Republican Hopefuls Utterly Implode in Most Entertaining Debate Yet

I’ve been in a roomful of six-year-old girls trying to organize themselves into an unrehearsed singing and dance performance, so I consider myself something of an expert on total and complete chaos. Saturday night’s Republican presidential debate set a new standard.

It wasn’t just Donald Trump’s constant insults and interruptions directed almost exclusively at Jeb Bush, who had no idea how to respond. It wasn’t just Ben Carson’s insistence on answering not the directed at him, but the one several questions back (and doing a bad job at that). It wasn’t just Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz battling viciously for second place.

On a night that began on a somber note with the death of conservative hero and unrepentant bigot Antonin Scalia, the debate quickly descended into a six-car train wreck. John Kasich summed the night up elegantly after a particularly childish Trump-Bush exchange: “I think we’re fixing to lose the election to Hillary Clinton if we don’t stop this.”

Indeed. There’s no doubt that Clinton and Bernie Sanders were the big winners of the night; this was by far the ugliest debate the Republicans have put on. It was so bad Republican pollster Frank Luntz tweeted, “the GOP is destroying itself tonight.”

Who knew Chris Christie would turn out to be the steadying hand of the Republican field?

Here are some things that actually happened in the debate:

—Donald Trump blamed George W. Bush for 9/11, telling Jeb, “The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign, remember that.“ He was roundly booed for it.
—Actually, Trump was booed a lot, not something he‘s used to. Usually if he‘s booed at a rally, he has his goons muscle the dissenters out of the room. He can‘t do that at a debate.
—Moderator John Dickerson, channeling your dad driving the station wagon to the beach, told the candidates for president of the United States, “I’m going to turn this car around.“
—Trump denied saying “fuck you“ at a rally but didn‘t address the time he called Cruz a pussy.