People come in. They live. They shoot. Something is going on, and it's bad.

—He, Trump, January 14, 2016

That pretty much summed up the whole damn rodeo from South Carolina on Thursday night. That pretty much summed up the entire Republican primary campaign to date. However, I'd like to begin by asking whether or not Tailgunner Ted Cruz has yet descended to earth after He, Trump parked him somewhere east of the Van Alen Belt. Remember, the Tailgunner is supposed to be the Optimus Prime of debaters. (I know someone who debated him while they were both at Ivy League institutions, and that person explained to me how formidable the Tailgunner really is.) So how in the name of Robert Y. Hayne—a good South Carolinian of Cruzian Tenther temperament—did the Tailgunner walk into such a resounding haymaker as he did?

He was really styling in his oleaginous culture-warrior drag, talking about how there were no conservatives in Manhattan, and sneering:

CRUZ: You know, I think most people know exactly what New York values are … But I promise you, in the state of South Carolina, they do.

You hardly noticed that he was dropping his left. He, Trump, with his wolverine's instinct for the jugular, struck, and he struck hard.

TRUMP: So conservatives actually do come out of Manhattan, including William F. Buckley and others, just so you understand. And just so—if I could, because he insulted a lot of people. I've had more calls on that statement that Ted made—New York is a great place. It's got great people, it's got loving people, wonderful people. When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on Earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York. You had two one hundred... you had two 110-story buildings come crashing down. I saw them come down. Thousands of people killed, and the cleanup started the next day, and it was the most horrific cleanup, probably in the history of doing this, and in construction. I was down there, and I've never seen anything like it. And the people in New York fought and fought and fought, and we saw more death, and even the smell of death—nobody understood it. And it was with us for months, the smell, the air. And we rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made.

I've been waiting for someone to squash that demagogic bug in just that way and, just for a second, I began to see the sense behind He, Trump's poll numbers. Most of these candidates—with the possible exception of Chris Christie—are purely amateur tough guys. (Cruz and Rubio were particularly amped about killing people last night.) But He, Trump is a genuine professional bully. He has the instinctive feel for someone's weak spots, and he jumps on them with malicious enthusiasm. If you're going to vote your Id, you're going to vote for the person who most authentically represents it.

Let's dispense with the nonsense first. Cruz referred to the Department of Justice's ill-conceived "Fast and Furious" program in a litany of gun control measures he opposed. Jeb (!) Bush seemed to say that the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill was a threat to national security. John Kasich, who seemed all night to be channeling Dana Carvey's imitation of Jeb (!)'s old man, referred to something called the "PTT" trade deal, and he later made the point that, "The country needed healed." Make the pie higher! And Chris Christie got to talk about infrastructure—bridges!—without the entire nation convulsing in uncontrollable laughter.

(Big Chicken also got to tell the president that, come next fall, "We're going to kick your rear end out of the White House." No need, dude. He's leaving then anyway.)

I don't know what to make of the rest of it. There was the first serious policy debate over tariffs in nearly a century, and there was a lot of yammering about the flat tax, which is never going to happen, because the United States would rather have an actual budget than not have one. There was a vigorous back-and-forth between Rubio and Cruz over who's tougher on immigration, and there was some spectacular silliness on the subject of whether or not, from the Beyond, the Founders will allow Cruz to become president. But it was on the subject of national security and guns that sent this thing spiraling out of control, and nobody propelled it with more velocity than young Marco Rubio, who is just dying to put on a hat with some braid and stand on a balcony. He knows, he does, young Marco, that the president would grab all the guns there are in America if he had the chance.

Look, the Second Amendment is not an option. It is not a suggestion. It is a constitutional right of every American to be able to protect themselves and their families. I am convinced that if this president could confiscate every gun in America, he would. I am convinced that this president, if he could get rid of the Second Amendment, he would. I am convinced because I see how he works with his attorney general, not to defend the Second Amendment, but to figure out ways to undermine it.

Of course, this is completely barking mad. No president can get rid of one of the amendments in the Bill of Rights. This president never has given the slightest indication that he is a gun-grabber; if Rubio doubts that, I have about 8 gazillion progressives who can enlighten him on the topic. Rubio is one very small step here from hiding under a tarp in an Oregon bird sanctuary. But his real piece de resistance was reframing his cowardly abandonment of comprehensive immigration reform as a bold and courageous move to keep us all from being killed in our beds.

The issue is a dramatically different issue than it was 24 months ago. Twenty-four months ago, 36 months ago, you did not have a group of radical crazies named ISIS who were burning people in cages and recruiting people to enter our country legally. They have a sophisticated understanding of our legal immigration system and we now have an obligation to ensure that they are not able to use that system against us. The entire system of legal immigration must now be reexamined for security first and foremost, with an eye on ISIS. Because they're recruiting people to enter this country as engineers, posing as doctors, posing as refugees. We know this for a fact. They've contacted the trafficking networks in the Western Hemisphere to get people in through the southern border. And they got a killer in San Bernardino in posing as a fiance. This issue now has to be about stopping ISIS entering the United States, and when I'm president we will.

This is oily enough to fry chicken. You wonder why He, Trump is ahead. He knows what the problem is. People come in. They live. They shoot. Something's going on, and it's bad.

I'll say.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io