Some thoughts on the debate last night:
- Rick Perry did fairly well in his first debate--especially with being the punching bag of the other candidates for almost half of it. He will have to do much better on global warming questions though. He did not back down on the quotes from his book, Fed Up!, and he did a good job in framing the Social Security question not as a debate on the issues we faced 70 years ago but on current day challenges. Perry still needs to supply us with reasons why Social Security is currently a Ponzi Scheme. Repeating that it is so over and over again is not an argument.
- Some further questions I have for Perry on Social Security: 1) Is social security in principle at all compatible with a republic based on natural rights and consent of the governed? 2) How can it be reformed today so that it can be constitutional if, in its current form, it is not?
- Romney was his usual, smooth talking self, and I thought he still was able to deflect questions on Romneycare fairly well. He successfully played the Newt card by rising above everyone else during the questioning on Perry's executive order on HPV vaccinations.
- Ron Paul's solution to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Take away air conditioning for the troops.
- And Paul's fear that border fences will be used to keep us in is, shall we say, crazy. Is it simply the presence of fences that make regimes tyrannical? Someone should investigate whether Paul has a fence around his own home.
- Bachmann seemingly took Rick Santorum's place from the last debate-virtually an after thought. Surprising considering that she won in Iowa.
- Both Santorum and Newt did well. Cain did pretty well too, but he did feature typical clean-up-the-bureaucracy language that politicians have been saying for fifty years.
- NBC took the liberal obsession with diversity to its logical conclusion: they dragged out a Telemundo anchor to ask a question on immigration.
- During the MSNBC post debate panel moderated by Rachel Maddow featuring Lawrence O'Donnell, Al Sharpton, Ed Schultz, Eugene Robinson, Robert Gibbs, and a raving Chris Mathews, they all voiced concerns that the candidates are "alienating the moderates." The irony is so thick, it's ridiculous.
- And last and certainly least, Huntsman had some decent answers, but the little good will I developed for him crumbled with his final answer regarding global warming and evolution. If his answer would have been taped and played for people on the street, 98 out of 100 responses would have identified Huntsman as trying to beat Barack Obama in the Democrat primary.
- And Jonah Goldberg is right. Huntsman looks exactly like the Merovingian from the Matrix trilogy.
No comments:
Post a Comment