8:57 = Hannity tells Carl Cameron that this debate is “Super Bowl time”. Does Hannity even know what football is? “Campaign Carl” says that McCain was an insurgetn candidate eight – no wiat, seven years ago. Yeah, McCain was an insurgent candidate in May 2000. Uh huh.
ROUND I: Iraq
9:00 = I’ll be able to vote on the winner of this debate at the end? I predict the Democratic Party. I think it would be awesome if Newt and Thompson joined the race, just to see how they’d jam everyone onto a stage. They’d need a mezzanine.
9:02 = A promo video for the SC Republican Party?? What next, a recruiting montage for USC? Holy Jesus — Fox News was alil fact file alongside each candidate’s headshot when they’re introduced. The second most important thing about these candidates to Fox after their age? Their religion? Career is fourth. And they spelled “capital” wrong in Romney’s bio.
9:05 = What a bunch of cowardly bootlickers! No questions on Falliwell? Next question — “you’re all amazingly great people — who is the absolutest bestest?”
9:07 = I think Thompson stayed home, and sent an animatronic version of himself. Do his hands move? His big plan for Iraq is an oil dividend going to every man woman and child in the country. How is that basket case of a country going to do something that complex?
9:08 = Unbelieveable, Romney just implied that every Muslim group that has guns is working together. Does he know what’s happening in Gaza right now? Does he know where Gaza is?
9:09 = Fox News sez “You want Republicans and Democrats to work together. Is that any way to win a war?”
9:10 = Duncan, it’s one party for the war, and one party and one country against the war.OTOH, Duncan gets the first Iraqi summer vacation shot in.
9:11 = Am I really supposed to be scared of the Fort Dix Six? The Keystone Kops could’ve caught those guys.
9:13 = Fox News is still working out the lighting on stage. Wicked.
9:14 = Ron Paul is asked if he’s running with the wrong party, because he favors a timetable. I don’t think that’s true, but he’s clearly too smart to be on this stage. Gets first Regean reference.
9:15 = Duncan Hunter: “One of us is going to be commander in chief in a few months.” Eight months is “a few”?
9:16 = I had no idea the alien from K-Pax was running for president!
9:18 = Jim Gilmore wants allies on Iran. While alienating the world with his actions in Iraq. And he thinks that Pakistan is going to arm the Saudis with nukes. They really do think all brown people are the same, don’t they?
ROUND 2: The economy for not rich people.
9:19 = Mitt sez he didn’t raise taxes as governor and won’t as president. So if he’s in the White House, we’ll be looking at $3,000 fees to get a passport. He also likes benchmarks. How bout this — if a president gets us deeply into debt and runs a huge deficit, he resigns? We can make it retroactive.
9:21 = McCain sez the Senate is more imaginative than a drunken sailor.
9:22 = K-Pax dude likes alliteration and says Congress spends like “Edwards at a beauty shop”. The crowd laps it up.
9:23 = The black guy for Fox says “Show me the money.” I hope he felt self-conscious. Rudy says NYC is harder to regulate than Washington DC. Rudy laughs, alone.
9:24 = Hunter has a hybrid car and is pushing conservation. And he wants to drill in Alaska. Where exactly does gas cost $4 / gallon?
9:26 = Thompson is starting to remind me of Mister Wilson from Dennis the Menace. And in the followup, Thompson describes a program under his department but can’t come up with the name.
9:26 = The main Republican solution to our economic problems thus far seems to be firing federal employees.
9:28 = Ron Paul wants cuts in FEMA. Gets the first 9/11 reference. He thinks 9/11 happened because we had inefficient bureaucracy.
9:30 = Gilmore is calling out the fake conservatives, but doesn’t have the stones to name names. Sez go to the website.
ROUND 3: Who’s the real conservative?
9:37 = Jim Gilmore is pushed to call out the fake conservatives. Lengthy descriptions, but no names. Chris Wallace pushes him, and Gilmore goes in. Blames Huckabee for tax raises (interesting!), Romney for our grrreat health care, Giuliani on abortion. Leave McCain alone.
9:38 = Giuliani sez “Rudy McRomney would make a great ticket”. Cute. Now he’s saying Hillary (“the front runner”) said, oh whoops, agreed that the free market is bad. In other words, yes I’m not a conservative, but Hillary is less a conservative. Oh, and he’s the most conservative mayor in 50 years in NYC. Giuliani can’t say that he’s pro-choice without stumbling over the words. Hillary has the war, Giuliani has abortion.
9:40 = I really think the FNC correspondant asking questions is the only African-American in the building. I’ve been checking out the crowd shots.
9:41= McCain’s first out the gate with immigration. And I think he’s been working on aping the Dubya squint.
9:42 = Huckabee is defending his spending program, and building roads. But he didn’t want to! The voters made him build roads and the courts made him improve education! If left to his devices, K-Pax would have left Arkansas (a heavily Democratic state) as a backward place!
9:43 = Romney hopes that being against gay marriage is anti-gay enough for the GOP. Then he lists all the things he “stood up for” in Massachusetts, and failed to implement.
9:44 = I don’t think Ronald Reagan would be enough of a Reagan conservative for Chris Wallace tonight. He’s going after Tancredo as an insufficient conservative for heaven’s sake.
ROUND 4 A whole round on abortion and stem-cell! Nuttin on corruption yet. You can’t spell “irrelevant party” without REP!
9:46 = Mr. Wilson aka Thompson uses lots of long words and name-checks doctors while discussing his opposition to embryonic stem-cell research. Impressive, but wrong.
9:49 = Giuliani is frankly a great ambassador for the pro-choice movement. The lasting legacy of his run may be explaining pro-choice viewpoints to the Republican base. But then he says “I think most of the people on this stage, including most Democrats…”
9:50 = Brownback gets the “how do you tell a rape victim she has to bring the baby to term” question. But he’s steadfastly pro-gamete. And pro-God. Just anti-crime victim.
9:51 = Romney gets the “what do you say to someone who dies of an illegal abortion” question. He starts muttering about cloning, but in the first three seconds of his answer, anyone really listening would have to realize that he’s pro-choice.
Round five: IMMIGRATION!
9:53 = Tancredo sees “conversions” on immigration in that very room. The spirit of Reagan compels you! And they’re still working on the lighting.
9:54 = McCain thanks God that the Fort Dix Six didn’t succeed. Are they really that scared of Moe, Curly, Larry, Joe, Shemp, and Joe DeRita?
McCain sez that he’s engaged, and we’re close to a solution on immigration. He’s going to lead, not block things, and get results. I think he’s releasing a sneaker soon.
9:56 = Lowell Sun gets a quote! Romney is going to tell illegals to go home…after they pass in their citizenship application. Ooooh…calls McCain’s immigration bill “McCain-Kennedy”. Twice. Nice call. The crowds claps.
9:58 = McCain “Does anyone say that there isn’t enough money washing around our political system
that has corrupted our party…I don’t change my views on things depending if it’s an odd or even year, or depending on the office I’m running for.” As the kids say: snap!
ROUND 6: Freestylin Yo!
10:00 = Did you know Tancredo built the border fence on the San Diego-Tijuana border? All by himself, poundin nails, shootin the Mexica– oh, wait. Sez the Mexico-US border is out biggest national security problem. Not the Canada-US border that the 9/11 terrorists came through.
10:02 = Ron Paul is again asked if he’s running for the correct party. He once again proves Wendell for Fox News correct by giving a thoughtful and complex answer, and as a bonus implies that the Fox guy is ignorant. Gets scattered applause.
10:04 = Giuliani says that Paul is saying that the US deserved 9/11, and asks for a withdrawal. Raucous applause.
10:05 = “If we think we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem…they do not attack us because we are rich and are free, but beacuse we are over there.” Congressman Ron Paul
10:06 = The crowd groans when they ask about South Carolina’s love affair with the Confederate flag. McCain is satisfied that the flag is no longer on the dome of the capitol, but merely on the grounds, so you need to get up close to see the bigotry. McCain wants to move on, and the audience celebrates in agreement.
10:09 = Tancredo: for every scientist who says global warming is human-caused, there’s one who doesn’t. By scientist, Tancredo means “guy who hangs out with my staff”. Then declares that killing us is “part of the their religion, I mean…”
Brit Hume: We’re gonna play a wargame!!!! Whee!!
Three shopping centers hit by suicide bombers, fourth attempt stopped, perps captured, and sent to Guantanamo Bay. Worries that a bigger one is one the way. So….
10:15 Do you torture the captives? McCain: There is a 1:1,000,000 chance of this happening. Torture makes us look bad and it doesn’t work.
10:16 = Giuliani “Use every method you can think of, but it shouldn’t be torture.” Loud applause.
10:17 = Romney: I won’t let it get that far. I’m into terror prevention, which is what I did in Massachusetts (?), we oughtta double Guanatanamo, which is not American soil, and use “enhanced interrogation techniques” but not torture.
10:18 = Brit Hume: Terrorists were trained in a hostile West African country. What do you do? (most of the hostiles are in East Africa, wilds of Somalia and Chad. Seriously, can you name a West African country hostile to the United States?)
10:18 = Thompson: We’d verify that info, then blammo!
10:19 = Tancredo: Blammo! (Replete with hitting the podium). And hey, if we blew up the wrong people, he feels — and I quote here — “that’s the way it is”.
10:20 Hunter: Torture away, then blammo!
10:21 = McCain courageously clings to his anti-torture stance to the bafflement of Brit Hume. McCain says that people “who’ve actually been in battle” support him.
10:22 = Gilmore is blinking furiously on his experience dealing with terrorism thanks to 9/11 in the Pentagon. Then…you guessed it…blammo!
10:23 = Brit Hume asks about the effect on the economy, and desperately wants to hear the magic words “tax cuts” in response to the crisis.
10:24 = An exasperated Hume tells Ron Paul that the answer is to cut taxes, just like it was i nthe wake of 9/11. So say you would cut taxes. Paul goes along with it. Then ruins it by reminding everyone then bin Laden is still at large.
10:26 = Tom Tancredo doesn’t think suicide bombers are enough. He has decided that this scenario perforce includes nuclear weapons (huh?) and that “if we go under, Western civilization goes under”. The ancient Greeks were just fakin it. Same with the Brits.
Round 7: Wherein we ask mildly dangerous questions
10:28 = Wallace: You’re a buncha white guys. Gilmore, you used to chair the Republicans…what’s up with that? Where are the minorities and women?
10:28 = Gilmore: Be patient. (Hey, the party’s only 150 years old…they’re working on it.)
10:29 = Wallace asks if Romney can flipflop in both directions. Romeny obliges, saying that he now loves No Child Left Behind because it keeps down those nasty teacher’s unions.
10:31 = Hunter talks about “how the Chinese treated the guy in front of the tanks in Tianenman Square”. Truth is, we don’t know what happened to him — he was pulled out of the way by a fellow protester.
Final wrap-up:
Giuliani will never escape the abortion issue.
McCain grew a spine and takes a slice at Romney.
Romney is an unconvincing conservative.
Tancredo and Hunter blur together.
Paul is conservative enough to be a GOP candidate, but way too smart.
I’m thinking Huckabee won by not losing.
Guess they all look alike when viewed through progressive lenses.
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By the way, the man’s name is Wendell Goler.
First time I’ve ever seen him.
classic.
McCain sez that he’s engaged, and we’re close to a solution on immigration. He’s going to lead, not block things, and get results. I think he’s releasing a sneaker soon.
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Priceless.
Gov. Mike Huckabee; ?We?ve had a Congress that?s spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop.?
is pretty darn funny.
Mike Huckabee is Kevin Spacey. That’s creepy!
My take on it is HERE
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I really liked the Fox format. Brit Hume and Chris Wallace made Olberman/Matthews look like a pair of ignorant goofballs. Everybody got a chance, and now it’s time for the winnowing to begin.
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Are the Democrats ever holding another debate? with all of them?
The first thing out of the commentators’ mouths after the debate was that “some” were talking about paring down the field allowed in the debates. Ron Paul because “the audience was not reacting to what he was saying” and Hunter and Huckabee for not doing better in the polls.
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I’m sure fringe candidates like Gravel and Kucinich will be in every debate because of my party’s commitment to democracy. Can the Republicans say the same?
..has nothing to do with good debate format.
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A candidates debate is an opportunity for the citizenry to scrutinize those who might hold a particular office.
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After it becomes clear who are the front runners , there is little point in diluting the debates with nut jobs and distractions like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.
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Of course, if a “top tier” candidate prefers not to answer tough questions, then it is to his or her advantage to water down the match “for the sake of inclusiveness“.
And you would have a good point in December 2007, but in May? Today’s also-rans are tomorrow’s front-runners.
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Here’s Mike Huckabee, with the most extensive executive experience in the field, with a detailed track record as a governor for nine years in a somewhat-swing state. He has potential to hit the top tier, but not if he’s shut out of the debates half a year before voting begins.