I have a weird hobby of watching other country’s presidential debates. The US model has spread everywhere from Kenya to Indonesia. It’s really interesting to listen to political discourse from other countries and learn how the politicians frame issues and interact with each other. Watching enough of these, you start to see what sorts of traits and manners of speech are universal to 21st century democratic politics and what are particular to each country.
There are probably young people in these countries interested in politics who watch American primary debates. I hope to god they stumble across Bernie and Hillary’s passion and policy-filled Feb 4th MSNBC debate, not last night’s dreck.
A few times in these debates you get that heart-stopping combination of nausea and schadenfreude watching a candidate totally blow it. When Rick Perry froze or Rubio repeated himself, it was like watching the British Office. Last night I felt that way for the GOP as a party.
Yesterday, Rubio’s people whispered to Politico that “ Rubio has yet to aggressively engage Trump — and those briefed on his strategy say he’s unlikely to. He has concluded that going after Trump would accomplish little, given the businessman’s supporters are deeply committed and unlikely to swing Rubio’s way.”
But he had no choice but to take Trump on. Down considerably in the polls with Super Tuesday just five days away, Rubio needed to shake up the race.
The biggest tussle Rubio got into before this debate was with his former mentor, Jeb Bush. Jeb looked really out of his element hitting Rubio for campaigning at the expense of attending Senate votes, and in this exchange Rubio gave a very fluid response.
Grappling with the nebbish Bush who would have a hard time pinning a toddler is one thing, taking on Trump another. Half an hour in, Rubio unloaded on him for hiring illegal immigrants, but his body language and demeanor looked uncomfortable. In this exchange, he seemed like a handsome jock in high school who had always been deferred to as an alpha dog. But ever since he changed school districts, he had to find someone to bring down a peg to establish himself but was uncomfortable rolling in the mud as he was always thought of himself as a good guy at heart.
In this instance, Trump had a quick rebuttal (“I’m the only one on the stage that’s hired people. You haven’t hired anybody”) and held strong. Rubio missed an opportunity to crack on Trump saying that his wall would only cost $10 billion if he hired illegals to do the work (crack from Phil Schneider).
But in his next attack on Trump’s lack of a health care plan, Rubio looked really comfortable going in.
Maybe he felt he was on more sure ground talking about policy and not airing dirty laundry. As seen in his work on immigration and national security, Rubio enjoys going into the weeds and must have felt embarrassed at how Trump had been able to lead his party’s primary while not caring at all about specifics. For another high school analogy, Rubio seemed like a nerd in the same math class as his bully, pointing out to his friends just how little the bully really has going for him. It reminded me of this classic clip of ltg vs. viscant beefing over Street Fighter, though viscant clearly executed better than Rubio.
I don’t think this attack will do much to erode Trump’s support —Trump’s voters don’t like him for his detailed policy proposals. But Rubio proved he could take on the Donald directly. In contrast, Cruz looked unable to land real blows. He comes off as too eel-like and out of touch to have you sympathize with anything he says. He doesn’t get that attacking Trump for not letting people die in the street isn’t going to win him support from anyone who wasn’t already extreme enough to be voting Cruz anyways. In this move he felt like a high school debater who knew he was going to lose a round and mistook a trap for a window of opportunity.
I used to think it would be cool to have a parliamentary democracy with lots of different parties popping up to give voters a richer choice than just between the Democrats and Republicans. There’d be all this palace intrigue with these coalitions forming and politicians founding new parties. After this election cycle, I’d like to apologize to the Founders for doubting them on this one. Thank god we won’t have to endure Ted Cruz and Donald Trump’s (or for that matter Bernie Sanders’) splinter movements after this cycle ends.
I just saw that Chris Christie endorsed Trump. I really hope two years from now every political figure who endorses Trump has a black mark on them that precludes them from ever mattering again.