The Vegas Auditions

Last night I watched the Republican presidential candidates debate one another, if you can call it that. It was more like grade school kids name-calling on the playground at recess. The obvious big bully, Donald Trump, had everyone frightened that he might pick on them, although he seemed to be in relatively good spirits and only made fun of Jeb Bush, the namby-pambiest of them all. Jeb looked like he might cry a couple of times but still managed to get in a few good rejoinders, although it was hard to hear him over the boos, jeers and cheers of the raucous audience members, many of whom likely got juiced up beforehand at the Las Vegas casinos.

Ben Carson, a sweet and gentle man who saved the lives of many children during his long career as a pediatric neurosurgeon, repeatedly called moderator Wolf Blitzer "Woof." Not sure if he has a speech impediment or if he was inferring that Blitzer is a dog, but either way it seemed wrong. Also, Ben chose to use part of his 90-second introduction on "a moment of silence in memorance of the San Diego victims." Ben, sweetheart -- not only was it dumb to squander your pittance of allotted talk time on silence, but "memorance" is not a real word.

Carly Fiorina should just shut up already about how she was once a CEO of a big company (she got fired) and still knows lots of important people in Silicon Valley who could help the government if only they were asked, and she will ask if she gets elected and they will say yes because they all like her so much. (Smiley face.)  She also trotted out a new slogan and promised to "Take our country back!" about a hundred times. I couldn't help but wonder from where.

Quite some time ago Chris Christie underwent some kind of surgical procedure to lose weight and apparently it didn't take because he is still so fat it is actually distracting from his main message, which is that he is the governor of New Jersey and thus knows all there is to know about running an entire country. New Jersey is home to Bruce Springsteen (a rock star) and Tony Soprano (a fictional character), let's all remember. Besides that, I think Christie is a hoot and would be fun to hang out with.

The youngsters, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, both 44, tried to out-ethnicize each other. (I think Rubio might be 5% more Cuban.) But it's easy to tell them apart: The handsome, smooth-talking Rubio looks like a model for the Hair Club of America, while Cruz could convincingly play a young Frankenstein, if that counts for anything. They got caught up in the weeds of some legislation or other, so I went and did the dinner dishes and missed most of what they said.

Rand Paul and John Kasich occasionally piped in with pithy comments when they could but got little air time since their poll numbers are so low. Nevertheless, if you ask me (and my husband), either one of them would make a better choice than all the others. Sure, Kasich is boring and yes, Paul is self-righteous, but they are both smart and certainly would keep us safer than that cackling witch who will be representing the other team.

Sadly, the popular tag line "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" is not true.  Instead, a lot of what happened in Vegas last night is headed straight for downtown D.C. and the hallowed halls of Congress. Pray for us.