The Ninth Republican Debate: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
February 15, 2016
Saturday night the GOP held its 9th out of 12 scheduled Presidential debates in Greenville, South Carolina. The pundits’ immediate assessment of who won or lost was as usual somewhat suspiciously like previous assessments of the winners or losers: Trump was bad; Kasich, Rubio, and Cruz were good; Bush was improving; and Carson was irrelevant. As the polling results come in, Trump, Kasich, Rubio and Cruz are seen as winners; and Bush is seen as helping himself. And, for the last several debates, Carson is irrelevant.
These hasty assessments have been wrong because of the media’s die-hard belief that real politicians will eventually overtake Trump. In fact the polls have consistently shown that there are three orbits consisting of Trump; followed by Bush, Kasich, Cruz, and Rubio; with Carson on the lowest level (Christie and Fiorina were also in this orbit until New Hampshire sealed their fate). 
This debate, like previous debates did not provide enough energy for any of the second orbit candidates to break out of their orbit to join Mr. Trump in his lofty position. Bush, Cruz, Kasich, and Rubio each undoubtedly breathed a sigh of relief that he was spared from descending to the bottom orbit with Dr. Carson. It would have taken a remarkable performance from one of the candidates to move to Mr. Trump’s orbit. Trump would have had to commit a horrendous mistake to knock him out of his orbit. While the many boos hooted at Trump might have seemed to signal a poor performance, they probably reflected an audience composed primarily of “establishment GOP operatives,” eager to drive him out of his winning position.
Governor Kasich was hit for accepting the Medicaid expansion, thus bolstering ObamaCare – a NO-NO for the GOP base. It is unlikely that the base will forgive Governor Kasich for this even though Kasich invoked Ronald Reagan’s acceptance of Medicaid to justify his own Medicaid No-No. Governor Bush was staggered by Mr. Trump when Bush claimed that his brother, President George W Bush “kept us safe”. In one of Trump’s strongest moments, he reminded Bush and the audience that the twin towers were brought down during President Bush’s watch. Senator Rubio attacked Senator Cruz for claiming to always have opposed amnesty when he, according to Senator Rubio, had offered amendments supporting amnesty and an increased number of green cards for undocumented immigrants. Predictably Senator Cruz shot back that Rubio had joined with Schumer and the Gang of Eight to foist an immigration bill offering amnesty for undocumented immigrants. While taunting each other in Spanish, they called each other liars (though not in Spanish). Aye Caramba! Trump managed to beat back an attack from Cruz. Cruz claimed that Trump would name liberals to the Supreme Court as Trump bitterly called Cruz “the single biggest liar” for hijacking Dr. Carson’s Iowa caucus-goers and Trump’s South Carolina supporters by telling the voters that they had dropped out of the race. Cruz retorted by telling Trump to not interrupt.
Although the moderators’ questions generated fireworks, they failed to go beyond the usual incestuous media carousel of Washington insider topics. During the week, the headlines included Zika Virus, global climate change, Flint’s poisonous water; but none of these topics were introduced. Nor did the panel ask about women’s issues, education, gun control, LGBT rights, voting rights, labor issues, or policing and race relations. They did, of course, ask about the reaction to the very sudden news that Justice Antonin Scalia had died. In the usual thirst for a fight, they asked about how the candidates would have addressed the vacancy if they were President in an election year. They didn’t ask more salient questions such as how the Court’s current likely 4-4 tie will impact current supreme court cases and what the role of the President will now be. Of course the moderators would say that they had not asked questions about topics such as climate change or Black Lives Matter because these are not GOP issues. While the contenders answers to these questions might not have elicited scintillating television, the inability of the candidates to answer these questions in a meaningful and nuanced manner might have provided the audience with important information. The Republican debates, even with fewer candidates on the stage, have ceased to inform us about either the outcome of the upcoming election or the issues that may drive the election. We have learned what the candidates will say to the set of issues that moderators will ask of Republicans. While we laugh at Rubio for repeating his memorized flashcard answers, we tolerate the memorized questions from Very Serious Moderators. The networks may have loved the fun clips of candidates calling each other names and making faces, but conscientious voters learned decreasing amounts with each debate. If we take back our country, what will we do to keep a democracy when the founding fathers said that the keystone of a democracy is an informed citizenry? |