I’m looking forward to the debate tonight.
Trump seems to be untouchable and I expect Carly to do well.
I expected more from Christie last time. I’m probably wrong again, but I think he may do well tonight.
What do you guys think?
Trump will say at least one thing that many people will find to be outrageous (or tweet something outrageous after the debate). He’ll also manage to answer questions posed to him without actually saying anything of substance. It won’t matter one whit to his supporters.
Apart from the usual Trump circus, the focus will be on Fiorina and Carson - the former because she’s pushed her way up to the big table and the latter because he’s currently giving Trump a run for his money in the polls.
Nobody will care about the rest unless they say something spectacularly stupid.
What if they say something spectacularly smart?
I expect it to be a talking-point fest, with the candidates topspinning the questions into whatever topic they really want to discuss instead of actually answering them, plenty of God this and Jesus that, inveighing on tax cuts and entitlement reform, obligatory Obama castigations and accusations with no facts to back them up, a good dollop of immigrant bashing, and a ridiculous number of sickeningly reverential mentions of Ronald Reagan. In other words, your average Republican debate.
In the unlikely event it happens it will be considered boring and no one will remember it five minutes later.
QFT
I just hope that they give some material for the Bad Lip Reading to work with.
What I expect- Trump Trump Trump Trumpity Trump. Obligatory verbal fellation of Saint Ronald. I expect some verbal attacks on each other, not just Trump. The time to impress the Iowa voters is getting shorter and there will be some pressure on each non-Trump to be the one whose sound bites get some play. In terms of policy differences, I don’t expect to see any. The non-Trump candidates are essentially interchangeable on policies and the Trump supporters don’t care about policies. So the attacks will be personal and not policy-driven.
I dunno. I think this may be Kasich’s make-or-break moment. And I think the MSM will be paying attention; Broder may be dead, but he left them hardwired to like a ‘moderate’ Midwestern Republican governor.
If he shines tonight, his campaign will get a needed boost (currently, he’s polling in the 2-3% range), and he’ll start getting something close to equal billing with Bush or at least Rubio as the potential Establishment anti-Trump.
But if he either comes across poorly or is simply a nonfactor (easy enough as one of 11 candidates on stage), he’s gonna have a hard time getting contributions to keep his campaign going.
My expectations were summed up by Simon and Garfunkel several decades back:
Laugh about it, shout about it, when you’ve got to choose,
Any way you look at it, you lose.
Yep, same-ole same-ole.
I expect someone to have a sound bite ready to attempt to smash Trump. It will go over well and Trump will just stand there with his nose in the air and his eyes closed with no comeback. Later he will tweet insults about that person. Hi fans will love him for it.
A couple of the front runners will go after eachother. A back runner will try to intercede with a “hey, hey, let’s remember who the real enemy is”.
Ben Carson will continue his “Yeah, I don’t know shit about politics, but I’m really really smart, I was a neurosurgeon for god’s sake!”
One sip of whiskey for every mention of Ronald Reagan by a candidate. How inebriated will you be by the end of the debate?
What is ‘comatose’, Alex? 
Trump: As president I will make everyone in the world do what I say with my super duper negotiating powers and will make this country fabulous, top quality. Anyone who disagrees is a no talent loser.
Carson: Unlike Trump I’m a real Christian, and smart enough to be president, after all it isn’t brain surgery.
Jeb Bush: I have actually have an actual economic plan down on paper. Sure its based on fairy dust and wishful thinking, but its better than anyone else’s got.
Carly Fiorina: Everything that Hillary does is bad. Don’t you want to see some girl on girl action in the general.
Scott Walker: I fought back against the unions in my state and so if I’m in charge business will be free for America’s worker. Vote for me and I’ll give workers the business.
Marco Rubio: I’m the next Obama but conservative. Wouldn’t you like to have a token Hispanic as your running mate as your running mate?
Chris Christie: Wasn’t I supposed to be the Republican’s great white hope? What happened? (Oh yeah that bridge thing).
Rand Paul: The federal government is inherently awful doing no good for anyone. Put me in charge of it so I can prove it.
Mike Huckabee: God told me I would win. Who are you to argue with god?
Ted Cruz: I’m Donald Trump too!
John Kasich: What the heck am I doing on stage with these bozos?
This is something to watch. I don’t think Trump substantively answered a single question in the last debate, and on the more difficult ones, he just seemed to randomly pick a talking point that wasn’t even related in order to bloviate through his allotted time. And it didn’t matter one whit to his supporters. This is the guy who’s going to repeal Obamacare and replace it with “something terrific”.
Hey, I want something terrific! Terrific sounds pretty good to me!
I think !Jeb! will say something shocking (don’t ask me what, but it’ll be shocking). The man still has the deepest campaign pockets and probably has a better campaign organization than any of his rivals, but unless he starts to attract notice and voters, that may be all for nought.
So I think he goes all-out this time, if for no other reason than to get his name talked about the next day rather than Trump.
Of course, more than a few of the others may have the same idea, and some of them (Cruz and Huckabee, for example) are much better at it than Jeb.
I still think the money people and the big-time pols in the Republican party still want to get Jeb the nomination, but you can’t get votes if no one is paying all that much attention to you. So I’m looking for bombs.
We shall see.
– Lords and Ladies, Terry Pratchett