Tickets started at $50 and then were reduced to $25. Students and campaigns were offered tickets first. I had gallery seats and it was a mixed bag, there were lots of supporters for all candidates except for Brownback, but that appears to be his problem everywhere he goes.
Rudy was a complete pig for laughing during other candidates remarks, he should have been called out on it and censured by the moderators the first time it happened. It was disgusting and not behavior that we should expect of a professional let alone a Presidential candidate. I was embarrassed for him. That man truly has no shame.
That was Rudy laughing?!? I assumed it was some backstage or crowd mike that some producer forgot to shut down. Wow, what an embarrassment. He was annoying enough in the debates by running far, far over his time limit every time he opened his mouth. No other candidate started doing that until Rudy had done it several times and it was clear the moderators weren’t going to do a thing about it.
Personally, I would have programmed the candidates’ mikes to cut off automatically five seconds after the bell sounded, and instruct the moderators to ask the next candidate his question as soon as that happened. Only the mike of the candidate who has the floor would be on at any given time. Granted, if that happened we wouldn’t have heard Ron Paul’s smackdown of Mike Huckabee, which I thought was one of the most entertaining parts of the debate, but it’s really annoying to have one candidate completely ignore the rules of the debate without penalty, and therefore cause everyone to ignore the rules if they want any chance of getting heard.
I wondered who was laughing during the debates. He should not have been allowed to do that, it drowned out our laughing here at home.