The So-Called GOP Presidential Debate

Like it seems most everyone else, I did not watch the recent debate of would be GOP presidential contenders since - to use Pam Spaulding's term - it looked like a clown car act. For a political party that once prided itself on intelligence and some minimum level of being in touch with objective reality, the list of would be contenders who were present certainly seemed to exemplify a party wide lobotomy. Dana Milbank has a column in the Washington Post that equates the event with an old movie “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.” Milbank indeed has a point. And what is truly scary is the fact that since the GOP base - those folks who will have a great deal of say in who does well in the primary contests - is now so controlled by the utterly ignorant, religious extremists, and unhinged that it will be hard for a sentient candidate to win the primaries. It's all self-inflicted damage that started when the party leadership sold its soul out of short term expediency to the Christofascists. The emergence of the "Tea Party" has only accelerated the descent of the GOP into the world of the mentally unbalanced. Here are highlights from Milbank's column:
*
Hollywood is reportedly at work on a remake of the 1991 film “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.” This, however, is unnecessary, because a remake is already playing. It’s called the Republican presidential primary. In the original, a mom leaves her kids with a babysitter for three months, but after the babysitter dies of a heart attack, the children fend for themselves for the summer.
*
The GOP nominating contest so far follows a very similar plot. With the grown-ups (played by Jeb Bush and Mitch Daniels) out of town, the field has been left in the custody of caretakers (played by Mitt Romney, Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich). When even the babysitters fail to show up at the first debate of the season, the juveniles run the thing themselves.
*
If there’s any good news for the Republican Party to come out of the first presidential debate, it’s that the Associated Press and Reuters didn’t cover it.
*
In the absence of adults, the first presidential debate favored the noisiest, and the least likely to win. Cain, a man who wants to return to the gold standard, had the most successful line of the night when he defended his inexperience. “I ask people, ‘Most of the people in elective office in Washington, D.C., they have held public office before. How’s that working for you?’ ” the former Godfather’s Pizza boss said. “We have a mess!”
*
There remains a hope that a white knight will arrive to rescue Republican primary voters from this lackluster field, but there is growing concern among party elders that such a person may not exist.
*
There’s Mitt Romney, but he’s the paternity-denying father of Obamacare. There’s Donald Trump, but he’s the midwife of the birther campaign. Gingrich has been rejected by his peers and married three times. Could it be that Herman Cain really is the best they’ve got?
*
Late in the debate, Santorum was asked about a suggestion by one of the missing grown-ups, Daniels, that Republicans should call a “truce” on social issues. “Anybody that would suggest that we call a truce on the moral issues doesn’t understand what America is all about,” Santorum inveighed. We’ll just have to let the kids fight it out on the playground.
*
Frankly, if Santorum - aka, frothy mix - represents what America's all about, then I suspect a majority of Americans will want to leave the country. Rather than run for office, Santorum ought to be spending his funds on quality mental health care.