The Republican Party has an allergy to facts
By Michael A. Cohen
About two and a half hours into Wednesday night’s marathon three-hour GOP presidential debate, I hit my breaking point.
I’d sat through the repeated fear-mongering, inflation threats, and hand-wringing on Iran, capped by Mike Huckabee declaring Tehran an actual threat to the survival of Western civilization. I sat dumbstruck as Carly Fiorina — who as CEO of Hewlett-Packard almost single-handedly destroyed the company, and who has never held elected office — complained that Hillary Clinton hasn’t accomplished anything. I heard Jeb Bush, to raucous applause, say that his brother George kept America safe . . . and then, not more than 10 seconds later, refer to his brother standing on a rubble pile in lower Manhattan in which nearly 3,000 Americans had been killed.
I watched Donald Trump criticize Rand Paul’s physical appearance as if he’s not wearing a dead sea gull on his head. I seethed as one candidate after another offered more heartless and uncompassionate plans for how to treat illegal immigrants. I even listened to Ben Carson try to one-up Trump by saying that we don’t need just a wall on the US-Mexico border . . . we need a double fence. I became slack-jawed as Chris Christie suggested that Hillary Clinton supports mass murder. I stewed as every presidential candidate for one of two political parties in the most powerful country in the world fell over themselves to deny the basic science of climate change or downplay the urgent need to do anything about it.
I put up with all of it. But then Jake Tapper directed a question to Carson about the connection between vaccines and autism — and it was on.
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