Debate shocker

[Sandy]

Just when you think that the circus that the GOP primary has become couldn't be any more entertaining, along comes Donald Trump. Seems like he was a bit angry about the audience being stacked with establishment Republicans, and not his adoring fans. So he opens up and blasts away. The Republicans are always harping about political correctness, and how "being honest" on certain topics raises accusations of racism or bigotry. But they won't put up with an honest evaluation of the massive failures of W's administration. So Trump unloads on Bush's failure to prevent 9-11 as evidence that he didn't keep the country safe, on attacking the wrong country in retaliation, upsetting the balance of power and opening the door to ISIS.

Reading campaign emails from the RNC, the desperation has been there for a long time, but now some of the candidates themselves, Rubio, and Kasich this time around, are sounding the alarm bells. Rubio was pretty sharp about the effect of all of this on the election, saying that they need to get their act together before its too late. I think it already is. The Reagan Revolution is over, the GOP only wins in off years when the turnout is low, and this campaign is a disaster. And they keep shooting themselves in the foot.

[Tim Bonney]

Agreed Sandy. Trump was basically telling the world that the last GOP President did a bad job. So now, why elect another one?

I think Trump right now is as dangerous to the GOP as he is to the Democrats.

[Lou]

It's irony of the highest order that Trump is able to leverage his outrageous statements to achieve front-runner status in a presidential campaign, while if I were to say some of the same things in my county courthouse I'd probably be disqualified from jury service.

What a world we live in.

[Dave Roberts]

It will be interesting to see how the Trump base reacts to George W on the campaign trail for Jeb.

[Neil Heath]

I saw a Facebook meme that described the last debate this way: "All of them agreed they were liars, and then they fought about who was the biggest liar."

[Stephen Fox]

Trump is a distraction to the larger issue for Baptists which is Ted Cruz. Last night on Fox in a Town Hall Cruz was asked by a woman in Columbia SC if he favored a "Theocracy". He said know but the David Barton PAC entangled with Pressler would suggest otherwise. Also the influence of Ed Young and James Deloach is yet to be explored framed in the Thomas Powers review of Wuthnow's Rough Country. That's where all the carnival around Trump has been a Distraction

[Sandy]

It's probably just as much of a shock today to realize that, in spite of the all out attack on Jeb Bush, Trump won the primary, though 70% of the voters chose another candidate. Bush, who was supposed to be in his territory, in a place where W and HW allegedly had a lot of support, and where Mom, Bro. W and Sister-in-law made appearances for him, got a little over 7%. If those facebook memes with W's smiling face on them, waving, and asking "Do you miss me yet?" are still circulating, the answer from most Republicans seems to be, "Nah."

The GOP has a quirky system to assign delegates. In SC, it is by congressional district, which worked out to give a guy who got a little over 30% of the vote, almost all of the delegates. It's similar to the way the GOP wants to assign congressmen, too. That means that 7 out of 10 South Carolina Republicans are disenfranchised in their party's nomination process. So the candidate who won the population centers gets two delegates.

Surprising as well that Carson and Kasich are still in. They still have money to spend, I guess.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Sandy]

I think the bottom line for Jeb is that his last name was Bush, and both of the other two family members who held the office left it at the low end of the job approval spectrum, without any significant achievement, and with some major failures and questions of competence hanging over their head. Jeb doesn't have the campaign personality of either his father or his brother. It's just shocking that the opinion of the extremist right, which is a majority of Republican voters in South Carolina, has shifted so quickly. Of course, South Carolina is also one of those places where the culture allows for people of prominence and means to cut in line and grab off more than they earn, and where there's a lot of reticent bigotry that makes it easier for candidates like Trump, who know how to play those cards, to appeal to a niche. Jeb's getting 7%, however, as the candidate most closely identified with the GOP establishment, is a sign that the Reagan Revolution, with its "less government is better" mantra, and its trickle down economic theories, is dead and buried.

It will take at least one election cycle for this to shake out. The battle for the Democratic nomination will be like the one in 2008, good for the winner. I hear a few Democrats say they wish Biden had tossed his hat in the ring, but not much of that. The politicizing of both Benghazi, and the email issue, is turning out to be a benefit to Hillary, not a detriment, particularly among independent voters, who turned out for her in pretty good numbers in Nevada. The Democrats, as represented by Sanders and Clinton, are not that far apart on most every issue, as it was in 2008, and will be far easier to unite than the Republicans, who will either be left with Donald Trump trying to pick up the pieces of the establishment that he blew up and discredited, or with an establishment candidate like Rubio trying to figure out how to get Trump's supporters, who will be even angrier and more disappointed if he doesn't win, to vote for him.