Posted on 01/30/2008 9:38:05 PM PST by Antenna Wilde
Considering the GOP debate was held in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, it was surprising to see the two leading candidates fall miserably short of his charisma. In the Florida Primary, Mike Huckabee fell behind both Romney and McCain by a whopping 20%, but you would never have guessed that listening to him tonight. Not only was he far more eloquent and grounded in presenting his arguments, he's consistently shown to be the candidate with the best sense of humor. I was embarrassed, in fact, listening to Romney and McCain's squabbling, and the applause Ron Paul received when chastising them for it shows I wasn't alone.
And speaking of Ron paul, why is he constantly being stifled, muffled, ignored, cut off and generally under-reported by the media? His comments on less taxation, less government and more power to the people received applause from the crowd—yet again, and continues to gain the most support among individual donors in the military: http://ronpauldelaware.wordpress.com/2007/07/16/military-favors-ron-paul-over-mccain/
But CNN's Anderson Cooper wouldn't let him get a word in edge-wise. It makes me wonder if it has something to do with CNN's parent company, Time Warner, doing business with Goldman Sachs—the top contributer to Romney, and one of the top contributers to McCain. You can see who supports the candidates here: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.asp?id=N00005906&cycle=2008
But linking CNN's coverage directly to contributers like Goldman Sachs is an uphill—if not impossible—endeavor. But you can bet these guys are making a ton of money off the war. Huckabee doesn't get Goldman Sachs money either, and the amount of air time given to him—and each of the candidates—seems to mysteriously correlate with who their donors are, and ultimately how they rise in the polls.
OK, I think most Americans have come to accept that all of the candidates—Reps and Dems—are slippery, but it pains me to see the slipperiness coincide with donors and amount of air time (arguably the same thing). If we could only have Romney in charge of the economy, McCain in charge of defense, Huckabee leading humanitarian affairs and Ron Paul to get rid of the IRS—among the long list of other destructive government agencies.
But why do I keep coming back to Ron Paul? I guess I agree with him; that we should be spending the money on securing the borders at home, security AT HOME. The terrorists didn't invade us, they snuck in and used airplanes. We should be more vigilant about those kinds of threats and stop dumping trillions of dollars into bombing people overseas who don't even have a military that could get past CUBA. We need to invest in AMERICA, and that means investing in AMERICANS. So I say let it be a Huckabee/Paul ticket. I like McCain—don't get me wrong, but the man is simple too OLD. You could see him struggling to collect his thoughts tonight, and he seems askew. I'm still on the fence about Romney... no, I suppose I just don't like him. And I don't want to listen to him arguing with McCain any more than I want to hear Hillary arguing with anyone.
Romney was dignified, well spoken and way more classy than any of the other three. I heard clear answers from Romney. I heard McCain dodge answers, drop names and invoke Reagan on occasion. And most of all, McCain kept insisting on lying about "timetables" even after the question was dropped. He also dodged the immigration question by refusing to answer.
Give me a break, NOOB.
If I were Romney, I would have done the same thing. McCain distorted what Romney said and then refused to back down even when confronted with the fact that he was wrong in what he said about Romney. Then he tried to throw into the discussion Romney not immediately being public with his support for the surge.
-—So I say let it be a Huckabee/Paul ticket. I like McCain—don’t get me wrong...-—
I think we get the picture.
I suppose the electorate would see McCain better on defense but t'aint necessarily so. He would continue the Bush policies, maybe even more hawkish, that has inflamed the left so much. It's hard to see how anybody could stand to work for him as he would grab the credit for everything. McCain ducked a lot of questions, said he'd build a fence and then hung himself on it, wouldn't go past it.
I missed the first part of it, as usual. As somebody said on another thread, the striped tie was too much. Picky perhaps.
Huckabee talked better than I expected, seemed a little personable actually. Probably too late for him, and in the general would go down.
The title of this thread suggests that the opinion is going to be around Romney and McCain acting poorly at the debate. I think maybe 3 sentences discussed that. The rest were about Ron Paul (and his supposed support from the military), Huckabee, and Anderson Cooper.
I agree with the poster for the most part, NOOB.
McCain is a bully, and he showed it last night. Mitt defended himself eloquently.
RP sounded like a whiney liitle kid.
Ron Pauls isolationist stance has no business even being considered in this global economy. Which, by the way, the United States of America has promoted to the rest of the world as the best path toward democratic freedoms.
Still on the “Mitt Mobile”? lol!
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