There were moments during the third Republican primary debate on Wednesday night when you could close your eyes, listen to what the candidates were saying and project yourself either direction in time. It sounded like the first debate and the second, and it will sound like the fourth and the 12th. We are the ghosts who keep doing the same things over and over because they don’t know that they’re dead.
Not-a-real-Jeb Bush is dead. Perhaps he knows. There is a kind of empty despair at the back of the eyes in photographs of the man now. Events have changed around him in a shattering and profound way for the scion of a political dynasty, a Copernican shift that has so reordered the nature of things as to destroy his cosmology. He’s losing to a reality TV host, a guy who wrote a book that reads like an eighth grader rephrasing the World Book Encyclopedia CD-ROM entry on the United States constitution and the callow young man he once mentored.
That young man, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, got the best of Jeb at the debate. After a recent Washington Post article describing Rubio as having given up on the Senate (I hate doing the work of governance, make me president!), Jeb called out Rubio’s absenteeism in that legislative body and suggested he let someone else do a job whose limited obligations he described as “a French work week”.
But Rubio confidently concern-trolled Jeb in reply, saying – almost pityingly – “Someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you.” The implication was devastating: I’m sorry you’re embarrassing yourself, but I won’t do the same by punching down. Even what could have been high points for Jeb, turned to dust in his hands. The CNBC moderators asked Jeb about regulating daily fantasy sports — something none of the Republican candidates can fully embrace because it’s a form of market regulation, though the companies face investigations into whether they are gambling and accusations of insider trading .
In response, Jeb first said that he’s 7-0 in his fantasy league. (With Ryan Tannehill as his starting quarterback! If that’s true, that’s extraordinary.) But Jeb allowed that he would be open to investigating potential corruption in daily fantasy sports, though preferably at the state level, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie let him have it.
“We have [Daesh, or the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] and Al Qaida attacking us and we’re talking about fantasy football?” Christie scoffed, drawing applause. It was a winning argument with the crowd.
Bush had no reply to Christie, which is frankly pathetic. “We have bigger problems, like [Daesh]!” is never a good argument, because it justifies almost any action. If “[Daesh] exists” is a sufficient argument to stop talking about literally any other policy, any Democrat could invalidate the entire Republican Party platform. We need school vouchers! Why? Daesh exists. We need tax reform? Why? Daesh exists. We need to audit the Fed, end the estate tax, privatise social security, repeal Obamacare and stop Planned Parenthood? Why? Daesh exists.
The easy question that Jeb never asked Christie was: “Governor, can you walk and chew gum at the same time?” All Jeb had to do was suggest that, if America is as great as he believes it is and everyone else says it is, then the US is capable of defeating Daesh and making sure that the little guy who wants to play fantasy sports isn’t affected.
But he either lacked the volition or the inspiration, and so another practical statement of his went down to jeering, with the candidate himself seeming to concede the point with his silence.
But if Jeb led himself to the gallows onstage, he at least had company. At best, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s night was a long stretch of silence punctuated only briefly by irrelevancy. For much of the debate, it was tempting to see if the CNBC moderators would ask him to periodically rap his knuckles on the podium to remind everyone that he’s alive.
During the long stretches that everyone ignored Paul, Texas Senator Ted Cruz co-opted two of Paul’s favourite talking points by calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve and a return to the gold standard — which have long been favourite demands of the Ron/Rand Paul movement. Leaving aside the fact that a return to the gold standard is basically insane, it’s telling that Cruz feels like he can cannibalise the leftovers of the Paul movement.
Cruz was probably inspired to co-opt the Paul family platform by reports that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and other Kentucky Republicans are urging Paul to abandon his campaign to make sure he doesn’t lose his Senate reelection bid. Then again, just watching Paul in each of the debates so far would lead anyone to conclude that someone else should put his followers to good use, since he doesn’t seem like he wants to.
The highlight of Paul’s night was him telling everyone to tune in tomorrow to watch him bloviating in the Senate over the debt ceiling and negative liberty, sound money, the founding fathers, some other things his dad told him about, whatever.
Both Paul and Bush should just drop out of the race, but there’s no reason to expect that they will, because dropping out would be the most practical outcome. If the Republican primary process were governed by the rigours of making any sense, no part of it as currently constructed would exist. Up is down, high is low, water is dry, we wear shoes on our feet, hamburgers eat people and everyone can and will run for president forever.
With Jeb, there’s some small reason to keep going even if he can’t win. Overlooking the fact that it has to gnaw at Jeb’s ambition to forsake the presidency after his brother had the job, a lot of people have sunk a lot of money into Jeb! 2016. Those people probably want a return on their investment, and Jeb! probably feels some obligation to give them a little effort for the cash. Meanwhile, Paul has given every indication over the span of his career that there is no privilege of which he believes himself undeserving, so the process of matching his self-abnegation to the American people’s massive disinterest cannot happen overnight.
They will keep running, because they can, because nobody will tell them to stop, and because they don’t really know, in their heart of hearts, that it’s over and has been since the first debate.
And so they will go on, as we all must, heedless of the consequences, locked into a struggle unbounded by time or sanity, doomed to another five months of the same arguments, the same peevishness, the same victimisation, the same existential threats, the same unreflective boasting, the same rage, the same, the same, the same. Americans have never had so much of the same for so long and it will never leave.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
