I was on vacation during the first Republican presidential debate, so I had plenty of time to watch it.
Fortunately, I had the good judgment not to.
I really wanted to change things up. Watching a debate and writing about how Donald Trump said outlandish things or how Jeb Bush was boring or Marco Rubio shocked everyone by not drinking a lot of water would have been exciting. I am sorry I can’t deliver that amazing commentary for you.
I intentionally missed the debate because I wanted an unbiased view of the response on social media. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The eye of the beholder also plays a big role in who “won” a debate.
Who really wins a debate? If you like the candidate, you will like their debate answers. They are all trained to deliver their well-rehearsed and focus group tested responses in the least offensive and most dog whistle filled answers.
That is why I wanted to watch the response and not the actual debate. It was an interesting study in how voters – or at least politically vocal people – think.
One of the best responses was from the Hillary Clinton Twitter feed. You know Hillary wasn’t sitting there drinking a beer with Bill and watching the debate when she thumbed out a tweet. But whoever her Twitter mastermind is said, “Watch the #GOPdebate? Bet you feel like donating to a Democrat right about now.”
That was clever. It would have been better to hear her say it but she doesn’t speak to the media so we just have to settle for pretending she actually runs her own social media accounts.
Many of the responses to the debate had less to do with the candidates than they did the moderators. You would think with Fox News running the debate, it would have been a series of softball questions like, “Why do you love America?” and “On a scale of 1 to 10, how great was Ronald Reagan?”
But apparently Megyn Kelly actually asked actual questions and that really made a lot of people mad.
She crossed the sacred pro-life line by wondering if candidates would really let a mother die to prevent an abortion. Pro-life voters hate that question because a pro-life candidate has to be consistent with the answer. Many Democrat and unaffiliated voters don’t agree with that position. Bringing it up simply isn’t great campaign strategy. There is even a petition on social media to ban Kelly from moderating future debates because she was just too hard on the 10 men who want to be the leader of the free world but can’t handle a tough question.
And then of course, Trump weighed in on Kelly’s questions when he said she “had blood coming from her eyes, and blood coming from her wherever.”
He said that because obviously any woman who asks a difficult political question is menstruating.
Trump has touched this funny nerve. Many on my social media feed – full of some of the most conservative people in America because I have lived in Oklahoma and Kansas my entire life – love Trump because he “speaks his mind” and “isn’t politically correct.”
I understand some complaints that many have become offended because others aren’t offended enough. That is true.
But why wouldn’t you want to be politically correct? This newspaper could run fake stories like some publications people ignorantly forward around Facebook or we could publish news like the National Enquirer.
We have that right, but we choose not to because our standards are higher than that. You can also have high standards and not say biased, bigoted or misogynistic things. You have a right to say them, but you can choose not to.
The fact that Erick Erickson – a man so conservative he uses the same name twice – banned Trump from his RedState forum because Trump is overly offensive is laughable. Erickson did this for two reasons. First, it hits Trump because he doesn’t think Trump is conservative enough. Second, look at all of the media attention his little party got after deciding to ban Trump.
After all, Erickson once tweeted that Supreme Court Justice David Souter was a “goat (expletive deleted) child molestor.” I don’t think a little menstrual comment really offended his delicate sensibilities. But every carnival barker knows how to draw a crowd.
I also loved my friends on Facebook who handicapped the debate. “Here are my five favorites,” they said, “these candidates were not as good.”
Amazingly enough, people who are tea party members liked Ted Cruz more than Bush and so forth.
Some liked Ben Carson. Others thought Marco Rubio was wonderful.
The first debate is in the books. Like the first chapter in a book, it was mostly introductions and exposition.
No needles were moved. No bombshells were dropped. No one jumped from the back of the pack to the front. Those things will happen during the campaign.
Debates will be more important after the field is narrowed by time and toil.
For now, enjoy the soundbites and over the top reactions. That’s about all the first debate can generate.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: First debate reaction better than the action