GOP debate thread
Ah, here we go again. And on a Saturday night, too!
Here’s what Carly has to say: “You’ll just have to find out, won’t you?”
If any of Carly’s advisers are listening, I have an idea: I think they should wheel in a big cake, and she should jump out of it.
And if anyone says she’s too old for that sort of thing, she’s not even close. See this:
I’ll be watching the debate this evening as long as I can stand it.
8:35 PM: I already can’t stand it. Seriously.
I don’t know whether any of you are watching, but this is just a stupid bunch of fighting on a personal level. Christie getting tough, Rubio getting tough back, none of it having anything to do with anything of substance. To me (and I’ve always been okay with Christie), it makes Christie look bad. I have no idea how other people react, though.
Everything I hate about so-called “debates” is on display. Well, not everything, but one big thing.
8:49 PM: I have a feeling this debate will get the lowest ratings of all.
9:11 PM: As far back as I can remember I have always hated debates.
Not actual debates with a regular debate format, but these things that they call debates, which are all about attacking each other in ways that seem stupid and petty to me, and then seeing how the other person manages to parry the attack. I suppose that measures a useful skill of some kind or other, but I don’t see it as part of being president. But apparently it’s become a mandatory part of how you get to be nominated to run for president.
It doesn’t entertain me, it makes me almost ill in addition to boring me. It’s an odd combination, stress and boredom, and not a pleasant one.
I do think Ted Cruz is doing well. Nothing rattles him, and I think that’s because (a) he’s really smart, and (b) he’s participated in so many real debates over his lifetime that mounting arguments in an organized way is second nature to him. But it gives him that controlled quality that a lot of people find offputting.
Hmmm, Jeb Bush finally mentions what Trump did to Vera Coking in Atlantic City, and Trump no like.
Well if you get one minute into this new sewage flow that will be one minute more than I can stand it.
Of course, she could always try this approach to eliminate the competition.
Unfortunately, the clip omits the best line: “Something in the cake didn’t agree with him”.
Other than wanting to choke Martha Radditz, I think it’s a pretty good event. So far. Toughen up, buttercup (that’s a joke BTW), we need a fighter.
The best line I’ve heard so far tonight was from Christy. “I’m going back to my office and order a pizza.”
Verbal cage match. Which while having it’s unpleasant moments, is better than the real thing. I hate ultimate fighting.
Cruz is doing well. I kind of enjoyed Trump getting booed – sorry. Kasich and Jeb seem like sweet guys whose time has passed. They’ve really been ignoring Carson. Would have liked him to say something about turning the other cheek instead of looking like he was still mad at Cruz.
Trump can be funny, but not in CinC way.
Rubio has a very well defined speech pattern in his answers. I call it the 40 60 80 pattern. He starts out at 40 dB, by the third sentence he goes up to 60 dB, and at the end he’s hitting 80 dB.
Bumsrush:
Crescendo!
I’m listening now how women should be signed up for the draft.
So if there is a war, the fertile young women who make new citizens should be sent to the front lines to be killed? What would be the situation today in Europe if in WWI young women were be sent into the meat grinder?
This is yet another facet of political correctness infecting the Republican Party. That women producing the next generation should be sent to the front lines? Supporting this is no better than supporting abortion and mass killing of infants. Rubio and Bush just disqualified themselves, not like they are conservatives anyway.
Gotta say it – Trump is a d!ck.
whatever Says:
February 6th, 2016 at 10:23 pm
I’m listening now how women should be signed up for the draft.
If you want the women to have front line duties, etc like the PC crowd wants then you make them register like the boys have to do. This is a way of making the Dems squirm about equality.
KLSmith:
Could you be a little more specific? 🙂
Seriously, though—was there a particular moment that prompted that?
A couple, probably. Closing statement, for one. He’s supposed to be giving his closing statement – why he should be elected Prez. But let me make be one more snide comment re the Cruz/ Carson war. He’s an @ss. I can see why some uninformed and/or macho people like him but 25-30?
The way he goes after Bush, too. Bully, mean, classless. And I’m not a Bush fan.
I missed the first 22 minutes, but I thought it was a fine debate later. I noticed that the “executive experience” angle which I long ago assumed would be a big issue but wasn’t, made an appearance.
This debate with a more subdued Trump is what I imagined most of the earlier debates would be like.
More of the wallflowers came out of their shells this time.
Bush needs something to spark his campaign and attacking Trump was his best shot. Probably didn’t work.
Cruz held his own. Trump held his own. Christie had his moments, especially against Rubio. Carson did OK. Rubio did himself no favors. Kasich flailed his arms to no avail.
Will this debate won’t change the polling in NH? Rubio seems like the likely loser.
I thought Cruz was unflappable, which is more than you can say for anyone else. Christie had a great night (still would never vote for him) as he tore Rubio a new one over his rhetorical style. It was awesome that Rubio then fell back into the pattern Christie just outlined!
Christie obviously had the intent of slashing Marco before the night began and studied his style to make this specific attack.
Jeb hit back for the first time at Trump and scored (still never voting for him either).
Kasich was there. So was Carson.
Trump got booed multiple times and he deserved it for being a dick.
Winners: Cruz and Christie.
Losers: Rubio and Trump.
PatD:
Bush went after Trump on Kelo but it’s such a complex issue that probably no one got what had really happened with Vera Coking and Trump, unless they already knew the story. If I’d been on that stage, I’ve done enough research on Coking and the Michael Forbes case in Scotland that I could have cleaned Trump’s clock.
That, or I would have peed my pants if Christie so much as looked at me angrily 🙂 .
Matt_SE:
My fear is that by Christie hurting Rubio (or, that is, Rubio hurting himself by not responding effectively to Christie’s taunts) it only helps Trump, who is far worse than any of the alternatives, IMHO.
If Rubio AND Trump lose, and Cruz rises, my fear is that he won’t do well in the general, although I probably think more highly of him than of anyone else on that stage.
This election is making me even more nervous than in 2012, and that’s saying something.
Christie the attack dog takes down Rubio, and paves the way for a Democratic win. That’s my fear. Because Christie, IMHO, is not getting the nomination.
As for Rubio, I think what happened is that Christie really unnerved him, and he did fall back on a canned response. Rubio is actually quite capable of thinking on his feat, but something about the Christie attack really struck him. I’m surprised he didn’t have a pre-rehearsed response, though, to the accusation that he can’t be a good president because he’s only a senator. I can imagine a good-ish response on the order of: most Americans think JFK was a good president, and I have more executive experience than he did because I was Speaker of the Florida legislature, which is a leadership position. He then could have listed presidents who were governors but who were bad or mediocre presidents (quickly looking it up, I’ve got Polk, Hayes, Cleveland, McKinley—although he hardly had a chance—and Jimmy Carter). There were good presidents who had been governors, of course, but why pretend that only governors can be good presidents, or that all governors are good presidents? It’s neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition.
Why didn’t Rubio have at least a canned answer for it? I think for some reason perhaps he didn’t expect such a fierce attack from Christie? If not, he should have.
@neo-neocon:
As I noted before, Trump inherited the Coking situation. She had already had an offer of $1 million for a property worth far less than that from Guccione. Eventually, she won her case against the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, which was backing Trump. Coking moved to California and the house recently sold for $583,000, far less than a million 1984 dollars. Her resistance probably cost her $1.5 million.
I haven’t checked the Scotland situation yet. I do know that Trump fought hard against a wind farm off shore of his golf course and lost. He had a similar battle in Ireland and won, not because he had a great case, but because the wind turbines “might harm the estimated 7,000 freshwater pearl mussels, an endangered species on the European Union list, that were living in the Doonbeg River. and also bad for tourism.”
We have a similar fight coming up in Ohio where the Government wants to put a wind-farm in Lake Erie in the direct path of major bird migratory routes.
Trump’s best point was that Keystone couldn’t advance 10 feet without eminent domain. Bush tried to claim it was not a private project, which was not true.
To my feeble mind, eminent domain means nothing if you have lost your country. That’s the real fight.
I’m happy Rubio had a tough time tonight.
Everyone else on stage had executive experience and accomplishments on their resume. Ted Cruz at the FEC and Texas Solicitor General, Jeb Bush as a successful Florida governor, Ben Carson heading up his surgery team, Chris Christie as a prosecutor and Governor, Kasich as a governor (we don’t like him in Ohio), and Trump as a successful businessman.
I think Rubio’s unpreparedness was exposed. Parroting talking points only gets you so far, as Fiorina found out.
PatD:
You don’t get it. You don’t, don’t get it. Trump “inherited” nothing. He had already built the casino. He wanted Coking’s land either for a limo parking lot (that’s what he said) or to expand the already-existent casino. There is no documentation of what Trump himself actually offered her, so we don’t know; but she hadn’t wanted to sell to Guccione for a million AND now, to do Trump’s bidding, the city was offering her 1/4 that (the city agency being a front for Trump’s needs). And of course the city ended up falling on hard times later on, and Trump’s property failed, and by the time Coking (who had lived in her house for over a decade more, not selling to anyone) was old and ready to sell, the house had depreciated.
But you do not understand two more things, and I’ll spell them out one more time:
(1) he didn’t just sue her (or Michael Forbes), he insulted her and her house, and insulted Michael Forbes and his home far worse: “he lives like a pig”; he’s “the village idiot.” No excuse whatsoever, but that’s the kind of lowlife bully Trump is. Gratuitous insults is the way he rolls.
(2) he shows no understanding of the difference between taking for public use and taking to benefit Donald Trump. Trump is power mad and power hungry, and will take whatever power he is given. That is very very dangerous in a president. These incidents are not just about the law or even primarily about the law, they are about his character and his attitude towards raw power and the people who stand in his way. That’s the real fight, not eminent domain. That, and how big and powerful the federal government can get, and how much and how easily it can roll over you. Trump’s attitude is “as big and as easily as I want it to, once I’m in power and can get it to do my bidding.”
PatD:
Coking’s “resistance” didn’t cost her that money. Her desire to exercise her free choice and liberty by living in her own home and not allowing Trump to take her land meant that, over time, the house depreciated because of the hard economic times we all went through. She obviously was not holding onto her house in order to make money, because if so she would have taken the cool million Guccione offered back when (I believe the year was 1989) that actually was an awful lot of money.
Amazing that you characterize Coking’s wanting to continue to live in her own home—that she had already lived in for 3 decades (this was not a spec house)—as “resistance.”
I forget whether you characterize your politics as conservative or not, but if you do, it’s an error. And you’re certainly no libertarian. So, what do you call yourself?
I do not watch primary debates, I also have never found a circus interesting or amusing. I do watch short videos the day after mostly to understand the post debate chatter.
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Which candidates understand the limits imposed by the 10th and 9th? Vote accordingly.
I go back and forth with PatD. He is a trump/dnc shill or merely a confused puppy. I lean to the former, but kindly I am willing to entertain the later. Confused puppies can be trained and corrected. Shills are shills are shills.
Christie the attack dog takes down Rubio, and paves the way for a Democratic win. That’s my fear.
Mine, too.
Another priceless Christie moment captured here.
Wonder if it will share a place in history with his love-buddy photo with Obama during the 2012 campaign.
@neo-neocon:
Coking was a tough cookie and threw back some pretty good insults at Trump. Good for her. As I pointed out, both parties lost. It was not a win-win situation.
We live in the condo of our dreams. 20ft curved ceilings, 10ft floor to ceiling windows with a gorgeous sunset views over Lake Erie. Modern construction and tax abatement to boot. In any big city, our space would be worth millions. In Cleveland, much less than a million. But, make us an offer that gives us a profit and we’ll do the standard negotiating stuff, and, at the right price, we sell.
Am I libertarian? That’s sort of an odd question. If I’m a true libertarian, I’d be for the legalization of all drugs. I’m not. We have a young relative, smart kid, doing a business major at OSU. One semester to go. Unfortunately, he believed the people who told him smoking heroin was safe, and he got addicted. The Mexican drug cartels are shipping it across the border in volume and targeting HS and College students at $10/hit. His father got him into rehab, and it seemed like he was safe. 10 days later, he is using again. He told his mother, his father’s ex-wife, that he needed $280 to pay off a debt to his dealer. She, being a crazy person and an enabler, gave him the money. Drug dealers don’t do credit. The only good news is he didn’t overdose and die after detox. Would his life be better if he could buy heroin legally on an open market? Or would it be better if heroin was illegal and extremely expensive? Difficult questions. Is marijuana legalization working out in Colorado? Difficult to say at this stage. I suspect not.
I’m for free markets, constitutionally limited government, and fiscal responsibility. Those are the original Tea Party values. I’d add conformity to the rule of law. Are those Libertarian values? You tell me.
It comes down to basic principles. The rule of law or rule by the whim of the mob of the day. We have a framework for the rule of law, which suffers a few flaws, but is a solid foundation , although mostly ignored by the ruling class. We return to the rule of law or we do not to the sorrow of generations yet to be born.
Pat,
Obviously, you don’t have the same emotional attachment to your home as many other people. For some people, the home brings back memories of family dinners and holidays, the work mom and dad did to fix the place up, the kitchen where they helped their moms peel potatoes and where they learned or taught their kids to cook. If 20-foot ceilings were the most important thing, Trump would be building all the housing in America.
If 20-foot ceilings were the most important thing, Trump would be building all the housing in America.
And then only the 1% would have homes.
@expat:
We love our place. But it is on two levels and there comes a time when one must look to the future. At some point, stairs become an issue and one needs to live on a single level We are approaching that point in the next decade or so.
Personally, if a casino went up next door, I’d take the money and run.
I am not upset at seeing the near-anointed Rubio get a bloody nose. I believe him to be a bloody liar.
Rubio v Cruz? That’s like a Downs’ v an Einstein.
Pat: You could always get one of those electric chairs you sit in and ride up and down in.
Ann — I don’t know about you, but if my state was wrecked and Barry the Onederboy showed up with the federal checkbook, I’d hug him, too!
The voters these days are more entertaining by these SL*s,
So its Trump World
Full Story Here
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3432666/Coldplay-start-Super-Bowl-50-Halftime-Beyonce-Bruno-Mars-join.html
I don’t get it. If I were a candidate, I’d be hosting my own debates. Reasoned, rational, substantive debates. Any of these guys could leap forward by taking the high road and not mercilessly attacking each other. They’re only feeding the Democrats by attacking each other.
They should know better.
VL:
Problem is, they’d all have to take the high road together, and at this stage they’re fighting for their political lives, figuratively speaking. For a number of them, Tuesday is do or die. They’ve all determined by now which other candidates are fighting for the same voters they are, so that’s who they’re attacking.
And of course, the Democrat operatives posing as “moderators” are doing everything they can can to encourage the oral combat. It makes for great ratings, enhances their own standing in the media echo chamber, and bloodies and weakens the eventual winner before the real race even begins.
Win-win-win for the Marxists.