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.”

#

GOOD NEWS FOR PROGRESSIVES IN SENATE RACES IN VIRGINIA AND TEXAS

Texas Democratic nominee for U.S. Senator, Rick Noriega and family

Although polls show that moderate Democrat Mark Warner will wipe the floor with either mainstream conservative Tom Davis or far right radical Jim Gilmore in the 2008 Virginia senate race, Davis' decision to not run-- while probably depriving Democrats of his House seat-- cedes the vast political center and will help Democrats up and down the ticket.

It was inevitable that Davis would drop out as soon as it was announced that the GOP would forgo a primary to pick a nominee and opt for a convention dominated by the kinds of extremists and neo-fascists who have run the Virginia Republican Party into the ground in the last few years.

Much more important news comes from Texas, where the Democratic insider/establishment candidate, multimillionaire Mikal Watts, has decided to give up his senseless and divisive bid for a chance to face radical right extremist John Cornyn in the U.S. Senate race next year. Blue America-endorsed Rick Noriega has been, despite Watts' gargantuan spending, the far and away favorite of the Texas grassroots. The Burnt Orange Report carries a statement from Watts and we just got an official statement from Rick Noriega's campaign:

I received a call from Mikal Watts this morning informing me that he has decided to withdraw from the Democratic Primary race for the United States Senate.

As Teddy Roosevelt once said, the credit goes to the man in the arena. And Mikal Watts will always have my utmost respect for standing in the arena and highlighting how John Cornyn has let Texas down, placing political extremists and his financial contributors ahead of the people of Texas.

Of course, this is not the first time Mikal has been in the arena-- he's been a true friend to Democrats in Texas and throughout the nation, and has always had the courage to stand up for his convictions.

Today, Mikal made a very difficult and personal decision to put his family first. That's a reflection of a strong character and a truly grounded leader.

Mikal and I made plans to sit down together in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I'll continue the campaign that we started together and fight for the vision for a better Texas that we continue to share.

This is great news for Texas Democrats who will be able to rally around Noriega and present the pathetic and ultra-reactionary junior senator a united front. This will be a very tough race in a very Republican state, but could well be the icing on the cake of a huge national repudiation of right-wing Republican policies over the past 7 years. If you want to congratulate Rick, consider a contribution to his campaign fund today.


UPDATE: MORE BAD NEWS FOR REPUBLICROOKS-- ALASKA

Virginia and Texas might be joined by another "red" state in electing a Democrat to the U.S. Senate, as corrupt senior senator Ted Stevens' disgraceful career continues to crash and burn. And Democrats in the state have been busy reminding Alaskans what kind of a crook the state has representing them in Washington. Today a really great new resource for Stevens watchers was launched, RetireTed.com. Worth a visit, if just for the fantastic artwork.

VIRGINIA SHAPING UP NICELY FOR 2008-- THEIR STORY IS PRETTY MUCH THE WHOLE NATION'S

The last time Virginia supported a Democrat for president it was 1964 and LBJ trounced Barry Goldwater. A new Washington Post/Rasmussen poll indicates that 2008 could be the end of a red tradition in the commonwealth. The disdain in which Virginians hold the current occupant of the White House is unprecedented (a 35% job approval rating) and "by a margin of 11 percentage points, Virginians would prefer that the next president be a Democrat, indicating that even a reliably red state could flip in 2008."

But that ain't nothin' compared to the race that's shaping up to replace John Warner in the U.S. Senate. First off, it doesn't matter if the GOP puts up a far right extremist, ex-Governor Jim Gilmore III, or a mainstream conservative, Congressman Tom Davis (also the III); the polls shows Mark Warner absolutely romping to a landslide victory-- probably with a 30 point margin.

Tomorrow Virginia's 84-member Republican State Central Committee will get together and decide whether to pick their sacrificial lamb by convention or primary. Primary means Gilmore is the candidate. "If a primary were held today, the poll shows, Gilmore would beat Davis by 19 percentage points." The Post perpetuates the myth that Davis is a "moderate," which his voting record proves is untrue. Example: Davis has participated in 54 roll calls regarding Iraq. So how many times did this "moderate" just rubber stamp the Bush Cheney position? Once, a February 2007 nonbinding resolution. So he's a moderate because he only rubber stamped Cheney's demands for endless war 53 times instead of 54 times? And it certainly doesn't look like he's "moderate" on women's choice. He participated in 23 votes and he voted the religionist right position against choice all 23 times. I'm sure the Post has some reason they call Davis and other wingnuts moderates. Maybe it's because they have never been photographed in a KKK or Nazi costume.

But like I said, it doesn't much matter which of these pathetic yutzes the GOP picks or how they pick him.

In the Senate race, Warner leads Gilmore 61 percent to 31 percent, a 2 to 1 margin replicated in nearly every region of the state. Warner leads Davis 63 percent to 28 percent. In vote-rich Fairfax County, where Davis argues that he would have more appeal than some recent statewide GOP candidates, Warner is up by 24 percentage points over the congressman (57 percent to 33 percent).

Gilmore and Davis say they are confident that Warner's lead will significantly diminish as the race heats up.

Warner's large advantages are a testament to his broad popularity, voters' unfamiliarity with his likeliest opponents and the state's current Democratic trend.

...Warner has a 67 percent favorability rating, and his appeal crosses party lines.

More than 7 in 10 Democrats have a favorable impression of the former governor, as do 69 percent of independents and 61 percent of the state's Republicans. Even 4 in 10 self-described conservatives said they would vote for Warner, who was elected governor in 2001 as a pro-gun Democrat who appealed to voters in traditionally GOP counties.

UPDATE: DAVIS WILL PROBABLY NOT BOTHER RUNNING FOR SENATE

Damn! I was hoping Tom Davis would run and give Democrats an opportunity to pick up his Northern Virginia congressional district while he got trounced by Mark Warner. But the neo-fascists in the Virginia GOP opted for a state party convention rather than a primary to select their nominee. And since the convention will be dominated by far right radicals, Jim Gilmore will be the nominee.