Better than a sleeping pill and even capable of producing a laugh or two...

THE REPUBLICAN DEBATE

I sat on my couch trying to stay awake long enough to last through the interminable republican debate. Talk about deadly and the bulls**t was up to elbows before I finally gave up. Admittedly, the republicans are in an impossible position. They made Odysseus position between a rock and a hard place look easy. The fact was that no matter how you slice it, the republicans are not ready to give up on Bush; but everybody wants to distance themselves from Iraq as quickly as possible—with the exception of McCain who is in his own celestial orbit.

When something new came up, it was generally at the expense of the Dems; and, in one or two cases, the Dems had the idea first. We’ll get into that as we kind of take the debate more or less metaphorically.

The only refreshing candidate was the congressman from Texas, Paul because he obviously never got his copy of the playbook. He did speak his mind, some of it I didn’t agree with, some of it I did—especially his idea about getting out of Iraq as soon as the general says the surge is not working. Tom Sacredo was also refreshing because he wasn’t kissing up and I respected him for that; in fact, for the most part, he was the contra posto to McCain, Giuliani and Romney, the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil crowd.

Each was trying to outdo each other in being Mr. Clean, the conservatives candidate de jour but it didn’t work. Romney got it wrong when he wasn’t exaggerating or flip-flopping (he used to be for the military’s “don’t tell” policy; but now he’s all for it!) So’s all the rest! Why? Because it’s working???.

Recognize , too, that with republicans supporting the republican mantra, the serious candidates cannot veer too far from the president’s line and stay top tier. The result They have to play the game.

What I found interesting was that the second tier that seemed to speaking more candidly more openly, more honestly. .

Giuliani and Mitt seemed competiting for who would be the viewed as the biggest super Republican. Giuliani had already put on the gloves and was trying a few rounds on dare I say the word, liberal Hillary.

Mitt kept up his nice guy routine but came off opportunistic and sleazy to my mind. To In the course of his self-defense, he denied the flip flopping and seemed to get off telling the audience how good he was at doing the hard work of running a State.

To paraphrase what was a real slip for Mitt was when he was asked by Wolf Blitzer that if he knew then what he knew now, would his decision on Iraq be different. Mitt went of the deep end getting all of his facts wrong saying that if the Weapons Inspectors would have been allowed in, and if the UN was involved, it would have been a different outcome. But Mitt, that all happened and Bush did choose to go to War. Mitt earned an F on his preparedness on an issue that he should have had locked up! Go to the rear of the class. …

Huckabee seemed to redeem himself as an honest and decent soul with his heartfelt discussion of morality; at least, he sold me. And surprisingly among the candidates who moved up the ladder was other Thompson, who was surprisingly fresh and irrelevant and even voiced an idea or two that didn’t seem too bad..

The democratic debate was especially useful to Giuliani for finding targets. He seemed to focus on Hillary and Edwards for his claim that terrorism was a bumper sticker.
Giuliani likes to go in for the kill especially when the person he is attacking cannot defend their position. Taking credit for everything good that happened in New York was a little bit over the top but the crowd seems to like him even though he’s had more wives than most people can count and he does stand up for freedom of choice—despite hating abortion.


One of the candidates, the one from Virginia, who is eminently forgettable, claimed that he is putting up an Iraq bill that he is going to put forward that divides up Iraq into three sectors and divide the oil revenues; then he agreed condescendingly that it was bi-partisan. Excuse me, didn’t Joe Biden come up with that about two or three years ago if memory serves.

All it all, the show under the big tent it didn’t generate the sparks we expected and, mostly, it was easy to sleep through part of it without missing much.

The sad part was the top tier seemed less sincere, less on top of the real facts than the second tier who were more specialized in subject areas like immigration, English as the language of the country and the cost of \illegal immigration….while most of the top tier candidates weaved and bobbed about Iraq. Most of the discussion despite the candidate’s points of view were actually pretty much alike.

I liked the one question about what would you do with the former president Bush.
Tom Sacredo said it best. He had that Bush’s spokesperson called him and said that he should never enter the White House to see the president again after his take on illegal immigrants. . Sacredo said that he would extend the same courtesy to the ex-president if he were elected. I loved it.

So far, the republicans seem pleased if they can hold together in a patchwork quilt a party that really seems to stand for not much if you take away Iraq. The only real second issue is Immigration and that’s where the tongues get thick and the swords sharpened.



What was really kind of weird in a funny way was when the moderator brought up the comments of a New England bishop about Giuiani’s support of abortion, he referred to the former New York Mayor as Pontius Pilot. . As Giuliani was about to answer, lightening struck his speaker and nobody could hear his response… Giuliani said that after years of religious training that kind of thing had him shook up. To me, that was one of the bright points of the debate.


Les Aaron