Thursday's Trumpless Debate Was Like An Expanded Kiddie Table

I missed Thursday's Trumpless debate. I was at my favorite restaurant, Michael Voltaggio's Ink, instead. For the last year I'm been battling cancer and one of the side effects of chemo is that you lose the ability to taste things. Sometimes everything tastes really bad and sometimes they don't taste bad, just not "right." My doctor warned me not to eat things I really loved while I was going through the treatment because I might never like them again. During the last 14 months, I did try Ink a few times and the food never tasted as good as I knew it was. Nothing did. But in the last month or so, my buds have started coming back. Last night's dinner was amazing and everything tasted as wonderful as ever. Oh my god-- the way they do their corn! And the little gem salad is the best in town!

Of course the food orgy left me with the problem of figuring out what had happened at the debate-without-Trump. Where to turn? YouTube, Philip Rucker and Sean Sullivan, the local press, Digby's blog, Crooks and Liars, PolitiFact, the New York Times... Twitter? I guess the Drudge poll summed up how the Republican base saw the debate.

Scary that 4,479 watched Fiorina in action and thought they would like to see her in the White House. That seems the definition of insanity! In the context of all the rest of the human garbage on the stage, though, maybe not certifiably insane. By far, though, my favorite descriptions from the debate was an unsigned post at Cafe.com. Highlights:

• Marco Rubio attempted to use his child preacher from There Will Be Blood over-religiosity to overcome his lack of accomplishments, plans or the later stages of puberty.

• Every question made Ben Carson seem like the kid everyone knows wasn’t paying attention who’d been caught by the teacher.

• Jeb Bush seemed like he was going to cry every time he thought of Trump.

• Chris Christie used bluster to blunt his anemic poll ratings, criminal administration and shriveled ambitions by basically accusing Obama of starting #BlackLivesMatter.

• But it was Ted Cruz’s night to remind everyone why he’s less popular in Washington D.C. than a wet toilet seat. The junior senator, former Donald Trump apprentice and monster who escaped from a laboratory before he finished baking was the focus of the seventh GOP debate, as the billionaire frontrunner skipped the event to host a faux-veterans’ charity event that looked like a DeVry graduation. Cruz attempted to dominate the debate by using his trademark move of accusing the moderators of trying to make incite Republican-on-Republican crime. But he forgot that only works when the moderators aren’t some of the most popular Republicans in America.

All and all the night reminded America of what the GOP primary would have looked like without Trump. Mostly the same, with a less jittery Jeb Bush and far fewer Americans aware that the party is more interested in building a wall against Muslims than keeping lead out of the drinking water.

The Trumpless debate had the second lowest viewership of the campaign-- 12 million, quite a bit down from 25 million. Not many people watched Herr Trumpf's sideshow either. Last word: help save our country.