Voices of the Crust Do What They Do Best re the Republican Debate
7th August 2015
Richard Fernandez discover that his bullshit detector has gone off.
From them the reader might understandably conclude that the debate was a food fight among a random collection of zany, or slightly demented mental midgets. That the whole thing is a waste of time, like a cartoon feature before the real show featuring titans of progress like Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. That’s when the “reality based community” comes out to judge the real horse show.
…
The media’s assessment is in its way a restatement of one of Fiorina’s main accusations: the political class has stopped caring about voters for a long time and become its own self-licking ice cream cone. The entire debate, including its subplots — Trump vs Kelly, Fiorina vs the rest — is about the dissatisfaction of the electorate with the Washington political elite. But who cares because the debate and all the words in it were a “play within a play”, a drama acted out inside a larger drama.
…
The last world you wake up in is big money, giant lobbies, demographic blocs and voter groups clamoring to get paid off. That is the ultimate ground of political reality; that’s real. That’s why, despite their complete mediocrity, the only “serious candidates” on either side are Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton because they know, as the media knows, where everything finally goes.
August 7th, 2015 at 09:10
That was a debate? From the comportment of the “moderators” and the crowd, I thought it was a WWE Wrestlemania event.
I thought the exchange between Christie and Paul was entertaining. Otherwise, it was the same old bombast, obfuscation, self-aggrandizement that most of these debates have been for the last twenty years or so. At least Trump, as the Chief Clown in the car, was refreshing–he didn’t cavil to show himself for the blustering, boorish bully he is. He’s disgusting, but at least he’s honest.