Gang of 8 the Rubio-Schumer plan, and Rubio’s retort is, basically, “waaah, you did it too,” which sounds a bit petulant. Bush is asked to affirm his “act of love” statement, which he does, and asks us to “show respect” for them. Kasich supports legalization PLUS a guest-worker program (whoa! I thought we’d abandoned that!). And Ben Carson asks us to go to BenCarson.com to read his immigration plan.
A few more bits:
On Planned Parenthood funding, Trump is asked about his prior support, and he says, “Planned Parenthood does wonderful things” — again, I can’t believe he said this and his supporters don’t care! And yet that seems to be the case, judging by Trump supporters posting on Facebook groups, saying Cruz is “smearing him” for citing these statements.
Rubio repeated his newly-favored line that Americans don’t trust the government to enfoce immigration law until they see it implemented, so that he is now a convert to Enforcement First (though never mentioning that the enforcement doesn’t include any deportations). It’s unfortunate that he doesn’t comprehend that this mistrust extends to him, and that no matter how many times he repeats that line, he still has to reach out more genuinely to potential supporters for whom his immigration stand is a deal-breaker.
So there you have it. Did you watch? What did you think?
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In