(Vanity): The Republican Debates: The GOP-e bids No Trump

This will be a review of the GOP debates last Thursday night; events following this debate are fast-moving, so while I strive for a modicum of completeness, I make no promise of such.

Did not watch. Jindal and Carly Florina shine: Carly in particular eviscerates Chris Matthews (of Hairball with Chris Matthews fame).

Earlier in the day of the debate, Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show that the word had gone out from the GOP bundlers to take out Donald Trump as a candidate, no matter, what, that they were tired of this. This ties in by the way, with the charges from the GOP base that the GOP-e never did intend to follow the base, but either followed the wishes of the Chamber of Commerce, or were co-opted into going along with the Democrats.

The first question, from both Brett Baier, was whether there was anyone on stage who would pledge to support the party and NOT run third party, if they did not get the nomination. It was obviously aimed at Trump — and, on the surface, it was a fair question, in the light of the the election of Bill Clinton — who never won more than 50% of the popular vote, by the way — partly due to the popularity of Ross Perot. However, there are two objections which never came up. First, Ross Perot did not run initially as a GOP member at all; and secondly, there are a couple of notable examples recently of GOPe members refusing to support the duly-elected primary winner when the primary winner was a Tea Party member: look at Thad Cochrane or Alaska’s Murkowski for just two; or the lack of support against Harry Reid, which might have cost him re-election, and the Democrats the Senate.

Will Florida Gov. Jeb Bush sign a pledge not to backstab Trump or Cruz or Walker (although, given some information I have recently come across about Walker, I may have to reconsider my support for him)?

The next question came for Dr. Ben Carson, MD, a black neurosurgeon from Johns Hopkins.

It is an excellent example not only, of the tremendous left-wing bias even at Fox News, but how the subtle hypocrisy of the left, like a stiletto knife, is slipped in as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Your critics say that your inexperience shows. You’ve suggested that the Baltic States are not a part of NATO, just months ago you were unfamiliar with the major political parties and government in Israel, and domestically, you thought Alan Greenspan had been treasury secretary instead of federal reserve chair.

Aren’t these basic mistakes, and don’t they raise legitimate questions about whether you are ready to be president?

Note the implicit statement that he is not ready to be President. That’s fine. Except that no such questions were given to Barack Obama. The closest I can recall was on Anderson Cooper 360, in 2008, when Sarah Palin’s executive experience was compared to Obama’s. Obama answered the question:

Well, my understanding is that Governor Palin’s town of Wasilla has I think 50 employees. We’ve got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made clear over the last couple of years.”

And David Brooks of the New York Slimes swooned over the creases in Obama’s pants. And besides, Obama was President of the Harvard Law Review. SO THERE!

But a Republican? And a man who was not a community organizer for the Chicago machine, but a tenured professor of neurosurgery at one of the top medical schools in the world? Not an affirmative-action position, as it involves life-and-death decisions with real consequences, just like, you know, the Oval Office.

“Your inexperience shows. Why don’t you just admit that you’re not ready for the Presidency.”

And they did a similar thing with their first question to Hispanic, son of immigrants, Marco Rubio.

Could you please address Governor Bush across the stage here, and explain to him why you, someone who has never held executive office, are better prepared to be president than he is, a man who you say did a great job running your state of Florida for eight years.

Nice bit of consistency from the press, insisting on executive experience, eh? Remember, Elizabeth Warren has no executive experience; and faked her ethnic credentials to get into Harvard. Bernie Sanders is a lifelong legislator. Hillary Clinton only got executive experience because of her husband’s standing, and to keep the feminists in the Democrat Party quiet over having the election stolen from her. She is currently under criminal investigation by the FBI for mishandling classified material: for which General Petraeus was summarily dismissed.

This established a trend, to last for the rest of the debate, of asking most candidates “Gotcha!” questions: but not only “Gotcha!” but framed and described in such a way that the candidate was ALREADY defined in the negative, that the negative was implicitly accepted as beyond question.

But not only that, the Commissars, err, moderators, violated another principle of sound journalism: Get at the facts. In attacking the candidates, they often missed clear-cut opportunities for the debate to show some of the policy strength and expertise within the GOP: and all for the sake of, depending upon you believe, pleasing the GOP donors, or fitting in better with their left-wing counterparts (but I repeat myself) at MSNBC.

Governor Bush, you have insisted that you’re your own man. You say you have a life experience uniquely your own. Not your father’s, not your brother’s.

But there are several opponents on this stage who get big- applause lines in early voting states with this line: quote, “the last thing the country needs is another Bush in the Oval Office.”

So do you understand the real concern in this country about dynastic politics?

The next question, from Megyn Kelly, went after Donald Trump a second time. And here’s were the real knife fighting started.

Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don’t use a politician’s filter. However, that is not without its downsides, in particular, when it comes to women.

You’ve called women you don’t like “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals."

Trump interrupted at this point, saying “Only Rosie O’Donnell.” This is an important action, for it broke up the emotional rhythm and momentum of the “Gotcha!” — not only invalidating the premise and breaking the spell, but, by focusing on the largely unpopular Rosie, shifted the sympathy of the audience TO Trump and away from Kelly.

Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president, and how will you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton, who was likely to be the Democratic nominee, that you are part of the war on women?

The reason for this is, the whole “War on Women” is a failed DEMOCRAT theme: it was supposed to sweep women into power in the mid-terms, to allow the Democrats to re-take the House and Senate. Remember Sandra Fluke? Or pro-abort Texan Wendy Davis? Or even the whole rape-culture dog-and-pony show in Rolling Stone about the University of Virginia, or the performance-art coed at Columbia who carried a damn mattress around campus for ages, even to her graduation, getting invited by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (Feminazi-NY) to the US State of the Union address?

When was the last time the press hammered a Democrat, live, during a debate, using a GOP-generated meme?

Trump was striking at the heart of the connection between the Press and the DNC. (The modus operandi has been for a fringe site, say, The Rolling Stone, as mentioned above, to “highlight” a problem; then, for the more mainstream, “objective” press, to springboard the issue into the limelight, while blindsiding a Republican: “Senator, (or Governor, or whatever), there are those who say [insert D&C soundbite here]...”)

So by interrupting Kelly to undercut her flow (in light of later remarks, see what I did there?), and by naming the unspoken mindset and rules behind her line of questioning, he gutted their immediate power.

But there are a couple of deeper issues about the question itself, and the stance of the press, which bear comment.

First, the follow-up question itself is in fact based on a lie. The *unedited* clip from the episode of the Apprentice is here. Note that the phrase about being on one’s knees was actually brought up by another man, describing his whole team — that the man looks to one of the young women with him for *support* and *confirmation* : and note, more importantly, that when Donald Trump uses the phrase “you’d look pretty good on your knees” — that the camera is pointed RIGHT AT Donald Trump, so you cannot tell who he is speaking to!

...and, when the camera returns to the three young people, it is focusing on the blonde girl, who, far from being offended, is smirking.

The other points, are about the “War on Women” meme. First — how DARE does anyone dare mention War on Women with a straight face, if they mention Hillary Clinton in the same sentence?

"Let’s talk about the War on Women. That’s supposed to set up Hillary. Remember when her husband was having illicit sex with 21-year-old intern IN THE OVAL OFFICE? Speaking of “looking good on your knees” — Bill Clinton is the one who introduced that concept to the American people. He sent out his minions to lie about it, he sent out Hillary to lie about it; she even called it a ‘vast right wing conspiracy’ until Bill’s body fluids were found on Monica's famous blue dress. And Bill Clinton suborned perjury — a FELONY — in the Paula Jones case, and is creditably accused by Juanita Brodderick of literal rape. Where were you in the press, back then?”(1)

It is interesting, by the way, that while watching the exchange, I noticed Megyn Kelly looking flustered and humiliated; as though, not only was she unused to a man talking back to her, but that she hadn’t even considered the possibility.

I think the reason is this. Megyn Kelly is, by many men’s standards, attractive. There is an important social dynamic in our society: call it chivalry, white knighting, whatever. It states that pretty women are VERY used to men rushing to be nice to them, because, well, “If I’m nice to her, it...it *could* happen.” Or, in a more misandrist light, men are incapable of thinking with more than one head at the same time. I believe that Megyn Kelly has grown so used to being treated in this way — and so used to taking advantage of it — that she accepted it as automatic, something that just *is*, like the sun going down at night. (Yeah, tell me that’s subliminal, you turkeys. If I had written “sun rising in the morning” you’d have accused me of the same thing.) But what she forgot is that Donald Trump is a billionaire — who has already had sex with, and married, and had children with, women who were far more attractive than she is. Far more attractive than she even was in her prime. So it never occurred to her that Donald would be anything but bedazzled by her looks: and she had no “Plan B” for when that fell through.

Since we are talking about deficiencies in the press questioning, this is a good point to expand upon the point made earlier, that the questions as asked, failed: not only because they were hit pieces, but that, BECAUSE they were hit pieces, they effectively hid the strengths of the candidates from the American people. It was almost as though the Commissars --err, sorry again, moderators -- were on camera mainly to hear themselves speak, as though they were in a dorm-room bull session with a young Obama, Kerry, and Clinton. The lion’s share of camera time for any of the candidates went to Trump (he got 10 min 31 sec to just over 5 minutes for Wisconsin’ Scott Walker), more time than *anyone* went to the moderators, who got about 31 minutes.

Marco Rubio is the son of immigrants. Wouldn't it have been better to ask him how his background gives him a unique perspective on the challenges related to integrating immigrants into our society?

Governor Walker, you've consistently said that you want to make abortion illegal even in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. You recently signed an abortion law in Wisconsin that does have an exception for the mother's life, but you're on the record as having objected to it. Would you really let a mother die rather than have an abortion...

"Speaking of incest, my record is one of reining in an incestuous relationship between the Unions and the Democrat Party. If you want to know about complications in pregnancy and saving the mother's life, why don't you ask the candidate standing just over there, Dr. Benjamin Carson? He's operated on babies in utero. And he's from the best Medical School in the world, Johns Hopkins. If he doesn't happen to know right off the top of his head how to save both the mother and her baby in extreme cases, I'm sure the doctor who does know is on his rolodex and he can get an answer for you during the next commercial break. But if you want to talk about government spending, or about how Democrats use the power of unions to secure their own re-election, then ask me."

Or, bringing up the Planned Parenthood videos, and pointing out the sacred-to-the-left Roe vs. Wade decision itself, allows states to regulate and restrict abortion through the second trimester, and many of the baby body parts on that video were of babies in the second trimester, and why does Megyn support the sale of baby body parts?

During the debate, Chris Wallace followed up a question about immigration, for Donald Trump, with a very rude demand, basically calling Trump a liar to his face:

Mr. Trump, I'll give you 30 seconds -- I'll give you 30 seconds to answer my question, which was, what evidence do you have, specific evidence that the Mexican government is sending criminals across the border? Thirty seconds.

Trump explained, not as forcefully, that he’d been to the border to see border patrol agents and it was obvious from the situation on the ground :

Border Patrol, I was at the border last week. Border Patrol, people that I deal with, that I talk to, they say this is what's happening. Because our leaders are stupid. Our politicians are stupid.

And the Mexican government is much smarter, much sharper, much more cunning. And they send the bad ones over because they don't want to pay for them. They don't want to take care of them.

Why should they when the stupid leaders of the United States will do it for them? And that's what is happening whether you like it or not."

Rush Limbaugh, the next day, analyzed this and explained he’d been in situations like this, where you knew an item but didn’t immediately remember the source to look up or quote; he added the example of the Mariel boat lift by Cuba where Castro had publicly emptied his jails onto US shores.

(Speaking of 20-20 hindsight, one wonders why none of the Fox News moderators asked Marco Rubio about the normalization of relations with Cuba: even so much as to ask his sense of the feelings among his constituents.)

Not to mention, the whole reason the issue of illegal immigration became an issue, was that the day after Trump had initially highlighted it, Kate Steinle was killed by an illegal alien, who had been previously convicted SEVEN TIMES for felonies, and yet somehow was here roaming our streets.

Which made it all the more remarkable when Wallace had the sheer unprecedented arrogance to turn to Ted Cruz with a question about Steinle's Law. Cruz's response:

CRUZ: -- I have authored Kate's law in the United States Senate and filed that legislation. I tried to get the Senate to vote to pass Kate's law on the floor of the Senate just one week ago, and the leader of our own party blocked a vote on Kate's law.

For all their smug attitude of "Keeping YOU informed" it sure looks like the Fox News Commissars didn't do their background research while preparing THAT "Gotcha!" question.

Has anyone noticed, that ALL of the GOP candidates are, in their own way, pushing back against the questions, and not meekly accepting the premise and apologizing for clubbing baby seals even before they begin to answer? That, I think, is the influence of Trump, earlier in this race: the other candidates, or their handlers, want to be liked in the cocktail party set, and by the press: but they want to be elected even MORE. And I am sure there were eight or ten or however many campaign managers and internal pollsters who told their candidates, that Trump, despite his attacks on McCain, or because of them, was rising in the polls.

If only the rest of the GOP can learn to fight back against the press, we may have made a beginning.

First, it did not result, as the GOPe hoped, and, as was preemptively declared by the press during Donald’s flap with Sen. John McCain (POW-AZ) , and again in the wake of the debate, with The Donald’s Demise. First, an informal poll on the Drudge Report showed Trump as the runaway winner, with around 50% of some 200,000 respopndents choosing him as the winner, and all other candidates in the single digits. Further, there are videos going viral such as this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP6S3KE2DaI) in which black women (!!)...are vocally defending the Donald verbally.

(Suck on that, Karl Rove, and you Bush dynasty freaks. You wanted a big tent, and here it is coming to you on a silver platter. But you don’t want it unless the Big Tent results from a surrender of the GOP’s original principles.)

Second, the GOPe and the MSM (but I repeat myself) have decided to double down upon this point, whether openly declaring “War on Women” or playing White Knight for the fair maiden Megyn, probably differs from person to person.

For example, Erick Erickson, founder of the GOP-friendly site RedState.com, pointedly disinvited Trump from a restate.com conservative gathering on Saturday August 8, inviting Megyn Kelly in his place. A number of the press tried to ask the other candidates how they felt about this; a few of them (Scott Walker, Pataki, Jindal, Fiorina) condemned Trump, but Cruz merely praised Kelly while refraining from attacking Trump.

My analysis of the remarks, is that, yes, the word has gone out to destroy Trump: but to whose benefit, I am not sure. That is, there are some who claim Trump is a plant to allow a Hillary win; if so, then certainly using the War on Women as a meme to attack Trump with, would be appropriate: but the current attack looks like it would knock him out of the race too soon, before he can take all the oxygen from the other Republican candidates. Especially this year when the GOP bench is so deep.

On the other hand, it would be typical of both the spite, and the ineptitude, of the GOPe, to take out Trump to spite the GOP base who are sick of being lied to; but to be so subsumed with Washington Uniparty Thinking, that they use Hillary Clinton (ready for Prison-2016) approved memes to attack him, thinking that they will be rewarded by Social Justice Warriors for attacking the big bad meanie, and not realizing the exact same accusations will be used to take them out next. Social Justice Warriors always lie.

(1)And, speaking of the hypocrisy of the press, concerning treatment of women, let us not recall the treatment of another woman running for office, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Recall: NY “comic” Sandra Bernhard comic ’joking’ about Palin being raped by multiple black men.

Guy Cimbalo writing in Playboy about wanting to hate f*ck Sarah Palin. (No link, since I don’t want to give either RedState.com or Playboy the hits).

Saturday night live having a skit where one of the reporters sent to Alaska openly muses about incest in the Palin family.

David Letterman joking about one of the Palin daughters getting pregnant by one of the New York Yankess during the 7th inning stretch at a baseball game.

We all know that they are ALL hired solely for their razor sharp minds, and not for their looks, right?

That is excellent retort to war on women meme, which Hillary is guaranteed to use. I hope that paragraph gets to the GOP nominee.

Great blog, grey_whiskers....BUMP!

...
I think the reason is this. Megyn Kelly is, by many men’s standards, attractive. There is an important social dynamic in our society: call it chivalry, white knighting, whatever. It states that pretty women are VERY used to men rushing to be nice to them, because, well, “If I’m nice to her, it...it *could* happen.” Or, in a more misandrist light, men are incapable of thinking with more than one head at the same time. I believe that Megyn Kelly has grown so used to being treated in this way — and so used to taking advantage of it — that she accepted it as automatic, something that just *is*, like the sun going down at night. (Yeah, tell me that’s subliminal, you turkeys. If I had written “sun rising in the morning” you’d have accused me of the same thing.) But what she forgot is that Donald Trump is a billionaire — who has already had sex with, and married, and had children with, women who were far more attractive than she is. Far more attractive than she even was in her prime. So it never occurred to her that Donald would be anything but bedazzled by her looks: and she had no “Plan B” for when that fell through.

Hot diggity damn, I was thinking the same concept in different terms, as in, "When you're trying to save that damsel in distress, make sure she's not reaching for a stiletto in her garter!"

Also, the possiblity "they" know Jebbie will lose in 2016 but if they can get Trump to go 3rd party, it will provide they same, lame "Perot Excuse" from 1992. I do think it could backfire and Trump could be the first, "true" Indepedent elected President. Celebrity has a lot of power in this country. A lot of people across a broad spectrum of demographics could vote him in. Blacks especially.

Thank you so much for the ping, dearest LucyT

Dearest grey_whiskers put a lot of time into this!!

Perfectly done!

I wish Mr. Trump could read this and now perhaps he will!

Keep in mind Trump is 69 years old. As you get older, memory is the 2nd thing that goes. However logic and wisdom improves with age. A president does not need to be a micro-manager, that was Jimmy Carter. Ronald Reagan was never a micro-manager. He set the direction the country needed to go, and delegated of executing to his cabinet and the executive branch personnel.

I am older than Trump and in case you are wondering what is the 1st thing that goes as one gets older, I can not remember!

The audience was composed of the delegate to a GOP workshop. Their final event. A Happy Hour cocktail party was held previously. The afternoon session according to Rick Santorum was empty because the delegate were in meeting. Each candidate was given 6 tickets (not enough for his or DTs family.)
The 20,000 seat facility was cut down to 4,500. Delegates got their tickets and a limited number of seats were available through party bosses.
IOW the audience was as well stacked as a little Kim NK birthday celebration

I gave up sex when I was 30-years old. No, I do not miss any of it and the serenity that resulted is very nice. As for my memory, it is sharp, very sharp.

It’s my hearing that sucks.

I want to suggest to everyone that viewing The Apprentice on youtube.com would help many people, particularly those who think that The Donald is a liberal. It isn’t noticeable and little clues to his true beliefs sneak in from time to time. He is no more liberal than most conservatives I have met here on Free Republic. I’m about to complete season 6.

Mr.Trump gave up The Apprentice to start his political campaign for President. He turned away from earning millions of dollars because he feels the nation is going in the wrong direction. Is he doing this for the Clintons? No, I don’t believe so.

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