Donald Trump, a colostomy bag stuffed with ill-considered opinions, face-planted at the first GOP Presidential debate, but how far can you really fall when you live in the gutter? Some thought Trump would be surprisingly good in the forum since he has plenty of TV experience, but if you think about it, he only seems potent in those venues when he goes unchallenged, when he’s the boss. Like most bullies, he grows flustered when having to ward off a return blow.

Far more than any other venue, including reliably Lefty outlets like MSNBC, Fox News led Republicans to a horrifying national defeat in 2012, reassuring the faithful with dodgy poll readings that Barack Hussein couldn’t possibly gain a second term. That led to complacency during campaign season and shocked disbelief on Election Day. Reince Priebus and the party called for a full check-up, with the patient to begin a new course in the immediate future.

But not much has changed. Immigrants, women, LGBT people, universal health care and a sane foreign policy are still anathema to almost all the candidates. Perhaps the Fox moderators’ contentiousness was an attempt to awaken the contenders to another November nightmare, but it was most likely just another Reality TV show, with the hosts pushing buttons to gain ratings. For Trump, of course, it was a different kind of program from the one he’s used to–it was one where he could get fired.

The opening of Edward Luce’s predictably astute Financial Times analysis of the debate:

If clarity and geniality count for anything, Donald Trump was the loser of the Republican Party’s first 2016 debate.

With star billing in the biggest reality TV show of all, the property magnate struggled for rapport with the audience. At several points in the two-hour debate, he was booed.

In the post-debate autopsy, Fox News Channel’s focus groups found Mr Trump to be rude, lacking in specific answers and unpresidential. It is hard to believe the average television viewer would have come away feeling radically different.

Yet it is also hard to believe they did not already know all this about him before the show began. Mr Trump has held a double digit poll lead for several weeks. Might the debate have arrested his rise?

We will have to await the polls. But it is worth bearing in mind that at every point in Mr Trump’s steep ascent since mid-June, the political classes have called his peak — and been wrong. The Fox News debate may be no exception.•