The first Republican Primary debate

So campaign season has officially begun, with the first event taking place in the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.

It was actually two events, one early in the day and on later, the late one was the main event, and consisted of the top ten candidates ranked by the average of the five most recent major polls, the early one was the bottom seven, at what I refer to as the Kiddie Table.

First reactions, man I had fun watching this, there is not a single convincing orator among either group, Carli Fiorina, the ex-CEO of Hewlett Packard came the closest to displaying the kind of conviction I would expect from a public speaker during the Kiddie Table debate, and, sadly, Donald Trump himself looked like the man best prepared for the big stage.

The kiddie table debate was largely kind of dull, I hit the highlights on Facebook earlier, but can't actually remember anything about it without referring back....
Okay after referring to my notes, it seems they are all proud of doing the most horrible, things like defunding Planned Parenthood, kicking thousands of people off the welfare and food stamp programs, and cutting jobs in government.
Rick Santorum seems to think PP is pushing partial birth abortion specifically to sell fetus organs.
Carli Fiorina tells us that progressives are the true bigots, because we apparently believe that some people are better than others, and those better people should help everyone else, while conservatives believe that everyone is equal, an nobody should help anyone. That is basically a direct quote.
Everyone wants to turn the Middle East into glass.

The main event was somewhat more exciting, it started off with the moderators asking who on stage would pledge to support the eventual nominee and not run against him, this was basically directed at Trump, and sure enough he refused to pledge, saying he would run as a third party candidate if need be, he did however specify that if nominated, he would run as a Republican, so we got off to a good start.

Trump and Rand Paul were at each others throats for the first half of the debate, then Paul got into a shouting match with Chris Christie, which was hilarious.
Backing up a bit, Trump responded to accusations of misogyny with a fat joke directed at Rosie O'Donnel, admitted that he thought that about a lot of women, then attacked the moderator directly accusing her of treating him unfairly.

Trump was amazing, the moderator tossed the nastiest questions at him, and he simply shrugged it all off, doubling down on every position he was called out on, and topping it off by accusing all politicians of having been bought by their donors, including those on stage with him tonight, and since he had donated to so many politicians, he basically owned them now, it was fantastic.

Meanwhile I am not sure why Ohio Governor John Kasich is a Republican, the policies he described having are pretty left of the current party, he is quite dull though, possibly the least evil person on stage though.

Ben Carson, being the only black person on stage, was not allowed to speak much, when he did he complained about not being able to speak, dodged question about experience, and advocated a tithing system for our tax code. Oh, he also wants to bring back "enhanced interrogation" but not to tell our enemies we are doing it.

Chris Christie and Scott Walker both spent a lot of time talking about how unpopular they are in their home states, and how that is somehow a good thing. Christie distinguished himself by saying that anyone who doesn't vote for security bills that infringe on civil liberties should be prosecuted, so that is new.

JEB was so boring, his only notable contribution was a slightly sane look at immigration reform, he doesn't seem to actually want to kick everyone out! He ain't winning any votes with that attitude.

Rubio was also boring, repeatedly bringing up his Cuban-American background for reasons I can't quite explain, and sticking to the party platform pretty much exclusively.

Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee competed for the worst person on stage award, reviling everything from Planned Parenthood, to immigrants, to everyone in the Middle East, including allies but not including Israel, to gays in the military, I think Cruz won the contest by a nose, but I really hate that man so I can't say for sure.

Rand Paul definitely showed his Libertarian roots, advocating a cut to foreign aid and not pushing as hard as the others for things like overturning the ban on gay marriage, he was also not too thrilled to talk about his relationship with God it seems.

I give the win to Trump tonight, the theme of the evening was "throw everything at Donal and see what sticks" but nothing did, or perhaps everything did, the man is the living Id of the Republican party, he holds their worst views up to the light and says "this is me, what are you going to do about it?" He has no shame and that is really hard to attack.

Runner up honors to the moderators, who pushed some very hardball questions, and pressed for answers almost half the time when they were inevitably dodged, much better than I expected from Fox News.

Looking forward to the next one, you guys don't even know.