The Last GOP Debate Before Super Tuesday

Ken AshfordElection 2016Leave a Comment

That is the tweet a few minutes ago from Trump who apparently cannot spell “lightweight” or “choker”.  And that’s not a typo because earlier, he tweeted this:

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UPDATE: It took a couple hours but Trump deleted the tweets and retweeted them with correct spellings.  Rubio had fun anyway this morning:

Rubio took out his cellphone and began to read Trump’s tweets from stage. Noting that some had misspellings, he cracked that the billionaire businessman “must have hired a foreign worker to do his own tweets.”

So did the dictionary people:

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Spelling errors aside, it isn’t what one could call “presidential”, but with Trump fans, not being presidential is a feature, not a bug.

And no surprise, the entire debate was very fact-free.

Last night’s debate was clearly the most bizarre debate in presidential history.  The three ring circus of Rubio, Trump and Cruz lacked substance and dignity, and both Rubio and Cruz tried to take down Trump, who has been receiving a pass from the candidates and the media for most of the GOP campaign.  Suddenly (and finally) we heard about Trump’s hiring of illegal immigrants and getting fined for it, the fraudulent Trump “University” scheme, and Trump’s balking at turning over his tax returns.

And then, on the sideshow, you had Ben Carson talking strangely about “fruit salad” and God knows what.  Kasich was actually the only one talking and behaving presidential, and it was so out-of-place that even that looked bizarre.

Here’s the debate in three minutes:’

In a normal world, Rubio won the “debate” in that he was the most effective at taking down Trump.  But this is not a normal world politically, and I am sure Trump supporters think Trump walked away with it.

Rubio may have saved his candidacy for post Super-Tuesday.  Which is saying something.  But I think even though he handily did what he needed to do last night, it was probably too little too late.

I think Trump has this nomination, and last night’s debate was a preview of the problems he will have in the general: (1) not conservative enough for GOP base (soft on pro-Israel stance, said good things about Planned Parenthood, etc.); (2) shady business dealings in the past (four bankruptcies, etc); (3)  Kind of a Johnny One Note (the wall, the wall, the wall…) and (4) his shtick gets old.

This isn’t the end of the Trump, but it is the beginning of the end.