The Next New Yorker Cover is Too Funny!

In the wake of Monday's presidential debate, on comment on Facebook summed up Donald Trump's sexism and vulgar treatment of women this way:  I find it ironic that an old, ugly, fat white guy, with a horrible comb-over and an orange spray tan, would criticize a woman on her looks?   New Yorker Magazine - which, like most New York based publications that know Trump well, can't stand the man - has found a wonderful way to humiliate Trump with its next magazine cover (the image is above).   How the narcissistic Trump will react is anyone's guess.   Mother Jones looks at the fun satire.  Here are highlights:

The New Yorker this morning gave us a sneak peak at next week's cover, and boy it's a keeper.

A little cursory context if you don't get it: In the closing minutes of Monday's presidential debate, Hillary Clinton called out Donald Trump for his poor treatment of women. Clinton said Trump called 1996 Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado, from Venezuela and now an American citizen, "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeper." (Trump didn't deny the language he used, and in fact doubled down on his attack against the former beauty queen the next day by saying, "She gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem.")

The punchline of The New Yorker cover, of course, is classic role reversal: a portly Trump as the pageant winner, struggling to maintain dignity while balancing a tiara and holding back tears on a runway under intense scrutiny.

Clash of Republican Con Artists

Watching the GOP "debate" last night was painful - almost a form of masochism.   The take away is that ALL of the GOP presidential candidates, including John Kasich who looks like the lone adult on the stage simply because of the crassness and juvenile behavior of the others, are all peddling snake oil to the ignorant and uninformed who increasingly make up the Republican Party base.  NONE of the budget proposals of these con-artist work when one adds up the numbers, a fact that Megan Kelly tried to demonstrate in questions posed to Donald Trump.  And on foreign policy, we again heard ridiculous claims of needing to rebuild America's military with no reference to the reality that America already spends as much as the next 10 largest military spenders combined.  Sadly, to be a Republican nowadays - and I say this as a former Republican - I believe that one must be either a religious extremist, racist, utterly uninformed and not looking beyond sound bites, have had a lobotomy, or some combination thereof. A column in the New York Times by Paul Krugman looks at the con artists at work.  Here are highlights: 

So Republicans are going to nominate a candidate who talks complete nonsense on domestic policy; who believes that foreign policy can be conducted via bullying and belligerence; who cynically exploits racial and ethnic hatred for political gain.

But that was always going to happen, however the primary season turned out. The only news is that the candidate in question is probably going to be Donald Trump. Establishment Republicans denounce Mr. Trump as a fraud, which he is. But is he more fraudulent than the establishment trying to stop him? Not really. 

Actually, when you look at the people making those denunciations, you have to wonder: Can they really be that lacking in self-awareness?

Donald Trump is a “con artist,” says Marco Rubio — who has promised to enact giant tax cuts, undertake a huge military buildup and balance the budget without any cuts in benefits to Americans over 55.

Mr. [Paul] Ryan also declares that the “party of Lincoln” must “reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry.” Has he ever heard of Nixon’s “Southern strategy”; of Ronald Reagan’s invocations of welfare queens and “strapping young bucks” using food stamps; of Willie Horton?

Put it this way: There’s a reason whites in the Deep South vote something like 90 percent Republican, and it’s not their philosophical attachment to libertarian principles.

Then there’s foreign policy, where Mr. Trump is, if anything, more reasonable — or more accurately, less unreasonable — than his rivals. He’s fine with torture, but who on that side of the aisle isn’t? He’s belligerent, but unlike Mr. Rubio, he isn’t the favorite of the neoconservatives, a.k.a. the people responsible for the Iraq debacle. He’s even said what everyone knows but nobody on the right is supposed to admit, that the Bush administration deliberately misled America into that disastrous war.

In fact, you have to wonder why, exactly, the Republican establishment is really so horrified by Mr. Trump. Yes, he’s a con man, but they all are. So why is this con job different from any other?

The answer, I’d suggest, is that the establishment’s problem with Mr. Trump isn’t the con he brings; it’s the cons he disrupts.

First, there’s the con Republicans usually manage to pull off in national elections — the one where they pose as a serious, grown-up party honestly trying to grapple with America’s problems. The truth is that that party died a long time ago, that these days it’s voodoo economics and neocon fantasies all the way down. But the establishment wants to preserve the facade, which will be hard if the nominee is someone who refuses to play his part.

Equally important, the Trump phenomenon threatens the con the G.O.P. establishment has been playing on its own base. I’m talking about the bait and switch in which white voters are induced to hate big government by dog whistles about Those People, but actual policies are all about rewarding the donor class.

What Donald Trump has done is tell the base that it doesn’t have to accept the whole package. He promises to make America white again — surely everyone knows that’s the real slogan, right? — while simultaneously promising to protect Social Security and Medicare, and hinting at (though not actually proposing) higher taxes on the rich. Outraged establishment Republicans splutter that he’s not a real conservative, but neither, it turns out, are many of their own voters.

 I find the prospect of a Trump administration terrifying, and so should you. But you should also be terrified by the prospect of a President Rubio, sitting in the White House with his circle of warmongers, or a President Cruz, whom one suspects would love to bring back the Spanish Inquisition.

GOP Debate Circus Reflections

Having watched the GOP "debate" last night - a form of self-inflicted torture - I was again stunned by the substance free nature of the performances of the supposed top three candidates all of whom appeared like elementary school (or at best junior high school) school yard braggarts and bullies.  It is frightening that this is what the Republican Party has become.  Some in the pundit class are breathlessly claiming that Marco Rubio was the winner last evening simply because he attacked Donald Trump.  They gloss over the fact that many of his statements were untrue and that his answers lacked details - and that he looked childish much of the time with his smirking behavior.  The only adult on the stage was John Kasich who in contrast to the other candidates tried to tone down the anti-gay rhetoric, perhaps remembering the the GOP's anti-gay stridency likely delivered Virginia and Ohio to Barack Obama in 2012.  In a column in the Washington Post (that has a hint of Maureen Dowd style snark in it), Joe Scarborough throws cold water on those grasping at straws to see Rubio gaining momentum to stop Trump.  Here are excerpts:

Expect the huddled masses of GOP insiders and conservative media commentators to tell us for the ninth time this election season that Marco Rubio had the debate of his life Thursday night and that the young senator’s tour de force will finally bring Donald Trump to his political knees. Some may even be delusional enough to once again utter the word “Marco-mentum”.

What exactly is “Marco-mentum”? If you judge Team Rubio’s hopeful slogan by actual results, it starts with a 4 point loss in Iowa, a 25 point drubbing in New Hampshire, an 10 point defeat in South Carolina, and an embarrassing 22 point loss in Nevada. Never mind that Team Rubio told reporters for six months to ignore any setbacks in the early states since Nevada would be their political “firewall”. In the end, the Silver State results looked more like a dumpster fire that torched The-Future-of-the-Republican-Party’s hopes to win a single state.

If you’re keeping score at home, Sen. Rubio is 0 for 4 and facing a string of Super Tuesday defeats that will extend that losing streak to fifteen. But relief will surely come in Florida, when Rubio returns to his Sunshine State. Right? Well, no.

Thursday’s Quinnipiac poll of likely GOP voters in Florida showed Donald Trump crushing the sitting Florida senator 44 percent to 28 percent. Among the tea party voters who propelled Rubio to the Senate in 2010, Rubio is getting pummeled 54 percent to 14 percent.

Sen. Rubio has shown an amazing ability to spin yarn into gold, celebrating one ugly election defeat after another with concession speeches that owe less to Ronald Reagan than Baghdad Bob. After losing by 22 percent in Nevada, Rubio criticized Donald Trump for “underperforming.” Before that, he distracted media sycophants and desperate money men from the fact he had no real organization in early states by inventing a “3-2-1″ strategy that vanished into thin air after an embarrassing 5th place finish in New Hampshire.

Regardless of what the future holds, Marco Rubio’s campaign for president is effectively over.

His campaign was fueled more by the promise of things to come than the reality of the present. Glowing press reviews and headlines declaring Rubio the future of the Republican Party were never grounded in substance, but instead on the plodding assumption that a political party bleeding support from young voters and Hispanics could only save themselves by embracing a young Hispanic politician — even if that campaign was little more than a bag of cotton candy.

One day, the hype surrounding Mr. Rubio may be replaced by hope grounded in more than crude demographic calculations. But with the upstart senator facing fifteen straight campaign losses without a win, it seems my tough take on Marco Rubio’s presidential prospects may have been far too kind.

Ouch!!!

Trump Slams George W. Bush's Lies and Fool's Errands

As noted, the husband and I were out with friends last evening so we missed the Republican presidential candidate "debate."  Perhaps the most delicious moment in the free for all was when Donald Trump accurately assailed George W. Bush for not preventing 9-11, lying the nation into the Iraq War disaster, and not following through to eliminate Osama Bin Laden.  It truly must have been a spectacle.  A piece in Politico looks at the train wreck which must have left Democrats grinning.  Here are highlights:

It was weird that an angry Code Pink-style protester interrupted last night’s Republican presidential debate with a barrage of familiar Democratic talking points about George W. Bush—that he lied the country into a disastrous war in Iraq, failed to prevent the September 11 attacks, and even whiffed on an opportunity to kill Osama bin Laden. It was especially weird that the protestor was one Donald J. Trump, who happens to be the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

Trump didn’t just call the Iraq war a mistake. He called it “a big fat mistake.” And he didn't call it an inadvertent mistake because of faulty intelligence. “They lied!” he thundered. “They said there were weapons of mass destruction … and they knew there were none.” Trump even groused that the war cost $5 trillion that could have helped rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure, a common Democratic attack line that sounded like a canine talking point at a feline convention, especially in military-heavy South Carolina.

Trump’s extended Bush-lied-people-died diatribe, featuring repeated scoffing at Republican Bush-kept-us-safe dogma, was the most surreal stretch of a debate that generally could have been scripted by Salvador Dali.

Trump boasted about his opposition to the Iraq war early in the debate, claiming that he warned at the time that it would destabilize the Middle East—a claim for which there is no evidence—but his real blast into the past began, as his blasts so often do, as a non-sequitur attack on Jeb Bush, who had just made some points about Russia. “Jeb is so wrong,” Trump scoffed. “If you listen to him, that’s why we’ve been in the Middle East for 15 years, and we haven’t won anything.”

[M]oderator John Dickerson asked Trump about an old quote where he had suggested that President Bush should have been impeached over Iraq, which gave Trump another excuse to carpet-bomb the Bush family.

“Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake, all right?” he said. “It took Jeb Bush, if you remember when he announced for president, it took him five days—it was a mistake, it wasn’t a mistake, it took him five days before his people told him what to say, and he ultimately said it was a mistake. … Obviously, it was a mistake. George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty.”

When Dickerson asked Trump again whether the president should have been impeached, Jeb tried to interrupt—“I think it’s my turn, isn’t it?”—but Trump steamrolled ahead. “You call it whatever they want,” he said. “They lied.”

Trump barreled back into the fray: “The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign, remember that,” he said. “That’s not keeping us safe.” That sounded more like a canine talking point at a fire hydrant convention, pure heresy in a Republican context.

When Trump went back on the warpath, again noting that the 9/11 attacks happened on Bush’s watch—“That is not safe, Marco. That is not safe.”—Rubio went back to the Republican playbook, blaming Bush’s predecessor for the attacks.

 

“The World Trade Center came down because Bill Clinton didn’t kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance,” Rubio said. 

Trump didn’t let that pass, either, raising bin Laden’s escape at Tora Bora during the Bush administration. “By the way, George Bush had the chance, also, and he didn’t listen to the advice of his CIA,” Trump said to a chorus of boos. At this point in the metaphor, the canine was basically biting the audience of whatever convention he was addressing, and probably chewing on the furniture, too.

[O]verall, the night was a Democratic dream, with the Republicans not only pushing each other to the right on issues like abortion, gay rights, immigration and foreign affairs, but ripping each other to shreds. While Jeb and the audience focused their ire on Trump, Rubio and Trump both called Ted Cruz a liar. “This guy will say anything,” Trump said.

“We’re fixing to lose the election to Hillary Clinton if we don’t stop this,” Kasich said last night. So far, nobody has figured out how to stop the guy who will say anything.

The GOP Debate Circus - South Carolina Installment

The main stage GOP debate began in South Carolina at 9PM EST via Business Network and so far the tone of circus - debate gives it too much dignity - is aimed completely at pandering to Teabaghistan and the most extreme elements of the ignorance and bigotry embracing GOP base.   To listen to Marco Rubio, one would think that Barack Obama has led a communist coup against America.  Indeed, to listen to Rubio et al, I feel as if I have been living in some alternate universe from the imaginary world in which the GOP contenders and Teabagistan have been inhabiting.  The irony is that the economic malaise of the middle class has nothing to do with Barack Obama and everything to do with the failed policies of the GOP under the misrule of Obama's brain dead predecessor.

As for Donald Trump, he slickly finessed the GOP establishment vetted comments of  Nikki Haley about the siren song of the angriest voices and turned his anger, hate and bigotry into an applause point for the knuckle dragging audience.  Trump may be a Hitler like demagogue, but he definitely learned how to pander to those with little education and low IQ's during his years on reality TV.

Up to now in the debate, only John Kasich sounds as if he is half sane and not totally willing to prostitute himself to the foulest elements of the GOP base and America.   My further thoughts will be share in a post in the morning.

Part of me still finds it hard to realize just how ugly and how extreme the Republican Party has become. It bears no resemblance to the party in which I was an activist for the better part of a decade. I do not know how anyone morally decent, sane and/or educated can be a Republican nowadays.  My main hope is that if the GOP nominates a far right extremist, as happened in Virginia in 2013, the GOP slate will lose across the board and perhaps the much needed death of the GOP in its present form will accelerate to finality.

A Night of Bellicose Republican Bluster

The husband and I had dinner last night with friends at a local country club, so I missed a good part of the Republican presidential debate last night although I listened to a part of it on satellite radio driving home.   While the main topic of the evening was national security, what I heard did anything but make me feel safer.  There were many promises of murder and mayhem towards ISIS and Ben Carson justified the killing of women and children in the process.  Then of course, there were promises of "boots on the ground" even though (i) it was American boots on the ground under the misrule of George W. Bush and Darth Vader Cheney that set the stage for ISIS's rise, and (ii) few if any of the GOP demagogues have served in the military or had family members in harms way in the Middle East. From what I heard, my vote is definitely, none of the above.  A column in the New York Times looks at the batshitery that thrills the hearts of the GOP base but which ought to make the rest of us very fearful.  Here are highlights: 

When you call for carpet bombing, as Cruz did again on Tuesday night, you are not outlining a strategy of pinpoint targeting or of any discernment.

You are sounding big and bold and advocating something indiscriminate. That’s the nature of a carpet. You can’t pretend otherwise.  Unless you’re Cruz, who can pretend just about anything.

“You would carpet bomb where ISIS is, not a city, but the location of the troops,” he said, as if there’s no mingling and the fighters of the Islamic State are somehow clustered apart from everyone they control, extinguished with the mere dropping of a rug.

“The object isn’t to level a city,” he added, never specifying how he would separate the good edifices and actors from the bad.

[I]it was a prime example of the bluster and oversimplification on vivid, infuriating display in this Republican presidential debate, the fifth.

It was dominated as none of the four before it by one word, one syllable — “safe,” which was uttered so regularly that it was essentially the heartbeat of the debate.

And each of the nine contenders on the stage had one goal above all others: to convince viewers that he or she could be the agent of that fiercely desired security. That he or she could bring back “safe.”

But many of the aspirants had additional aims: to wound the rivals for the nomination who stood most directly in their way. As the night wore on, it degenerated into tedious, often puerile quarrels: between Cruz and Marco Rubio; between Rubio and Rand Paul; between Jeb Bush and Donald Trump.

Actually, the Bush-Trump crossfire was welcome and satisfying, because Bush more than anyone in any of these debates effectively called Trump out for his galling recklessness, and Trump’s responses were as naked a display of his adolescent narcissism as he’s engaged in yet. That’s saying something.

“He’s a chaos candidate,” Bush said when asked to elaborate on a tweet in which he’d called Trump “unhinged.” “And he’ll be a chaos president. He would not be the commander in chief we need to keep our country safe.”

The candidates rightly observed that neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton had articulated a strategy or found an answer for reassuring jittery Americans.

But their own attempts to do that also failed, eclipsed by their sparring and preening, by an emphasis on puffed chests and sound bites over nuanced policies and earnest reflection.

In that sense Cruz was the night’s defining figure, his certainty verging on cockiness, his ambitions transparent, his attempts to tap into some warmth a mesmerizing exercise in futility.

Trump's Next Target: Ted Cruz

In some ways I find it difficult to decide who I find more despicable: Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.  Trump is engaging in demagoguery that would have done Benito Mussolini proud and pandering to the racism and bigotry so widespread in the GOP base.  Yet, Cruz is little better and is prostituting himself to the most extreme Christofascists on the party base when not seeking to channel the late Joe McCarthy.  Both are horrible individuals in my view and dangerous. Now, with Cruz having pulled ahead of Trump in the Iowa polls - even as Trump hits new highs in GOP national polls - a potentially delicious moment is before us: Trump trying to destroy Cruz.  Politico looks at the coming dueling of demagogues and hate merchants.  I hope they destroy each other.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump wants to pick a fight with Ted Cruz. Cruz wants no part of it.

As the top two presidential contenders in most national polls prepare to square off in the CNN debate Tuesday night, one of the most important sub-dramas will be Trump’s attempts to engage Cruz -- and Cruz’s efforts to avoid getting drawn in.

Cruz fears alienating Trump’s supporters, having painstakingly positioned himself to take possession of the mogul’s large following should Trump’s backers decide he is unfit for the presidency. 

For months, Cruz has referred to Trump as his “friend,” chided the media for asking about contrasts with the real estate mogul, and dismissed other Republican candidates who “go out of their way to smack Donald with a stick.”

Now, with Cruz rising in the polls, Trump is suddenly recognizing him as more threat than friend, and the billionaire has gone on the offensive against the Texas senator, opening up a challenging and potentially awkward new dynamic for Cruz headed into Tuesday’s Las Vegas encounter, when the two men will stand side by side onstage.

The senator confronts an odd balancing act: how to de-escalate tensions with Trump and not offend the national poll-leader’s supporters, while also avoiding seeming timid if Trump intensifies attacks, as he already has on a host of other GOP candidates.  . . . . It doesn’t seem to be in Cruz’s nature to go take a whole bunch of punches.” But Trump is increasingly trying to land them.

Over the weekend, Trump called Cruz a “maniac,” painting him as an intransigent force in the Senate, and repeatedly tweeted out critical comments about Cruz, who was recorded at a fundraiser last week privately raising questions about Trump’s judgment and experience, according to audio posted by the New York Times.

The issue is, Trump is going to go out and hammer Cruz really, really hard, as he likes to do, and Cruz better be prepared to hammer him just as hard right back — otherwise I don’t think Cruz is going to come out of this as well as he otherwise could.”

The kid-glove handling Cruz has used until now comes in large part from a desire to avoid alienating Trump’s supporters, who could be a natural Cruz constituency. Cruz is upfront about his approach.

Trump has a knack for knocking the candidates in his sights off message and for fanning damaging narratives about rivals — whether it was calling Jeb Bush “low energy” or raising questions about Ben Carson’s suitability to hold high office. And sooner or later, most observers expect them to come after Cruz even more aggressively.

“You never know what crazy thing is going to come out of his mouth,” said Jeff Miller, the campaign manager for Rick Perry, who was a frequent Trump target.

Yet a growing list of endorsements from influential conservatives in Iowa and elsewhere could serve to insulate Cruz should he come under serious fire from Trump, providing him with a circling-of-the-wagons defense that Trump's other targets could not muster. 

Tomorrow evening should prove entertaining even if the things coming out of the GOP candidates' mouths otherwise make you want to either throw up or throw something at the television. 

Best Moments From Tuesday's GOP "Debate"

Last night saw another circus debate between the would be GOP 2016 presidential nominees.  It was a spectacle that ought to send chills down the spines of thinking Americans and could best be described as a plan for the road to serfdom for most Americans, the mass deportation of Hispanics, and more endless, losing wars in the Middle East.  Of course, the tax policy proposals all benefit the wealthy to the detriment of the majority of citizens.   While the hapless Jebbie Bush stood up to The Donald on immigration (Trumps insists that millions of Hispanics must be deported) at one point, overall, he looked weak and proved yet again that debates, even of the GOP type, are not his strong suit.  Mother Jones looks at the disturbing batshitery.  Here are highlights:

The Republican presidential candidates met for the fourth time Tuesday night, with a slightly less crowded debate stage after Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee were demoted to the JV event. With fewer candidates competing for speaking time, a few were able to shine through with the extra breathing room: Marco Rubio stuck to his well-rehearsed talking points, Ben Carson bypassed his biographical oversights, and Rand Paul awoke from his slumber in the previous debates (while Jeb Bush did not).

Here’s a roundup of the debate’s best moments:

No one wants to raise the minimum wage.  The debate started off with Fox’s Neil Cavuto highlighting New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's promise to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour for public employees. The moderator asked the current front-runners if they'd like to see the federal minimum wage—currently just $7.25—increased.

Trump, Carson, and Rubio all quickly said that they don’t think the floor on wages needs to be any higher. "We don't win anymore," Trump bemoaned, reciting one of his favorite sayings. Why is that? "Taxes too high, wages too high."

Trump calls for another "Operation Wetback."  John Kasich attacked Trump’s plan to deport the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. "We all know you can't pick them up and ship them back across the border," he said. "It's a silly argument. It's not an adult argument. It makes no sense!"

But Trump defended his plan by citing an episode in American history: "Operation Wetback."
"Let me just tell you that Dwight Eisenhower...moved a million and a half illegal immigrants out of this country." Trump responded. "Moved them just beyond the border, they came back. Moved them again beyond the border, they came back. Didn't like it. Moved 'em waaaay south, they never came back. Dwight Eisenhower. You don't get nicer, you don't get friendlier. They moved 1.5 million people out. We have no choice. We. Have. No. Choice."

But the actual operation under Eisenhower in the 1950s was less than successful and very inhumane.

Ted Cruz dodges his own "oops" moment.  In 2011, Rick Perry sank his first ill-fated presidential run when he failed to name the three federal agencies he would eliminate, following his painful memory lapse with his now-famous "oops."  On Tuesday night, Ted Cruz could have had a similar moment. But he dodged it. When trying to name which five agencies he would eliminate, Cruz mentioned the Department of Commerce twice. "Five major agencies that I would eliminate," he declared. "The IRS, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, and HUD."  But did he say oops? No, he kept on going as if he hadn't just pulled a Perry.

Paul and Rubio go to war on military spending.  After keeping mostly quiet at the past few debates, Paul finally got a chance to go all-in on how he diverges from the rest of the field when it comes to foreign policy. "We have to decide what is conservative and what isn’t conservative," Paul interjected after Rubio touted his conservative credentials. Paul singled out Rubio’s tax plan, which includes a refundable tax credit, as well as Rubio’s hawkish approach to the military.  Rubio fought back. "I know Rand is a committed isolationist," Rubio said. "I'm not. I believe the world is a stronger and a better place when the united states is the strongest military power in the world." Paul wanted a debate. "Marco, Marco, how is it conservative—how is it conservative to add a trillion dollar expenditure to the federal government?" he shot back.

Bush grows a spine.  Trump came to the defense of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intervention in Syria, saying that Russia is going after ISIS. . . . Trump concluded that the United States shouldn't have to take on the international crisis alone. "We can't continue to be the policeman of the world," he said. "We owe $19 trillion, we have a country that's going to hell, we have an infrastructure that's falling apart. Our roads, our bridges, our schools, our airports, and we have to start investing money in our country."  Enter Bush. "Donald's wrong on this," he said. "He is absolutely wrong on this. We're not going to be the world's policeman, but we sure as heck better be the world's leader."

Carson has a plan to make "global jihadists" look like "losers."  Carson jumped into a foreign policy conversation, veered off to discuss "global jihadists," and continued to describe what sounded like another invasion of Iraq—. . . . 'How do we make them look like losers?' Because that’s the way that they’re able to gather a lot of influence."  He continued, "I think in order to make them look like losers, we have to destroy their caliphate. And you look for the easiest place to do that, it would be in Iraq. Outside of Anbar in Iraq there’s a big energy field—take all of that land from them. We could do that I believe fairly easily, . . .

A piece in Slate summarizes the GOP contenders' lack of concern for ordinary Americans:

[T]he GOP contenders were out of step with the actual economic needs of ordinary Americans. Each candidate talked about relief for workers and families, but outside of Rubio’s child tax credit, few offered it. Instead, candidates came out against raising the minimum wage, called for a new gold standard for currency, and pushed plans for massive upper-income tax cuts. Unlike the first Democratic debate—when Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chaffee tusseled over college affordability and health care costs—there was little in the Republican debate that spoke to the challenges of ordinary people  rather than businesses.

The Fact Free World of Today's GOP

I have long said that today's Republican Party no longer functions in world of facts and objective reality.  Instead, much of the party and certainly a majority of the GOP base lives in a fantasy world.  It wasn't always this way, but the slide to lunacy began, in my view, when the Christofascists began their insidious hijacking of the GOP grassroots more than 25 years ago.  And as those who base their lives and world view on ancient myths authored by unknown, ignorant individuals have increased in the party, sane and rational individuals have felt compelled to escape the asylum.  The result is the on going spectacle of the GOP presidential nominee field which would have horrified Republicans of forty or fifty years ago.  The New York Times looks at the fact free world in which today's GOP functions.  Here are highlights:

Eleven presidential candidates had three prime-time hours on the national stage on Wednesday to tell the American people why they should lead the country. . . . . the Republican Party’s “A-Team,” as one of them, Mike Huckabee, said at the outset.

And that, America, is frightening. Peel back the boasting and insults, the lies and exaggerations common to any presidential campaign. What remains is a collection of assertions so untrue, so bizarre, that they form a vision as surreal as the Ronald Reagan jet looming behind the candidates’ lecterns.

It felt at times as if the speakers were no longer living in a fact-based world where actions have consequences, programs take money and money has to come from somewhere. Where basic laws — like physics and the Constitution — constrain wishes. Where Congress and the public, allies and enemies, markets and militaries don’t just do what you want them to, just because you say they will.

Start with immigration, and the idea that any president could or should engineer the mass expulsion of 11 million unauthorized immigrants. Not one candidate said that a 21st-century trail of tears, deploying railroad cars, federal troops and police dogs on a continental scale, cannot happen and would be morally obscene.

On foreign affairs, there was a lot of talk about not talking with bad people. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said his first act would be to tear up the Iran deal, throwing the nuclear race back to the ayatollahs and rupturing global alliances — but making a point! Carly Fiorina said: “What I would do, immediately, is begin rebuilding the Sixth Fleet, I would begin rebuilding the missile defense program in Poland, I would conduct regular, aggressive military exercises in the Baltic States. I’d probably send a few thousand more troops into Germany. Vladimir Putin would get the message.”

We get the message, and it’s scary.

Jeb Bush spun a particularly repellent fantasy. Speaking reverently of his brother the president, he said, “He kept us safe,” and invoked the carnage of 9/11. Wait, what? Did he mean George W. Bush, who was warned about the threat that Al Qaeda would attack? Who then invaded a non sequitur country, Iraq, over a nonexistent threat?

When the A-Team got around to science and health, many of them promised to help Americans by killing the program that gives millions of them medical insurance.

Despite an abundance of serious issues to talk about, nobody offered solutions to problems like child poverty, police and gun violence, racial segregation, educational gaps, competition in a global economy and crumbling infrastructure. On looming disasters (the changing climate) and more immediate ones (a possible government shutdown over, of all things, Planned Parenthood), the debate offered no reassurance that grown-ups were at the table, or even in the neighborhood.

The insanity is the result of the rise of the Christofascists in the GOP and the years and years over which the GOP has fanned the insecurity of whites who see their era of white privilege waning.  Things did not have to be this way but for the short term cynicism of the so-called GOP establishment that welcomed in the insane and delusional in the hope of winning the next election cycle with no thought to the long term damage being done to both the party and the nation.