Left Hand, Meet Right Hand

The once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle, in today's editorial "The GOP's Uncivil Debate:"

The Republican presidential race, the headlines tell us, suddenly turned civil and substantive this week.  When the candidates faced off in their last debate before Tuesday’s crucial primaries in Florida and Ohio, they did not trade petty insults or discuss body parts. Instead, Donald Trump merely stated that “there is tremendous hate” among “large portions” of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims. “We better solve the problem before it’s too late,” Mr. Trump said.

A debate is not civil when it includes this kind of ignorant stereotyping. It is not substantive when such rank prejudice earns inadequate protest from the others onstage. In fact, it is a measure of how crude Mr. Trump has made GOP politics that the front-runner’s hateful spewing seems increasingly normal.  (our emphasis)

Here's what the Bugle's own headline (and front page story) said just yesterday (paper edition):

Novel approach:  Talk about policy
GOP candidates set aside insults
Debate is sometimes sharp but also serious

As we and others noted yesterday, much of the initial Beltway media reaction to the last Republican "debate" was one of relief that, finally (!), the candidates were pulling themselves out of the gutter! No insults! Serious!  Less widely noted, except by the usual suspects, was the fact that what the candidates were actually saying was every bit as godawful mindless and extreme as what they were saying before, but now it was being said with an "inside voice."  Many crack Republican- wired journalists stenographers somehow missed that minor point, though the Bezos editorial board is happy to glide past the reality that its own left and right hands apparently don't know what the other is doing.