#stumptrump

Three days ago, CNBC hosted the Republican Presidential Primary debate. CNBC, as is known, is a subsidiary of NBC. The debate took place in Boulder, Colorado, at the college campus therein. This should have been the Republicans’ finest hour, thanks to demands made by two of its participants, Donald Trump and Ben Carson. But the night was a disaster to the Republicans, an embarassment to CNBC and the university which hosted the debate, and an utter delight for Democrats.

To begin, the fact that Trump and Carson, with the consent and support of the other candidates, likely set themselves up to fail epically when they demanded that the debate time be reduced first to three hours, then two hours (including commercial breaks). Recent debates, while being admittedly long on hours and short on actual substance, at least gave participants equal opportunity to jab and pick at each other while also criticizing President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the likely but by no means certain Democratic nominee for president. Perhaps the debate should’ve went into a third and fourth hour, as it seems that Republicans will only admit their true agendas when they’re on the verge of falling asleep at their podiums. The two-hour Festival of the Deranged, Brain-damaged, and Ignorant never got to the real meat of their rhetoric, choosing instead to waste time with their usual “hate the media, hate Clinton, and hate Obama” drivel.

Secondly, the choice of Boulder for the debate had initially been seen as a chance opportunity to bring independents sitting on the fence closer to choosing to vote Republican. Perhaps it should’ve been seen instead as a bad omen, for Boulder is a typically liberal town in a liberal state that’s rarely voted Republican. Plus, add to this the fact that the campus was majority liberal despite the fact that of the eight board of regents members, four were confirmed conservatives. The last ingredient to this nightmare gone wrong was the lack of seating for the students of the campus. Only 150 seats were made available to college students. If the Republicans wanted to convince the student body that they had the same values, they should’ve considered an off-campus venue with seating that could’ve accomodated everyone from their staff members to the students themselves. 

Lastly, it was the candidates themselves who did the most to damage their own debate Wednesday night, by ignoring or dodging the really tough questions and accusing the CNBC moderators of asking ‘gotcha questions’ in an effort to try to get them to attack each other. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the very next day, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Carly Fiorina went on the attack again, accusing the media of being too pro-liberal and “pro-Hillary Clinton” while again failing to answer the questions Americans want answers to. When criticism began on the candidates’ performance, they attempted to turn it around and make of it an issue with CNBC so serious that the RNC Chairman Reince Priebus has even considered the demands of the candidates to boycott the next debate, moderated by NBC unless certain ‘conditions’ are met. 

With this said, I now present to you my list of the winners and losers of the debate. While this list may be different from anything the reader has, or anything the media has presented, this is based solely on my personal opinion of how the debate went. If this should present a challenge to a conservative reader’s hopes and dreams for their favorite candidate, they may want to stop reading now, otherwise accept your butthurt and go about your day in quiet contemplation (in other words, don’t attack me because I will only laugh at you and dismiss you):

Winners:

Democrats - Yes, I said it. Democrats. Did you really expect that to be any different than previous GOP presidential debates thus far done? The very fact that the candidates either attacked each other as they did last month, or attacked their favorite scapegoat aside from Obama, the media, as they did Wednesday night meant that Democrats could justifiably state that the Republican candidates have no agenda beyond “repeal, repeal, repeal”.

Independents - This will be a rather vague assessment as independents not only won, but also lost. How they won is by simply watching the Republican bloodletting on stage. I’ll explain further down how they also simultaneously lost.

Marco Rubio - Even I have to admit that Wednesday night was Rubio’s night, but not for the reasons you may be thinking (or are you?). His slap-down of his former mentor Jeb Bush was pretty epic, even if he ruined it by criticizing President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton.

CNBC Moderators - Contrary to whatever conservative drivel-sites are saying, CNBC’s moderators came out winners because they perservered even under the withering fire of the candidates onstage, such as Carson, Trump and Cruz. They asked the tough questions and proved how little the Republican candidates actually know and thus set them up to be heavily criticized by late-night shows and comedians.

Losers:

Truthfully, every last Republican candidate on the stage was a loser, but in order to be particular and simply because I can, I will list the four most prominent losers of the night, as well as what they did the next day.

Carly Fiorina - Her so-called baby butchering video which she touted at the last debate as proof of how evil Planned Parenthood was and how ashamed President Obama and Hillary Clinton should be had been proven to be dead-horse material similar to Benghazi. With no leg to stand on, not even the tried and spectacularly false Benghazi conspiracy whipping-boy to whip, Fiorina did the unexpected and horrifying: she became the female version of the third-person talking former Republican senator and presidential candidate from the 1990s, Bob Dole. Evoking Dole, she made the statement that “in your heart of hearts, you know you want a debate between Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina”. It didn’t work for Dole when he went up against Bill Clinton, and it will utterly fail Fiorina (or should I call her Fail-orina now?) against Hillary. The next day, when asked a question about her record at HP, Fiorina dodged the question, then attacked the reporter for asking the question.

Ted Cruz - “The Foreigner once again shoved his head so far up his rear that feces spilled from his mouth when he criticized the CNBC moderators for their “attacks on the candidates such as Trump, Bush, Carson, and Christie”. He used the same voice he used in his other famous (infamous) temper-tantrum over Obamacare which led to the 21-day government shutdown that cost $27 billion dollars (of which HE paid back zero dollars). The next day, he attempted to block a budget deal passed by the Senate, along with his GOP rival and fellow senator, Rand Paul. Cruz also joined the ‘Gotcha Question Club” presided by Dr Ben Carson.

Ben Carson - He was mostly just decoration on the stage, but even when he spoke, he spoke so softly that people just under him had to strain to hear him, not that it would’ve mattered. They were better off listening to a monotone rendition of a Shakespeare play or an Edgar Allan Poe poem. As he shown time and again, every time Carson opened his mouth, stupid poured forth like a waterfall. No wonder his practicioner’s license was revoked by the AMA, Not to mention his picture and interview at a pharmaceutical company who, intentional or not, used his image to endorse their latest product.

Donald Trump - Gone are the days when the bombastic billionaire who could do no wrong because he was a self-funding candidate and not beholden to the Koch teets could be, well, bombastic. Aside from a major jab at John Kasich on stage, Trump was a more tame billionaire than he was a mere two months before. He was the candidate most fact-checked and he didn’t come out smelling like roses (unless they were rotten roses). With his poll numbers slipping and people starting to reconsider their candidate options, its likely that once Trump reached the top, the only way he can go now is down.

Mike Huckabee - Huck played the part of Donald Trump somewhat better than the Donald himself. Nevertheless, Kim Davis’ secret fifth husband was almost not even there at the debates, staying mostly silent except when he perceived a danger emanating from Trump or Carson. Perhaps he could be the next to drop out?

Independents - As stated above, independents won due to the fact they witnessed the Republican bloodletting on stage. Where they also lost is in the fact that many of them left the room with no clearer idea of what the candidates represented than when they arrived to watch. This could bode well for Democrats unless by a very slim to nonexistent miracle, Republicans can recover lost ground.

If I had to name one honorable mention in the loser category, I would have to name Chris Christie. The fact he continued to throw the conversation (if you could call it that) back to the “Hillary is a criminal” ranting typical of the Republicans even after the 11-hour grilling they recently gave her left her smelling sweet as a rose and them scrambling to extricate themselves from their own quagmire means he has no leg to stand on. The fact that he also DISSED fantasy football in so many words should be a major alarm bell for those who love football, whether fantasy or the real thing.