First, let’s see if the GOP candidates can even enter the stage without messing up their guidance from the CNN stage director.  Okay.  Seems as though they finally deduced how to enter a debate stage under clear instruction.  That could bode well.

On Thursday night, the debate was hosted by CNN and featured the moderation team of Hugh Hewitt (he of Salem Broadcasting, who is leaving Fornicalia, the traitor, and moving to DC for a new AM radio slot), Dana Bash and María Celeste Arrarás in order to draw in the Mexican Telemundo crowd, illegals and all.  George HW Bush, 91, was in the audience along with his wife Barbara.

[About Hewitt: “Hugh’s first morning broadcast will be Monday, April 4th. Soon SRN will announce a star performer who will join the lineup replacing Hugh in the all-important 6pm-9pm ET day part.”]

This is the last GOP debate before March 1st’s Super Tuesday, where voters in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia will hit the polls. In addition, Alaska Republicans and American Samoa Democrats will caucus that Tuesday.

A nice explanation of Super Tuesday is here:

The five candidates appearing on the University of Houston, TX stage were Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Donald Trump and John Kasich.

The last GOP debate was a devolving farce.  Let’s see if they do better.

Ben Carson started out the Uniter, Kasich still continues to piss me off (Kasich broadcasts the “I shouldn’t trust him” vibe to me), Rubio speaks well but I still can’t help but think he’d do a 180 on immigration if installed in the White House, Cruz welcomed everyone to Texas and, I have to tell you, I believe Cruz would attempt to do everything from DC he says he will.  Trump started off a bit muted and with his standard bullet points of “winning again and a lot.”

Immigration was the first topic right off the bat.

Cruz brought up the point of Arizona, where illegal Mexicans fled, business owners complained about rising resulting wages, but dollars spent by Arizona on prisons, education and welfare went down by hundreds of millions of dollars.  Unemployment dropped and wages rose.  Rubio is still of concern to me about his Gang of 8.  Then Rubio and Cruz made numerous points with Trump at the crux.  Kasich hit the “practical path to legalization” for illegal Mexicans.  Kasich acted as though there weren’t and aren’t fiscal and societal consequences for allowing illegals to flood the country.  Carson wants a back tax penalty and future taxes on illegals.

Let me pause.  That won’t happen, Carson.  Illegals won’t pay back taxes.  That’s an ignorant pie-in-the-sky point — and in particular since about 45% of Americans don’t pay taxes anyway.  Roughly half of Americans pay no federal income tax because they have no taxable income, and the other roughly half get enough tax breaks to erase their tax liability,

Fact: the top 1 percent of taxpayers pay a higher effective income tax rate than any other group (around 23 percent, according to a report released by the Tax Policy Center in 2014) — nearly seven times higher than those in the bottom 50 percent.

Offhand, it sounds to me like those of us who are stupid enough to actually pay taxes — we are the morons.

Trump still has not dealt in specifics with regard to how he believes Mexico is going to pay for a wall at the southern border.

The Telemundo entree, María Celeste Arrarás, then accused Cruz of insufficient pandering to illegal Mexicans — make no mistake, this bimbette was present on the CNN stage to ensure her racist and nationalist bias comes through — because Cruz makes illegal immigration a point and, instead, should “go along to get along” with other Hispanics who want America’s immigration laws to be ignored and/or rescinded.  The implication is that Cruz, as a Cuban/Hispanic, should be falling all over MCA in order to support “his own.”

Let’s stop right here.  This racist María Celeste Arrarás wants breaks just for Mexicans and everyone else in the US can shut the hell up and pay for it all, simultaneously watching the country become more like Mexico and knowing it will then turn into the nation from which Mexicans currently flee.

What the fuck?

What part of that makes sense to people who believe in sovereign nations?

In a nice way, though, Cruz told the racist María Celeste Arrarás to buzz off.

The racist María Celeste Arrarás then worked on the weak link inhabiting the stage, John Kasich, who enjoys pandering to Mexicans, because she knows Kasich is the weak GOWP illegal Mexican link.  He’d love him some amnesty, a big bag of it, for Mexican votes.

The racist María Celeste Arrarás finally brought up to Dr Ben Carson that “a report” (which remained unspecified) indicated that in order to approach Hispanics and “bring them to vote for the Republican Party, certain things needed to happen, and one of them was that they shouldn’t feel like they gonna get kicked out of the United States.”

Translated: law breaking Mexicans want not only preferential treatment, but they should be above the laws of the United States because they can provide votes to those who allow illegal Mexicans to break those same laws.

More prodding for preferential treatment for Mexicans from the racist María Celeste Arrarás.

“Or otherwise they wouldn’t pay attention to one more sentence from candidates.”

Translated: REPUBLICAN candidates who won’t kneel down to fellate the State of Mexico shaft.

Dr Ben Carson didn’t bite.  You could clearly see the resulting look of pissedness on the face of the racist María Celeste Arrarás.

Hey Mexico, why don’t you just be clear and say what you want?  You want to put a gun to the head of the American Taxpayer — the 54.7% of US citizens who actually pay taxes — and force them to send money directly to Mexico City?

After that little show, I immediately got tired of what the racist bint María Celeste Arrarás had to say.

Hugh Hewitt asked the first questions about SCOTUS and religious freedoms.  Carson nailed it:  “The Constitution protects all of our rights.  It gives people who believe in same-sex marriage the same rights as everybody else.  But what we have to remember is, even though everybody has the same rights, nobody gets extra rights.”

Thank you sir.

“Nobody gets to redefine things for everybody else and then have them have to conform to it.  That’s unfair.  It’s the responsibility of Congress to come back and correct what the Supreme Court has done.”

Let’s be plain.  Trump still can’t be specific.  He crafts his points in generalities.

And no one has brought up the debt crisis and emphasized it like Rubio.  The debt crisis needs infinitely more focus and attention.

I got tired early of the tax return release issue.  Move on.

One note: it was clear that the racist María Celeste Arrarás liked John Kasich.  She smiled at him twice and no one else.  Ever.  Why?  Because of Kasich’s support of illegal Mexicans.

Yes, there was backbiting in this debate but, thankfully, not to the extent of the last one.  There was more focus on various issues this time around.  Mostly.  Sort of.

Who won?

First, I don’t care for Kasich.  Period.  Dr Ben Carson is a nice man but over his head.  Yes, he is better coached but his forte is not the presidential seat.

Carson: “could someone attack me please?”

Yes, that’s how desperate the debates have become.  I don’t really watch them for insight anymore; most people are way beyond that now.

At this point absent a severed trend, it appears Trump will continue with his numbers, Cruz will continue as number two and Rubio as number three.

The GOP debates aren’t for insight or an informational exchange any more.  They simply provide a modicum of entertainment for me.

But the ultimate question?

Who in the GOP can beat Hillary Clinton or, if she implodes, Bernie Sanders or in extremis a farm team player like Joe Biden?

Who?

BZ