The New Hampshire Republican Debate

Did any of you watch the all-men's choir last night? Not that Michele would have made any difference.

Actually, of all of the debates I've watched (or were available for me to watch on the tube), this was the most informative and, to me, definitive.

Of course, a disclaimer is warranted here that in no way would I ever vote for a Republican who espouses the fundamentals that the party now represents. Let me say that there were, in the past, some reasonably good Republicans, starting with Lincoln and probably ending with Teddy Roosevelt. And, of course, there was General Ike who did a yeoman job on our nation's infrastructure (he'd have been shot down by today's congress). And I even liked a lot of Nixon without really liking him, if you know what I mean. His policies were better internationally than locally.

But then along came a former Democrat from Hollywood's "B" movies who ventured into California politics, became governor and quickly put the state's crazies out onto the streets by closing down the mental institutions in order to save money. With the notoriety of his fiscal austerity, he was then elected president of the United States at the expense of our most humanitarian and perhaps wisest president, Jimmy Carter. As president, he escalated the 'cold-war', proclaimed all sorts of 'star-wars' types of weapons which were not technically possible, against the evil empires of this planet!  He exploded our national debt, but at the same time bankrupt the USSR who tried to keep up and justifiably went broke! His memorable battle cry in Berlin was "Take down that wall!" which sounds good, except that enemy had already been defeated economically because they didn't have Visa credit.

And, of course, the voice of the people also produced a new economic method which would ensure stability of our nation's economy.... the "trickle-down-theory" or "Reaganomics". It turned out to be a disaster and even the economist who wrote the book which had become the Republican Bible recanted his own works! ....and when his Vice President ran for office, he rightly called the theory, "Voodoo Economics"! The first George Bush was surprisingly not a bad president!... much better than his predecessor.... and much, much better than his son who really screwed things up! We won't list his screwups here.

So now we have a Republican party still clinging onto the defunct "Reaganomics" while thumping the Bibles of their Southern "born again", pro-Israeli, yet racial bigotry, trying valiantly to rouse the American people to their cause which is their election back into power.

Now, if you haven't already gone to sleep, lets return to the debate:
The structure of the debate was refreshingly relaxed so that those who had something to say could say their 'thing', or even avoid the posed question without penalty.

Aside from the expected attacks on Obama and the conduct of his presidency and "how any one of them could be a better President", I was shocked to learn that aside from Huntsman and Paul, the candidates for President were ready to not only send troops back to Iraq to shore up that regime, but to rattle our swords at Iran and Pakistan and even Saudi Arabia which has its faults, but is at least an ally.  I suspect that they simply don't like Muslims!

Huntsman was certainly the most cautious concerning alienating the rest of the world through a grandiose display of American military superiority the others seemed to swarm to.  Of course Paul, wisely, thought we should stay home and mind our own business and balance our budget. And in this, he's right, the others would have us in a new war in no time!

Of course, Romney, Gingrich and Santorum were different in their approaches to the questions, but the most talkative and perhaps the most dangerous of the three was Santorum who is an unabashed bigot with righteous  fervor whether it be race, sex or class.

The New Hampshire primary should be interesting in our quest to find out who our President will be up against. I think that Santorum would be an easy win for Obama. Romney, the perceived candidate would be difficult because of his mercurial style, in other words his pragmatic adaptability. I don't think Gingrich, although very clever, will survive.






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