Recap of CNN Town Hall

Lots of thoughts on last night's "Town Hall":

• What a shit show.  The lack of decorum, respect, and a display of those drunken with their time in the spotlight turned this into a version of the Wellstone Memorial.  I understand the trauma these folks faced.  But opening a vein to that trauma is not a "Town Hall."  It is an emotional rant.  Call it what it is.
• Along those lines, that's the last one of these we'll see.  The smugness, mugging to the camera, and canned questions were too much.  There certainly will be rallies, but you'll never see someone with a different point of view on stage there to discuss.  Rubio and the NRA were merely there to shut up and take their punishment.  Period.
• Marco Rubio was a punching bag, and the example that will be pointed to when republicans turn down future invites to "discussions" like these.  He was the Christian that was served to the lions to satisfy the crowd's lust for someone to pay.  Despite making a couple of good points, nobody was there to listen to him.  They wanted blood.  They got it.  
• That being said, Dana Loesch of the NRA came across as very grounded, versed, level-headed, and sympathetic.  If this was a prize fight, folks there wanted (and truly expected) a first round knock out.  In reality, not many gloves landed.  She still loses on decision due to the emotion of the night, but she made it all 15 rounds and was not bloodied.
• Loesch's argument that law enforcement had dropped the ball was spot on, although nobody wanted to hear it.  And there, gentle reader, is your sign.  Nobody wants to "fix" the situation if the fix doesn't involve banning guns.  
• Sherriff Scott Isreal came prepared to turn any accountability of law enforcement back to "too many guns on the streets."  He played to the crowd, told them what they wanted to hear, and accepted zero responsibility for the failure of his office to keep kids from being killed.  As a law enforcement official, he's truly a disgusting individual.

What happens from here?  Like the Wellstone memorial, it sure feels like the hand is being overplayed.  The kids are being told by their betters in the liberal stratosphere about how great they are and how they're going to change the world.  Money and adulation are rushing in, and that usually brings out the worst in people.  We're seeing that.  

While this screed can play extremely well to those drunk on the liberal Kool-Aid, I feel it's time is not going to last too long with middle America.  Sympathetic figures will look less so.  "With us or against us," demands require that folks choose an immediate side on a very nuanced issue, and such demands aren't typically received well.  Real solutions that would have done something but don't ban guns will continue to be rejected because they don't deliver upon the Final Solution.

But CNN will continue to drive this; scripting questions and events.  Big money will continue to flow.  Kids will continue to gain in celebrity, driven by their political hatred and refusal of comprimise.  

In essence, expect the shit show to continue.