Absolutely! As the centrist pundits always tell us potty-mouth libruls, what’s important isn’t the real-world consequences of the policies we propose, but that we’re civil and polite in proposing them.
A few things worth noting here that have been said better elsewhere, but they belong here:
This wasn’t the GOP drawing the line. They’ve been a bystander in their own process lately. FOX News decided how it would be determined who got to go to the grownup table, and who got relegated to the kiddie table. And now Erick the Ugly has disinvited Trump from his party. The GOP proper doesn’t control its own nominating process anymore. (Must be the free market in action!)
Erick the Ugly (seriously, it must be a chore for his mother to have to look at that face) is hardly the guy to get upset about foul language. He’s the guy who called a Supreme Court Justice a “goat fucking child molester” just a few years back, along with assorted other similarly less-than-polite remarks in other situations.
It’s interesting to reflect on asome of the things Trump has said that haven’t outraged conservatives. Apparently insulting everyone from Vietnam vets to breastfeeding moms was no big deal, but an ambiguous insult of a young, blonde FOX News anchor was over the line.
Or maybe not. He’s still leading in the polls, and the GOP establishment still hasn’t quite figured out how to deal with this guy.
For all of the moaning about how Jeb Bush handled himself at the debate, I think he’s taking exactly the right approach. No need for Jeb to take off his suit and thrust himself into that mud pit. Just sit back, let Trump scrum with the others as they run out of cash, and let the $120+ and growing pile of PAC money do the rest. He’ll win the war of attrition.
Trump will continue to be a pain in the rear, but he won’t win the GOP nomination. In fact my hunch is that this whole election thing is nothing more than a marketing ploy to keep his name and brand in the spotlight. Say what one will, but the guy knows what he’s doing when it comes to self-promotion and staying relevant in the entertainment business. He’s PT Barnum on steroids.
But getting back to politics, the bigger danger to the GOP is that the longer Trump stays in the race, the more power that gives him should he decide to go off and run as a 3rd party candidate, which would almost surely hand the next election to Hillary Clinton. Love him or loathe him, the GOP establishment will probably end up having to make some sort of political concessions to him, whatever it is that Trump may went from this.
Moreover, Megyn Kelly and Fox don’t seem to be punishing Trump too harshly. Maybe they’re smiling over the prospect of another Trump debate appearance and the ratings bonanza that might come with it. I mean, why report news…when they can be a part of it?
Is Fox getting any more debates? I understand that CNN has the next one, with the same limitation of 10 podiums. Looks like Carly will be at the adult table, one of the 10 dwarves will be sent to kiddieland.
As much as I hate to be fair to Fox, doesn’t the RNC have a say in this? Do they give the networks carte blanche to make the rules or do they sign off on them? In any event, CNN may have less vested in the outcome than Fox, plus they have the benefit of the criticism of round one. Let’s see how balanced the questions are in round two.
In particular, Ezra’s thoughts on the aftermath are worth thinking about:
I have the feeling that there’s at least the possibility here that this might cause conservatives to start wondering if Fox is really on their side. NBC’s followup poll suggests that Trump wasn’t hurt by the debate or its immediate aftermath, and if his supporters feel Fox News is going after him unfairly, it may be the start of a wedge between Fox and the conservative base.
One thing I wonder is, where has that past-his-prime bloviator, Rush Limbaugh, been in all this? Has he been boosting Trump as he’s been rising, and if so, is he gonna defend him or follow Fox in dumping on him? Even if Rush’s following isn’t what it was, if they take different sides here, it would be an interesting schism in the movement, and provide at least one media outlet where Trump’s supporters would get some reinforcement that they’re on the right side.
Rush has been all about supporting Trump (while insisting that he’s not taking sides, of course) and is probably a good part of why Trump has been so successful despite his earlier dumb remarks. I don’t think this was really a big story yet by Friday morning though so today might be the first you really hear him talk about it.
This is really ridiculous. I think it’s pretty clear he didnt mean it as a reference to menstruation. Why would he reference menstruation at that time? Just because he said “wherever” instead of specifying everyone assumes its innuendo.
How about you stick to criticizing him for having abhorrent views about immigrants. Shouldnt that be enough anyway. Trump is right, political correctness really has gone too far, when the story that he said something that could be misunderstood to be about menstruation gets harsher critique than his actual policy suggestions of how to make live worse for Mexicans.
That’s kind of my take, as well. Trump insults everyone, but he doesn’t do so in a clever way.
To believe he was referring to menstruation means he was doing a pretty sharp rhetorical pirouette mid-sentence. He began the sentence talking about “blood coming out of her eyes,” a metaphorical reference to being really upset. If the second part of the sentence, “blood coming out of her wherever,” referred to menstruation, he was turning the metaphor into a literal description of menstruation and using this suddenly-literal description to refer to a more-or-less metaphorical description of her as hormonal.
He’s not that clever with his insults. Witness this Twitter battle between Trump and a comedy writer, where he gets his ass handed to him.
He’s a tawdry asshole. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he accused a woman of PMSing when she pissed him off. But I wouldn’t expect him to do so with any rhetorical finesse at all, because he isn’t clever enough to do that.
I believe him in this case. His assholish behavior in attacking a debate moderator apears not to mention menstruation.
With a MORE eloquent speaker, I’d believe that. With Trump? I suspect he couldn’t think of other words for facial features that blood would flow out of.
Again, he’s lightning-fast with the insult. He’s not lightning-fast with interesting rhetoric or new vocabulary. She’s lucky he didn’t call her a loser moron loser.
(1) Democrats and the MSM are always trying to make conservatives apologize to cu them own. Look at how they kept trying to make Bush apologize for Iraq!
(2) Megyn Kelly wouldn’t want to be seen as a victim here so stop talking about Trump doing her wrong. She wouldn’t want it that way.
(3) People don’t realize that Trump’s supporters are very angry about government, not pointless stuff like this
(4) Political correctness is so bad that comedians won’t play to college campuses any more. This is just more PC-garbage.
(5) If anything, Obama should apologize to America about how he destroyed the country but how come no one tries to make him do that, huh? HUH?
(6) I left as he was teasing the next segment: Two black women have a YouTube channel and they love Trump!
I don’t agree that Trump was referring to Kelly’s menstruation. However, it seems that many people have convinced themselves that it is the only thing Trump could have meant. Oh well, life goes on.
I haven’t read the thread yet but here’s my thoughts.
Trump didn’t say anything about any vagina. He simply meant to say she was out for blood and gunning for him, which she was.
I totally mis-read the debate and how it would impact Trump. The moderators were clearly gunning for him and I thought he looked like an idiot. I figured he would be finished soon.
Listening to some conservative talk radio the next day, I realized the opposite was true. Poll numbers are now showing the same thing. Despite his absurd debate performance his numbers are up as a result.
Here’s the deal with the Trump supporters: They hate the media. They hate basically all politicians. They hate the whole system. The more a journalist tries to nail Trump with a question the more they will support Trump. The more the media and other candidates bash Trump the more they like him.
The best way to handle Trump is to let the guy hang himself. If they just played it straight at the debate and asked Trump policy questions without being tougher on him than the other candidates he would have likely imploded. Instead they made him look like a hero to his misguided followers.
I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that 20% of people are saying they support this clown. Some of them, many of them, must be trolling the pollsters. I don’t think that many people would actually vote for the guy. He certainly has no hope of winning.
