According to Dante's Divine Comedy the inscription on the gates to hell says, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here".

That phrase should have been emblazoned on the entrance to the North Charleston Coliseum Thursday night, as well. In their lust for war, the GOP candidates to a man forgot why the Republican party even exists.

In remonstrating noisily for even more of Washington's imperial overreach abroad, rather than attacking its bloated and intrusive aspect at home, they forced the American people to abandon any hope for the restoration of fiscal rectitude, sound money and free markets.

It started with Senator Cruz who ignored the first question entirely and launched off into an utterly gratuitous exercise in rank demagoguery about the US sailors held for 16 hours by Iran. Said the candidate who is supposed to be talking about the Fed's brutal war on savers and Washington's burial of the nation's taxpayers in public debt:

"Today, many of us picked up our newspapers, and we were horrified to see the sight of 10 American sailors on their knees, with their hands on their heads," Cruz said. "I give you my word, if I am elected President, no serviceman or servicewoman will be forced to be on their knees, and any nation that captures our fighting men will feel the full force and fury of the United States of America."

Oh, c'mon, Senator. This incident happened because two US riverine patrol boats, which specialize in coastal landings, wandered into Iranian territorial waters and at the very worst place imaginable. That is, about 1.5 miles from Farsi Island, which is a major base of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—-the very reactionary force in Iranian politics that wants to sabotage the nuke deal and stop normalization of relations with the US no less than do Washington's neocons.

So if someone needed to be called on the carpet by the GOP debaters, it should have been General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The lapse of command and control in the instance was inexcusable.

After all, treading on the IRGC's Farsi Island base could be considered the equivalent—–given the debate's geographic setting——of firing on Fort Sumter. No US warships should have been anywhere in the vicinity—-especially given that the implementation schedule for dismantling much of Iran's uranium enrichment capacity is starting right now.