Live Blogging the Fox News South Carolina GOP Debate by Matt Payton
Huntsman’s out. So I guess if you want to hear from an adult during this thing I suggest you call up your mom and put her on the speaker phone. Brent Baier is trying to pretend that his network wouldn’t call for Martin Luther King Jr.’s head on a stick if he were alive today right now so this is as good of a time as any to get started.
8:03 - Romney and Gingrich standing next to each other look to me like some sort of joyless Laurel & Hardy. I really want to see them sleep in the same room and Romney wear a nightcap. “Good night, Newt. Good night, Mittens.”
8:07 - When Mitt Romney confesses to a murder I imagine that he’s this matter-of-fact about it. “A poor person looked at me the wrong way so I got a knife, stuck it in his stomach, watched him bleed to death and then had a chicken salad sandwich. What?”
8:10 - Rick Perry is clinging to being in this thing like a turd after a particularly satisfying barbecue meal. I’m pretty sure that’s on one of his lawn signs in Houston.
8:11 - Romney is running to crack down on cheaters. Better watch your back, Newt. Boom!
8:12 - The bald guy with a beard who looks like a scrappier and slightly less suicidal Ben Bernanke is going to be getting his head shoved into a toilet later by Rick Perry while Gingrich and Romney hold his body and Ron Paul stands behind them and pretends they’re not going to do it to him afterward.
8:14 - The hot lady in the blue dress is recognizing that Ron Paul exists. Tomorrow she’ll use this for indie cred in the office and brag about that one time she listened to Arcade Fire while on line at Starbucks.
8:16 - Oh yeah, Rick Santorum is still around. I completely forgot about that dude. Just like that one guy will soon…what’s his name….oh yeah, America.
8:18 - Oh shit, Santorum is going to verbally smack a bitch. He’s going to ask his wife later if she saw that part before he confidently has missionary-position sex with her for the 15 seconds in between the end of the local news and when Jay Leno’s monologue starts.
8:21 - Wait, Romney is against Super PACs and the way these campaigns are financed? Isn’t that like Lex Luthor speaking out against kryptonite?
8:22 - Rick Perry thinks that Romney and Santorum are insiders. His aides haven’t yet informed him that he’s also in the race. His candidacy makes so much more sense now.
8:24 - Let’s see companies buy advertising time during this: Infiniti (sure, cars for people with money), CSX (never heard of it, don’t care enough to look), Brother printers (to print off pictures of Barack Obama in African tribal garb), ThermaCare (old people’s backs hurt especially when full of hate), some sort of joint medication (same), Bertlitz (it helps you learn a new language I guess - so you can order your gardener around more efficiently). Makes sense.
8:30 - Romney has that trait that a lot of pastors always did for me: equally boring, cocky, dumb and rage-inducing all at the same time. It’s a talent.
8:32 - “The state of Texas is under assault from the federal government” - Rick Perry. Man, this guy is as good at stoking Southern paranoia as he is at mixing a stiff drink. Although it seems he’s only had a half dozen tonight which is pretty damn sober for him.
8:34 - I can’t believe I’m saying this but can we hear something from Newt Gingrich now? I want to switch from depression to anger.
8:36 - I spoke too soon. Newt wants people who collect unemployment insurance to have a mandatory job training program…and that’s it. No details about how that would work or what field or what “business” would run this thing. Maybe someone could get a job to deflate him in the evenings. Nah, that would require way too much training.
8:41 - What do you think the odds are that Ron Paul at one time had the largest rubber band ball west of the Mississippi?
8:44 - Ron Paul is working hard on building that bridge the utopia that was America pre-1913. I’ll be right back, I just have to go press my favorite malaria outfit.
8:45 - The crowd is booing the fact that Juan Williams even dares to mention that Mitt Romney has Mexican heritage. How are these buffoons not treated like hecklers at a comedy club? That’s one of the things lacking in the modern GOP: embarrassment.
8:48 - Rick Santorum thinks all you need to do to avoid poverty is work, graduate high school and get married before having children. I love that work is the first answer. “All you need to do to avoid being a virgin is 1) get laid 2) stop listening to Rush and 3) brush your teeth every once in a while.”
8:51 - Who’s that making a sensible argument about the drug war as it relates to race the prison industrial complex? Ron Paul: ix-nay on the ogic-lay.
8:52 - God, Newt Gingrich is fucking gross. So is this crowd. Cheering for a man who stands by his ignorant and racist statements. Juan Williams seems to actually be trying to hold some of these assholes’ feet to the fire and Newt just goes into detail about his poor-people-should-just-clean-shit-up plan. Fuck him.
8:55 - “More people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama that any other president in history” -Newt Gingrich. He found that fact in the same place God sends sinners to live for eternity: his ass.
9:01 - Ron Paul is being forced to defend his comment about having any respect for international law. In Republican-land that’s like implying you wouldn’t mind if the Pope came on your face.
9:02 - Brent Baier shouldn’t have this job. He should go back to his old job of being the little man that comes in every box of Legos you’ve ever bought.
9:04 - If Ron Paul keeps making sense in his arguments about our foreign policy Brent Baier is going to start his period and the crowd is going to roast Mr. Paul like a pig on Hawaiian TV specials.
9:06 - The golden rule is literally booed among the Republican base. The goddamn golden rule! Do these people sit around and watch Leave It Beaver and when Ward tells Wally his moral lesson at the end do they all shout “bullshit!”?
9:12 - Rick Perry is being asked about Turkey still being included in NATO. The thought bubble above his head right now is filled with Smarties candy and a kick line from 1938.
9:14 - Rick Perry just made a joke about Ron Paul being gonged that was actually somewhat funny. Ron Paul looks perplexed mostly because he hasn’t watched the radiation box since Jack Paar walked off the Tonight Show when he couldn’t tell a joke about a water closet.
9:16 - Now Ron Paul is pointing out that the Taliban used to be our allies and that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are seperate. Or in other words, he’s tap dancing on his own GOP electability grave.
9:17 - This crowd, ugh. How bad is it when the candidates are the least disgusting people in the room?
9:18 - The hot lady in the blue dress is so over this. She’s just waiting for Megyn Kelly to go back to her rap career so she can get in there and entertain stoned college kids skipping class.
9:22 - Isn’t Congress already part-time? What’s next? Is Perry going to suggest that the Post Office have fewer people working the counter when you go in just to send off a simple package and end up going through the whole day’s New York Times on your phone while having to pee like a bastard and then that lady with her awful kids is in front of you and…
9:27 - Only two references to Ronald Reagan this evening by my count. What’s going on guys? Too busy reading The Nation and e-mailing Sean Penn to give The Gipper a shout-out every 30 seconds? Sheesh.
9:30 - Every time Rick Santorum finishes a rant he has this smug little look on his face that either reads “Nailed it!” or “Is this the face you make after finishing a grown up sentence?”.
9:33 - No taxes on dividends or capital gains, Newt? While you’re at it why not throw in no sales tax on yachts, scooners and Grey Poupon?
9:37 - Here come the questions about guns. Gentlemen, get out your tiny, tiny cocks!
9:39 - Only at this debate do you have to answer how many animals you’ve killed in the last few years and if you haven’t you might as well put on a prom dress.
9:41 - These guys are really threatened by Ron Paul. I’m not sure why since Fox News has done everything but add a digital clown wig to his head.
9:45 - Newt doesn’t care much for Romney’s Super PAC attack ad against him. Romney is pretending like he doesn’t talk to them and like he has the ability to give a shit.
9:47 - “We all would like Super PACs to disapear” -Mitt Romney. In a night chop full of it that has to be the biggest load of horseshit South Carolina has ever seen. And they had a horse shitting convention in Charleston last week.
9:50 - Wait, what is this with Newt Gingrich making a good point about the failure of No Child Left Behind? Surely he’s about to suggest that immigrant kids just learn how to count by how many grapes they can stuff into his mouth, right? He can’t just leave us hanging like this.
It’s over. Not just the debate but my hope for humanity. I need to wash my ears out with soap after this. I think I’ll listen to something more intelligent and less offensive by putting on my “Bowel Movements 97-00” compilation tape. Goodnight.
