8:34 PM: Jeb owned. We’ve got that out of the way.
8:41 PM: Cruz: “This deal will spend $100 billion making the Obama administration the world’s leading finance of radical islamic terrorism.”
8:43 PM: Good answer there from Rand Paul. But it sort of shows how completely crazy the baseline on foreign policy is with this group. Trump and Rand Paul actually come off as pretty level headed. Kasich does too. But he’s actually a serious candidate.
8:46 PM: “They threaten the very essence of Western Civilization.”
8:47 PM: I’m remembering once when I was on Hewitt’s show maybe 15 years ago and listening to him concern-trolling about famine in North Korea.
8:51 PM: Ted Cruz is in his mid-40s but he’s as callow as he was as an undergrad.
8:55 PM: Wow, that Huckabee tirade was nuts.
8:58 PM: Watching this, you just see how Cruz keeps walking Republicans down the shutdown garden path. Hilarious.
9:06 PM: Good lord. Staffers just told me that this debate goes on for three hours.
9:07 PM: Trump: I wasn’t insulting her looks. She’s hot.
8:12 PM: Props to CNN execs for giving Jake Tapper those injections of Epinephrine.
8:13 PM: Rubio water joke about as well handled as original water goof.
8:15 PM: First presidential debate use of word “braggadocious” in US history. Drink.
8:16 PM: Watching Carson’s intro gives me a better sense of why he’s surging as a sort of anti-Trump. The guy is so gentle in his speech and manner I almost wonder sometimes whether he’s going to just fade away. He’s everything that Trump isn’t.
8:20 PM: Not to get policy-ish but Trump’s hair looks a bit off?
8:21 PM: This is not disappointing me.
8:23 PM: Walker’s zinger!!! oh, no. Learn timing, dude. Ouch.
8:25 PM: I think Walker’s word fugue there may be like agonal debating?
8:26 PM: I think Walker just said it’s about time the American people realize he’s awesome?
8:27 PM: On the plus side, 30 minutes in and now Hugh Hewitt?
The Trump phenomenon seems to encourage minor ritual humiliations like this gauntlet walking for a group portrait.
We generally don’t think of Republicans as the folks to go in for alternative lifestyles or outre sexual practices (at least not openly). But here we are, mere hours away from round two of the televised ritual humiliation of what were until a few months ago the top contenders for the Republican nomination – and at the hands of a former reality TV star with an exalted hairdo, who sometimes goes by his first name only. What’s surprising is how similar the mood going into tonight’s debate seems to be to the one going into the first debate on Fox back last month.
The setting seems to be this: Donald Trump is at the head of the pack. That’s unnatural. He doesn’t deserve to be and should not be. Someone has to destroy him. Last time Fox News took it upon itself to be the executioner and I think we can all agree that it failed spectacularly, though it took a few days for many commentators to realize that was what happened.
The sheriff of the second largest county in Georgia, in suburban Atlanta, went off on Black Lives Matter today, calling the movement “domestic terrorists” and a “hate group.”
Full statement, provided to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, below:
State lawmaker says quit your whining over the Facebook meme featuring Obama as as “Islamic son of a bitch.”