Trump doesn't attend the debate, but he still manages to dominate traditional and social media coverage. Amazing. And f*cking terrifying.

Personally I find Trump boring. No substance. Unfortunately I can say pretty much the same thing about the actual Fox debate which I did watch (or at least TRIED TO). 

At least the Fox debate was not just primarily insults although it was not devoid of them. Again becoming more the normal in political debates. 

Eventually trump will need to make peace with the party.
Last nite did not help. Sure, it delighted his fans. But at some point, you have to go beyond the tactic of just giving the finger to folks.

These 'debates' are a joke. A bunch of people spouting tested canned stump speeches and trying to zing one another. After the show, all the staffers mingle with the media to re-explain what their candidate meant to say by 'clarifying' their remarks. What inevitably follows are a bunch of talking heads trying to determine their opinion of who 'won' the 'debate'. The newspapers and online blogs the next morning blast headlines like Best One Liners from the Debate.

If that what is important to determine who the next president should be, I'm voting for Jerry Seinfeld.

I watched the whole thing while knocking back some Nugget Nectars.

To be honest, I thought it was the best of the GOP debates, but was still lacking in a lot of areas.

For one thing, key questions only got one response. Two glaring examples were a question about crime and race relations and only Rand Paul was able to give a response before they cut to commercial. And the lone health care question only got a single response from Cruz. The first half dozen questions were more GOP party related and Donald Trump related than policy questions. 

On the flip side, using fairly recent video clips of Rubio's and Cruz's past positions on immigration was strong. I'd like to think the ghost of Tim Russert was giving a thumbs-up to that segment of the debate. It made both Cruz and Rubio look bad and as they were the only two candidates Fox did that to. 

And so here is my conspiracy theory: Someone at Fox leaked to the Trump campaign that the moderators were going to pull out old video on the candidates and Trump knew that would go badly for him. That's why he backed out at the last minute.

Anyway, my no-nothing-know-it-all grading of the candidates:

Bush: His best performance yet. It was like without Trump there, he was free to be himself. A+

Christie: Pretty good. Nothing earth shattering. Mods went light on him I thought. Positioned himself well as an outsider B+

Rubio: Too spastic, too loud, but held his own against Cruz and the others. Love his "everyone else is a RINO" poke at Cruz. Didn't like his shameless pandering to evangelicals. B

Cruz: He was the center of attention and held up pretty well under the spotlight. He's such a huckster though. That said, if you asked me to put money down on who wins Iowa, I'd have to put it on Cruz. B-

Kasich: He was ok. Was the rational voice on the bunch. But thought he came up weak considering all the extra time he had to speak. C

Paul: Meh. They only asked him about questions that were in his wheelhouse. Privacy. Civil rights. Isolationist foreign policy. Fox was quietly showing him the door. D+

Carson: I don't get how this guy is still in the race. F-