PIMPS, prostitutes, messages from God, border walls and a child who is “a total superstar”. The questions of the first Republican primary debate ranged far and wide on Thursday night, but for all the talk of healthcare, immigration, benefits and war, a conspicuous silence reigned over some of the issues most sensitive to conservative voters.

Guns

A day after a gunman attacked a movie theatre in Tennessee, two weeks after a gunman murdered two young women in a Louisiana theatre, three weeks after a gunman killed four marines in Chattanooga, and less than two months after a gunman shot nine people dead in a South Carolina church, the Republican National Committee and Fox News held the first presidential debate in a “gun-free zone”.

Although the RNC, Fox News and Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena banned guns from the stadium — a decision praised by gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety — the moderators asked no questions about gun control to the 10 leading Republican candidates.

Gun control remains anathema to the majority of Republican voters, especially those most likely to vote in primary elections that tend to draw more conservative elements. Enshrined in the constitution, gun rights have been sacrosanct to many Americans for decades, and voters have increasingly turned away from gun control.

To suggest anything other than mental health checks — and possibly background checks — is blasphemy for Republican candidates, who mostly recite pro-gun scripture that people, and not guns, kill. With the NRA always watching, lobbying and making hefty contributions to conservatives, neither Fox nor the candidates have cause to broach the issue.

Climate change

Although the leading candidates have mostly turned away from denying global warming, the problem — described as an imminent threat to humankind by international experts and even the pope — never came up during the two-hour main debate.

Moderators of the early debate for seven low-polling candidates did mention climate change to senator Lindsey Graham, but only to criticise him.

“You worked with Democrats and President Obama when it came to climate change,” Fox moderator Bill Hemmer asked. “How can they trust you based on that record?”

Graham turned his answer into an attack on Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, but did not deny the reality of global warming. “When I get on the stage with Hillary Clinton, we won’t be debating about the science,” he said.

“In her world, cap-and-trade would dominate, that will destroy the economy in the name of helping the environment. In my world, we would focus on energy independence and a clean environment.”

Most of the undercard candidates said they would rescind Barack Obama’s executive actions on climate change. Chris Christie has said he believes humans cause climate change; Jeb Bush and Rand Paul have said they accept that the climate is changing, but not that humans are responsible; Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker have shied from any conclusive statements; Mike Huckabee has dismissed the dangers of “a sunburn”; and Donald Trump said last month he’s “not a huge believer in the global warming phenomenon”.

Except for related issues on which the candidates are of one mind — rolling back EPA regulations, support for fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline — talk of climate change remains radioactive for candidates who want to appeal to conservatives who deny the science, the sceptics (including billionaire Charles Koch ) and the voters who believe the research. No candidate wants to look like a luddite, but nor do they want to invite comparisons with Democrats like Obama and Clinton or Republican environmentalists like Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon.

Justice, police and race issues

Republicans have proven as amenable to reforming the criminal justice system as Democrats in the last year, backing plans to overhaul the prison system and drug sentencing laws that have left minor, non-violent offenders in prison for decades.

But the United States’ crowded, chaotic prison system, the largest in the world, was not mentioned in either debate, meaning candidates did not have to choose between looking tough, magnanimous or fair.

Police and race issues were briefly mentioned in the main debate, in questions to Scott Walker and Ben Carson. Walker emphasised more thorough training to prevent police abuses, and said that the officers who commit abuses should face the full force of the law. Carson said he was disinterested in race issues, saying “it’s time for us to move beyond that”.

But the debate essentially ignored the Black Lives Matter movement, institutional racism and its symbols (e.g. the Confederate battle-flag), the steady increase of unarmed people killed by police, and the militarisation of police departments and their cultures.

Money in politics

The fuel of contemporary politics — massive amounts of “dark money” driving campaigns — was never an intentional debate point, but the ugly gears of contemporary politics were exposed in one brief, surreal exchange, when Rand Paul accused Trump of “buying politicians” over the years.

Trump shot back that he had donated to most of the Republicans, too, and several of the candidates started shouting denials or equivocations about whether the billionaire had ever contributed to them. Trump bluntly admitted he gave to politicians on a pure quid pro quo basis — that he expected favours down the line for giving donations.

He said that Hillary Clinton, for instance, came to his wedding because she owed him for the money. In the span of a few minutes Trump both bragged about his success as a creature of money in politics and also portrayed himself as an outsider able to shake up the Washington establishment.

In contrast, Vermont senator and Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders has tried to make campaign finance a major issue, railing against the supreme court decision that allowed special organisations unlimited cash to funnel into campaigns.

Any Democrat besides Hillary Clinton

Finally, neither the candidates nor the moderators showed any awareness that the former secretary of state is running against Sanders, a former governor and a former senator, and may soon face Vice-President Joe Biden.

Most of the candidates even held back against Obama, denouncing his policies but reserving their ad hominem attacks for Clinton. The concerted attack against Clinton has had little apparent consequence on her campaign, although Americans have increasingly disliked Clinton since she officially announced her candidacy.

—By arrangement with the Guardian

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2015

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