Thoughts on the G.O.P. Debate

I think that it went quite well in some ways.

The one highlight of the evening was when Tom Tancredo said that there would be no place for Dubya in a Tancredo administration. In that statement he spoke for all of the beleaguered cnservatives who are fed up with El Presidente.

As with most of the debates, Ron Paul's performance improves in hindsight. The secret of Paul is that he brings up topics that no one else will deal with. But he got shafted with little attention and with bad questions. On the Iraq War, Blitzer simply asked him more or less does he want us to get out (allowing him to state a position he has stated many times before), rather than asking a far more interesting question such as what does he think of the fact that Rudy Giuliani has never before heard of "blowback," or something else that could have really gotten the ball rolling or could have allowed him more elaboration.

It was good, though, to hear Paul bring up the issue of birthright citizenship, so that Tancredo didn't have to do all of the heavt lifting on the immigration issue.

The one big error Paul made is when he said something toward the end about the money for Medicare and education coming from the Iraq War. Presumably he meant that the taxpayers would have more money to pay for these things himself (although in the case of Medicare he could be talking about the transitional costs as he phased it out), but it sounded as if he supported these as federal government programs, which he does not.

Here are the Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo official sites. I encourage my readers to visit both and to consider making donations to one or both of these candidates.

That is all.