(Rewritten and updated, with video embedded.)

The GOP senatorial primary debate in Tucson last night was a sorry spectacle.

PHXated again thought that that bozo J.D. Hayworth came across well. He’s failing at the polls; his ludicrous past as an infomercial pitchman for a skanky company has come back to bite him on the ass; and he looks like … well, he looks like a clown.


hayworth_debate


Still, each of his answers was coherent (within the confines of the nutty far-right philosophy he was espousing) and energetic, and he came across far stronger, in command and in control of both the physical space and the dialog than McCain.

Here’s the video:



Or you can watch the event on the KUAT web site here.

The moderator, Bill Buckmaster, of the long-running public-affairs show “Arizona Illustrated,” on Tucson’s KUAT, was a caricature of the milquetoasty public broadcasting guy.

He didn’t ask a single tough question.

I mean, I guess I didn’t expect him to ask McCain about the spousal abuse described in the book Game Change, but he could have asked him about some of the terrible decisions he made during that presidential campaign, or even his recent statement that he never considered himself a maverick.

Instead, Buckmaster played entirely to the candidates' own talking points, at one point literally letting the candidates discuss the pressing issue of which was the most conservative.


mccain_debate


There were no follow-ups, nothing that asked any of the candidates to deal with political and social realities of the issues facing Arizona.

At the end, completely giving up, he let the candidates each get free time to “set the record straight” about anything else said about them in the debate.

This produced the following exchange:

Hayworth [turning to face McCain]: “John, you wrote the book, Worth the Fighting For. You relayed what happened in South Carolina in 2000….

“You wrote, ‘Given the chance between losing and lying, I chose lying.’ John I’m sorry to say that it appears history is repeating itself here. As you deal with half truths, as you deal with blatant character attacks, as you deal with failing to own up to mistakes you have made that have hurt our nation.

“That’s what I most lament about this campaign.”

McCain [grimacing]: That’s a pretty strong attack there, and I’m tempted to respond.

“But I’m reminded of the advice from my old friend Bob Dole. Never get into a wrestling match with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”

McCain then was given time to yammer on about “doing more for our vets,” though he and Hayworth were both part of the six-year-long Republican reign that produced the pointless war in Iraq, which has had a fairly deleterious affect on quite a few U.S. service people, and the lax oversight of Walter Reed Hospital, which created a big scandal for the Bush administration a few years back.


jim_deakin


A minute or two later, the moderator let Jim Deakin, the soi-disant Tea Party candidate, have the last of the final statements. He began:

“It’s been a lot of fun. Next time, popsicles!”


PHXated’s live-blogging of the first Hayworth-McCain debate is here.