Republican Debate Part Deux

[Reub]

Tonight is the second in an epic series of Republican Presidential debates. Will the trailing candidates slice and dice The Donald? Will Ben Carson show enough to be their savior? How will Carly Fiorina overcome her business record and face? Will Rand Paul cling to his isolationism and also do something different with his hair? Will CNN ask only questions about causing women to die by banning abortions? And about poor illegal immigrant babies? And how Republicans are so mean to women and other minorities who happen to make up more than half the population? Please stay tuned.

[Pointedstick]

I'm having a heck of a lot of fun watching the kiddie table debate already. But let's face it, Trump is going to win again because he alone realizes that debates are meaningless sideshows in the age of Twitter. All he has to do is say something outrageous right after the debate and it's totally erased from everyone's mind. The media stranglehold on candidates' access to the populace is broken and he's virtually the only one who truly comprehends what this means.

[Reub]

CNN has extended the second debate by an hour before it even starts. I guess that charging 10X their normal advertising rates agrees with them. Dirty capitalists!

[Reub]

PS, I actually think that Santorum looks and sounds very presidential.  Now I remember why he was so strong four years ago.

[Pointedstick]

PS, I actually think that Santorum looks and sounds very presidential.  Now I remember why he was so strong four years ago.

I think so too, with some caveats. His bit about raising the minimum wage and focusing on workers instead of business owners was very powerful and very presidential. Not a message I agree with, but one that I think really resonates with the huge mass of blue-collar conservatives who don't own businesses and whose wages have been flat for years.

[Reub]

Could Hillary stand up to this scrutiny?

[Reub]

Does Santorum crave mainstream support at this stage or just the support of the primary voters?

[Pointedstick]

Imho, Santorum is way to into religion to garner mainstream support.

Agreed. It's his strength and weakness--just depends on the venue. On the national stage, I think it's a net liability, but it does give him real sincerity.

[I Shrugged]

I cannot understand how we all get sucked into paying attention to and attaching some earnest belief in what is said by political candidates.  It's all blather. 

[Reub]

Carly may be the big winner. The first female President?  How ironic that would be!

[MediumTex]

John Kasich is the only Republican who is remotely appealing to me.

[MediumTex]

I've always thought that a Kasich/Rubio ticket had the best chance of winning.

I don't know how we get there, but that's how I hope it plays out.  The thought of any of those other people being President is kind of scary to me.

If Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura are any indication of how these entertainer turned politician things tend to go, if Trump were elected President he would get nothing through Congress and find that governing is vastly more challenging that campaigning.  Obama has pretty good political instincts and he has still been mostly a failure at governing. 

I think that there was a time when the media simply wouldn't cover a candidate if they thought he wouldn't make a good President.  Those days are long gone now, and the media now seems to simply want candidates who are entertaining. 

When I think of Obama and Trump, they seem to me to be the two sides of President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho from Idiocracy.

[Reub]

I used to think that Kasich had potential until I heard his views on this dangerous Iranian appeasement.  He said why not try it? Let's give it a try? If they cheat we'll just impose sanctions again.
This position is so absurd that it disqualifies him. As if we would even know if they were cheating as their Supreme Terrorist Repressor Leader shouts death to America. As if we will be able to inspect their nuclear military sites, which we will not. As if we can just walk in and inspect their agreed upon sites (which will actually take months if not years to inspect once we ask their permission ). As if Iran will not actually do their own inspections and let us know what they found. As if they will not already have received the $150 billion dollars and a lot more with their new business deals. As if they will suddenly recognize israel's right to exist and stop destabilizing Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Afghanistan,  Lebanon, to name a few.
Kasich's reckless naivete on this subject disqualifies him in my eyes.

[WiseOne]

Hope you all don't mind but here are some random thoughts about the debate.  I'd love to hear what you all think about these.

First - I am absolutely, completely delighted that two of the GOP's biggest front runners this year are African-American and a woman - seriously that is marvelous!  and it rather steals the Democrats' thunder.

I actually thought Ben Carson and Rand Paul had the most intelligent and well-considered points, with minimal faith based b-s.  If I had to vote today, I'd pick Ben Carson without hesitation.

Trump said a couple of things I thought were beyond ridiculous, like how he would solve the Middle East problems by "getting along" with Putin.  Also he doesn't seem to realize that deporting 11 million people wouldn't be possible unless you got the military involved or something equally dramatic.  It's a mystery to me why he came out so well - other than the factor that PS mentioned.

Ted Cruz is the guy I would have put dead last.  I thought he sounded like a raving nutcase.  I have to say also that illegal immigration is very high on my list of critical issues, and several of the candidates had obvious personal biases here that make me discount them immediately.  I wouldn't presume bias just based on ancestry, family ties etc, but each of them stated those biases right up front.

And quote of the day:  I forget who said "We want to get America back."  I was thinking, hey, I didn't know it had gone!  What the H were some of them talking about???

Finally - I'm also interested to know what MediumTex likes about Kasich.

[moda0306]

John Kasich is the only Republican who is remotely appealing to me.

I'm curious... What exactly about Kasich appeals to you?

I must confess to not seeing a lot of any of the Republican candidates on TV (I don't have cable, and don't watch much broadcast stuff on-line), though I've read a fair amount, and heard soundbites from all of them on the radio over the last few months.

Relative to the other candidates, Kasich and Paul have the most appeal.  Things I like about Kasich:

• he strikes me as less of a showman than the others
• he seems less willing to engage in hyperbole
• he doesn't seem quite as omni-directionally belligerent in foreign policy as the other candidates  (he said he wouldn't cancel the Iran nuclear deal, for example)
• his accent sounds familiar -- like me, he's from Pittsburgh.  Superficial, I know.

OTOH, like all the other candidates except Rand Paul (and I have my doubts about him), he's probably for endless war, and I could never vote for someone with such a stance.

I 100% agree with all that. Except the accent thing, though I certainly like it better than Cruz's gay southerner impression. (Jk. Kinda)

Most of these guys are a complete joke on foreign policy right after having lamented about "big government." Listening to them talk about Iran is like watching a 3 year old play a game of Risk.

[Reub]

WiseOne, Kasich has shown himself to be an appeaser like Rand Paul. But with slightly better hair. There, MT. I saved you the trouble.

[Reub]

Ben Carson looked lost in my opinion. He was rambling and rudderless. I think that Carly has or soon will surpass him as the nonpolitician not named Trump.


Finally a female President! Fantastic!

But a little more seriously, Trump's time as a television star gives him an advantage with regular folks that hasn't been seen since Reagan.

[MediumTex]

John Kasich is the only Republican who is remotely appealing to me.

I'm curious... What exactly about Kasich appeals to you?

1. As former chairman of the House Budget Committee, he knows how to manage the legislative process, work with members of the other party, and get controversial legislation passed.  The short period of balanced budgets in the 1990s wouldn't have happened without Kasich.  That's a meaningful and impressive accomplishment.  As Obama has discovered, getting things through Congress is harder than it looks.

2. As a former host of a Fox News show, he has lots of friends in the media and he understands how to craft a message for media consumption.  A person who is able to do a TV show night after night understands how to synthesize events into a way that the public can understand.  A President must be able to communicate effectively with the public.

3. As a former Lehman Brothers executive, he understands how the financial services industry works, along with the myriad ways it attempts to influence policy.  Where I have always thought that neither Bush nor Obama fully grasped the way the financial services industry actually operated, I think Kasich does, which means that he would be less likely to be lured into dumb responses to crises like we got from Paulson and Geithner, who both also understood the financial services industry, but who understood almost nothing about politics.

4. As a sitting governor, he has executive experience that is absolutely critical to being an effective President.  I like the idea of a person having run some smaller government before stepping into the role of President of the United States.

5. I love Republicans with working class roots.  Those people tend to understand the full range of the social, cultural and economic experience of being an American.  Lots of Republicans have no idea about what it means to be working class.  A person who can be raised working class and find the kind of success that Kasich has suggests he is a very capable person.

6. I like that Kasich has had a variety of experiences in the public and private sector and has been successful in all of them.  Unlike candidates such as Fiorina and Trump, whose resumes contain stunning failures, or other candidates like Paul and Cruz, whose resumes contain neither success nor failure, Kasich has shown that he can succeed in almost any environment.

7. If the Republicans want to win, they need to carry Ohio.  I assume that Kasich would be able to carry his home state.

Those are a few things that I like about Kasich.

[Cortopassi]

I think Fiorina won, but damn, she sure was sounding hawkish about all the military "rebuilding"

Don't we already spend 500B+ a year on defense, 3-4x the next closest (China) and almost 10x Russia?

I went through a list of the US military assets, personnel, equipment, etc. Jesus, do we really think we need more?

[WiseOne]

Fiorina's talk about building up the military didn't sound great to me either.  Not sure if she genuinely would want to do that or if it's just tough talk.

I love that she's running, but I don't love the above or her record with HP.  I mean...she was fired as CEO.

[MediumTex]

Fiorina's talk about building up the military didn't sound great to me either.  Not sure if she genuinely would want to do that or if it's just tough talk.

I love that she's running, but I don't love the above or her record with HP.  I mean...she was fired as CEO.

Fiorina ruined HP.  It's hard to interpret her tenure as CEO in any other way.

What makes her failure as CEO worse was that when things went sour she blamed everyone but herself.  That's not what great leaders do.

[Pointedstick]

Unfortunately Kasich is an insider and not very adept at rousing populist furor, which is what this election seems to be about.

[MediumTex]

Unfortunately Kasich is an insider and not very adept at rousing populist furor, which is what this election seems to be about.

That's a shame because Kasich is one of the few true populists on that stage.

Cruz acts like a populist, but he is a Harvard Law School grad whose principal claim to fame is arguing a few cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and he is married to a Goldman Sachs partner.  When you look at who Cruz really is, there is nothing populist about it.

[Reub]

Kasich proved himself to be a fool on Iran. He wants to give them $150 billion, allow sophisticated weapons and a Putin led buildup and see if they cheat and get nukes even if there will be no way to know until its too late. Think N Korea is bad?

[MediumTex]

Kasich proved himself to be a fool on Iran. He wants to give them $150 billion, allow sophisticated weapons and a Putin led buildup and see if they cheat and get nukes even if there will be no way to know until its too late. Think N Korea is bad?

Maybe.

...or maybe Iran and the U.S. have a symbiotic relationship in which never-ending tension benefits both countries.  It benefits the U.S. because it always provides a pretext for a large U.S. footprint in the Middle East, and it benefits Iran because it helps push up the price of oil and it gives their leaders a convenient scapegoat for the effects of their own incompetent leadership.

If you look at the post-revolution history of Iran, the U.S. has always used Iran when needed to justify the expansion of U.S. military power in that part of the world through hysterical warnings of Iran's imminent nuclear capability.  This has been going on since 1979.

Even if Kasich is off base in his thinking on Iran, he will need to make a LOT more dumb comments about the Middle East before he is anywhere near the level of stupidity displayed by Bush and Obama when it comes to that part of the world.