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. The GOP Still Needs a Candidate


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National Review:

The Republicans’ presidential debate Thursday night sponsored by Fox News and Google gave primary voters and caucus-goers at least one good reason to reject every candidate on the stage. The interesting question now is whether someone else will enter the race — at just about the same point in the election cycle in which Bill Clinton entered the Democratic race in 1991.

The spotlight was hottest on Rick Perry, the frontrunner in national polls since he announced his candidacy in Charleston, S.C., on Aug. 13, the same day that Michele Bachmann won the straw poll in Ames, Iowa.

Perry’s problem was not just that he punted on the tough question of how to respond to a terrorist takeover of nuclear-armed Pakistan. Even the smooth-talking Mitt Romney might have had trouble with that nightmare scenario. And Perry was right to cite our informal alliance with India as a source of leverage.
The problem was that Perry couldn’t respond cogently to utterly predictable questions and was unable to articulate his pre-scripted criticisms of Romney. A case can certainly be made that Romney has flip-flopped on issues. But Perry failed to make it.

Perry defended his order requiring HPV vaccinations by citing his talks with a woman with cervical cancer — but they took place only after his order. He failed to fend off attacks on his criticisms of Social Security in his book Fed Up!, saying he was only endorsing the longtime exemption from the program for state and local public employees.

He failed to explain why Texas, with its large legal- and illegal-immigrant and young populations, has a high percentage of people without health insurance.

He was eloquent in defending Texas’s in-state college tuition for children of illegal aliens, but his stand is hugely unpopular with Republicans outside Texas. And he failed to point out that it helped him win a respectable 38 percent from Latino voters in the 2010 election.snip
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These "debates" have degenerated to self destructive exercises that serve no other purpose than to help assure victory for the dims.

Until you can get a non-dim-bias panel that will ask meaningful questions, abolish them.

To his credit, Noot tried to diffuse the system a bit at the first debate but, alas, it's now just a farce.

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These "debates" have degenerated to self destructive exercises that serve no other purpose than to help assure victory for the dims.

Until you can get a non-dim-bias panel that will ask meaningful questions, abolish them.

To his credit, Noot tried to diffuse the system a bit at the first debate but, alas, it's now just a farce.

 

While I agree that some of the infighting that has gone on has been a bit destructive, I think that the debates have been a good thing. It is good that they've taken place well ahead of the primary cycles, instead of during. There is nothing wrong in exploring past the rhetoric and letting the voting public see the whole picture. I think that the process is going to produce the most electable candidate.

 

We must keep in mind that, unlike 2008, the "o" now has a record to run on, and it isn't a good one. Nothing wrong about making sure that we field a candidate with a better record than his.

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These "debates" have degenerated to self destructive exercises that serve no other purpose than to help assure victory for the dims.

Until you can get a non-dim-bias panel that will ask meaningful questions, abolish them.

To his credit, Noot tried to diffuse the system a bit at the first debate but, alas, it's now just a farce.

 

While I agree that some of the infighting that has gone on has been a bit destructive, I think that the debates have been a good thing. It is good that they've taken place well ahead of the primary cycles, instead of during. There is nothing wrong in exploring past the rhetoric and letting the voting public see the whole picture. I think that the process is going to produce the most electable candidate.

 

We must keep in mind that, unlike 2008, the "o" now has a record to run on, and it isn't a good one. Nothing wrong about making sure that we field a candidate with a better record than his.

So true. That would be all nine of them, even the mad man Paul.

But, I agree the most electable is a prime objective.

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righteousmomma

ok, lets face it -- when all is said and done and all the songs sung - no one is really passionate about any of the lineup.

 

I keep thinking about the old Wide Awake site and Mad Ivan and his reason for being. Then I think about the possibly brilliant timing and strategy by a certain someone....

Then reality in the form of NCT hits me in the face and I go back to insecurity and apathy. Just me-- so carry on.

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My biggest concern: someone needs to be asking serious questions of these candidates during debates instead of the screwball fluff that's been tossed at them so far.

 

Star Parker stated it very eloquently today:

 

The Republican presidential debates are looking more and more like symptoms of the problems we've got than part of the process of solving them.

 

Maximum style, minimum substance. Focus on sizzle, forget about the steak.

 

These events are supposed to be about quality information, raising the bar, and producing a thoughtful, informed electorate. But they are being produced to provide entertainment, and we are barely getting that.

 

Technology doesn't take the place of substance. YouTube and real-time polling are not substitutes for thoughtful, provocative questioning.

 

Can it really be that Rick Perry, in this third debate in which he has appeared, was not pushed, after all the heat being thrown out on Social Security, on how specifically how he would reform it?

 

Can it be, as healthcare expert after healthcare expert has laid out the long list of failures of RomneyCare in Massachusetts, and its unquestionable similarities to ObamaCare, that Mitt Romney was not grilled thoroughly on this and called on his sidestepping and denials?

 

Can it be that, on a day where the stock market in our country dropped 3-1/2 percent and in China 5 percent, that candidates were not asked what they think is wrong with the global economy?

 

Can it be that, when many experts agree that government meddling in housing and mortgages -- particularly through mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- was central to the recent financial collapse, there has not been a single question on why Fannie and Freddie are still standing, propped up by government, and untouched?

 

Why, when everyone knows that Rick Santorum is a social conservative, would the question on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the military be directed to him? His answer was a surprise to no one. Why wasn't Romney the one questioned on this?

 

Why, instead of time being wasted with stupid questions like "Who on this stage would you choose as your vice president?" would the question not be asked "Who is your favorite justice on the Supreme Court"?

 

Both Romney and Michele Bachmann have said they will repeal ObamaCare on day one.

 

Wouldn't you think someone would ask what happens on day two? What would they do with our healthcare system, which clearly has problems?

 

With all the focus on Social Security, policy experts generally agree that the problems of Medicare are much bigger and more complex.

 

Yet, there has not been a single question about Medicare and what, if anything, should be done to reform it.

 

But perhaps even more fundamentally, the cable sponsors of these events have failed grotesquely to bring out the fault lines that divide these Republican candidates and the Republican Party.

 

Where are these candidates on Roe v. Wade and the role of law in protecting unborn lives?

 

Where are these candidates on preservation on the integrity of traditional marriage?

 

With all the talk about states' rights, why are there no questions about the appropriateness of a federal court overturning a popular vote in the state of California -- Proposition 8 -- to preserve the traditional definition of marriage in their state?

 

Or the denial of the District of Columbia government to even allow a vote of its residents on this issue before declaring same-sex "marriage" legal?

 

Does the collapse of the traditional family in America -- something undeniably happening as we rapidly approach almost half our children being born to unwed mothers -- even matter? Should not these candidates be forced to weigh in on this?

 

Allowing this to become an exclusively technocratic discussion about the economy -- like we're all laboratory mice in a box with politicians pushing the buttons -- obfuscates key differences between these Republican candidates and the two parties.

 

It is a symptom of the big problems of our country that we appear incapable of having presidential debates with serious questions.

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Yep...all hat, no cattle.

I have previously stated that these "debates" as presently constructed are a farce. Until we can get a panel that will ask real questions, I'll boycott them.

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