15 posts tagged “republican”

National Review Online has a tremendous piece by Frederick W. Kagan on Iraq.  Specifically, the common myths associated with the war that many on the left side of the spectrum continually cite as reasons we have lost, will lose, or must withdraw from the present conflict.
Do the nattering nabobs really know the counterpoint to their arguments?  I would think not.  So often I see a parroted claim about the war that can be no more supported than the rantings of a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.  Conservatives who have conviction but not the knowledge to back it up must educate themselves so as to better exploit this weakness.  Liberals who wish to better defend themselves may also find the article useful.

Let's just ignore for now the sobering fact that no amount of information will make any of us actually change our minds, and just enjoy the opportunity to learn.

The article's long, as something like this would have to be, but it's not overlong.  Five years of the left pulling out every conceivable objection to the war have left Kagan a big job.  He tackles it handily and you should read the whole thing.  However, I provide a snippet to draw you in:

The War Costs Too Much
An increasingly popular talking point of the antiwar party is that the war simply costs too much and that we must end it and refocus on domestic priorities. This talking point has a number of variants:

The “$3 trillion war.” Simplistic economic analysis declares that the war has cost the taxpayers $3 trillion since its inception, implying that this is a $3 trillion dead loss to the economy — a price too high to pay.

• Modern economics has long understood that the notion of a one-for-one guns-versus-butter trade-off is simply wrong. A high proportion of money spent on defense goes back into the U.S. economy in the form of salaries paid to the more than 5 million Americans employed directly or indirectly by the Defense Department, and payments to the defense industry and the long and complex supply chains from which they draw their raw materials. Military spending has traditionally been a form of economic stimulus, and wars more commonly end recessions or depressions than start them. That’s not a good reason to start a war, but neither is it a good reason to lose one. The impact of the current war on the U.S. economy, finally, is far smaller than the impact of previous major conflicts. Military spending in World War II ranged from 17.8 percent of GDP to 37.5 percent; in Korea from 5.0 percent (in 1950 — 7.4 percent in 1951) to 14.2 percent; in Vietnam from 7.4 percent to 9.4 percent. Current expenditures on the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars bring total defense expenditures to something well below 5 percent of GDP. Even granting the simplistic and misleading $3 trillion figure, $3 trillion is about 5 percent of the nearly $60 trillion American GDP over the five years of the war.

Occasionally, e-mail forwards are worth reading.  But only rarely.

Dream Team

  Last night I had the strangest dream. It was so real, so life-like and so
vivid. Let me describe it to you briefly...

  1. Hillary wins the Democratic Party nomination for President of the
United States

  2. Naturally, she wants to choose as her running mate someone with a lot
of knowledge and experience in government and foreign affairs, someone who
is a seasoned campaigner who could bring a lot of strength to the ticket.
Who better than Bill, her husband?!!!

  3. Hill and Bill go on to win the election in November and the Democrats
maintain control of the House and the Senate.

  4. Hillary is sworn in as President on January 20, 2009. The next day,
after all the inauguration parties are over, she calls a press conference to
make an announcement: she is resigning as President!!! Bill, as the Vice
President, immediately becomes President!!! This is all perfectly legal
under the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, for it states that 'no person
may be elected as president more than twice'.

  Bill is not being elected for a third term but is merely serving out the
remainder of Hillary's term---all 4 years of it.

  5. But wait! There's more! The following day Bill calls a press conference
to make an announcement. He has chosen someone to fill the now-vacant office
of Vice President. Guess who he p icks? Why, Hillary, of course!!!

  6. And one last thing, Bill could resign just before the elections and
that would make Hillary the incumbent President. She could run for
re-election and we could do it all over again and she would never serve out
her two terms... Bill could be President for life....

  Please forward this e-mail to all of your Republican friends and to as
many others as you wish to cause sleepless nights...

I think this paragraph from Jonah Goldberg of National Review is a tidy summation of my feelings on what some have called "one of the finest speeches ever." 

Why do voluptuaries of racial argy-bargy want yet another such dialogue? For some, it’s to avoid actually dealing with unpleasant facts. But for others — like La Raza or the college professors scrambling to follow Obama’s lead — when they say we need more conversation, they really mean their version of reality should win the day. Replace “conversation” with “instruction” and you’ll have a better sense of where these people are coming from and where they want their “dialogue” to take us.

Ultimately, Obama's speech is nothing so momentous, so awe-inspiring.  In fact, Obama's refusal to distance himself personally as well as professionally from the man who condemned America in no uncertain terms while giving an award to real hate-mongers like Louis Farrakhan is troubling.  Is it weakness of character, which might be forgivable, or is it that Mr. Obama finds the words of his pastor not particularly offensive? 
One thing I think we can agree upon is that the President of the United States cannot be too patriotic.  He is not only our leader in matters foreign and domestic, he is also America's preeminent spokesman.  When a man tolerates sentiments such as Jeremiah Wright's and refuses for years to repudiate them, that man is demonstrating a quality that no President should possess. 
Is Obama's speech really a call to dialogue?  That remains to be seen.  Currently, it amounts to nothing more than a grand changing of the subject.

And thank goodness, because Huckabee could have won Virginia.  I voted McCain despite my reservations...which have returned in force after my brush with His Maverickness left me a bit star-struck. 

Tell me if this has happened to you:  I find that the last two viable candidates are the ones who were last and next to last on my initial list.  I am voting against Huckabee rather than for McCain.

There is nothing like hitting the primary at 6:15 a.m. and being rewarded with hot coffee.

Mark Levin has issued a call to conservatives:  Act now, or you will have John McCain as your Republican nominee.
With McCain's win in Florida there has been this air of inevitability about the man...well take a step back and you see that it's all hokum. 
I will reiterate something I've said in previous posts:  The man has broken with conservatives, repeatedly, on some of the central issues of our time.  Immigration is one.  His ability to work with Democrats is admirable, but shouldn't the measure of a compromise be that we at least get something resembling our goal?  His support of liberal immigration reform is damaging in the extreme because it makes him indistinguishable from your Democrat frontrunners.  Riddle me this, Democrats to whom McCain supposedly appeals:  Would you vote for a white guy with the same ideas as the first woman or first black?  Especially one who still supports the war?
McCain's crossover appeal is over-hyped by spinmasters with an agenda.  In an age where the media can destroy a candidacy simply by ignoring it (Giuliani?) one must question their motivations for actually reporting on someone favorably.
His wish to close down Guantanamo Bay is foolhardy, as it will put us in the ridiculous position of trying to acquit our own sworn enemies.  The same enemies who, if released, will gladly take up the mantle of jihad and resume their efforts to reduce Western influence in the world.  These men in Guantanamo deserve what they get, which apparently includes things like their own Koran and plenty of halal food to eat. 
And I would remind the Senator that his opposition to water boarding is also a bit silly when we're dealing with people whose interrogation methods include beheading.  Or wait, aren't those their standard methods for hostage-taking?  I'm confused, someone help me.  Do radical Muslims behead before or after they've forced a video conversion to Islam/denunciation of the West?
McCain is an old man who has been in the Senate too long.  His compromises are a sure indication that his principles lie elsewhere from a majority of conservatives.

Rally for Romney Conservatives need to act now, before it is too late. By Mark R. Levin I have spent nearly four decades in the conservative movement — from precinct worker to the Reagan White House. I campaigned for Reagan in 1976 and 1980. I served in several top positions during the Reagan administration, including chief of staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese. I have been an active conservative when conservatism was not in high favor. I remember in 1976, as a 19-year-old in Pennsylvania working the polls for Reagan against the sitting Republican president, Gerald Ford, I was demeaned for supporting a candidate who was said to be an extremist B-actor who couldn’t win a general election, and opposing a sitting president. And at the time Reagan wasn’t even on the ballot in Pennsylvania because he decided to focus his limited resources on other states. I tried to convince voter after voter to write-in Reagan’s name on the ballot. In the end, Reagan received about five percent of the Republican vote as a write-in candidate. Of course, Reagan lost the nomination to Ford by the narrowest of margins. Ford went on to lose to a little-known ex-governor from Georgia, Jimmy Carter. But the Reagan Revolution became stronger, not weaker, as a result. And the rest is history. I don’t pretend to speak for President Reagan or all conservatives. I speak for myself. But I watched the Republican debate last night, which was held at the Reagan library, and I have to say that I fear a McCain candidacy. He would be an exceedingly poor choice as the Republican nominee for president. Let’s get the largely unspoken part of this out the way first. McCain is an intemperate, stubborn individual, much like Hillary Clinton. These are not good qualities to have in a president. As I watched him last night, I could see his personal contempt for Mitt Romney roiling under the surface. And why? Because Romney ran campaign ads that challenged McCain’s record? Is this the first campaign in which an opponent has run ads questioning another candidate’s record? That’s par for the course. To the best of my knowledge, Romney’s ads have not been personal. He has not even mentioned the Keating-Five to counter McCain's cheap shots. But the same cannot be said of McCain’s comments about Romney. Last night McCain, who is the putative frontrunner, resorted to a barrage of personal assaults on Romney that reflect more on the man making them than the target of the attacks. McCain now has a habit of describing Romney as a “manager for profit” and someone who has “laid-off” people, implying that Romney is both unpatriotic and uncaring. Moreover, he complains that Romney is using his “millions” or “fortune” to underwrite his campaign. This is a crass appeal to class warfare. McCain is extremely wealthy through marriage. Romney has never denigrated McCain for his wealth or the manner in which he acquired it. Evidently Romney’s character doesn’t let him to cross certain boundaries of decorum and decency, but McCain’s does. And what of managing for profit? When did free enterprise become evil? This is liberal pablum which, once again, could have been uttered by Hillary Clinton. And there is the open secret of McCain losing control of his temper and behaving in a highly inappropriate fashion with prominent Republicans, including Thad Cochran, John Cornyn, Strom Thurmond, Donald Rumsfeld, Bradley Smith, and a list of others. Does anyone honestly believe that the Clintons or the Democrat party would give McCain a pass on this kind of behavior?   As for McCain “the straight-talker,” how can anyone explain his abrupt about-face on two of his signature issues: immigration and tax cuts? As everyone knows, McCain led the battle not once but twice against the border-security-first approach to illegal immigration as co-author of the McCain-Kennedy bill. He disparaged the motives of the millions of people who objected to his legislation. He fought all amendments that would limit the general amnesty provisions of the bill. This controversy raged for weeks. Only now he says he’s gotten the message. Yet, when asked last night if he would sign the McCain-Kennedy bill as president, he dissembles, arguing that it’s a hypothetical question. Last Sunday on Meet the Press, he said he would sign the bill. There’s nothing straight about this talk. Now, I understand that politicians tap dance during the course of a campaign, but this was a defining moment for McCain. And another defining moment was his very public opposition to the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. He was the media’s favorite Republican in opposition to Bush. At the time his primary reason for opposing the cuts was because they favored the rich (and, by the way, they did not). Now he says he opposed them because they weren’t accompanied by spending cuts. That’s simply not correct.   Even worse than denying his own record, McCain is flatly lying about Romney’s position on Iraq. As has been discussed for nearly a week now, Romney did not support a specific date to withdraw our forces from Iraq. The evidence is irrefutable. And it’s also irrefutable that McCain is abusing the English language (Romney’s statements) the way Bill Clinton did in front of a grand jury. The problem is that once called on it by everyone from the New York Times to me, he obstinately refuses to admit the truth. So, last night, he lied about it again. This isn’t open to interpretation. But it does give us a window into who he is.   Of course, it’s one thing to overlook one or two issues where a candidate seeking the Republican nomination as a conservative might depart from conservative orthodoxy. But in McCain’s case, adherence is the exception to the rule — McCain-Feingold (restrictions on political speech), McCain-Kennedy (amnesty for illegal aliens), McCain-Kennedy-Edwards (trial lawyers’ bill of rights), McCain-Lieberman (global warming legislation), Gang of 14 (obstructing change to the filibuster rule for judicial nominations), the Bush tax cuts, and so forth. This is a record any liberal Democrat would proudly run on. Are we to overlook this record when selecting a Republican nominee to carry our message in the general election?   But what about his national security record? It’s a mixed bag. McCain is rightly credited with being an early voice for changing tactics in Iraq. He was a vocal supporter of the surge, even when many were not. But he does not have a record of being a vocal advocate for defense spending when Bill Clinton was slashing it. And he has been on the wrong side of the debate on homeland security. He supports closing Guantanamo Bay, which would result in granting an array of constitutional protections to al-Qaeda detainees, and limiting legitimate interrogation techniques that have, in fact, saved American lives. Combined with his (past) de-emphasis on border-security, I think it’s fair to say that McCain’s positions are more in line with the ACLU than most conservatives.   Why recite this record? Well, if conservatives don’t act now to stop McCain, he will become the Republican nominee and he will lose the general election. He is simply flawed on too many levels. He is a Republican Hillary Clinton in many ways. Many McCain supporters insist he is the only Republican who can beat Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama. And they point to certain polls. The polls are meaningless this far from November. Six months ago, the polls had Rudy winning the Republican nomination. In October 1980, the polls had Jimmy Carter defeating Ronald Reagan. This is no more than spin. But wouldn’t the prospect of a Clinton or Obama presidency drive enough of the grassroots to the polls for McCain? It wasn’t enough to motivate the base to vote in November 2006 to stop Nancy Pelosi from becoming speaker or the Democrats from taking Congress. My sense is it won’t be enough to carry McCain to victory, either. And McCain has done more to build animus among the people whose votes he will need than Denny Hastert or Bill Frist. And there won’t be enough Democrats voting for McCain to offset the electorate McCain has alienated (and is likely to continue to alienate, as best as I can tell). McCain has not won overwhelming pluralities, let alone majorities, in any of the primaries. A thirty-six-percent win in Florida doesn’t make a juggernaut. But the liberal media are promoting him now as the presumptive nominee. More and more establishment Republican officials are jumping on McCain’s bandwagon — the latest being Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has all but destroyed California’s Republican party. Let’s face it, none of the candidates are perfect. They never are. But McCain is the least perfect of the viable candidates. The only one left standing who can honestly be said to share most of our conservative principles is Mitt Romney. I say this as someone who has not been an active Romney supporter. If conservatives don’t unite behind Romney at this stage, and become vocal in their support for him, then they will get McCain as their Republican nominee and probably a Democrat president. And in either case, we will have a deeply flawed president. — Mark Levin, a former senior Reagan Justice Department official, is a nationally syndicated radio-talk-show host.

Allow me to share my final opinion of Mike Huckabee.  This man has been and continues to be the worst aspect of the 2008 Republican race.  Not only is he unfit to be President by virtue of his inexperience, but he has troubling tendencies towards big government.  Just because he touts the Fair Tax doesn't mean he'd be able to enact it!
He may have taken on the Clinton machine in Arkansas, but how would he deal with the Putin machine, or the Ahmahdinejad machine?  Considerably higher stakes, and I don't trust the man's experience.

Now here's my real problem with him:  He has consistently impeded the progress of men who are better qualified to win this race, to the benefit of one John McCain. 
First, Huckabee snatched up evangelicals and social conservatives ahead of Fred Thompson, whose conservative credentials are quite solid.  He effectively tripped up that horse right out of the starting gate and Thompson never recovered.  This was his first offense.
And now, his newest offense is that he will not drop out of the race.  The only thing he is doing is benefiting John McCain at the expense of Mitt Romney...the better candidate. 
John McCain is, for all his "straight talk," willing to break with conservative principles and has had a little trouble suppressing his scorn for the conservative base of the Republican Party.  He is a Washington bigwig and isn't shy about telling people.  His partnerships with Kennedy and Feingold on legislation that is almost directly contrary to conservative principles are immensely important in our judgment of the man...and why he should not be President.

So, thanks Mike Huckabee.  Thanks for your folksy down home nonsense that has effectively handed the Republican nomination to John McCain.  Thanks for disrupting not one, but two of the more viable campaigns.  And thanks for ruining my opinion of Chuck Norris.  You were funny, Mike, and likable, but you should have stayed in Arkansas. 

Damn your eyes, sir.  Step aside now.

I am the one who sainted Reagan, days ago...VDH has only become more intelligent by imitating me.
This is a great message for the GOP candidates.  While Reagan was a great leader, this is not Reagan's America.  This is 2008, not 1980.  Republicans must show that they can emulate Reagan instead of ape him.  The principles are constant, but the particulars are by necessity different.

St. Reagan
Idealizing ideological purity.

By Victor Davis Hanson

Ronald Reagan’s presidency was a great success. He rebuilt a chaotic U.S. military and helped end the Cold War. Reagan’s radical tax cuts in 1981 spurred economic growth and redefined the relationship between U.S. citizens and their government. And he appointed conservative federal judges and bureaucrats who tried to roll back the half-century trend of expanded governmental control over our lives.

Reagan’s nice-guy charm made it difficult for even his critics to stay angry with him for long. But he was no mere smiling dunce, as liberal intellectuals used to snicker. His private papers and diaries instead reveal that he was widely informed, read voraciously, drew on a powerful intellect and was an effective writer.

It is no wonder that conservative leaders — especially the current crop of Republican presidential hopefuls — now constantly evoke Ronald Reagan’s successful presidency. In contrast, they rarely hearken back to the uprightness of the one-term Gerald Ford, or praise the foreign-policy accomplishments of the two Bush Republican presidencies.

Instead, the candidates try to “out-Reagan” each other by claiming they alone are the true Reaganites while their rivals in the primaries are too liberal, flip-floppers, or without consistent conservative principles.

In short, Ronald Reagan has been beatified into some sort of saint, as if he were above the petty lapses and contradictions of today’s candidates. The result is that conservatives are losing sight of Reagan the man while placing unrealistic requirements of perfection on his would-be successors.

They have forgotten that Reagan — facing spiraling deficits, sinking poll ratings and a hostile Congress — reluctantly signed legislation raising payroll, income, and gasoline taxes, some of them among the largest in our history. He promised to limit government and eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy. Instead, when faced with congressional and popular opposition, he relented and even grew government by adding a secretary of veteran affairs to the Cabinet.

Two of his Supreme Court appointments, Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, were far more liberal than George W. Bush’s selections, the diehard constructionists, John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Reagan’s 1986 comprehensive immigration bill turned out to be the most liberal amnesty for illegal aliens in our nation’s history, and set the stage for the present problem of 12 million aliens here unlawfully.

Republicans forget all this — but so do Democrats, who for their own reasons want to perpetuate an unflattering myth of Ronald Reagan as an extremist right-wing reactionary.

In foreign affairs, Reagan was not always sober and judicious. He shocked Cold Warriors by advocating complete nuclear disarmament at his Reykjavik summit with Michel Gorbachev.

In the middle of Lebanon’s civil war, he first put American troops into a crossfire. Then, when 241 marines were blown up, he withdrew them. That about-face, and the failure to retaliate in serious fashion, helped to embolden Hezbollah’s anti-American terrorism for decades.

The Iran-Contra scandal exploded when a few rogue administration officials sold state-of-the-art missiles under the table to Iran’s terrorist-sponsoring theocracy, and prompted opposition talk of impeachment.

In other words, a great president like Ronald Reagan made mistakes. He sometimes reversed positions, played politics, and baffled his conservative base — some of the very charges now leveled against Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson.

When a candidate today says, “Reagan would have done this or that,” he apparently has a poor memory of what Reagan — the often lonely, flesh-and-blood conservative in the 1980s — was forced to do to get elected, govern, and be re-elected. While in office, he proved more often the pragmatic leader than the purist knight slaying ideological dragons on the campaign trail.

So what is the real Reagan legacy? It is mostly the Great Communicator’s uncanny ability to distill complex problems, offer a more conservative solution than America was used to or ready for, and then inspire and enact difficult change through a brilliant “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” turn of phrase.

But 2008 is a different world from a quarter-century ago, when Reagan began his presidency. Amnesiac candidates need to separate the myth of Reagan — the perfect conservative — from the real man when stridently chastising their rivals for their past fudging on taxes, illegal immigration or the size of government.

The current pack of five serious Republican candidates should call on the spirit and principled inspiration of Ronald Reagan for guidance about new problems in the way they evoke Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt.

But these candidates only do his memory — and their own careers — a disservice by claiming sainthood for Ronald Reagan, and thereby demanding a standard of immaculate conservative conduct that neither Reagan nor they could ever attain.

--Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author, most recently, of A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.

(C) 2008 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

So if it hasn't been made clear by now, this race for the Republican nomination is a bit different than usual.  We've got different winners in the early primaries, and South Carolina looms as a make or break state for more than one candidate. 
It may interest a very few to know that I have decided to support Fred Thompson, at present.  While I prefer him to Romney, I would not hesitate to vote for Mitt in the absence of Fred. 
Here's a nice analysis of the results from Michigan, courtesy of my old stalwart, National Review. 
What an exhausting campaign this is to follow.  I can't imagine running it.  I may make a post outlining why I prefer one candidate over the other soon.

John Hood
So, it’s Mitt Romney by, oh, a quarter mile. By the previous standards of this quirky and often-silly electoral season, the political talk shows ought to start speculating about Romney’s strategy for November and columnists ought to be tossing around potential veep picks. It’s all still way too early, of course, which was also true last Tuesday night in New Hampshire and the previous Thursday in Iowa. The GOP race remains competitive. Both practicality and politeness argue for letting voters in other states have their say before packing it in.

Apologists for the other candidates will discount Romney’s win by pointing to his native-son status, the exceptional nature of Michigan’s economic challenges, the lack of a real Clinton-Obama fight to boost political interest, and the weather. The apologists will be right. But where were they when Romney defenders pointed to the idiosyncrasies of Iowa and New Hampshire, and the odd media snub of Wyoming’s Jan. 5 vote (which actually awarded more delegates than Granite State voters did)?

If there is a deeper significance in Romney’s Michigan success, it is that the conservative establishment within the Republican Party retains influence and cohesion. Among the GOP candidates, the divide is between two candidates on the one side (Romney and Thompson) running as conservatives in the traditional triad of economics, foreign policy, and social issues and three candidates on the other (McCain, Huckabee, and Giuliani) running as conservatives in one or two of those issue sets but not all three. The latter group essentially believes that the current GOP coalition is inadequate to defeat either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the fall. Romney and Thompson disagree, believing that Republicans must secure their base and then pitch independents on particular issues where the Democratic nominee will lack credibility or be out of step.

For good or ill, the conservative establishment agrees with the optimists, Romney and Thompson. These establishmentarians don’t feel inclined to abandon conservative principles that they believe are both correct and politically effective. With varying degrees of enthusiasm, many of them have gravitated to Romney (with a smaller group preferring Thompson on grounds of either resume or consistency). The Michigan results please them, though few seem to have yielded to irrational exuberance. That is wise. Super-Duper Tuesday is still to come, then a long, hard slog to November.

— John Hood is chairman and president of the John Locke Foundation and author of Investor Politics.

It's going to be Obama for the Democrats and probably McCain for the Republicans.  Romney will be close, I think. 

My favorite, Fred Thompson, has one more shot to get things going.  If he wins South Carolina, I'll continue to support him.  If he loses, he's done..  I think he'll raise the money he needs, but not the votes.  He's got great positions and I hope that whoever wins will adopt some of them, maybe even put him as VP or on the cabinet.  That would be stellar.

Rudy's a non-entity, and he'd better hope that he has enough steam for his late strategy.

But Hillary is in trouble.  I can't decide how I feel about that.  I am terrified that Barack "Half a Term" Obama will beat her.  The man is a novice, truly.  But people will vote with their hearts, not their heads.  This is why the founding fathers restricted voting to the landed gentry.  They could count on them to be educated when they voted...

I'm convinced that the Republicans will lose.  If they nominate Mike Huckabee (they won't, I pray) I have decided to vote for a third party.

Doom and Gloom, I say. 

I have been thinking that it's almost time for a cheeky poem.  Maybe later.  I know how much my readers love my awesome rhymes.

Firstly, let me say that I loathe commercials.  They have cut off some of the answers to the most provocative questions.  I mean, how hard would it be to devote a commercial free block of time so that I can see all these answers without making an internet search?

Now let me give you my running commentary on the candidates.

Thompson:  Thompson is my man, and he's on point tonight.  But he's not on fire.  He's saying the right things so far.  I want him to win, but don't think it's likely. 

Paul:  Ron Paul is sounding good on issues of the federal government poking its nose into things.  His lackeys, who no doubt made the road trip from their college in a van whilst braiding their dreadlocks and smoking their doobies, keep on booing anyone who mentions radical Islam.  I hate Ron Paul.

Tancredo:  He's having a good time.  Get 'em Tancredo.  He's not going to make it much longer though.

Hunter:  Duncan Hunter is also doing well, but to be fair he has not said as much.  I don't think he's going to make it out of Iowa.  He's got Chuck Yeager on his side though.  He handled the inevitable "homosexual in the army" question well.

Huckabee:  I like him more and more.  More and more.  He's keeping a cool head despite being attacked over his record, but I hear he has a temper.  I'd like a man with a temper in office.  He's my current favorite for VP.

Romney:  It's bad between him and Rudy.  They've calmed down from their opening spat this evening, but I think it damaged them both.  Romney needs to score some decisive points tonight, in my estimation.  He has yet to do so.  Waffled on gay question.  But man, I think he could handle the financial stuff.

McCain:  John McCain hasn't slipped up at all tonight.  He's on message, he's consistent, and his record is unchallenged.  But I can't help feeling like his opponents take his eventual defeat for granted, and see no benefit to scoring points off the old man.  He's a hero, and he is standing up to Ron Paul and his idiot supporters, but perhaps his time has passed.

Giuliani:  Rudy Giuliani has had to fend off attacks all night, and it's showing.  He's making some mistakes, but I don't think he's being hurt too badly.  I felt bad for him with the Bible question.  As a Catholic, it's hard to explain to people the nuances of biblical understanding.  In Giuliani's case, obviously he's not too devoted a Catholic...this question probably highlighted the divide he has to cross to reach values voters.  His biggest hurdle is that he keeps mentioning New York over and over again.  Not my pick for anything, but he'll be in it for a while.

Anyone else watch the debate?

Update:  It would appear that a number of questioners, including the gay general and Mom of Two Concerned About Lead, were plants.  I'm not sure if this is a bunch of caterwauling or what.  Obviously, though, if a candidate can't handle the opposition then he doesn't deserve the nomination.