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EditorialAs a lifelong independent voter, I didn't see much point in watching the Republican debate on Fox News.  First of all, I won't get to vote in the primary election.  Secondly, the whole thing seemed like a game show -- a lot of hype.  But how much actual substance could there be with all those hopefuls trying to get a word in.  And it's not easy to get a word in when Donald Trump is one of the speakers, as we all know well from watching The Apprentice.  With so many candidates -- contestants? -- in a limited time period how much would we learn about where they stand on issues?

So I decided to skip it, and with that decided I thought I'd make an experiment of it: how much would I really know after the debate if I took a casual interest in debate news?

So here is what I know:

  • Donald Trump is in trouble with Fox News.  He is trouble with a lot of institutions because he stands up to them and calls them names.  He is now famously in trouble with Megyn Kelly because he said, during the presidential debate, that Kelly had "blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever" after she questioned him about his history of insulting women.  Trump later said he meant her nose, but everyone else saw it as a disparaging reference to menstruation.
  • Megyn Kelly garnered a lot of sympathy for being dissed by Trump.
  • Megyn Kelly spells her name with a 'y'.
  • Despite acting like a jerk, Trump still leads in the polls.
  • Fox didn't invite all the candidates to participate in the debate, so Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Chris Christie, John Kasich were the only -- the only?! -- ones invited.  Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham and George Pataki had to debate at the children's table.  Cool!  I wondered what became of George Pataki after he stopped being Governor!
  • Nancy Reagan invited all but one of them to an upcoming CNN debate.
  • Nancy Reagan has something to do with CNN.  I am not sure what.
  • The CNN debate will be held at the Air Force One Pavilion at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.  I didn't know there was an Air Force One Pavilion there.  I have really no idea, but I am hoping it is an actual reenactment of a Boeing 747 like the one on the TV show, The West Wing.
  • Jeb Bush was reportedly not aggressive enough.  But when he appeared on the Tonight Show he told Jimmy Fallon that he is smarter and better looking than his brother.  It was charming.  Fallon loved it.  So I knw Bush can be charming, but not from the debate news.
  • Donald Trump is a champion against political correctness.  While I have been baffled by Trump's public success in entertainment -- after all he is his biggest fan, and I could never fathom why so many other people think they should join that club -- I have to admit I agree with him on this one.  In theory.
Political Correctness is a tyranny.  It has so eroded what we are allowed to think and say that nobody knows what anyone else actually means any more.  And it has spawned a peculiar backlash in ethnic humor that not only allows people of an ethnicity to make jokes about their heritage, but leads us to expect that they will, while everyone else is reviled for finding any aspect of other peoples' ethnicity humorous.  And that's only the tip of the iceberg.  So Trump is right to take a stand against political correctness, and doing so in actual politics is a bold choice.

However, political correctness was spawned by bad manners and abuse of social standards that Trump delights in.  So you might say that Trump is railing against something he helped spawn, and certainly helps perpetuate.  Nobody wants to be seen to be as boorish as Mr. Trump.
  • Is political correctness a political issue?  What about the Middle East, or poverty?  I haven't seen anything about those in the aftermath of this debate.  Or going to Mars?  I think it would be cool if we sent people to Mars.  Anyway, I haven't seen anything on any matter of substance.
That's all I've got.  I have no idea what any of these guys stand for, except that Trump stole the show and therefore my feelings about his showmanship must be wrong.  It's just a lot of hoo-ha Trumping substance.  I figure I am more informed than many of my fellow Americans.

If this is what I base my vote on in November, then our country is in real trouble.

Maybe we should send all the debaters to Mars (both sides of the aisle, please).

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