Darline Graham’s debate disaster stirs memories of past GOP gaffes – Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff
Sen. Darline Graham’s awful showing at Tuesday night’s South Carolina Republican Senate primary debate is a reminder that not everybody is ready for the job they aspire to. But in her defense, she’s just the latest in a long line of GOP blunderers in recent memory.
The fact that someone shouldn’t be given an important job due to being corrupt or an incompetent boob does not necessarily mean they won’t crony their way into a position of authority, unfortunately. Case study: Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Who could forget his awkward GOP response speech after then-President Barack Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address. 
Then there was the odds-on favorite to win the Republican primary in 2015: Jeb(!) Bush. He was quickly reduced to a wet blanket of a politician, pleading with audiences to clap for him.
And who could forget the man who debunked the idea that brain surgeons are geniuses? During Ben Caron’s first speech to the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2017, he explained that immigration and hard work was what America was about.
“There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less,” Carson claimed. 
No, Ben, those were enslaved people.
Rick Perry, the now-former secretary of energy, seemingly began wearing glasses as a disguise after humiliating himself during a 2011 Republican presidential primary debate. 
But even the most recent Republican president with something above a mediocre mind wasn’t immune to exposing his utter lack of disregard for the American voter—a signature of the GOP. Who could forget George H. W. Bush checking his watch as an audience member asked him a question about affordability?
Remember any more great Republican gaffes?
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