Not Exactly Reminiscent of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates
….but right on brand
Last night’s Republican Presidential Debate was…a middle school food fight.
Lots of cross-talk, talking over each other and the moderators, and name-calling…without any substance at all. It was painful (and ear-splitting) to watch.
However, their antics, tactics and avoidance of any substance was right on brand with today’s GOP.
On brand with Majorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert heckling the president’s State of the Union speech; in character with Greene’s harassment of Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg when he was advocating for safer gun laws; in character with with Boebert’s expulsion from a musical in Denver; and on brand with Matt Gaetz’s mocking of COVID precautions in his gas mask.
More substantively, in character for a party that is about to shut down the government (yet AGAIN) because of a few nihilists in their ranks, and a Speaker who is unwilling to cut a deal that would bring togetyher the more reasonable Republican House members (yes, there are some, in purple districts mostly) with Democrats to pass a compromise. As the Rs in the Senate did.
In character for a cast of characters on the debate stage who were willing to criticize Trump’s failure to appear, but unwilling to call out and condemn his sedition, criminality, and careless treatment – and stealing of – state secrets. Closest they came was Nikki Haley’s criticism of Trump’s budget deficits.
No mention of Trump’s apparent suggestion that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (General Mark Milley) be tried for treason (and face a penalty of death) because of his actions to reassure China that a deranged Trump would be restrained from a “wag-the-dog” attack to stay in power after his electoral defeat and January 6 insurrection. Or his earlier exhortation “to suspend the Constitution” to reinstate him as President.
Apparently they’re OK with that. In the previous debate they were falling over each other suggesting they’d consider pardons for Trump and his J-6’ers.
One proposal particularly stuck in my craw…Mike Pence (a/k/a, “the White Rat”) said he is
“sick and tired of the mass shootings happening in the United States of America…And if I’m president of the United States, I’m going to go to the Congress of the United States, and we’re going to pass a federal expedited death penalty for anyone involved in a mass shooting, so they will meet their fate in months, not years.”
This is his solution to America’s gun problem. Not air-tight background checks, not red-flag laws, not outlawing military-style weapons for civilians or limited magazine capacity, not even age limits to purchase these guns. Just quick execution of perpetrators.
Stop and think about that; will quick execution prevent the mass casualties? No, not unless you believe it will be a deterrent. But it won’t be. How many of these mass shooters survive the event? Most are killed by law enforcement or take their own lives. So we’ll have retribution, but not prevention. Does that satisfy you?
Pence and his stage-mates also railed against the bugaboo of transgender care. Is this really a subject for a presidential debate? Really a widespread problem? Something that anyone other than those souls seeking their gender identity and the bigots hounding them care about? Or just another in a long line of “wedge issues” out of the Lee Atwater/Paul Manafort/Roger Stone/ Carl Rove playbook?
We deserve better. The GOP keeps showing us they won’t be providing it.
As always, thanks for reading. Please feel free to comment, share this post with friends, and think about what YOU can do to promote a healthy, fact-based democracy