Coop Scoop: Slender Takeaways from Tonight's Romper Room Debate

Nikki Haley comes off as Dan Quayle in a Skirt

September 27, 2023

By Marc Cooper

About halfway through the prime-time Fox horror show, known as The Second Republican Presidential Debate, I realized that I was leaning toward Donald J Trump as my favorite.  All for a simple reason.  He was not there and therefore I did not have to hear a word from him. That was great!

Actually, it was a great relief as the other seven mental midgets on stage, plus the three other mental deficients who made up the moderator panel, made my stomach turn, mys eye roll, my brain hurt, and my ears bleed.

Yes, it’s a long and comfortable tradition for those of us who deplore the MAGATs to write after each one of these debates that it was impossible to listen to if not to actually watch for more than a few minutes.  That’s usually somewhat of an overstatement.  As I usually watch carefully and dissect everything that happened. But not in this case. Not tonight. No way.  This debacle was truly insupportable and unintelligible. There was no narrative. No logic. No serious policy discussion.  Just a bunch of hyped up clowns fighting for GodKnowsWhat in this useless and already decided primary.

I did take notes for the first hour to be used in this wrap up but I have decided to ignore them as they are irrelevant. I would argue that there was virtually nothing serious, mature, worthy of analysis or interpretation that was said. The whole evening was pointless other than further confirm that Trump remains the favorite for the Republicans.

Trump was 40 points ahead of these yo-yo’s this morning. And he will be 40 points ahead still tomorrow morning.  A few very minor potshots were taken at Trump by his putative rivals but they really added up to, um, less than nothing.

The one issue they all agreed upon was that Americans should be afraid, very afraid, actually scared to death. The whole American Carnage theme was ever present at least as s leitmotif during the entire event.  The majority of emotion during the debate was spilled over one encomium after another for our glorious police, police, police, police and, oh yeah, the wonderful guys of the Border Patrol.

More words were spent trying to scare the piss out of the audience over the supposed ongoing invasion at the southern border.  Apparently it is more dangerous and volatile tha, say, the Polish border in September 1939.

So we have a lot to look forward to if these geniuses come back into power. Chris Christie didn’t do much to cut up Trump but he did a bang up job decrying the threat that immigrants now pose to America and our way of life. Denying that the border was a humanitarian crisis, Cristie ruled the mess to be only a law enforcement issue.  Vivek IamTrulySwarmy said he would abolish birthright citizenship (after he blows up the Department of Education). But wait… DeSantis will go a step farther. He vowed repeatedly he would deploy the US military against the cartels directly suggesting he would take war on drugs into Mexico itself.  How does he think that would work out?

The media of course has been focused on Nikki Haley who they have decided is the Only Real Challenger to Trump because, after all, after the last debate her poll numbers skyrocketed into the high single digits (where it still hover today).  She definitely has a somewhat softer tone than Trump but make no mistake, Nikki is not-so-smart run-of-the-mill right wing Republican reactionary whose policies differ very little if it all from her fascist adjacent colleagues standing next to her.  She said she also supports sending “special forces” (that means SEALS, Green Berets and CIA ops) into Mexico to “take out” the cartels. She also swooned over more fracking and overshore drilling.  And she spent a lot of time attacking the others from the right. Nikki Haley is Dan Quayle in a skirt. Nothing more.

Nikki did have the best one liner… one that I can actually relate to. “The more you talk,” she said sharply to Vivek,” the dumber I feel I’m getting.”

Mike Pence at least did not scream and yell as much as the others.  He very naturally had nothing of interest to say except…except when asked what he would do about the epidemic of gun violence.  He was ready for that question and quickly whipped out his pre-canned answer. The problem, he explained, is that the courts are too slow and too liberal and that the only way to end gun violence was to quickly execute any mass shooter who is arrested. Because almost all most mass shooters are generally seeking “suicide by cop”I’m not sure Pence’s answer made any sense at all. 

Abortion? Um, let’s not talk about that. As soon as the issue was raised, the pack ran like greyhounds after a rabbit, except in the opposite direction. When DeSantis was pushed on his 6 week ban he avoided any answer and instead started ragging on Trump for not showing up. Ok.  Comrade Cristie, however, took the bait and beat his chest over how he defunded Planned Parenthood 14 different times in New Jersey and somewhow turned the issue into something about Fentanyl.  He did not specify who many women, in turn, were denied cancer care because of those shut downs PP clinics.

I suppose I should say something about media darling, Senator Tim Scott. Not so easy to as he is one more guy with nothing much to say.  But I will credit him as the only candidate who can smile and is probably the only one among them that would not scare a room full of small children if he were to walk in on them. That said, make no mistake. Scott is an evangelical reactionary that must be transparent once he takes a dump and gets off the toilet seat. He praised Ronald Reagan for firing striking air trffic controllers and said he would do the same with the auto workers.

The only fun I had in watching as far as I did was how at a moment when 71% of the American people are supporting striking auto workers, all of the candidates railed and fulminated against the UAW who they blamed, along with Joe Biden, for most all of America’s problems. Oh, yeah, the teachers union too…another Enemy of America!

You might say this is a stupid political strategy as it will not play well in the general election. But, hey, what makes you think any of these pathetic losers who have spent the last 8 years splashing around in Donald Trump’s gold plated toilet bowl, are ever gonna be in the general election?  Not unless Trump literally keels over dead before the RNC next year as none of them have a chance in hell in beating him for the nomination.

I could say so so so so much more but why bother?  After a few more months these political Lilliputians will disappear completely from the political stage (though maybe Trump will pick Nikki for VP) of if he, God Forbid, should be re-elected I suspect we will see Vivek as another possible VP or Secretary of Commerce (actually I think he is best cut out to be a special attraction along with the bearded lady at some God-forsaken rural Kansas freak show). Listening to him screech and lie and interrupt made me long for a real statesman like, er, Ronald Reagan?

Maybe, something more substantial about this sad excuse for political theater will occur to me in the next day or two, but I doubt it. This was a tiny if not microscopic affair that simply confirmed that today’s crop of MAGA polls are more like cantankerous teens at a student government meeting rather than pretenders to the mantle of Commander-in-Chief.

Remember this is a busy week. On Thursday we get to see the first GOP sponsored congressional impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden making tonight’s little debate even smaller if not wholly forgettable. 

Maybe they will even come up with a justification for such a ridiculous move  to impeach Biden but I wouldn’t hold my breath.  But we will have to hurry to write anything about that because on Satuday, the government is going to shut down.  And it is going to do si because Kevin McCarthy would rather cling to his empty job than make sure the US government remains funded.

Friends, we are in a world of trouble.  If you are sitting anywhere near a big red panic button, you might consider giving it a good strong push.

P.S. Nothing, not a word, was said about Donald Trump’s current legal trouble even though they couldn’t stop talking about law and order. Of course. ++

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