They be hatin'

I'm feeling pretty good about myself today, I actually sat through about 20 minutes of the Republican debate last night. I feel like I did my level best to get my head fair and balanced.

God, what an awful group of human beings.

They wasted no time in getting the red meat out on the floor, with the first few questions about immigration reform. Rudy and Mitt jumped right on it, each trying to out hate the other one, accusing one another of gross improprieties: (You were the mayor of a sanctuary city! You hired illegals to clean your mansion!). Poor John McCain tried to back down some of the demagoguing, and Fred Thompson rolled over and barked a little bit of bile into the conversation now and again. Ten minutes into the debate, it was a battle to see who could prove that they were the number one hater of brown folks, and not surprisingly, Tom Tancredo flashed his bona fides and won that match. Sheesh.

The YouTube crowd was a comforting cross section of Republican America. From the Weekly Standard:

So, a good night for for the lowest denominator, a bad night for the GOP. America got to see a vaguely threatening parade of gun fetishists, flat worlders, Mars Explorers, Confederate flag lovers and zombie-eyed-Bible-wavers as well as various one issue activists hammering their pet causes.

I actually started to understand why Huckabee is polling so well. He speaks clearly and slow, uses small words and bromides, and makes a point of telling everybody that he's the holiest one of the bunch. With Rudy and Fred up there, that aint sayin' much, but I hear it's playing well in Des Moines.

Needless to say, after 20 minutes, I finished up my nightcap and headed up to bed. If the Dems actually find a way to lose this election, they don't deserve a party.

UPDATE: Here's a classic.