Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Roger L. Simon: Republican Debate #4: Do We Have a ‘Final Four’?



...Only eight front-running candidates are going to be on the main stage according to the rules of the Fox Business presidential debate Tuesday night, and four will participate in the undercard. Nevertheless, no matter how many are on that stage in Milwaukee, I’m almost certain we are already down to a “Final Four.” And it’s pretty obvious who they are: Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. (Sentimentally, I wish there were still hope for Carly, because I like her. But there isn’t. If this were the Oscars, we could give her a special humanitarian award or something.)

Short of something extraordinary happening — and that’s always possible — it’s hard to envision any of the others, including Jeb Bush (whose desperate SuperPAC is reportedly about to blow $20 million to destroy his ex-mentee Rubio — how pathetic is that?), finding a path to the nomination, even though the conventional wisdom is that it’s “still early.”

The truth, however, is that, largely thanks to Trump, it’s not early at all. The public has been glued to this election from the get-go. It’s a national sport, rivaling football....

...there’s good news in all this. All four of these gentlemen in the Final Four would make a pretty decent president. And not just in comparison to their unappealing adversaries — a serial-lying ex-Alinskyite gone Chappaqua plutocrat and an aging Norman Thomas-clone who seems to have forgotten to come back from his honeymoon in the Soviet Union. In different ways, the four Republicans are in themselves interesting and impressive men. I almost wish we could run history four times to see which of them finally would be the best president, because no matter what any of us say, it is impossible to know. We can only guess...