On this evening’s GOP debate:
I’ve watched these debates since 1976. We have hit rock bottom in info-content and common sense. Reagan-Mondale was like Lincoln-Douglas.
Sadly, it’s always darkest before it turns pitch black.
Who won? Cruz and Rubio punched each other up pretty good. Paul locked down all 11 isolationists left in the Republicans, Carson was calmly ethereal and might tick up a few points and Bush may also pick up a pity point or two, but the non-Trumps are all picking each other’s pockets and wiping their noses on each other’s shirttails.
In my opinion Trump won using the most basic yardstick of political victory: setting the agenda and forcing everyone else to fight over the scraps from your table.
To quote the late Dr. Thompson, Trump is “one of God’s own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”
God help us all.
Dan Drezner (a foreign policy realist and mild conservative):
The overwhelming bulk of what the GOP candidates had to say last night was pure, unadulterated horses***.
Were I in a different humor, I might focus on how there was an interesting axis of Donald Trump, Cruz and Rand Paul advocating against greater military intervention in the Middle East but more draconian border and homeland security measures. But truthfully, that would be missing the forest for the trees. No, what was startling about the debate was just how so many candidates could say so many wrong things about American foreign policy in two hours….
What’s particularly frustrating is that the Obama administration has plenty of foreign policy warts to pick over. There can and should be a vibrant debate over how best to advance American interests in an uncertain world. But we’re dealing with a political environment in which the GOP front-runner knows nothing about U.S. nuclear capabilities. This is not the most fertile soil to inculcate a real debate.
When I came of political age, the Republican Party had a surfeit of smart, tough-minded foreign policy folk: Brent Scowcroft, Robert Gates, James Baker, Bob Zoellick, Richard Haass, and Lawrence Eagleburger. I pity these people having to listen to what was said on the GOP main stage last night.