Where Are Our 'I Survived the GOP Debate Marathon 9/16/2015' T-shirts?
If you watched both debates tonight, you watched about five hours. Exhausting. Logistics: Eleven candidates on one stage didn't work well. Every candidate was left out for long stretches. You could forget that Hugh Hewitt was one of the questioners. The four–eleven split -- four candidates in the first debate, eleven in the second -- seemed odd going in and looks like the wrong choice in the cold light of Thursday morning. The Questions: The good news is that Jake Tapper, Hewitt, and Dana Bash brought up a lot of topics -- in a three hour debate, there was no excuse not to. But CNN was itching to see some Trump vs. Jeb and Trump vs. Fiorina fights, and the time management was abysmal. The Candidates: Carly Fiorina really shined; you could see her extraordinary preparation. Is it too much to hope that a candidate who shows extraordinary preparation for every appearance, interview, speech, and debate will be extraordinarily prepared for the challenges of being president? The best answer of the debate: I would like to link these two issues, both of which are incredibly important, Iran and Planned Parenthood. One has something to do with the defense of the security of this nation. The other has something to do with the defense of the character of this nation. You have not heard a plan about Iran from any politician up here, here is my plan. On day one in the Oval Office, I will make two phone calls, the first to my good friend to Bibi Netanyahu to reassure him we will stand with the state of Israel. The second, to the supreme leader, to tell him that unless and until he opens every military and every nuclear facility to real anytime, anywhere inspections by our people, not his, we, the United States of America, will make it as difficult as possible and move money around the global financial system. We can do that, we don't need anyone's cooperation to do it. And every ally and every adversary we have in this world will know that the United States in America is back in the leadership business, which is how we must stand with our allies. As regards Planned Parenthood, anyone who has watched this videotape, I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, it's heart beating, it's legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain. This is about the character of our nation, and if we will not stand up in and force President Obama to veto this bill, shame on us. Fiorina walked onto that stage with certain advantages, namely she's the lone woman in the field and most male politicians are wary about attacking a female rival. Trump had set up an easy slam dunk with his idiotic "look at her face" comment and exacerbated it by not apologizing, either privately or publicly, and insisting that he meant only her persona. When prompted to respond, she went simple and quick: Mr. Trump said that he heard Mr. Bush very clearly and what Mr. Bush said. I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said. Again there was an opportunity for Trump, but he offered a lame line that he thought Carly had a beautiful face; I doubt anyone in the entire room believed Trump at that moment. Now, just imagine how we would have gasped if Trump had said, "It was a mean, stupid thing to say, and Carly, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it." The billionaire could have done himself some good there with a genuine expression of contrition. But he couldn't do it. We saw a slightly more buttoned-down Trump on stage tonight – slightly. Still, his dismissive characterization of the topics in his interview with Hugh Hewitt -- "Hugh was giving me name after name, Arab name, Arab name, and there are few people anywhere, anywhere that would have known those names"-- suggests this is a candidate who's not interested in doing his homework Just a refresher on the names Hewitt mentioned: General Soleimani: Commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, the guy running Iran's military and clandestine operations beyond its borders. Hassan Nasrallah: Head of Hezbollah. Zawahiri: The current leader of al-Qaeda. al-Julani: The head of the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's wing fighting in Syria. al-Baghdadi: The head of ISIS, proclaimed by some of his followers to be a Caliph, head of the Caliphate. Trump is counting on staff to carry him on the policy questions -- both for the remainder of the campaign and in the White House. He began with a baffling sucker-punch of Rand Paul, declaring he didn't belong on the stage. Later Trump took a swing at George Pataki's record as governor; talk about punching down! Trump continued to demonstrate the impulse control of a toddler: Rand Paul: His visceral response to attack people on their appearance — short, tall, fat, ugly — my goodness, that happened in junior high. Are we not way above that? Would we not all be worried to have someone like that in charge of the nuclear arsenal? Trump: I never attacked him on his look, and believe me, there's plenty of subject matter right there. Then he indicated he's at least somewhat concerned about the possibility vaccines could be connected to autism, a comment that approaches Jenny McCarthy territory: "Just the other day, two years old, two-and-a-half years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic." Based on everything we have seen so far this year, this damaging performance will lead to an even larger lead for Trump. Would you have guessed Ben Carson is running in second place? His calm, deliberate demeanor is a welcome relief from the bombast and jabs of the other candidates. At his best, he's the adult in the room. At his worst, he affirms the suspicion that he's a brilliant surgeon who has neither the interest or the inclination to get into the weeds on policy. If you're running a strong second, a night like tonight is fine -- not much gain, no mistakes. Marco Rubio continues to hit it out of the park on foreign policy and get solid base hits on domestic topics. But it's fair to wonder whether this translates to poll momentum -- he garnered rave reviews for the last debate and subsequently dropped in the polls. Then again, Rubio seems to be playing the long game. Watch your money, pace yourself, and kick it into a higher gear once the caucuses and primaries begin. Jeb Bush was a lot better in this debate than the last one, but it's hard to see how he really changed the dynamics much. When your top rival says something about your wife -- i.e., you're more sympathetic to illegal immigrants because your wife is from Mexico -- you're allowed to show a flash of anger and instinctive protectiveness. In fact, you should. Bush seemed insulted and miffed. "I hope you apologize for that, Donald." Jeb has developed the milquetoast reputation, so any sign of fury at the man standing inches to his right would have helped. He could have used an "I paid for this microphone" moment. Keep in mind, Jeb later summarized his foreign-policy view as "peace through strength." If you're going to get voters to believe in that, you have to come across as strong. He showed another flash for a moment while discussing President George W. Bush and the War on Terror -- helped along by a Republican audience eager to applaud that. It was cute when he admitted he had smoked marijuana, and was embarrassed that his mother now knew. Walker had some good lines, when he could get in there. After the fourth break, Walker had spoken for seven minutes, ten seconds -- the least of anyone; by comparison, Trump had spoken the most, 17 minutes, 54 seconds. A lot of that is the fault of the moderators, but considering how badly Walker's polls have slid in the past few weeks, he needed a "moment" tonight . . . Did you see a "moment" tonight? Anything that made you call your friend to say, "Oh, man, did you see that?" In the next debate, he's got to overcome his Midwestern polite instincts and just jump in there. Rand Paul often seems like he's about to exclaim incredulity at what's going on around him and declare the whole thing a farce. He's got the policy knowledge, and he knows just how to pitch policies that otherwise might not be appealing to a GOP audience: "If you want boots on the ground, and you want them to be our sons and daughters, you got 14 other choices. There will always be a Bush or Clinton for you, if you want to go back to war in Iraq." Christie ate his Wheaties yesterday morning - no, that's not a fat joke. He's funny, combative, and full of fury on the topic of Planned Parenthood's actions. We're fighting with each other up here. We agree. Let's ask Hillary Clinton. She believes in the systematic murder of children in the womb to preserve their body parts, Dana, in a way that maximizes their value for sale for profit. It is disgusting, and the American people need to hear it. He also took a seemingly unneeded shot at Carly Fiorina, suggesting she and Trump were too focused on discussing their business careers. But both had specifically been asked about their records by the moderators! It was a moment for them to defend their records, and Christie tried to suggest it was self-centered or narcissistic. Fiorina made reference to it later in the evening -- clearly it irked her. John Kasich went out and played his kind of ballgame. It clearly worked for him in Ohio, is working for him in New Hampshire . . . and eh, not so much nationally yet. Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee are at the back end of the eleven-candidate field. Both shine during those rare moments when they actually get the spotlight, and each one has a serious strength and fluency in particular topic areas -- Cruz the legal arena, Huckabee the defense of Christian values. But both men got way less time than the poll leaders, and it's hard to see tonight changing their poll position much. ADDENDA: Here's the what-the-hell commercial for Amazon's new alternate-reality series, The Man In the High Castle, which starts out sounding like a cookie-cutter campaign commercial . . . and then takes just about the darkest turn imaginable. | 
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