The GOP debate’s biggest losers

Human civilization has given us a few great unanswerable questions, such as “What is the meaning of life?” and “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” To these, we must now add “Why are Republicans so bad at telling jokes?”

From former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s terrible pun targeting the absent frontrunner (“You’re ducking these things … You keep doing that and no one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore. We’re going to call you Donald Duck”) to former Vice President Mike Pence’s faux-folksy attempt at a wink-wink-nudge-nudge gag about his wife (“I have been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years”), the candidates showed a remarkable inability to deliver zingers at a debate held in the memorial library of a Republican president who was a master of them. Facing off against Democratic candidate Walter Mondale in 1984, Ronald Reagan famously said: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”