Tag Archives: Chris Christie

What to Expect From the Second GOP Debate

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After what turned out to be a relatively calm first debate last month, the Republican Party will gather their candidates for President of the United States together again tonight for a debate. The second GOP debate will begin at 6PM on CNN with the undercard – the four competitors, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham; Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal; former New York Governor George Pataki and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (two of their brethren, former Texas Governor Rick Perry (has ended his campaign) and former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore (nonexistent in the polls) have already been excluded from the debate) who couldn’t build up enough support to crack low single digits – will be featured in this showdown at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, CA. While some points may be scored here, the attention of the 500 or so people who will be in attendance will more than likely be on the “Main Event” that begins at 8PM (Eastern Time).

The main field is now expanded to 11 participants, with former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina the only candidate who came out of the “Happy Hour” debate in Cleveland improving on her support and earning her way onto the main stage. Even with the addition of Fiorina, the leader has stayed constant:  Donald Trump, despite pissing off and insulting pretty much the entirety of the human race with a brain, continues to lead the Republican parade. What has made it interesting is that the second place candidate has changed and it isn’t one of the “usual suspects.”

Coming off a notable debate performance in Cleveland, Dr. Ben Carson has been able to pull his way up to second in some polls and at least in the Top Five in others. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush will be beside Trump also, putting two “low energy” opponents (Trump’s words, not mine) on each of the New York billionaire’s hands. The difference this time around is that both of those hands are in danger of being gnawed off.

Unlike the first debate, this one is going to be a free-for-all. In the first debate, the novelty of a Trump campaign hadn’t worn off yet for the other nine competitors as they, for the most part (save for Kentucky Senator Rand Paul), stayed away from Trump, expecting to see him crash and burn on his own. Not to say that Trump didn’t try, making a point as the only candidate at that time who would not pledge support of the eventual GOP nominee and/or swear off a third-party run (he has since signed a “loyalty pledge” which will be about as binding as the toilet paper in Trump Tower) before then insulting Fox News commentator Megyn Kelly during and after the event. Another month into the campaign – and with polling and favorability numbers for Trump that are going up instead of down – and the rest of the GOP has finally come to the realization that they have to take him out.

Jindal has basically said that Trump is a “madman” who will do irreparable damage to the conservative cause and perhaps even end the Republican Party. “It’s pointless arguing policy with someone not intellectually curious enough to care and who makes it up on the fly,” Jindal wrote in an op/ed on CNN. “According to him, his plans will be ‘fabulous’ and ‘something terrific.’” With his own polling numbers around 1%, Jindal has seemingly taken on the sword of taking Trump down (and he may have some backup in Graham). The problem is these men are on the “kiddie table” while Trump plays on the Grand Stage; the only way that anyone from the early debate will be able to touch Trump is with a trebuchet.

So who will it be on the stage in front of President Reagan’s Air Force One (if you haven’t already seen the stage for the CNN debate, it is a feat of engineering that has the 747 right behind the candidates – a feat that required set designers to build a 30 foot scaffolding for the stage itself) that tries to take down Trump? How about everyone?

The moderators for the debate, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash and conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, have already said they want the debate to take on more of a donnybrook look than a genteel tea party. “My goal is more about: Let’s draw the contrasts between the candidates, and have them fight it out over these policies, over who has the best approach to Putin, over who has the best approach to taxes, over who believes what over immigration reform,” Tapper stated to the New York Times on Tuesday. “Have them lay it all out so voters can see it.”

Paul has already stated he will come at Trump with every weapon he has available, telling CNN that Trump is a “fake conservative” who won’t be able to handle the job of the Presidency. “Do we really want someone in charge of our nuclear arsenal who goes around basically using the insults of a junior high, or a sophomore in high school?” said Paul during a CNN interview. “That’s not the kind of person we want to be practicing the diplomacy of the United States.”

What about the other candidates? New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich have been non-committal on what their approach to Trump will be, but if any of them are to last much longer than Iowa and New Hampshire, their time is now to make a move and attack the frontrunner(s). Texas Senator Ted Cruz, whose lips have been locked on Trump’s ass for so long it may take Ben Carson’s surgical talents to remove him, won’t be looking to harass Trump as he hopes to take his supporters if, and or when Trump decides he’s had enough of the campaign. For their part, Bush and Carson have also said they aren’t looking to attack “anyone” in particular, but you can be sure that if the opportunity arises they’ll be looking to cut their own pound of flesh out of Trump.

As it has been since he entered the race, it could be Trump who is the key as to what this debate may turn out to be, a bloodbath or a policy discussion. If the Trump that comes out on stage on Wednesday night is the same boorish, misogynistic, xenophobic, arrogant ass that has been running around the United States for the last two months, then the other 10 competitors on the stage are going to carve him up. Yes, Trump is an excellent counter-puncher, but there isn’t a counterpunch to a death by 1000 cuts. If you’re constantly on the defensive – and if you even show a glimpse that you’re thin-skinned, you’re over with – you’re not going to be taken seriously.

On the other hand, if Trump comes out and talks halfway intelligently about issues – discusses SERIOUSLY where the money will come from to build the wall across the border between Mexico and the U. S. and not the half-cocked plan of having Mexico pay for it; offers a plan for the humane treatment of immigrants here illegally to return them to their home countries (or offer them a form of amnesty, an anathematic word to conservatives); give a few details as to his taxation plans (once again, Trump sees nothing wrong with the wealthy and businesses paying “their fair share,” another policy point that whips the GOP into a horrified frenzy) – then his opponents will have no opportunity to go at him except on a policy level. Instead of attacking his general personality, now the other GOP candidates would have to pick apart details of his suggested plans and probably have to stake themselves to something they might not want to do with their own plans at this point. Trump has to be careful here because as soon as he strays from policy into any sort of “insult campaigning” (which has been his creation for political scientists to dissect in the future), the floodgates open and the attacks will fly.

So what is going to happen in the sacred grounds of the Reagan Library? It’s going to be a bloodbath. Simply because he is either too proud or has too big an ego, Trump isn’t going to be able to hold back his personal attacks on his opponents and, as such, the other 10 players in the game are going to descend on him like a pack of hyenas. The hyenas may not kill the wildebeest quickly on Wednesday night, but it will mark the beginning of the end as they will, while getting their fangs and claws bloodied, rip apart any thought that Trump could actually have a solid plan to lead the nation. (I wonder what the odds are of an expletive making it out over the CNN airwaves is.)

It’ll all go down later tonight and will probably be more entertaining that boxing champion Floyd Mayweather’s fight was last weekend. The two debates – the “kiddie table” at 6PM and the “Main Event” at 8PM – promise to be high theater for all involved. Unfortunately, it will also show the worst of what is the U. S. political process in a mudslinging debacle instead of a discussion of ideas and opinions.

Let the (Political) Games Begin!

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I’ve always had a bit of a penchant for the political process. When I was around six or seven years old, my mother would have to keep me away from the newspaper until her and my father actually got a chance to read it first. I was an ace in history in school and, in particular, politics through the birth and development of the United States. When in college, I studied history and political science (actually had ambitions of becoming a Senator, oddly enough) and, as I have grown older, continue to watch how politics develops or destroys our nation. Thus, when the first debate of the Presidential campaign comes up, I usually watch it with bated breath.

Last night’s Republican Presidential Debate and Down Home Hootenanny (only one part of that may be true) in Cleveland, OH, marked the start of the Political Games this year, but this was something different than anyone has seen before. With 17 people putting their names in the hat for the GOP, they had to come up with some way to keep the field somewhat manageable. Thus, Fox News – the moderators for the first debate – decided to only let the Top Ten players (through an averaging of the top five polls in the country) in the game make the Main Event, while the seven “other” candidates (those in eleventh through seventeenth places) were shuttled off to a “kiddie table” for a discussion held in front of an empty arena and, presumably, darkened television screens.

I tried to watch both, I really did. The first one was interesting as these players – Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, former New York Governor George Pataki, former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore, former HP Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina, current South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum – realized they were all in danger of being eliminated from the Republican Hunger Games and came out swinging. Against what, they weren’t exactly sure, but they were swinging away in the hopes of trying to dig themselves out of this round of the debate and into the “Big Show” for the next GOP meeting. There were two things that I noticed here that were interesting.

Fiorina came off much more knowledgeable about issues than I first gave her credit for. She was able to answer questions solidly and with a measure of decorum that you’d expect out of someone running for the Presidency. If it wasn’t for the factor that her fundraising is so far behind the others that she’ll end up like Michele Bachmann did in 2012 – out after the Iowa primaries – she’d be a credible person to put on the ticket (and there’s still room for her to end up there as the Vice Presidential nominee).

Secondly, I really do despise Graham. It didn’t sound as if Graham wanted to be at this debate at all as he offered monotone responses every time that he opened his mouth. If that weren’t bad enough, every time he answered a question – be it about the current flap over Planned Parenthood, how to get the economy going or a wealth of other issues – he either would swing it towards starting another war in the Middle East (Iran or ISIS, he really doesn’t care) or completely ignore what the moderators were asking in saying, “I don’t want to talk about that, I want to talk about Iran (ISIS),” forever hereon to be known as a “Sarah Palin.”

One of my pet peeves in politics is when anyone (and from any party) doesn’t answer the question that they were asked. I’ve often thought that, in a debate, if a responder strays off the question, they should either A) have their microphone cut off until they return to the subject at hand, B) have someone shove a cattle prod between their shoulder blades until getting back on track (and, if necessary, go to more sensitive areas for repeat offenders), or C) both. I don’t come here to listen to you regurgitate your metaphors or pre-programmed canned responses, I’d like to know what you actually think (if you can). But maybe that’s too much to ask for.

Anyway, the “Happy Hour debate” was better than the Main Event last night. With ten candidates on stage, no one was able to really get any traction other than to demonstrate that they were an upright, walking biped capable of human thought and action. The tete a tete between Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie over how far the federal government should go in procuring information in the fight against terrorism got some juices going, but it turned out that was about the only infighting that went on. Paul, in fact, was ignored heavily throughout the two-plus hour debate, something he should have gotten used to from his father Ron’s two tries at the GOP nomination in 2008 and 2012.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio came across as someone that may not quite be ready for prime time but will be a force to be reckoned with in the future. At 44, he was the youngest person on the GOP stage and came across as someone that recognizes the challenges that the country faces in the 21st century and MIGHT have some ideas on how to combat them. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush didn’t come off one way or another in the debate, something that will probably serve him well until the field starts shrinking and he actually has to narrow his debate style down to a few opponents.

Which leaves us with the buffoon that is Donald Trump. Coming into the debate, Trump was the #1 seed in the event and all he could do was try and knock himself from that pedestal. He was the only one who wouldn’t commit to supporting the GOP nominee in 2016 (unless it was him), berated Fox moderator Megyn Kelly (not one of my favorites but still a respected commentator) through the wee hours of Friday morning and was still complaining on Friday afternoon that he had been unfairly targeted by Fox News and the debate management, coming up just short of saying the Republican National Committee was out to put a screw job on him.

How anyone can even take Trump seriously is beyond me. His first answer that “he doesn’t have time to be PC” should have demonstrated that he doesn’t have the capability to lead this country. While everyone might like to tell Vladimir Putin to go take a flying fuck, to invade the Middle East at the drop of a hat, chest bump the Chinese back to the Ming dynasty and force Mexico on its knees (as Trump had suggested would be good to see former Playboy model Brande Roderick do, as pointed out by Kelly), there’s a little something called international relations and respect that has to be doled out whether you like it or not. International politics isn’t like the good ole boy network of the business world, you sometimes have to handle things a little more delicately than usual.

Furthermore, this entire “don’t have time to be PC” thing has gotten completely out of hand. It is being used WAY too much for people to get away with saying shit that would normally get their faces caved in for saying in general public. You can get your point across without belittling someone else, a nation of people, a race or a segment of society…IF you have a modicum of intelligence, which Trump seems to lack.

There’s still fifteen months until the election for the next President of the United States. As of yet, I haven’t made any decisions on which person is worthy of taking the seat. I am going to have to wait on the GOP side until the pretenders are dropped (that should be by January 2016, I think) and, for the Democrats, it seems they have crowned their choice in Hillary Clinton, not exactly a desirable choice either (can we have an administration that doesn’t have a Bush or a Clinton in it? The last time this happened – other than the last few years of the Obama Administration – was under Jimmy Carter). The next few months – and the debates on both sides of the political equation – will be important for me, and perhaps many others, to decide who their choice will be.