...oh, you're here for the other thing. Hold on, switching gears...
To the 3200-plus survivors of this blog's drinking game, I hope you are all okay and that the night wasn't as bad for your livers and nervous systems as I feared it would be. I hope you drank responsibly and sobered up by replaying the Canadian election debates on YouTube (yeah, weird timing eh?)
In hindsight, I missed a few possible zingers worthy of a drink shot. I completely failed to realize the Fox Not-News moderators would bring GOD - "Did you receive word from God on what to do?" - into the debate. Considering the emphasis on abortion last night, pandering to the religious base should have been a given.
Anyway, I digress. Let's get to the facts: who won the Republican Suck-Up To Fox August Debate of Sound and Fury?
Well, for starters the Aspirin / Hangover Cure industry won... /rimshot
Okay, okay. I'll settle down... sheesh...
First thing to note: the Republicans do not debate over matters in a rational or oratorical fashion, at least not anymore. The modern GOP debate - much like modern campaigning since the late 1960s - relies more on emotion than on logic. If a pundit / columnist / media observer thinks a candidate responded well by using facts, that is no guarantee that candidate won the argument or the night. The winner(s) is/are going to be the candidate(s) who made compelling emotional arguments or at least pandered well to the base on stirring up resentment and contempt.
Second thing to note: if you want notes, the Washington Post wrote up a transcript of the night, a handy reference tool to help highlight what was said and notice what wasn't.
Personally, I avoided directly watching the debate. Cowardly, perhaps. But as someone who DOES NOT drink, I would not have endured long the voices of certain candidates I now furiously despise. I would have honestly smashed the flatscreen TV in rage if I had spent more than ten seconds listening to either Jeb or Huck.
It was easier for me to track along with live-blogs and on Twitter, as the night progressed I was able to read responses and see by what was joked about or what created a "Oh GOD No" blast how the candidates were faring.
Just by my twitter feed alone, I determined that Trump had an even night. Yes, he answered some pretty direct and harsh questions about his own brash persona. Yes, he did not have rational or reasonable answers for half the questions he took. But the twitter responses implied he bulldogged through the night, remained relatively unflappable. For Trump, that's a win (then again, when it's him it's always a win, and it's HUGE). And given how the general view of the audience was how Fox Not-News was going after Trump with a prison shiv for most of the night, Trump and his people are likely coming out aggrieved and angry at the cable network as part of the Establishment punting Trump to the curb.
As the twitter feed progressed, I could see which candidates were getting the most upticks - the more liked responses, or the most despised - in terms of announcing their presence with authority. The ones who were making any kind of impression period, which is what most of the low-tier candidates are in dire need of doing to gain traction in this crowded race.
The ones getting the positive reviews from the punditocracy I follow on Twitter were Rubio and Kasich. Kasich was getting described as the only serious adult in the room, someone acting and reacting with answers that made sense (if even he was sticking to the GOP agenda). Rubio was getting points on Twitter for poise and reasonableness (when immigration came up he shared in the groupthink against illegals but found room to argue for the legal immigrants, a tone clearly lacking in the otherwise hateful discussion). Just to note, the ones I follow on Twitter lean center-left, so that means these two may not have won over the Far Right base that much...
On the other side, Walker and Jeb Bush were getting hammered by the Tweetists. Walker came across the feed as underperforming, a little too quiet (meek would be too harsh a word). Jeb stumbled on a couple of questions and didn't deliver as many barbs: he was trying to act like the adult in the room (where Kasich was) but acted more milquetoast than concerned dad. In terms of emotional performance, Jeb failed: he showed little of the charisma and geniality his older brother excels at (remember, Dubya is a Passive-Positive and a guy who can work a room), nor any of the authoritarian reasonableness of his father (Bush the Elder as political enthusiast).
The overall impression from Twitter was that Jeb was uncomfortable on-stage: not a good sign.
For the other candidates, the Twitterrati I follow were less kind but that was to be expected because this group - Rand Paul, Huckabee, Cruz, Christie, Carson - tend towards the extremist positions that the people I follow can easily mock. Among them, the important thing was to feed the party base and in that count Huckabee and Cruz delivered the most blows. Huckabee pandered hard to the religious base - arguing for personhood rights to fetuses - and Cruz went in hard on war-mongering in the Middle East. Rand Paul made a few attempts to pummel Trump - where Trump punched back - and otherwise stuck to his libertarian script. From what I was following, Christie got beat up a few times and didn't impress. Carson did not make much of an impression across the Twitter feed, although the debate reviewers documented he got decent air-time.
That was just the twitter feed though. How did the actual Beltway media respond to who won and lost the night?
The New York has a round-up of select reviews per candidate:
Of the positive round-ups, Rubio and Kasich got consistent high votes. Among the Far Right pundits, the winners were Cruz, Huckabee and Christie, with Carson getting the Mister Congeniality award. Paul got pummeled, and Walker and Jeb were criticized for their underwhelming stage presences.
CNN's list has a mixed bag among winners, but the consistent loser among the judges was Jeb Bush.
The overall impression of winners and losers, in my humble opinion?
Given how the debate focused on pretty divisive issues - abortion, immigration, slashing Social Security and social safety nets, the drumbeat for more war - the overall loser was the Republican Party. There was nothing in last night's debate that would help appeal the GOP towards the moderate voters needed for the general election.
When polling Americans on their political priorities - following this Gallup poll - the highest numbers are on the economy, on employment in general, with wages and income inequality somewhere in the mix. But when you look at the debate's transcripts, when you look at the reviews and the twitter feed, you'll notice the candidates spent little time on those topics.
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| click to zoom, I hope |
And what were the biggest topics last night? Going after illegal immigrants big time, an issue bound to drive Latino voters straight into the arms of the Democrats in 2016. The second big issue was abortion, an issue on the Gallup poll that DOES NOT EVEN EARN A PERCENTAGE POINT, it's not even a Top 10 issue for a majority of Americans and yet the Republicans are treating it (again) like a major issue: all because the Far Right religious base has gotten tired of getting shunted to the side on abortion and are finally pushing the party leaders to answer them.
Problem is, just look at that poll: most Americans don't CARE for abortion as an issue because in a lot of ways they've already settled on it. Most don't like abortion in practice, but recognize there is a need for it in specific cases. That's why the safe spot on abortion is the "safe legal but rare" position: it acknowledges restrictions on the procedure but allows it to exist. The Far Right - stuck on absolutes as necessity, and viewing abortion as a cardinal sin equal to genocide - can't accept it... so they're pushing hard on this issue in a way most Americans won't like. This is going to bite the Republican Party on its collective ass if the Far Right succeeds in making this a Top Three issue: this is why I view the GOP as the biggest loser in last night's showing.
In terms of the candidates themselves, how I would rank them (as a moderate, yes Eric I am one shut up) and how the Republican voting base would rank them as winners down to losers of the night:
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My Take
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Likely GOP Voter Base’s Take
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Kasich
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Trump
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Rubio
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Cruz
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Trump
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Huckabee
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Cruz
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Walker
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Walker
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Christie
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Paul
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Carson
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Carson
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Rubio
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Christie
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Paul
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Bush
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Kasich
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Huckabee
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Bush
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Jeb! just really didn't win over a lot of people, neither pundits nor pollsters.
What do you think, sirs?
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