So Who Won Last Night?

So who was the big winner last night? I’d say John Kasich. If I were him, I’d have been listening to all the calls to pull out, and this would have troubled me. But after last night’s performance by Cruz and Rubio I’d be determined to stay in.

And maybe Ben Carson feels that way too, with reason.

In fact, if I were them, I’d be a little annoyed at all the well-thinking conservative establishment pundits, in all respects my inferiors, who have been ordering me to drop out. Just who the H__ gave them the keys to the kingdom? Who made them the Grand Inquisitors charged with stamping out heresies?

More recently, they’ve been behaving like the Millennial cry-bullies at Oberlin. Either denounce Trump, they tell us, or we’ll denounce you! If I weren’t already in Trump’s camp, that would be reason enough to support him.

Mind you, it’s not as if I disagree with any of them. In a general election against Hillary, I’d vote for any of her opponents. And small policy differences wouldn’t matter so much as it would that, with Hillary, we’d have elevated the most corrupt politician since Aaron Burr and the most paranoid leader since Nixon.

If I like Trump, then, it’s simply because I think he’s more likely to beat Hillary than anyone else. I think Rubio would wilt like a week old lily. Or choke, as Trump put it. As for Cruz, he’s arrogant, imperious and nasty. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a lawyer and these are my people! I just don’t think he could bring along anyone other than the true believers who see politics as nothing more than a matter of espousing the right policies, and who don’t care about personalities.

I might mention that I get the creeps when I see Cruz laying hands and praying over someone, or when he and Rubio get into a quarrel about whether one of them denied the literal truth of the Bible. Sooner than that, I’d prefer a wishy-washy Presbyterian.

Surrounded by two yipping attack poodles, Trump kept his cool last night, and that impressed me. Cruz’s attempt to one-up him on immigration was merely embarrassing. And Rubio seemed to think he was in a middle-school food fight. On the subject of Israel Trump was the adult in the room. And he came up with the best line of the night: “The wall just got ten feet taller.”