Biggest Joke on Television Tonight

[Sandy]

The Fox News Republican Debate.

1. They wanted to make a big show of going to the most Democratic county in Ohio. Then they couldn't find enough people to fill all the seats.
2. It's not a debate, or even close to it. It's all set up questions to allow the candidates to use their talking points to answer.
3. Megyn Kelly. Really?
4. Toward the end, a question to give the candidates a chance to "Out God" each other. And they sure did.
5. I have to wonder, how in the world Rand Paul became a doctor, and who in their right mind would go to him for care.

It was encouraging in one way. If one of these guys is the GOP nominee, the Democrats will have a pretty easy time keeping the White House in 2016.

[Tim Bonney]

I didn't watch it. I figured it would be a circus.

[William Thornton]

Union guy dislikes Republican candidates. No news there.

I thought the undercard was better. Fiorina is formidable, as i have been saying for months.

Once you guys get off the ridicule, we might have a discussion.

[Dave Roberts]

I thought that the BBC gave the best coverage to the GOP debate......................they didn't mention it at all in their news summary.

[Haruo]

In odd moments of free time I have been contributing to the process by providing the candidates with articles in the Esperanto Wikipedia. Here is ; blue links mean the articles now exist; red links mean I still have to do these ones if no one beats me to the punch; italics mean the article already existed, I just needed to make sure it was updated to reflect the person's 2016 candidacy. As you can see, William, Carly Fiorina is next on my list.

[Haruo]

[Sandy]

Honestly, until the first couple of primaries thins the field down to the serious contenders, it is going to be a circus, because the serious candidates are going to be compelled to keep responding to, and stepping around the piles left by the clowns. You can't have a "debate" with 10 candidates, and moderators who are basically their personal cheerleaders, allowing them to bypass serious questions and go to their talking points.

So let's be honest, and have a discussion.
1. There was nothing of substance brought out in the debate. There was no time, and the questions weren't geared toward asking questions to get a response with substance.
2. The only real distinction between eight of the ten candidates that I observed was that Rand Paul is sincerely and genuinely a libertarian, and his views certainly put him in the same category as his father. The end result will be similar, though I don't know if he will be content being the perpetual fringe Republican every four years.
3. Trump certainly distinguished himself. If the GOP leadership gets anything out of this debate, they need to pay careful attention to this, and consider this debate performance by Trump as a code red warning. Donald is running for President, and he will either run on their ticket, or he will run on his own. Personal opinion, but I think his aim is to weaken the field by knocking down any other Republican who has a shot at the nomination, and then either taking the spot himself, or if they won't hand it over to him, he will have made sure there is no viable candidate on the right.
4. Warning number 2. The campaign theme better improve and be different than "Obama bad, bad, bad." Yeah, it grinds on their nerves that he doesn't think like they do on social policy, but 70% of the electorate these days doesn't give a tinker's dam about social policy. The under 35 voting block that only shows up for Presidential elections, and gave Obama almost 70% of their votes last time around, won't take kindly to that, they'll want to see some substance, and not the same old themes that have given the Democrats a majority of the vote in five out of the last six elections. Trump has achieved one goal. The Republicans needed to motivate Latino voters, and he certainly has motivated them for the Democrats. So politics as usual isn't going to cut it. Kasich seemed to be the only candidate last night that got that message.

I would welcome a discussion that would include valid reasons why I would want to elect a Republican to the presidency in 2016, that is not based on the political rhetoric the right has been harping on since before the 2012 election.

[William Thornton]

There are times when I think my old friend Sandy has been around Fox too long and strays into an alternate universe.

All the liberal outlets are commending Fox for the pointed, relevant moderating where quite a bit of news was made. Would that the sycophantic lib media would do the same for Hillary.

[Tim Bonney]

William, I can't think of a single thing that that any of these candidates are promising that benefits middle class working Americans. So that doesn't leave much of anything for me to discuss. I'll be voting for the Democratic candidate.

[Sandy]

The New York Times thought the moderators were "pointed." But that was largely because they pinned Trump to the wall. I watched it, and I didn't see a single difficult question they asked to any of the other candidates.

Trump is on with Don Lemon now. He invited him on because he thought the moderators were unfair to Trump, and let everyone else off the hook. Point to a difficult question they asked Jeb Bush. Or Rand Paul. Or Ted Cruz. Then there was the God question. That would have been a toughie for Trump, but they didn't ask him. They asked that question to Huckabee and Cruz. Fact is, if there is going to be a good debate among Republican candidates, it will have to come after the field is whittled down to two or three candidates.

If you want a clue as to how far the Republican Party is out of touch with the American people, take a look at Trump's numbers. He's put together a populist message, he is saying things that he knows the anti-establishment crowd wants to hear, and he's picking up the support of about a fourth of Republicans. That's a significant percentage of mostly far right conservatives who feel disenfranchised by the party establishment. There's not a snowball's chance of his actually doing anything as President except solidifying the corporate oligarchy's takeover of the US government, but his rhetoric certainly does draw attention.

[Sandy]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyat ... residency/

I'd say this might be considered a "lib" perspective. Good read.

[William Thornton]

Sure, we could have an athiest forum here, maybe an "Athiests for Hillary" forum.

[Tim Bonney]

[Haruo]

And of course his point about angels was not that they are not real, but that if they were they'd be weeping.

I didn't watch the event. I almost feel I should.

At the moment the biggest blotch on my politial screen is the Black Lives Matter disruption of the Sanders event in Seattle the other night.

[William Thornton]

[Haruo]

And hoŭ about a misanthropic sibling in Christ?

[William Thornton]

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

One of the things I've wondered about is how it is that Trump is just barely a Republican (just for few years now I think) and is the Republican front runner. Also Bernie Sanders who isn't a Democrat suddenly decides to run as a Democrat.

I wonder if there should be some mechanism that would require to actually show some kind of commitment for the party you are running under before you can actually be eligible to run for President under that ticket. IMHO, if someone is threatening to leave the party if they don't get their way they shouldn't even be on the ticket for that party. Trump has been in multiple parties in recent years. He obviously has no party loyalty. So why should he be able to run as a Republican party candidate?

I'm sure the Republican leadership wishes they had some way to declare him not a "real" Republican and show him the door. But, If Trump spins off an independent campaign for sure it will hurt the Republican candidate.

[Dave Roberts]

As far as I can see, Donald Trump has only had one job in his life. He has been promoting Donald Trump. He is good at that, but it makes his focus mighty narrow making him a small country bounded on the north, south, east and west by Trump.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Sandy]

Trump is sitting at about 24% of the pre-primary Republican vote. He'll need a lot more than that to win the nomination, not to mention the election. I don't see that there's much room in the electorate for his popularity to grow beyond 25% of the GOP, because the same polls that have him leading Republican candidates also have him not getting almost 70% of the vote in the general electorate.

The fact that he has virtually no campaign organization to date, no "boots on the ground" in New Hampshire or Iowa, to date, and just fired the one guy in his campaign who really knew what he was doing, along with not really campaigning from anywhere except his apartment in New York, but is leading the Republican field says one thing pretty loudly--the GOP isn't really very excited about the array of candidates who have announced, because the ones who are spending a fortune and campaigning like mad are losing ground. That can't be good, at least, not for the GOP.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Tim Bonney]

Trump can't win a general election because he is an offensive troll who has no positive qualities other than being rich.

[Haruo]