Crazy Talk at the Republican Debate - The New York Times

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The Opinion Pages

EDITORIAL

Crazy Talk at the Republican Debate

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

SEPT. 17, 2015

Eleven presidential candidates had three prime-time hours on the national stage on
Wednesday to tell the American people why they should lead the country.
Nobody forced them to be there. They were there freely, armed with the best
arguments they and their policy advisers had come up with, to make their cases as
seasoned politicians, business leaders and medical professionals the Republican
Partys A-Team, as one of them, Mike Huckabee, said at the outset.
And that, America, is frightening. Peel back the boasting and insults, the lies
and exaggerations common to any presidential campaign. What remains is a
collection of assertions so untrue, so bizarre, that they form a vision as surreal as the
Ronald Reagan jet looming behind the candidates lecterns.
It felt at times as if the speakers were no longer living in a fact-based world
where actions have consequences, programs take money and money has to come
from somewhere. Where basic laws like physics and the Constitution constrain
wishes. Where Congress and the public, allies and enemies, markets and militaries
dont just do what you want them to, just because you say they will.
Start with immigration, and the idea that any president could or should
engineer the mass expulsion of 11 million unauthorized immigrants. Not one
candidate said that a 21st-century trail of tears, deploying railroad cars, federal
troops and police dogs on a continental scale, cannot happen and would be morally
obscene. Ben Carson said, If anybody knows how to do that, that I would be willing
to listen. They accepted the need to control our borders with a 2,000-mile fence.
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Crazy Talk at the Republican Debate - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/18/opinion/crazy-talk-at-the-...

Even Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, once an immigration moderate, endorsed the
fence. Mr. Carson actually suggested two fences, for double security, with a road in
between. Do these people have to be sent to the Rio Grande Valley to see how
ludicrous a border fence over mountains, vast deserts, remote valleys and private
property would be? And it wont solve the problem they are railing against, which
doesnt exist anyway. Illegal immigration has fallen essentially to zero.
On foreign affairs, there was a lot of talk about not talking with bad people.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said his first act would be to tear up the Iran deal,
throwing the nuclear race back to the ayatollahs and rupturing global alliances but
making a point! Carly Fiorina said: What I would do, immediately, is begin
rebuilding the Sixth Fleet, I would begin rebuilding the missile defense program in
Poland, I would conduct regular, aggressive military exercises in the Baltic States. Id
probably send a few thousand more troops into Germany. Vladimir Putin would get
the message.
We get the message, and its scary.
Jeb Bush spun a particularly repellent fantasy. Speaking reverently of his
brother the president, he said, He kept us safe, and invoked the carnage of 9/11.
Wait, what? Did he mean George W. Bush, who was warned about the threat that Al
Qaeda would attack? Who then invaded a non sequitur country, Iraq, over a
nonexistent threat?
When the A-Team got around to science and health, many of them promised to
help Americans by killing the program that gives millions of them medical insurance.
One candidate said he felt sure that vaccines had caused an autism epidemic. The
two doctors on the dais did not seriously challenge that persistent, dangerous myth.
Let loose by the CNN moderators, the candidates spun their visions freely.
Despite an abundance of serious issues to talk about, nobody offered solutions to
problems like child poverty, police and gun violence, racial segregation, educational
gaps, competition in a global economy and crumbling infrastructure. On looming
disasters (the changing climate) and more immediate ones (a possible government
shutdown over, of all things, Planned Parenthood), the debate offered no
reassurance that grown-ups were at the table, or even in the neighborhood.
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Crazy Talk at the Republican Debate - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/18/opinion/crazy-talk-at-the-...

But we did hear an idea to put Mother Teresa Mother Teresa, a penniless nun
on our money. Think about that.
We were discussing disease, we were discussing all sorts of things tonight,
many of which will just be words. It will just pass on, one candidate said, wrapping
up. I dont want to say politicians, all talk, no action. But a lot of what we talked
about is words and it will be forgotten very quickly.
Which was the smartest thing Donald Trump has said all year, and an outcome
America should dearly hope for.
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A version of this editorial appears in print on September 18, 2015, on page A28 of the New York edition
with the headline: Crazy Talk.

2015 The New York Times Company

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