The annual Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney, Australia has nothing on these Republican presidential primary debates, although festival seems a bit too, well, festive. Last night's debate was more like the Carnival of Dangerous Ideas.

Regular readers will know that veteran Pither Bruce Barry has been recapping the Democratic and Republican debates, an idea he proposed himself for some reason. No recap this morning though, as he was on a plane last night during the debate. And truth be told, who wouldn't have preferred to be off the planet during this Democracy-Demolition Derby?

For now we'll just highlight a few things, with this important context: Tennessee's Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey and House Speaker Beth Harwell have both now said they will support Donald Trump if he wins the Republican nomination. In fairness to them, Trump won the state in last week's primary and if a plurality of your constituents vote for a proto-fascist, well, what can you do?

Anyhow, let's get this out of the way: Last night Donald Trump clarified for the nation that there is "no problem" with the size of his penis.

A few days ago Sen. Marco Rubio was at a rally mocking Trump's hair and his spray tan when he added a quip about Trump's small hands, a running joke that has always gotten under Trump's skin. "And you know what they say about guys with small hands," Rubio added, to the amazement and amusement of a Virginia crowd. That is a thing men say in locker rooms when they want to suggest that another man has a small penis.

Well, last night, Trump responded, even holding up his hands to the audience and asking "are they small hands?" He went on.

"And he referred to my hands, if they are small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there is no problem. I guarantee."

This line will go down in the history of presidential elections not just because it is a quote of the Republican frontrunner denying that he has a small penis, but also because of that beautiful Trumpian formulation. "I guarantee you there is no problem. I guarantee."

As Radley Balko noted on Twitter last night, most political disputes between shouting men seem to actually be about this anyway, so maybe it's a good thing to make it the actual text instead of just the subtext. It also turned out to set the tone perfectly for the rest of the debate.

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have apparently made an agreement of some sort and spent the night leaving each other alone while firing everything they had at Trump. The Fox News moderators were actually the high point of the debate, pinning down Trump on a number of issues he had flipped on — a tough task, given that Trump appeared to changed positions on some issues during the actual debate. A segment on Trump University, and the lawsuits that have resulted from the scam, was particularly brutal.

What stood out to me, though, was the frontrunner for the GOP nomination promising (again) to order the United States military to commit war crimes. In and of itself, this may sound like a banal point. Marco Rubio and John Kasich proposed more than one ground war last night and at a previous debate I nearly lost count of the countries Ted Cruz wanted to attack in one answer. Moreover, the United States not been a model of military restraint in recent history, to say the least. But last night, Trump not only stood by his assertion that he will bring back torture — "so much worse" than waterboarding — and that he would target terrorists' families, but suggested he would compel the military to follow orders that are illegal.

Here's the entire exchange, via The Washington Post's transcript of the debate:



BAIER: Mr. Trump, just yesterday, almost 100 foreign policy experts signed on to an open letter refusing to support you, saying your embracing expansive use of torture is inexcusable. General Michael Hayden, former CIA director, NSA director, and other experts have said that when you asked the U.S. military to carry out some of your campaign promises, specifically targeting terrorists' families, and also the use of interrogation methods more extreme than waterboarding, the military will refuse because they've been trained to turn down and refuse illegal orders. So what would you do, as commander-in-chief, if the U.S. military refused to carry out those orders? TRUMP: They won't refuse. They're not going to refuse me. Believe me. BAIER: But they're illegal. TRUMP: Let me just tell you, you look at the Middle East. They're chopping off heads. They're chopping off the heads of Christians and anybody else that happens to be in the way. They're drowning people in steel cages. And he — now we're talking about waterboarding. This really started with Ted, a question was asked of Ted last — two debates ago about waterboarding. And Ted was, you know, having a hard time with that question, to be totally honest with you. They then came to me, what do you think of waterboarding? I said it's fine. And if we want to go stronger, I'd go stronger, too, because, frankly... (APPLAUSE) ... that's the way I feel. Can you imagine — can you imagine these people, these animals over in the Middle East, that chop off heads, sitting around talking and seeing that we're having a hard problem with waterboarding? We should go for waterboarding and we should go tougher than waterboarding. That's my opinion. BAIER: But targeting terrorists' families? (APPLAUSE) TRUMP: And — and — and — I'm a leader. I'm a leader. I've always been a leader. I've never had any problem leading people. If I say do it, they're going to do it. That's what leadership is all about. BAIER: Even targeting terrorists' families? TRUMP: Well, look, you know, when a family flies into the World Trade Center, a man flies into the World Trade Center, and his family gets sent back to where they were going — and I think most of you know where they went — and, by the way, it wasn't Iraq — but they went back to a certain territory, they knew what was happening. The wife knew exactly what was happening. They left two days early, with respect to the World Trade Center, and they went back to where they went, and they watched their husband on television flying into the World Trade Center, flying into the Pentagon, and probably trying to fly into the White House, except we had some very, very brave souls on that third plane. All right?



Here is The Washington Post fact-checking Trump's 9/11 conspiracy theory the last time he floated it.

Trump returned to the idea that the military won't refuse him later on, saying "...frankly, when I say they'll do as I tell them, they'll do as I tell them. And that's very — it's very simple. It's very simple."

There is no good way to spin this. Trump, here, is outing himself as a would-be despot and promising to see just how far you can go in America before you bring on a military coup. If you simply don't believe that he means what he says, that's only slightly better. In that case, the likely Republican nominee for president is so unstable and insecure that he not only feels the need to take part in a literal dick measuring contest on national television, but also to suggest that there is no law that would give him pause. In a nation that now takes perpetual warfare for granted, this probably shouldn't surprise me, but it did.

At the end of the debate, the candidates were given the chance to reconsider the pledge they signed last year to support the Republican nominee, even if it's Trump. Each one of them — even Rubio, who has attempted to co-opt the #NeverTrump movement online and put fake #DumpTrump yoga pants in his campaign store after the debate — said they will pledge their allegiance and fall in line.

Update 1:10 p.m.:

In a statement to the Wall Street Journal (which is behind a paywall) Trump has reversed his stance on torture and committing war crimes.



As of this writing, his stance on the size of his penis has not changed.

Update 3/7 10:45 a.m:

Over the weekend, Trump revised his statements on torture yet again. From CNN: