The great Mark Steyn!
* * *
The debate?
Well, I thought the most interesting moment came when
Donald Trump brought up Eisenhower:
"Let me just tell you that Dwight Eisenhower — a good president, great president, people liked him. 'I Like Ike', right? The expression 'I Like Ike'? - moved a million and a half illegal immigrants out of this country, moved them just beyond the border: They came back. Moved them again, beyond the border: They came back. Then moved them way south. They never came back."
To the establishments of both parties and the media,
Trump is beyond the pale. Yet he keeps, confidently, moving... beyonder. And, as
he does so, he's moving "the pale."
NBC News:
"Sorry Trump, 'Operation Wetback' Was A National Disgrace"
* NONSENSE. OPERATION WETBACK WAS A BLUE-PRINT FOR WHAT
WE COULD - AND SHOULD - BE DOING TODAY.
At this point in the evening, the candidates were arguing
not whether it was disgraceful but whether it was do-able.
* YEP. CHANGE THE PARADIGM!
Trump's response is that not only is it doable, but it's
already been done - by a two-term Republican president.
* YEP! TRU DAT!
Eisenhower, by the way, was the last non-politician to be
drafted as presidential nominee (and "I Like Ike" came from Irving
Berlin's "Call Me Madam"). His sudden reappearance in the GOP pantheon is a fine
example of the difference Trump's made to this primary season; without his
presence in the race, no one would be talking about the practicalities of mass
deportation of illegal aliens.
* DAMN STRAIGHT!
Whether that's a good thing is a matter of opinion.
* YEAH; IT'S A GOOD THING...
But, considering that the erasing of America's borders is
the signature issue that propelled Trump to the top of the polls and has kept
him there for six months, there's been a curious reluctance on the part of all
four debate-hosting networks to get into the subject.
Wouldn't it be appropriate, in the present atmosphere, to
question Marco Rubio on the Gang of Eight business and get a bit of a ding-dong
going between him and Trump? (Apparently not.) So two minutes of "Wetback Revisited" is
apparently the closest we'll get.
It arose in the context of John Kasich and Jeb Bush's
objections to Trump's views on the armies of the undocumented.
* THE INVADERS...
Kasich actually said, "Think about the families.
Think about the children." Then he scoffed, "Come on, folks. We all
know you can't pick them up and ship them back across the border. It's a silly
argument. It is not an adult argument."
Jeb Bush on the other hand thought that even talking
about this stuff was a mistake that would work only to Hillary's benefit,
[whining,] "They're doing high-fives in the Clinton campaign right now
when they hear this."
How pitiful a candidate is Jeb?
This pitiful: He's not even competitive in the
bleeding-heart compassionate establishment squish sub-section of the primary.
Kasich offered sentimentalist pabulum - "Think about
the children" - and elite condescension - "Trump's position isn't adult."
But Jeb basically previewed his general-election fetal position: We can't talk
about this because we have to play this game on the Democrats' terms.
* JEB... BUSH... IS... A... MORON...!!!
So I'm less persuaded than other pundits that Jeb has
staunched the bleeding. He's at four per cent in the most recent Fox and
Quinnipiac polls, so there's a limit to how much more he can bleed anyway. But
did he reverse his fortunes? No.
Jeb Bush and Ben Carson both began the debate with
something to prove - Bush, that he isn't just a legacy pick who's not up to it;
Carson that he wasn't damaged by the sudden forensic attention to his
autobiography. (I confess I don't quite get the good doctor's appeal, but a
mild-mannered man insisting that he attacked his mother with his hammer is
certainly a novel kind of candidacy and there seems to be a market for it. He
shored up his support far better than Jeb did his.)
So after this fourth debate I would expect the Top Two -
Trump and Carson - and the runners-up - Rubio and Cruz - to remain unchanged,
with the bazillion other candidates jostling over the remaining 30% - and
shrinking.
* I THOUGHT PAUL HELPED HIMSELF... BUT... THIS IS A
PERCEPTION GAME - NOT REALITY. UNLESS THE MEDIA TELLS PEOPLE THAT THEY SHOULD
BELIEVE PAUL DID WELL... YOUR AVERAGE SHEEPLE WILL SIMPLY NOT RECOGNIZE THIS
TRUTH. I MEAN PAUL LITERALLY DEMOLISHED RUBIO ON FOREIGN POLICY... BUT IF THE
MEDIA IGNORES THIS - AND ACTUALLY LAUDS RUBIO - THE SHEEPLE WILL GO ALONG WITH
WHAT THEY'RE TOLD.
Nonetheless Rubio didn't have a great night. He gave too
many canned stump-speech bromides, including an interminable riff about how
"his election is about the future." Even that leaden cliché can be
moving and, indeed, persuasive if it's being advanced by a septuagenarian
candidate seeking to shape a world he will never see. But when, like Rubio, you
look twelve years old, it's just a middle-school commencement speech.
(*NOD*)
As for the far ends of the line-up, Rand Paul had his
best night in a while: He represents a genuine strain of Republican sentiment -
libertarian, isolationist - and he argued his corner better than previously.
* THAT CHARGE OF "ISOLATIONISM" IS TOTAL BUNK.
PAUL IS NOT AN ISOLATIONIST. NEVER HAS BEEN. (LIKE ME, STEYN IS NO DOUBT A CRUZ
MAN. UNLIKE ME, STEYN WILL TAILOR HIS MESSAGE SO AS TO SUPPORT HIS FAVORITE CANDIDATE.)
Trump's observation about Carly Fiorina - "Why does
she keep interrupting everybody?" - is generally agreed to have been a huge
mistake on his part. But I dunno...
* TRUMP LOST THE LIVE AUDIENCE, BUT, I BELIEVE HE WON THE
TV AUDIENCE.
Trump's asides are often far more substantive than his
formal answers - and revealing. Last night for example he himself interrupted
Kasich and the moderators to offer a hand to Bush - "Let Jeb speak!"
- because the poor little low-energy fellow was having a hard time getting a
word in.
A week or so back Trump observed that "God-wise"
he was very "mainstream" whereas he didn't know too much about this
"Seventh Day Adventist" business that Ben - "don't get me wrong,
I like Ben, he's a lovely man," etc - had gotten himself mixed up with. It
led to a spate of stories about how Carson believes the pyramids were built by
"the biblical figure Joseph" to store grain in. "The pyramids
are solid," said Trump, who knows construction, "so you can't store
grain in them."
* MY GUESS IS THAT IT'S NOT SO MUCH THAT STEYN
"LOVES" TRUMP AS IT IS THAT HE'S NOT SURE CARSON WOULD BE AS LIKELY
TO WIN THE COMING ELECTION IF NOMINATED. THE LITTLE SHOT ABOVE IS STEYN'S
PRAGMATISM SHOWING.
Jeb is low-energy. Marco is sweaty. Ben is... a little
weird.
Unlike Jeb, Ben saw that these Trumpisms can stick - and
took action.
With Carly, Trump began by saying that if you listen to
her for ten minutes you start to get a headache. Then he moved on to her
"face," which Carly turned around at the second debate and got a
brief little poll bump from. Then the ladies at "The View" started
going on about her face and she turned that into a pretext to elbow her way
onto the show. I don't know whether she can ride this face business through to
Iowa, but again Trump intuited the problem with her: She's well informed,
super-articulate, fact-stuffed to the gills, but the severity thing is an
issue. Rich Lowry seems to enjoy his emasculation fantasies, but the broader
market may be somewhat limited.
Ted Cruz had a strong night without any breakout moments,
unless you count his venture into the immigration debate. It is striking that
no moderators want to bring it up. For many Trump supporters, it's the issue -
because, if you don't have borders, it doesn't matter having a president or a
tax code or a school system or a health-care plan, because they'll all be
overwhelmed.
It's a timelier subject than ever, given the Great
Migrations across the Atlantic.
Since Chancellor Merkel announced she was abolishing
Germany's borders and embracing all these "Syrian"...
(*SNORT*)
..."refugees," for example...
(*SMIRK*)
...Germany country has run out of... diapers? Blankets?
No... pepper spray... (Hmm...)
People always go on about how they want specifics - a
little bit of wonkery, with decimal points in the numbers, references to arcane
bills and obscure acronyms. But after four debates I'd like a little more
generality - a bit of big-picture stuff.
The safe-space shock-troops of the American university,
for example, say nothing good about where this country's headed. Nor does the
deteriorating mortality rate of middle-aged high-school educated white
Americans - whose lives are not only shorter than their compatriots, shorter
than socio-economically similar Canadians, but shorter than pretty much anyone
in the developed world other than Russian men face down in the vodka. That
seems not unconnected to the dissolution of the border and the ceaseless supply
of cheap foreign labor - and the stagnation in wages, and the shriveling of the
employment market to crappy low-paid service jobs about to be rendered obsolete
by technology.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
(*NODDING*)
It is striking that, even in a conservative debate, mass,
remorseless, illegal immigration is discussed almost entirely from the
illegals' point of view. As Kasich advises: Think of the families; think of the
children.
Their families...
Their children...
The families of those they've supplanted are of less
consequence.
* MEANING MY KID AND YOURS! MEANING POOR BLACK KIDS AS WELL...
The argument made by Bush and Kasich against enforcing
the immigration laws is an appeal to moral preening, to "This is not who
we are." But using mass immigration to destroy the lives of your own citizens?
That's exactly who we are.
* AT LEAST THAT'S WHO THEY ARE!
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