The truth is that the whole G.O.P. seems stuck in a time loop, saying and doing the same things over and over.
--Paul Krugman, NY Times, Feb. 8, 2016
Just when one thinks that the Republicans can't sink lower, they do. In this particular debate Chris Christie and Donald Trump played bullies, Rubio, Bush and the sleepy Carson were bullied, and Kasich tried to have everyone get along, even if it meant sometimes getting along with Democrats in order to accomplish something (what a concept!). To a certain extent I felt sorry for Rubio, as he was bullied and taunted by Christie. On the other hand, what Rubio kept saying made no sense, criticizing Obama because Obama "wants us to be like other countries." And what other countries does Rubio not want to be like, the ones that have single-payer healthcare, extensive parental leave, subsidized daycare, decent unemployment insurance? He and the other candidates want us to be America, which takes no crap from anyone, where if one is poor it's one's own fault, where the rich get richer and the poor poorer and rugged individualism reigns. Trump, however, thinks the problem is that Obama doesn't know what he is doing (the debaters were divided on this).
The conceptual difficulty with the Republican debates is that there is no debating going on: everyone is opposed to abortion (some would make exceptions for cases of rape and incest) but no one plans to do anything about it; if they even dared to mention making Supreme Court appointments that would change Roe v. Wade they know it would not help their election; everyone is opposed to Obamacare but offers little or nothing to replace it (Cruz's suggestions are risible and Carson's are incomprehensible); everyone wants to build a wall to keep out both immigrants and drugs (the competition seems to be about how big the wall will be and how to pay for it); everyone wants a bigger military than the next guy, though none of the candidates ever served in the military (Rubio bragged that his brother had!)
Christie did have at least one genuine accomplishment to brag about, other than having been a federal prosecutor, and that was putting first-time, non-violent drug offenders in rehab instead of jail. Otherwise the governors bragged about how much they lowered taxes and how many jobs had been created during their terms. Once again the only mention of unions, which had once been instrumental in increasing wages, was Chris Christie bragging about how he had busted the teachers' union. Cruz started using the term "socialized medicine" once again, apparently to scare people, and said (without presenting any evidence) that it didn't work. Most of the candidates, though, seemed to support socialized medicine for veterans and no Republican has criticized socialized medicine for senior citizens.
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