February 15, 2016

This was rough weekend for America. First, news broke of Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing. Scalia was of the finest defenders of the Constitution and the God-given rights that it ensures. His absence on the Supreme Court portends a gloomy outlook for the future of the country.

Moreover, we got to endure a debate in which we witnessed the Republican primary frontrunner – by a margin larger than his own ego – repeat left-wing lies all night. Yes, there was a crazy man yelling left-wing gobbledygook in a presidential primary debate, and it wasn’t the open-socialist Bernie Sanders. It was billionaire businessman, bully and braggart Donald Trump.

Trump decided that instead of focusing on the issues facing America and arguing his policies, he would go after Jeb Bush – by attacking his brother, the former president.

“The World Trade Center came down during the reign of George Bush,” Trump said to a strong reaction from the audience. “That’s not keeping us safe.”

Trump then pulled the left’s favorite line: “Bush lied. People died.” Perhaps he bumped into Hillary Clinton on his way there and accidentally ended up with her debate notes?

“You call it whatever you want. I will tell you. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction,”

The audience was not pleased at Trump’s vicious attacks on the former president; retorting with loud boos, to which Trump responded;

I know so many of the people in the audience. And by the way, I’m a self-funder. I don’t have — I have my wife and I have my son. That’s all I have. I don’t have this.

And this is what Trump’s been doing in every debate. Anytime he says something that isn’t met with a standing ovation, it must be because the audience is planted with special-interest groups. Not because he said something really, really imprudent – or in this case, plain false.

There’s no question that throwing a Trumpertantrum on stage – blaming the worlds ills on the former president – was a poor decision. Polls even show that George W. Bush is fairly well-liked by not just Republicans, but most Americans. And certainly no one believes this asinine, left-wing revisionist history that Bush is responsible for 9/11 or that Bush deliberately lied to the American people. There is only one real liar who Trump should’ve been focused on attacking, and that’s Hillary Clinton.

Trump didn’t confine his smears to the former president. Trump also took a jab at Ted Cruz. When the Texas senator called him out for his support of funding of Planned Parenthood, Trump responded with:

You probably are worse than Jeb Bush. You are single biggest liar. This guys lied – let me just tell you, this guy lied about Ben Carson…

This guy will say anything, nasty guy. Now I know why he doesn’t have one endorsement from any of his colleagues.

He’s a nasty guy.

This is rather awkward, considering how Cruz wasn’t lying. Trump did support funding Planned Parenthood back in the summer, when he said he supports funding the portion of their business that adheres to women’s health, not abortion. Trump would have been okay if he just explained that and defended his position. But he didn’t. Instead he savagely pounded away at Ted Cruz’s moral character as an individual.

The latest pre-debate polls in the South Carolina primary have Trump at 37%; second place shows Ted Cruz with 17%. If Trump maintains such a substantial lead – or even expands it – after this debate, if he wins South Carolina with a 20-point margin, the nomination  probably over. Lifelong Constitutional defender Justice Scalia has passed away. The likely Republican nominee is a populist, New York liberal. The Democrat nominee will either be an open socialist or a dishonest and crooked closet-socialist.

Ronald Reagan said that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Right now, “one generation” would be a hell of an improvement.