After
three of the dumbest months in modern American political history, something kind
of wonderful happened Wednesday night at the Reagan Library: Carly Fiorina took
a machete to the Donald Trump balloon. By treating him more like an
embarrassing if beloved house pet than a serious competitor, Fiorina, Rand Paul,
and even Ben Carson put The Donald on his heels, leaving him with little more
misfired put-downs and bizarro anti-vaccine riffs. For whole stretches of a
time, the oxygen-hog was silent, leaving the candidates to talk about—of all
things!—ideas. So that’s the good news. The bad news? Well, the
ideas. Did you know that ISIS was on the verge of toppling Western
Civilization? That immigration has destroyed us as a country? That the military
has been cut down so brutally that the Marines can barely tie their own shoes
anymore? These surreal assertions and more were treated as fact by wide swaths
of the GOP field.
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