Personal Review of the Republican Debate 9/5/07

I watched the entire debate on FNC last evening and instead of playing politics and saying this one won or this one lost, I thought I would give my impressions on the debate and on each of the eight contenders.

First off,

I thought that the way the debate was conducted was unfair and extremely biased. My experience in debates allows every participant to answer one question before another was presented. This did not happen.

Tancredo, Paul and Hunter were afforded far less opportunity to voice their campaign views then those presented as "main stream" by the media.


This in my opinion shows blatant bias on those conducting the debate.

Having said that from what I was allowed to see these were some thoughts that I took away from the debate.

Giuliani:

It appears that no matter the question thrown at him, he will remind you that he was the strong NYC mayor who most citizens recognize as someone who handled the 9/11 attacks in a professional manner. As a citizen of the US, his name will forever be tied to those events, why does he feel that we need to be reminded? I thought he held up well in the aftermath of 9/11, and while I am not a New Yorker, I can give him credit for helping turn around the city. This alone would never gain my vote for POTUS.

Romney:

This is the candidate that after seeing his appearance, has me confused, how in the world could this guy even be considered a candidate? He reminds me of that computer head dude that used to appear on videos. His answers were without substance, well let's just say to me he is a fake.

McCain:

Out of the panel, McCain came across as honest and not afraid to say things which may not be popular. It was a surprise to me how well he came across, definitely credible, someone who knew how to answer the questions.

Huckabee:

Another surprise, I haven't heard too much from him, though I got the impression he would be very good at selling you a used car. He was a little overboard as being a nice guy

Brownback:

Reminded me of Gore, no chance, immediate turn off, said nothing of significance to me.

Hunter:

He can't win the office on the basis that he claims responsibility for the border wall south of San Diego, and his bold claim that the 870+ mile border fence would be finished within 6 months of his taking the oath. Did he forget how Washington works?

Tancredo:

I liked everything he said until he said he would condone forms of torture to extract information from an enemy. Believe me, I know that it is a probablity that some methods may be used, but you can never have the POTUS, spouting off that he condones these methods. He lost me there.

Paul:

The most emotional and it appeared that there was laughter from the others when Paul was getting ready to speak. He was definitely different but he spoke of the Constitution, which others did not. While some of what he said struck me as "out there", I have to wonder if politics in our country has gotten to the point that laughing at someone who speaks of the Constitution is normal.


It was an interesting debate (if you could call it one), while it was fresh on my mind I wanted to make a post.

I would love to hear others reflections on how they viewed this debate.

Originally posted by JacKatMtn
Tancredo, Paul and Hunter were afforded far less opportunity to voice their campaign views then those presented as "main stream" by the media.
This in my opinion shows blatant bias on those conducting the debate.

I agree, and they've been doing this from day one. If you're the slightest bit unknown or don't have millions of dollars to pump into a campaign to become known, the media shrugs the candidate off as though they never had a chance to begin with. Oddly enough, it's the media's denial of certain candidates that pushes them further into obscurity, and the media is ultimately responsible for a lot of these candidates' campaigns never fully getting off the ground. If you take away their stage, you take away their shot.

I thought it was odd that Rudy was boasting about how he handled the illegal immigrant issue in NYC by encouraging them to report illegal immigrant criminal activity. What about the fact that all illegal immigrants are committing a crime by being here illegally in the first place? He tried to minimize the negative effect of illegals by singling out the criminals, but it doesn't address the other 380,000 illegal immigrants that continued to live in NYC. I was very offended by his post-debate comments about how Mike Gravel and Ron Paul should have a special debate, an insinuation that Ron Paul is nutty. I was offended, insulted, and can say i WOULD HAVE voted for Rudy in the general election.

Romney was getting a lot of difficult questions last night, and he did an okay job of answering them. Not great, and i didn't think his presence was very memorable.

I feel like John McCain has nothing to lose at this point. He is definitely an authority on Iraq, and has been there on several occasions. If we MUST continue this occupation, i would prefer to see him calling the shots because it sounds to me like he doesn't want to draw it out. However, i think he will run out of money before the primaries.

Huckabee is a complete tool. I'm sure he makes a good governor for Arkansas, but i see a huge contradiction electing a minister for political office. Separation of church and state, anyone? I think all of his answers are canned responses, i've heard the "i believe God created the heavens and the earth" on so many occasions i'm ready to shoot myself.

Ron Paul was, in my opinion, the most comfortable, thoughtful, logical, and honest. I was disgusted by the snickering of other candidates as he gave solid answers to questions posed to him. That matter, coupled with Rudy's gravel-paul debate joke and Hannity's brilliant deduction that the Paul army of text message spammers were responsible for high poll results rather than people who want to see real change prompted me to sending a scoldng email to rudy for being immature and childish, Fox News for obviously trying to discredit a candidate when they should be objective, and Hannity for opening his mouth when he doesn't know what he's talking about. I have calls in (and emails) to Fox News to find out if you really can text vote over and over, or if you can only text vote one time. I doubt i'll see a response from the fair and balanced network where all the spin stops!