The Republican debate on Sept. 16 was a sorry sight of hypocrisy and demagoguery. The only candidates that showed any sense of intelligence or dignity were Rand Paul and George Pataki, staking out their libertarian and liberal Republican positions, respectively. Rand Paul stated that the invasion of Iraq made things even worse and Pataki stating that we should follow laws on which the Supreme Court has ruled. All the other candidates tried to outdo each other in how much they would beef up the military and bomb the hell out of anyone who doesn't "respect" us. At one point the question was raised about birthright -- should everyone born here be a citizen -- since few other countries allow this, but no one said we should have single-payer healthcare because everyone else does! Obamacare received much criticism but no one suggested an alternative that would help those without health insurance. (My own feeling is that we will have single-payer healthcare eventually, especially now that Medicare is generally accepted.)
Medicare was originally demonized as "socialized medicine" and it was mordantly amusing to hear Bobby Jindal rail against the Democrats because they had a "socialist" running for President, making it sound like something akin to a child molester. Most of the other candidates repeatedly referred to themselves as conservatives, with Obama and Hilary Clinton as "left-wingers." And the specter of communism was not far away, as references were made to Putin backing Syria as a way of re-establishing "the evil empire." Rick Santorum was the only one attempting to establish himself as a populist, without using that word (most of the audience would probably not know the term), supporting an increased minimum wage and concern for the working class. Scott Walker of the Progressive state of Wisconsin said he thought increasing the minimum age was not the answer, but rather more education to allow people to get better jobs. That was okay as far as it went, except that Walker had engineered a drastic reduction in the budget for the University of Wisconsin. Education was only mentioned once, with a passing reference to "the common core," otherwise it was totally absent from the debate, and of course no one even mentioned Obama's plan to make community college free. Also not mentioned, and I blame this on the CNN softball questioning, were labor unions. Many of the candidates have bragged about their union-busting successes , though the evidence strongly indicates a relationship between the decline in unions and stagnant salaries, all those suffering people living, as Marco Rubio put it, " from paycheck to paycheck." No one had any suggestions for what could be done about this.
I was also amused that most of the candidates introduced themselves by making reference to their long marriages and their children, probably an indirect attack on Trump and his multiple wives. The old Republican term "family values" was never mentioned. There was also no mention of the controversial National Endowment for the Arts and no mention of literature, music, painting, dance, etc.
It was interesting, and probably a coincidence, that PBS broadcast its documentary "Walt Disney" on the two days before the most recent debate. Neil Genzlinger mentioned, in his review in The New York Times, Disney's "staid, white-washed view of America" (the film was written by Mark Zwonitzer and directed by Sarah Colt). The Republican candidates seem to want such a world, which those of us who grew up in small towns know never existed and never will. Though Vietnam was not mentioned in the debate it seems that many people did not learn anything from that destructive war. Rand Paul gets credit for at least saying that war is a last resort, not a first, and should be declared by Congress and not the President.
