The End of the GOP

I was never a fan of presidential primary debates, and after the Trump party’s group news conference Wednesday night on the broadcasting arm of the GOP, I flat out hate the idea. I won’t argue they have not had their moments in the past fifty years with great lines like, “Where’s the beef?” and “John Kennedy was a friend of mine. You’re no John Kennedy,” but think of what we had to sit through to get to those rare memorable moments. So much rah, rah, party BS and greatest country on Earth silliness. The rest of the world no longer thinks we are the greatest because we’ve waged unjustified wars, cut funding for our schools, and lack health care for our citizens. But we are very good at building prisons.

I’ve been to dozens of presidential and vice presidential debates during my TV political reporting career. I can’t think of one that didn’t strike me as mostly stupid. I don’t know what I’d replace them with but I’d find another format. When the stage is filled with multiple candidates, and controls over responses, you end up with a consistent group news conference. They stand behind podiums and recite talking points and messaging given to them by consultants. The tedium is mind numbing, and does nothing to serve voters.

Their opening statements in Milwaukee were mundane and a waste of digital data information. Tim Scott made sure to twice mention the fact that he was raised by a single mother, Vivek Ramaswamy, did the “whoever thought a skinny guy from a small town could make it to this stage” kind of speech. What a wondrous thing he is, and how great is a country that can get a boy billionaire a microphone in a GOP debate? All it takes is a bottomless wallet to get signatures and donations and corporations having your back.

An Unfortunate Assault on Intellect and Presidential Politics

Not a lot of time was spent on Trump. Every one of those people were trying to parse how they were going to speak about the former guy. To get in the debate, they had to sign an agreement to support the nominee of their party, which Trump overwhelmingly controls. The only way they were able to do that was by convincing themselves that Trump was not going to win the nomination because of his cascade of criminal charges and the trials he is facing. Never mind the fact that no candidate with a lead as large as Trump’s at this point in the presidential election cycle has ever lost his party’s nomination. Asa Hutchison can’t quite seem to understand the counterintuitive nature of his pledge to support the nominee even though he has refused to vote for Trump, who appears headed for the nomination.

I am not certain how anyone could find a person on the FOX stage that they wanted to give their vote. The closest the discussion came to rational was when Nikki Haley tried to offer a marginally sane policy on abortion that came from a female perspective. Ramaswamy was, to be blunt, as annoying as a tech bro at a cocktail party. But Ronnie D was probably smiling because the skinny kid became the lightning rod. DeSantis kept yammering about abortions up to the time of birth supported by Democrats, which is not a thing. Abortion up to the time of birth is actually known as birth.

Christie did try to engage the crazy-eyed wannabes with a discussion about Trump. The FOX crowd didn’t want that to last long so it wasn’t allowed to come up until an hour plus into the debate and when Christie started telling his peers (does he really have any, in his mind?) that they needed to stop normalizing Trump’s behavior because it was “beneath the dignity of the office of the president,” the old bridge closer from Jersey got booed. The audience didn’t want to hear it and neither did most of the people on the stage. The entire silly mass of GOP ectoplasm then got wrapped around the axle on whether Pence did the right thing by refusing to stop certification of the last election. These are the kinds of topics you debate when you are uncertain about right and wrong and have no principles.

The border issue got the veins in their foreheads pulsating, though. Everything from fentanyl to cartels waltzing matilda across the border and filling up immigrant backpacks with deadly drugs. Ronnie has promised to leave them dead if they cross. He’s sending a message to Texas Governor Greg Abbott that the next step in the border issue is to open fire. Bring us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, and we will mow ‘em down. We are American badasses. Poor billionaire Ramaswamy played up his immigrant story and apparently missed the part of the narrative that his party isn’t that into immigrants, or people of color.

Analysts will be offering up takeaways from this debate but there is only one and that is the late great Republican Party of the United States of America is a smoldering wreck. Not a soul in front of those cameras in the first Trump Party debate has any more business being president than the man they are fearful of confronting. They are apparently against crime and against aborting live births and in favor of growing the economy and controlling inflation. Such manifest courage. They also don’t like Biden, a stunner, and are ignorant of what he has accomplished, or trying to ignore it. An octogenarian is going to stomp them all into oblivion a little over a year from now while the leadership of their party begins serving his multiple prison sentences.

Maybe some day a new conservative party will rise from the ashes of what they allowed Trump to set to flame. But after watching this debate, I’m inclined to think it will take decades to even begin laying a foundation.