The CNN Republican Debate
Tonight’s GOP debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Ventura County, Southern California, was better as a debate, thanks to moderator Jake Tapper, who decided to be journalist rather than part of the status quo. But it reveals the Republican Party’s fundamental bankruptcy (read my pre-debate analysis of each candidate here).
As has been clear for decades, the party has abandoned its defense of individual rights and capitalism, which has never been strong and consistent. But tonight’s debate showed the total inversion. The three-hour main event demonstrated that the candidates oppose man’s rights and pure capitalism while pretending to represent the best of both ideals. Frontrunner Donald Trump, for instance, made his essential value proposition that he can fix America because he’s a businessman. Then, he promptly defended the income tax, denouncing the flat tax as too complicated in favor of the graduated income tax, and called himself “militaristic” in an apparent confusion over whether militarism is a virtue in an American president. When Trump was right, as he was in contending that George W. Bush made Obama possible, he failed to explain why, let alone do so on principle.
Fake capitalist Trump was topped by fake capitalist Carly Fiorina, an ex-CEO who was fired and ran for the U.S. Senate in a race she lost (by a wide margin). Everything she said, including her debate theme to challenge the status quo, is unconvincing. Ms. Fiorina had been elevated in stature by an earlier attack by Trump on her looks which allowed her to play to her essential value proposition in this presidential campaign: the fact that she is a woman. Everything she says and does is calculated to magnify this fact, despite her assertion that she’s the anti-Hillary Clinton. Actually, Carly Fiorina, who made an emotional rant against fetal tissue research, is very much like Mrs. Clinton, whom she rightly accused of being devoid of accomplishment.
That the most serious anti-abortion female presidential candidate later claimed in her Lady Liberty/Lady Justice pitch that she seeks to offer everyone the “opportunity to live the life she chooses” underscores that this candidate is a fraud as an advocate for individual rights. Everything from a line for women about Trump’s comment on her face, an easy shot against Trump, to her being the only candidate to decline to name a woman to put on paper currency, amounts to an appeal based solely on her sex. Ms. Fiorina proved again that she can come up with lines fast but she’s putting on an act; she seeks power for its own sake.
Sen. Ted Cruz denounced the Iran deal in strong terms, looking into the camera and speaking in measured language naming national security as a paramount concern, sharply asking an Iran deal apologist: “How do we know if they cheat?” Cruz’s closing statement, framed by Tapper as a hypothetical post-presidency assessment, was good, with no mention of his recent plan to elect the Supreme Court. He invoked Winston Churchill, pledged to open a U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, Israel, and named “radical Islamic terrorism”, which President Obama refuses to do. He promised that he would “never, ever, ever” let Iran’s ayatollahs acquire nuclear weapons, proposed a flat tax, abolition of the IRS and repeal of “every word of ObamaCare”. But in touting the fact that he’s been fighting the status quo, he reminded the audience that he is not winning.
Jeb Bush blurted out the debate’s biggest applause line with the lie that his brother “kept us safe” from attack, an outrageous if widely accepted claim given that the nation’s worst attack happened on Bush’s brother’s watch, not counting numerous attacks (DC sniper, anthrax attack, various passenger jet attacks stopped by passengers, not government) that followed. Trump replied with the question “do you feel safe right now?”, a legitimate counterpoint to the Bush presidency which no one answered.
On the positive side, Gov. John Kasich evoked a sense of optimism and called for a return to an American, can-do approach to getting things done and the questions and format were more serious than the personality-driven event co-sponsored by Fox News and Facebook. The debate’s best short line came from Sen. Marco Rubio, who noted that “we have a president who is more respectful of the ayatollah than of the prime minister of Israel”.
But Sen. Rubio also said that U.S. foreign policy “must find moderate elements in the Middle East” and arm them, without mentioning that the evidence that moderate elements exist is scant. Ben Carson equivocated and endorsed raising the minimum wage, adding that the U.S. government should impose two minimum wages! Gov. Kasich, who said he would put Mother Teresa on the ten dollar bill, proposed that America adopt Judeo Christianity’s ethics of selflessness to stop Islamic barbarians from recruiting Americans to sacrifice themselves in acts of Islamic jihad. Is Ohio’s governor, a serious contender polling well in New Hampshire, preaching religion and selflessness to stop violent acts of religion and selflessness?
Yes, seriously and unfortunately. Stand by for the Democrats in October.