#NeverTrump: Post-Debate Open Thread

GOP Presidential Candidates Debate In DetroitWith impeccable timing, the server went down last night and my blog vanished.  My blog is restored (as you can see), so I thought that I’d do an open thread about last night’s Republican debate.  I managed to watch 2/3 of it, and think that Ace sums up my feelings about Donald Trump last night:

Repudiated the Jeff Sessions Immigration Plan — which was the only reason to support him — by declaring he was “changing” and “softening” it because we need all these highly-skilled people to take our jobs. Then said he would be “flexible” on the wall and deporting illegals and pretty much admitted he’d said as much to the New York Times editorial board, and then, in case you were unsure if you’d heard him right, praised Marco Rubio’s Amnesty plan as “fine” and a good opening bargaining position.

Kept talking about his hand-size and then, just when you thought this was getting weird, brought it back into a more sensible area by assuring the world that his penis size was sufficient for most.

He then added some substance to his foreign policy platform by declaring that he would force American soldiers to break the law and murder children.

On other issues, he was less reassuring.

His answers to questions about Trump University and the budget were somewhat uncomfortable to watch, in much the same way that it is uncomfortable to watch a bus full of circus clowns crash into a school for blind children and even worse the clowns were doing their “Gasoline Comedy” act that day and now all the blind children are on fire and the clowns are trying to squirt water on them with their stupid lapel-flowers but the flowers are just squirting out more gas and the children are crying tears of fire out of their Unseeing Dead Eyes and holy shit a couple of the clowns look like they have boners and they’re chasing around the fiery blind children trying to rub up on them with these bobbling clown-boners with big red bulbs on their tips.

In other words, as Trump would say: Not the best. Really not terrific. A real mess!

Grade: I don’t even know how to even start grading this. As far as a letter grade, I give a red X carved crudely through the face of a rotting pig with a bunch of stripper-glitter tossed on it.

When Trump first appeared on the political scene, I knew generally that I didn’t like the man, an impression going back to the 1980s.  I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, though, because he was cutting through the PC cone of silence that the media invariably erects around Republican presidential candidates, and I thought then (and think now) that Trump performed an important service by doing that. I also appreciated his blunt talk about illegal immigration (which, as Ace noted, he repudiated last night).

With the passage of time, though, I’ve discovered that I cannot, ever, vote for Trump.  My response to him last night was genuine horror.  I was horrified that large numbers of Americans — both Republicans and Democrats — would back a man who has the emotional maturity of an infant and a moral compass that makes Barack Obama look like a decent, honorable man.  I thought American political discourse hit its nadir with Obama’s toilet joke, but learned last night that it can sink further still when a presidential candidate brings his penis size into a debate — and that was just one moment in an endless series of lies, prevarications, insults, interruptions, and other bizarrely narcissistic, disordered behavior.  I was left sickened.

On November 8, 2016, I’m writing in Ted Cruz’s name.  Last night, he once again distinguished himself as the only true conservative in the game.  I’d gladly see him paired with Rubio as his running mate, because I think the latter has such strong foreign policy chops that he’d be a big advantage on the ticket.

(And P.S., to those Jews who think he has Israel’s back, I doubt it.  Even the fact that his daughter converted doesn’t convince me.  He may not be an antisemite, but he’s certainly not a stable friend of Israel.  I echo everything Jonathan Tobin says about Trump and Israel.)