Lobsters in a Bucket: Party Loses Greenville Debate
As the February 13th Republican debate in Greenville, South Carolina drew to a close, John Kasich called for peace among the Republican party in order to best unite their efforts against Hillary Clinton (a name with which all six candidates had been spitting out with more disdain than Satan, or perhaps Voldemort). And as with the overwhelming majority of reasonable things Kasich says to his political peers, the suggestion was buried underneath the continually chaotic, moderator-stomping debate that characterized the evening.
In many of these debate recap articles, in the interest of brevity, the author or analyst attempts to define a winner of the debate. And though an argument could be made for the newly bold, newly resilient Jeb Bush Jeb(!), it seemed more to me that though no winner was clearly evident, the Republican party lost the debate.
First, the evening began with a clear misunderstanding/misinterpretation of the Constitution. This was partially due to the leading nature of the question: “[Mr. Trump] You’ve said that the President shouldn’t nominate anyone in the rest of his term to replace Justice Scalia. If you were President, and had a chance with 11 months left to go in your term, wouldn’t it be an abdication to conservatives in particular, not to name a conservative justice with the rest of your term?” So the question itself was an unfortunate mix of lack of substance, ‘gotcha’ attitude and general Trump suspicion. Calling out idiotic, nonsensical things on the campaign trail is a noble pursuit, but not a manner of beginning productive, cordial debate. This only became more clear as each candidate sidestepped dealing with the constitutionally unfounded and historically unprecedented remarks regarding the aftermath of Justice Scalia’s death and roughly translating this footwork into care for Republican constituents.
Second, mostly due to structure of the audience, there was A LOT of booing. Regardless of the fact that such behavior is appropriate at sporting events and concerts rather than events which contribute to determining the future of the nation, it was audibly jarring to hear some of the stronger boos. Perhaps the singular best instance of booing was during the exchange of blows between Jeb(!) and the Donald. Jeb was shockingly holding his own, and decisively won the skirmish for two reasons: Trump blamed W. for 9/11 and disparaged the service of veterans of the Iraq War (some of which were present) and also that Jeb then took that opportunity to spin his response both to defend establishment Neoconservatism and his own ‘family values.’
Third, it seemed near unanimous decision among the candidates that Ted Cruz is a liar. This unfortunate label is particularly effective on the Texas senator who is then barred from using eloquent debating in deflection lest he contribute to this perspective. When this happens, Cruz fades into the background. Until he has the opportunity to speak bad Spanish at impeccable speaker Marco Rubio, which was by no means a saving grace.
So with a few moments of clear gaffe, and no particularly striking performance in Greenville, the party as a whole takes a hit. However, with Jeb’s drastic improvement from previous debates, it will be interesting to see if his performance perhaps bumps him from 5th to 4th in the South Carolina Primary on February 20th.
