Batshit in St. Pete - The Republican Debate:
Sweet motherfuck, what a collection of pussies, posers, and paranoiacs gathered on that stage in St. Petersburg last night for the CNN/YouTube debate. What the fuck was that? Leaving aside Fred Thompson, who looks and talks like the ghost of Jacob Marley in a community theatre production of A Christmas Carol, Crazy Eyes Huckabee, the worthless Duncan Hunter, the worthlesser Tom Tancredo, and the batshit nutzoid little fuck that is Ron Paul (yeah, yeah, he's against the war - still, fuck him), and leaving aside John McCain for just a moment here, what you had was a throwdown between a pair of pampered bitches each trying to show the other who can tear up a satin pillow the most viciously.

It's hard to figure out what the most embarrassing moment was for Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani. Was it the sight of two incredibly wealthy white men trying to out butch each other on illegal immigrants? It's like wandering into a Harvard Club discussion of the relative merits of Jackass versus South Park. You stare for a while in nauseated wonder and then you just wanna smack everyone involved on principle.

For the Rude Pundit, the lowest of the low for Romney came when the former governor of Massachusetts tried to get in John McCain's shit about torture. Perfectly spouting the Bush administration's line about how we don't torture, but we can't tell you what we do, Romney got all manly: "I'm not going to specify the specific means of what is and what is not torture so that the people that we capture will know what things we're able to do and what things we're not able to do. And I get that advice from Cofer Black, who is a person who was responsible for counterterrorism in the CIA for some 35 years."

It was too late, though. McCain had already bent Romney over the bamboo mat and made the Mormon into his bitch when he said, "Then I am astonished that you would think such a -- such a torture would be inflicted on anyone in our -- who we are held captive and anyone could believe that that's not torture. It's in violation of the Geneva Convention. It's in violation of existing law. And, governor, let me tell you, if we're going to get the high ground in this world and we're going to be the America that we have cherished and loved for more than 200 years. We're not going to torture people. We're not going to do what Pol Pot did. We're not going to do what's being done to Burmese monks as we speak. I suggest that you talk to retired military officers and active duty military officers like Colin Powell and others, and how in the world anybody could think that that kind of thing could be inflicted by Americans on people who are held in our custody is absolutely beyond me." It was the best answer to any question the entire evening, one of the only ones that bespoke a grounding in humanity, an oasis of normal among the savagery.

For sheer fucking hilarity, there was Rudy Giuliani's response to the scary guy who wanted to know if the candidates believed every word of the bible. Having already been booed on gun control and immigration, the adulterous, gay-loving Giuliani brought out the weasel stick: "I think there are parts of the Bible that are interpretive. I think there are parts of the Bible that are allegorical.I think there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be interpreted in a modern context. So, yes, I believe it. I think it's the great book ever written. I read it frequently. I read it very frequently when I've gone through the bigger crises in my life, and I find great wisdom in it, and it does define to a very large extent my faith. But I don't believe every single thing in the literal sense of Jonah being in the belly of the whale, or, you know, there are some things in it that I think were put there as allegorical."

You gotta wonder if Rudy was readin' the good book while his limo was taking him to Judith Nathan's place in the Hamptons. Maybe he found in it the wisdom to sustain him while he lied to his wife and family for all those pre-9/11 weekends spent balling Nathan. Perhaps he thought about the allegorical aspects of the crucifixion while he was nailing his mistress. Maybe he thought about Jonah and the whale as Nathan was fellating his tiny cock.

The wheels are coming off Giuliani. Romney's unelectable. Huckabee's spooky. The Rude Pundit's said it before: McCain's the only way to go for Republicans who actually want to win. Sure, the crazy showed every now and then with McCain, when talking about the public losing Vietnam or about Iraq, but among the men on that stage last night, McCain was the only one who sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Other than on torture, McCain's best answer was on another creepy question about what guns the candidates own and can use. While Romney and Thompson went macho, McCain, sounding like the guy who would gut you in your sleep, answered, "For a long time I used a lot of guns, including carrying a .45 as a pilot flying in combat over Vietnam. I know how to use guns. I don't own one now."

Now that's the real badass.