The debates are more entertainment than education

“Trump said something racist. That’s another shot.”

Glasses clink on plastic bottles of cheap alcohol, followed by coughing and some sighs of discomfort.

“Rubio’s talking about Jesus.”

“Seriously? We just took one.”

“Now they’re going on about the Constitution.”

“I think we need another bottle.”

This is exactly the sort of scene that has become more and more commonplace among college students. Republican debates have become a farce, a joke, an excuse to drink and laugh at the almost inconceivably ridiculous mockery of the political landscape.

I mean, how is Donald Trump still a legitimate candidate? He referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and “killers” who were bringing drugs into this country. He wants to ban Muslims from travelling. And Trump is a front runner!

What about Ted Cruz? Oh, he still thinks climate change is a hoax.

Ben Carson? He thinks Obamacare is the worst thing since slavery.

You get the idea.

The candidates seem like caricatures, pandering to an aging party base with a patriotism that borders on racism (or just racism. Looking at you, Donald.) and a lack of substantiated evidence when it comes to actual issues. Each debate spawns dozens of memes based solely on outlandish statements. This cycle’s crop of Republican candidates is a joke, and too often, the debates are the depressing punchline, the one that makes you chuckle a bit until you start feeling dead inside.

The debates themselves are a mess. The candidates resort to personal attacks, sweeping declarations, and cheap emotional appeals to “making America great again”, family ideals, and people’s fear of ISIS. They speak in abstracts and emotional triggers in order to avoid any real substance, and more often than not, one of them says something just plain dumb (Ted Cruz clearly does not know what carpet bombing means).

Their platforms are vague and clouded with pseudo-patriotic noise, and don’t tell voters why their ideas are better, just that they are. The candidates question each other’s character with veiled insults when they should be questioning each other’s ideas with real criticism. Their claims almost always lack any real evidence outside of some big numbers taken out of context.

We also care about how relatable the candidates are, and let’s face it – watching the Republican debates is like watching a geriatric ward. A really senile geriatric ward. A terrifying, senile geriatric ward that thinks guns deserve civil rights too and hasn’t found out women actually have real jobs outside of the kitchen *coughKasichcough*. It’s like listening to your slightly racist, vaguely sexist grandpa Bill make a joke at the dinner table, while your family laughs awkwardly before realizing he was being serious.

Young people are, more than ever, interested in the issues and how candidates stand on them. Over half of us identify as independent, and those that do identify as leaning left or right politically are more likely to vote across party lines, based on the issues we value the most. Which is great, if the candidates focused on debating the issues instead of each other.

It’s a well-known fact that young conservatives are being alienated by the archaic stances on social issues like gay marriage and drug policy. Millenials, as a group, are fiscally similar but significantly more socially liberal than previous generations. “If you aren’t a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you aren’t a conservative when you’re 40, you have no brain,” so the saying goes. As you get older, you’re supposed to outgrow the rash idealism of your 20’s and become more practical. However, these ideals of tolerance and civil liberty aren’t going to just fade away. They’ve become part of our culture, of how we think, of how we believe the world should be. And we’ve become more motivated to make changes. If the GOP wants to connect to the young generation, it needs to react to our changing views. The debates serve only as a reflection of the party’s failure to do so.

College students all across the country can enjoy drinking away the debate, taking a shot every time Trump insults someone, or a candidate interrupts the moderator, or a speaker prays to Ronald Reagan. We play the game because we realize what the Republicans are to us now: the cheap liquor we’re settling with because we can’t get anything better.