Trump, the Pope, an the incompetence of the campaigns.

Every day is something new and horrible coming out of the GOP primary, today Donald Trump decided he had a beef with Pope Francis over Francis' comments about walls and their relationship to Christianity. Turns out he isn't a fan, metaphorically or otherwise. Trump, currently courting the evangelical vote in South Carolina, was less than pleased, this is not particularly new or interesting, save for the target, I suspect attacking the pope might hurt him a bit come the general election, but who the fuck knows anymore.

What is interesting is the complete incompetence of Trumps competitors, they are given the perfect opportunity to go after Trump based on religion, given to them by perhaps the only man in the world who is the final authority on what is, or isn't Christian, and they are blowing it! To a man they are lining up behind Trump and against the Pope. It boggles the mind, now being anti-Catholic isn't going to hurt much in the American south, dominated as it is by various evangelical sects, but even so, if Trump is vulnerable anywhere it is on religious grounds, and they basically ignore it, Ted Cruz literally wants to turn the country into a freakish theocracy but he won't hit Trump on his (lack of) religious cred?

For the record, I like Pope Francis, he's a breath of fresh air into a church that desperately needs an image update, is he perfect? Lord no not at all, most recently he disappointed me with his visit with Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, the church in Russia has been working very closely with the government itself, and is a major player in how Russian anti-homosexual policy is accepted by the public, among other unsavory things, for his part Francis also keeps reinforcing existing church doctrine on homosexuality, birth control, and women in the church so he could be a lot better to be sure. But compared to Emperor Palpatine before him he is the nicest and most progressive guy in the world, and I don't expect the church to change overnight.

But anyway, the point is in a showdown between Trump and the pope I would expect the candidates to take on opportunity when given to them. I know and accept that any one of the nearly twenty people who have been in the race would have been considered too over the top evil for a James Bond villain, but how can they be so bad at it? How can JEB!, who of everybody in the race should have the most tightly controlled image, have been allowed to post a picture of a Belgian pistol with his name engraved on it to Twitter with the caption "America"? How can Marco Rubio be so unprepared for questions that he recites his stump speech three times in two minutes during a debate, against an attack that he knew was coming? How can Ben Carson even still be in the race?

It isn't even the candidates, we all know the candidates are horrible, but when you have a horrible candidate you surround them with advisers and people responsible for image control, Ronald Reagon sure as hell wouldn't have been elected if he had to write his own speeches, or do his own research, so why are these guys allowed to go out in public without handlers? An argument against money in politics is that the rich get too much influence over the candidates, but why aren't they using their influence to get any competency into their campaigns? Hell all it take is one person with veto power over their social media posts and probably half the ready made attacks against them wouldn't be able to happen.

Donald Trump is by far the most competent campaigner in the race, he also has literally decades of experience manipulating the media and the ability to lie with a straight face, but he wouldn't be running rings around the campaigns if they didn't let him.

Trump is un-electable, so I can't really have a problem with this turn of events, and to be honest it is a positive that despite all the money and contacts none of these yahoos can apparently dress themselves, but it just baffles me to see how dumb evil is sometimes.