Perhaps surprisingly, there was a clear winner of last night's crypto-presidential debacle

There's one candidate who contributed nothing dishonest, depraved, or demeaning to last night's debates (yes, debates -- either the varsity or the jayvee).

"[N]ot an hour into the rollicking, interminable debate, as the candidates on the stage finally ganged up on front-runner Donald Trump, Gilmore tweeted that it was 'all process and nothing to tweet about.' "

-- Dana Milbank, in his WaPo column "The one
candidate CNN refused to invite to the debate"

by Ken

No, of course I didn't watch That Thing Last Night. (You must be new here. No taker has begun to explore how much I would have to be paid to watch That Thing.) But contrary to my assumption going in, there turns out to have been a clear winner.

But before we get to that, the Washington Post's Tom Toles is here to tell us: "It is one big joke, and no, we are not in on it. We are the punch line."

No, you are not insane, the debates are insane



By Tom Toles | September 17 at 2:10 PM

I’m sorry, but somebody has to say it. The debates are nearly wall-to-wall torture. Let me put it in the form of a debate question: Mr./Ms. Debate Viewer, does the vapidity of a one-minute answer or a half-mine rebuttal give you a bigger headache? You have five seconds to answer, and direct your answer to Donald Trump who is making faces at you.

Whatever you answered, you answered wrong. The real headache comes from the oceans of debate ‘analysis’, and you can count these paragraphs into that if you like. I have to confess I didn’t make it all the way through, either the debate or the analysis. Here’s my short take. Donald Trump sounds like an absolute MORON, and even the answers from the others that sounded almost plausible and ‘well-delivered’ were only slightly, and I mean VERY slightly more illuminating.

The format not only is designed to showcase this game of goofball, but to amplify it. Three HOURS of one-minute answers with follow-up squabbling? No. Just no.

If you missed both the debate AND the ‘analysis’, here’s the three word summary: Gloomithon of Incoherence. If you want to read one slightly longer version of that, read this.

Carly Fiorina was declared by some to be the ‘winner’, for sounding almost adult-like while saying dumb things like she wouldn’t talk to Putin, from under the wing of the plane of the talk-to-the Kremlin Saint Ronald. The very next day it was reported that her ‘good friend’ Netanyahu would be talking to Putin next week, and traveling to Russia to do it. Whoops.

It is one big joke, and no, we are not in on it. We are the punch line.

Now as to last night's winner, I should stipulate that you can hardly look for a winner in what is by definition a field of losers -- a bunch of hoodlums striving for the crown of Worst Person in the World.

So it stands to reason that the one candidate who stands above the fray is the one who wasn't allowed to be part of the fray. The one who was reduced to tweeting:

“Trump doesn’t understand the Constitution.”

“Dr. Carson waffles.”

“If Santorum becomes president he will have to obey the law to.” (sic)

“Fiorina ducked the question.”

“Huckabee calls for disobedience of the law.”

“Gov. Walker does not understand how wages go up.”

Fortunately, at least one person besides the Gilmore Faithful was paying attention, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank.

The one candidate CNN refused to invite to the debate

By Dana Milbank | September 16 at 11:58 PM

Sixteen candidates remain in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Fifteen of them were invited to Wednesday night’s debates.

And then there was Jim Gilmore.

“I’m very disappointed,” the former Virginia governor told me when I reached him on Wednesday. He paused, as if reflecting on his word choice. “Uh, actually, I’m angry,” he revised. In fact, “I’m really upset about this.”

Gilmore warmed quickly to this thesis.

“It’s wrong and against the public interest,” he said of debate host CNN’s decision to disallow his participation, even in the pre-debate debate of minor candidates, based on his sub-1-percent standing in the polls.

“I just am rebelling against the unfairness of it all and the wrongness of it all,” he continued. “CNN is not being faithful to the stewardship they’ve taken on.”

Gilmore would like to take up his grievance directly with CNN’s Washington bureau chief, Sam Feist, but “the guy won’t even call me back, which I consider a personal insult,” he said.

And so the former governor, Republican National Committee chairman and chairman of a national homeland-security commission did the only thing he could do: While the other candidates reached tens of millions of Americans on the airwaves, Gilmore went to his campaign office in Alexandria, Va., and tweeted out his own answers to his 1,500 followers using the hashtag #GOPDebate:

“Trump doesn’t understand the Constitution.”

“Dr. Carson waffles.”

“If Santorum becomes president he will have to obey the law to.” (sic)

“Fiorina ducked the question.”

“Huckabee calls for disobedience of the law.”

“Gov. Walker does not understand how wages go up.”

But as his tweets vanished into the ether with scarcely a retweet, Gilmore showed his frustration; not an hour into the rollicking, interminable debate, as the candidates on the stage finally ganged up on front-runner Donald Trump, Gilmore tweeted that it was “all process and nothing to tweet about.”

Live-tweeting the debate from which he was excluded was but one of many indignities Gilmore had endured of late.

For one, he seems to be doing his own staff work. He has been known to send reporters e-mails from his Gmail address, providing his cellphone number and asking them to call. I used the number to call him Wednesday, and he was grateful for the attention: “It’s like water in a desert to me.”

I attempted to serve as an oasis for the parched candidate. Could he say how much money he has raised?

“Nope, can’t do that,” he answered. (He has not yet had to file a report to the Federal Election Commission.)

Would he run ads?

“We’ll augment our strategy with ads if we raise enough money to run ads,” he replied.

How about campaign staff?

“Okay, let me count,” he replied. “Dan. Dick. . . . Alex. Um, let’s see here. Um, Jeff. . . . I think seven at this point,” although “some are part time.”

Gilmore is aggrieved by my Post colleague David Fahrenthold, who wrote that Gilmore “has not held a single formal campaign event with actual voters present.”

The governor finds this to be “a little cute” because he actually does go to campaign events — just not his own. “I don’t need to” have campaign events, he said, because there are plenty of committee meetings and candidate forums he can attend. In fact, he has visited New Hampshire nine times this year, he said.

But with little to show for it. CNN said Gilmore was the only candidate who had been in either of last month’s Fox News debates who didn’t meet its requirement of averaging 1 percent support in any three polls released over a two-month period.

“They’re being inflexible with me!” he protested, and he had a point that his exclusion — even from the undercard debate — seemed gratuitous.

George Pataki and Lindsey Graham made the JV event even though they averaged 0.5 percent in recent polls, and CNN bent its requirements to allow businesswoman Carly Fiorina to join the main event Wednesday night.

“And yet they turn around and draw a strong line on me?” Gilmore said.

But none of this changes the governor’s strategy: to “finish as high as possible” in New Hampshire, then ride his momentum into South Carolina. How high? “I’m not going to make a prediction.”

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