A gobsmacking day of intraparty pie-throwing ended with Donald J. Trump, from the stage of the Fox Theater in Detroit, assuring the American public that the size of his male appendage was just fine. “I guarantee you,” he said, “there’s no problem.”
There was a time when I might have been stunned. There was a time when Mr. Trump kept his anatomical allusions to post-debate interviews, when he referred to the moderator Megyn Kelly — who was tough on him at his last debate on Fox, in August — as having “blood coming out of her wherever.”
I might have been shocked, once, at this whole debate — the hooting audience, the barking candidates, the NSFW content — but those days are over.
.. They attacked him for lies; he answered with size.
.. Mr. Romney’s speech was high-minded and flowing, quoting presidents and philosophers. Mr. Trump throws sentences like punches. Sentences that repeat. For emphasis, they repeat. Mr. Romney disparages Mr. Trump’s integrity. Mr. Trump visualizes Mr. Romney as, literally, beneath him. Romney: You lack gravitas, sir! Trump: I got your gravitas right here!
.. But Mr. Romney was at least partly arguing for standards that Mr. Trump’s supporters reject. Over and over, they tell reporters, “He’s just saying what everyone thinks” and “He says what’s on his mind” — which are not the same thing as “He always tells the truth” or “He never contradicts himself.”
Republican Debate Takeaways: Voters’ Options Couldn’t Be Clearer
Time and time again, anxious Republican leaders have urged their more conventional standard-bearers in the race to take on Mr. Trump. Thursday night’s debate showed why that almost never works. He talks over attack lines. He refuses to admit to flip-flops, even when pressed by a moderator or hemmed in by video footage. He blusters his way past fact-checkers and rivals alike.
.. But it was impossible not to watch the debate without suspecting that the right-leaning and highly influential news network was using the evening to litigate each of Mr. Trump’s faults and vulnerabilities.
.. If the Republican establishment’s strategy now is to deny Mr. Trump the nomination by keeping the field as large as possible — diluting his chances to reach a majority of delegates on the first round of votes at the party convention in July — the debate may have offered a preview.
.. Unlike his rivals, Mr. Kasich is running as a “compassionate conservative” who is disinterested in the culture wars and who can reach out to the opposing party. If his message does not resonate, it will not be because voters did not hear it.
.. The exchange produced a CNN headline for the history books: “Donald Trump defends size of his penis.”
Call Me Mister Trump
On Super Tuesday night in the ballroom of equality, Christie stood behind Trump appearing totally miserable. As a number of commentators noted, he looked like a person who had just been informed that his family was being held hostage and would be released only if he kept quiet and stared straight ahead.
.. Why is Donald Trump always “Mister”? True, since he has absolutely no record of public service, he lacks a title like Senator or Governor. But this goes way back — on his reality show, all the would-be apprentices, including the celebrity ones, called the host “Mr. Trump,” even when he wasn’t in the room. “It’s this underlying power,” an ex-contestant explained to Cosmopolitan.
Donald Trump ditched free market ideology for nationalism — and it’s working
He is winning because he understands that nationalism is more important to real-world conservative politics than free market dogma, and he offers what conservatives care about: a populist nationalism that is inflected with conservative policy commitments but by no means limited to them.
.. For candidates like Rubio — following the pace set by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — it’s about embracing a new, more diverse, more tolerant country. For Trumpers, it’s precisely the opposite.
.. And what is Trump’s agenda? A revived and unapologetic American nationalism, which will stand for American interests abroad while defending the traditional conception of the American nation at home.
- On foreign policy, he is suspicious of idealistic ventures but willing to be maximally brutal and maximally avaricious when force does need to be used.
.. The point, in other words, isn’t about wall construction. It’s about Trump signaling that he wants to take a punitive attitude toward Mexico and an unapologetic attitude toward cracking down on illegal immigration. The wall says that Trump’s thinking on the matter is untouched by humanitarian concern or high-mindedness.
.. The Rubio gambit, in short, is that Republicans should surrender to Obama-era cultural change, that they ought to embrace it and simply position their party as having a tax-cutting, spending-hating, free-trading, war-fighting ideology that Americans of all skin tones and musical tastes can learn to love.
.. the demagogue’s instinct for finding the angriest voice in the room.