The day after the debate, there is a façade of stability descending on the Republican Party. The House has elected its new right-wing Speaker. And the presidential candidates are briefly united in their contempt for the mass media (nevermind that a handful of them have run the media circuit today to spin their debate performances last night). It seems, as Jonathan Chait wrote in New York Magazine, that peace has broken out among the Republican candidates.

But for a party whose goal is to retake the White House in 2016, it seems odd that they would elect as their most visible national leader someone who, as the vice presidential nominee, lost a national election. This, after running on a platform to repeal Obamacare, ravage aid to needy families and end Medicare as we know it.

The presidential candidates even bungled their opportunity to appeal to the American people on a friendly network, CNBC — and then blamed the moderators for it.

Nevermind that tax cut-crazed CNBC allowed Rick Santelli to bellow an on-air rant in 2009 that helped inspire the Tea Party.

Indeed, there was a lot of nevermind-ing going on throughout the debate.

Marco Rubio tried to out-math CNBC’s John Harwood about his tax plan — nevermind that even the conservative Tax Foundation admits Rubio’s plan would disproportionately favor the rich and hurt the middle class.

Donald Trump was bold enough to extract an apology from moderator Becky Quick for misquoting him — nevermind that the quote appears on Trump’s website.

In fact, almost every candidate on stage attacked the moderators — nevermind that their campaigns had all agreed to the debate rules.

When it comes to Republican debates, fibs and fits come first; facts come last.

And whether the discussion was about Fantasy Football, Bolsheviks or blimps, the middle class was the obvious loser, noticeably absent from the conversation. That’s because not a single GOP candidate is running on a platform focused on helping the middle class.

The GOP’s policies are not designed to help the middle class. They are designed to help their wealthy, powerful friends and donors under the misguided idea that wealth will one day trickle down.

Nevermind that this idea has been debunked time and again — both by economists and by the middle class families it never helped.