Hitler Trends in 2016

Jeb Bush declared, “Hell, yeah, I would!”

“Look, you gotta step up, man,” he said Tuesday. “That would be key. The problem with going back in history and doing that is, as we know from the series — what’s the name of the Michael J. Fox movies? ‘Back to the Future’ — it could have a dangerous effect on everything else,” Bush added.

“But I’d do it. I mean — Hitler,” he said, with a shrug and a coy smile.

To explain — yes, he’d kill baby Adolf Hitler if he got the chance.

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Then on Wednesday, a former neurosurgeon named Ben was asked this: “Mr. Carson, as perhaps the most anti-Hitler but also the most anti-abortion candidate, would you be in favor of aborting baby Hitler?”

“I’m not in favor of aborting anybody,” the low-key Carson said.

“Not even Hitler?” the “reporter” asked.

As Carson turned away, the so-called reporter, filming the exchange, said to his viewers, “OK. Pro-Hitler.”

Carson, perhaps, had invited some sort of question on the Nazis. He did say that the Holocaust would have been less likely to happen if the Jews had armed themselves.

“There’s a reason these dictatorial people take the guns first,” Carson told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview.

Related: The Debate: Bushism vs. Reaganism

But Bush was completely unprepared. He looked sheepish and silly, like a grown man in a business suit trying to join in a kickball game.

Republican candidates, once again, seem to have almost no idea how to handle the gotcha — or incredibly stupid — questions. That they’ll get asked them is never in doubt, but they apparently have no plan for how they’ll deal with them when they do.

Don’t they know “reporters” are lying in wait to spring a gotcha question?

Bush was asked the Hitler question as he was trying to make nice with reporters on a bus ride through Moultonborough, New Hampshire. The questioner? A reporter from the hyper-liberal Huffington Post.

And Carson was blindsided at a media scrum by a guy known only as “PFT Commenter.” He identifies himself on Twitter as an NFL writer and chief political correspondent for SB Nation, which describes itself as “the fastest-growing online sports media brand and the largest network of fan-centric sports communities.”

Don’t they know “reporters” are lying in wait to spring a gotcha question? It happens every cycle, and unschooled candidates take the bait, every time.

Back in 2012, former GOP Rep. Todd Akin from Missouri, running for a Senate seat, appeared on a local TV station and was asked about abortion in the case of rape. He said that conception from rape is “really rare.” He added, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Indiana GOP U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock also weighed in on abortion and rape that year. Clearly more aware of how the human body works, he said that rape can lead to conception, but that he opposed aborting pregnancies conceived in rape because “it is something that God intended to happen.”

Candidates need to learn how to answer the goofball questions.

Both got crushed in the election. And for good reason. Reasonable people concluded that the two guys were idiots.

Early in this campaign cycle, former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said President Obama doesn’t “love America.” Then, as the mainstream media does, many Republicans were asked if they agree with America’s Mayor.

Asked about the pressing issue, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said, “The mayor can speak for himself. I’m not going to comment on what the president thinks or not.” A Washington Post writer immediately called for the governor to quit the race, which the not-ready-for-prime-time player did a few months later.

Related: Christie Takes the JV Debate

But in between, Walker and others were asked whether they believe in evolution, and whether vaccines cause autism.

It happens only to Republicans, of course. When skeezy Vice President Joe Biden put his hands on a Cabinet secretary’s wife, leaning in close for a creepy over-the-shoulder whisper, no one asked Hillary Rodham Clinton if she thought her one-time potential 2016 opponent was a pervert. (She has some experience with dirty old men, so she could’ve given a qualified opinion.)

And when liberal darling Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was out on her Senate campaign claiming to be part American Indian (she isn’t), no reporter asked Biden, who as vice president is president of the U.S. Senate, what he thought about a candidate lying (and with his plagiarism past, he could’ve gone on and on).

So now we’re in the full tilt of Election Cycle 2016, and the gotcha questions are picking up pace — and weight. As a primer on how to handle the coming questions, candidates need to learn how to answer the goofball questions they’re going to get.

Related: Cruz on Rubio: ‘Talk is Cheap’

We’ve seen two great examples — by current candidates — on how to do this. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida gave a great example of how to respond when he was asked if he thought Obama “loves America”:

“I don’t feel like I’m in a position to have to answer for every person in my party that makes a claim. Democrats aren’t asked to answer every time Joe Biden says something embarrassing, so I don’t know why I should answer every time a Republican does. I’ll suffice it to say that I believe the president loves America; I think his ideas are bad.”

Zing. In his answer, he slapped the media for its clear bias, whacked Dirty Joe, rejected the notion that he’s responsible for everything for things his fellow Republicans say, and gave Obama a punch in the gut — on policy, not a personal attack — all the while saying, “Sure, the president loves America.”

But New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was perfect in his technique when he was asked at a GOP debate about betting on fantasy football.

“Are we really talking about getting government involved in fantasy football? We have — wait a second — we have $19 trillion in debt. We have people out of work. We have ISIS and al Qaeda attacking us. And we’re talking about fantasy football? Can we stop?”

The crowd erupted in cheers.