MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Florida GOP Debate - live blog

• Posted by Sparta on October 21st, 2007 filed in 2008 election, Candidates, Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson, General, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Paultards, Politics, Rudy Giuliani    

First, you can either listen to–er, read–me babble, or you can read the live-blogging at The Fred File (the official Fred! campaign blog). They’re also live-blogging it in Spanish here.

I’m not gonna do a play-by-play of every single thing said, but here we go…

HAHA, Fred! gets in a dig at lardass Ted Kennedy. “I didn’t know there was anyone to the left of Kennedy. I didn’t think there was anything to the right, either.”

They’re all making the case for why they’re The Conservative candidate right now. Uh oh, friendly fire. Fred goes after Rudy saying he agrees with Hillary Clinton more often. Rudy fires back saying Thompson blocked tort reform. Fred says he supported tort reform, but he supports it being at the state level. Hits Rudy again about NYC being a sanctuary city; Rudy touts his record in lowering crime in NYC and says Fred has no executive experience.

Whew. Now to McCain. He’s low-key as usual, no problem. Romney says he “respects his service,” but disagrees with him on certain issues. After crediting McCain’s service, says he was “fighting” liberalism. Oh God, please don’t compare that with McCain’s service in the Navy, please.

McCain says “lawyers are the last people we should be turning to in a crisis.” Watch the left spin that line, although anyone with a brain ought to know what he meant. Romney says if there were ever a crisis, he would act immediately to protect American citizens, in an attempt to defuse the “lawyers” meme. Defends Bush, saying he went to Congress for Iraq and got approval.

Oh, damn. Ron Freakin’ Paul. He “didn’t understand” the question about gay marriage. Argues against a Constitutional Amendment, says it should be a state issue. Romney asked why he supports a ban when the other candidates do not; says he is from a state with legalized gay marriage, says there should be a nationalized standard.

I’m sorry, I was distracted by Mitt’s hair. What? Oh. Blah blah blah, gay marriage bores me. Wow, Rudy says if it gets to be a problem with states all going around changing standards, then he would support an amendment. Hmm.

Heeee. Huckabee is happy he wasn’t involved in the first few minutes of the debate when the others were fighting with each other, saying they can have that part. Mentions that among the Founding Fathers there were many clergymen. Excellent point, Huck.

Fred’s talking about his work with Planned Parenthood as clients, noting that it was his job, but when he was a Senator, he always voted against PP’s interests.

McCain is now discussing “reconciliation” with the social conservatives/religious right/whatever. Zzzzzz.

WTF is Tancredo still doing here? Again, he’s got that agitated tone. God, he’s annoying. Yay, Duncan Hunter–it sucks he’s not doing better. Dude is awesome. “We’re the party of freedom.”

Oh, God, health care. Wake me up when this is over, because they all need to just keep their hands OFF of it. Obviously, this is all going to be No Hillary-care. Yay, Ron Paul. Let me guess: deregulate everything, if you want to see a doctor, get a job. LOL. GAWD, he’s got that raised voice thing going on again, just like the old crank he is. And basically, I wasn’t far off. “Take care of the poor people, but work toward a market-only system.” Whatever. Pie in the sky utopianism, as usual. Free kittens and unicorns too, courtesy of the marketplace, no details necessary! Yippee! (Just to clarify, I’m no fan of restricting the marketplace; I’d just like a little bit of reality in the plan.)

BWAHAHAHAHA. My daughter is watching this with me, asking “who’s he?” about them. She thinks Huckabee is funny but “he has big ears.” LOL! Thank God for kids, because this part is boring to me. She just asked me why teachers “hated” Giuliani, after Wendell Goler said “teachers hated you.” I told her he made them do their jobs (the simplest explanation), and see? An eight year-old gets it. She says, “That’s a good thing!”

Well, as usual the media, in this case Chris Wallace, has already anointed Hillary as the Democratic nominee–not that I think they’re wrong, though. Audience is not pleased, unsurprisingly. Heh.

UGH. I just lost a whole paragraph. Rudy did well in the “bash Hillary” topic; McCain got a standing ovation when mentioning that he was a little “tied up” when Hillary’s people were at Woodstock. Excellent. (UPDATE: Video of McCain’ moment here.) Huckabee said, “I like to be funny, but there’s nothing funny about Hillary Clinton being President.”

Sigh…missed Fred, I’m busy being a parent. Jon Henke saves me here:

8:57 It’s Fred Thompson’s turn - I’m not skipping all of the specific quotes! - and he says we need to stick to the basic principles on which our government was founded - free markets, individual freedom, limited government - and avoid the “comfortable mediocrity” offered by the Democrats.

HAHA, Ron Paul is on and did the audience just boo him? HA! Really? I sorta missed it, dammit. Ranting about privacy and other paranoid crap, “back to the basics.” Because he is of course the only one interested in the Constitution, blah blah blah, heard it all before. Black helicopters!!!

Ugh, back to health insurance. Again, wake me when it’s over. OK, they’re actually talking about cutting entitlement spending and fixing Social Security. I’m sorry, I’m being totally distracted here and can’t keep up.

OK, good question to Romney from Brit Hume: “You saw what happened” when the President tried to do Social Security reform–nothing–and asked, “what are you going to do about it?” Eh, he said, “Learn from his mistakes.” FAIL. Next?

Yay! Mike Huckabee is NOT for killing off old people to save money on Social Security! w00t! I love that guy.
Ron Paul, though, just might be for it. Ranting again, and I’m tuning it out. Shut. Up. Old. Man. Haha, get rid of Social Security and health care and everything! Dream on, pal. That’s sure gonna happen. “It’s not in the Constitution!” LOL!

OK, OK, we get it. Republicans are for less spending and lower taxes. This isn’t exactly groundbreaking stuff here. Another shocker: Tom Tancredo is angry about illegal aliens. Yawn. Bored.

Now Russia: McCain says “When I looked into Mr. Putin’s eyes, I saw three letters: K-G-B,” and “he’s a dangerous man.” Next Duncan Hunter–he wants to keep missile defense strong, as Reagan intended. Rudy wants to expand NATO to look further geographically, i.e. Australia. Also re: Russia and China: “We can engage a country commercially,” while being strong strategically.

Fred! on Turkey and the PKK: “Turkey is a friend of ours,” and our bases there are critically important, particularly Incirlik. (Remind me to write about Incirlik, the Kurds, and the PKK in Turkey some day. Been there, done that–or two out of three, anyway.) Says we have friends in the Turks and Armenians, but Nancy Pelosi jumped the shark (not his words, mine).

Gawd, here we go again with Ron Paul: We suck, America has done everything wrong. “What if Mexico came here and started putting missiles here like we do in Europe?” Yeah, it’d be exactly the same thing, Mr. Savior of Freedom. We just need to “talk to people.” Bite me. HAHA, the audience is loudly booing him again! Yeah!

Wendell Goler asks RP if the party has left him, or vice versa. RP sez everyone else has abandoned “our platform.” Everyone except him is a Republican! Whatevah. More ranting and complaining about “neocons!” More booing! He sucks. “Our platform” for Ron Paul is the platform of the John Birch Society. Next?

OK, Fred! is back, defending himself against charges of “laziness.” Lots of things mentioned that he’s done: Condi Rice, Bush, John Roberts, etc. More importantly, five kids including two little ones. Haha!

Finally, it’s over. I missed a bunch of stuff, so check out The Fred File. I’ll probably add more links to this post as they come along.

Post-debate thoughts:

Fred Thompson: Relaxed, confident, at ease with himself and with the debate. Lots of good points raised, although obviously I wasn’t able to write any of them down (thanks to my daughter!).

Rudy Giuliani: Did particularly well this time, and I’d say probably better than he has in most other debates. Surprising revelation: He may support a Constitutional amendment on gay marriage, if needed.

Mitt Romney: No mistakes stuck out, no problems, although again, nothing to knock ‘em dead. Well, except his hair. Dude’s got great hair.

John McCain: Looks more bored by the process every debate. I dunno, does he still want this? Big, big reaction when he contrasted Woodstock and Vietnam, though. If it weren’t for that, his presence would have been pretty much missed.

Mike Huckabee: As usual, he didn’t get the same airtime as the big four, but he always gets attention when he speaks. Audiences can’t help but love him, and I see why.

Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo: Barely there. Hunter was strong and knowledgeable as usual, but again, nothing earth-shattering. I think he forgets that speaking in a Presidential debate or a Presidential campaign speech is different from speaking on the floor of the House, and that’s a shame. Tancredo? Starting to look like a troll, just there to waste people’s time. Sorry, dude.

Last but definitely least: the Reverend Doctor Saint Ron Paul, Messiah. Booooo hisssss. He was definitely not appreciated by this audience, and that just warms my heart. God bless you, Florida. ♥

Speaking of Florida: my dear friend Janette is there in the spin room right now. I can’t wait to read her report from it! I’m just watching the spin room activity on the teevee right now waiting for her to wave her tiara up for the camera. ;-)

Another thought: I think debates are a huge waste, a silly show. Just watching each of the candidates speaking after the debate, there’s a huge difference. Mitt Romney, when just speaking extemporaneously, comes off so much better than in debates it’s not funny. Fred! said these debates aren’t really his thing, that he’s a “laid back guy.” Heh. He seemed perfectly at ease to me! Anyway, I really wish we could just do away with this debate format. There’s nothing said that couldn’t be read in a press release; it’s basically a formal hazing process. See if anyone fails miserably, and weed ‘em out. Other than that, it’s dumb. Can’t we just cage match ‘em instead? OK, not really, but I’d much rather see the candidates sit down and discuss things rather than this timed Q&A thing. Whatever.

HAHAHA!!! Ron Paul “won” the call-in text-vote on Fox News! Hannity said “they’re stacking the votes again!” Frank Luntz just polled the focus group, asking who thought RP won. NOBODY did. Not one. PWNED.

Luntz’ focus group loved Huckabee, unsurprisingly. I’m telling you, people love that guy. Huck apparently just won over a few new supporters, at least in that group. (Ron Paul? Not so much. LOL.)

By the way, if you want to vote, text to 36288. I have no idea what the numbers are specifically; I just voted how my daughter told me to vote. Heh. All I know is that the Paulbots are spamming Digg like crazy right now with their boy’s text-vote number. Freaks.
Here are the numbers:
Giuliani: R1
Huckabee: R2
Hunter: R3
McCain: R4
_{Paul: R5}
Romney: R6
Tancredo: R7
Thompson: R8

[UPDATE] Others on the debate:

Jim Geraghty says “Everybody Was Good; Fred, Rudy, and Huck Were Best.” I absolutely agree.

Matt Lewis at Townhall:

Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney both did well, but they always do well. Mike Huckabee is still the best debater, but there’s nothing new there.

I think Fred Thompson did quite well. Once again, he ended strong. People tend to remember the first thing and the last thing they see, and if this is true, Fred Thompson had a very good night.

Tonight, John McCain “the Statesman” showed up.

Stephen Green of Vodkapundit for PJM:

Thompson exceeded expectations, I think, keeping him running. McCain had the best soundbites, Rudy had the best instincts, and Mitt turned out his worst performance to date. Tonight’s winner: Hillary Clinton, for being the focus of 15 minutes of a short debate.

Complete report at Fox News:

The claws were out Sunday night as the GOP presidential candidates went for each other’s jugulars trying to prove to Republican base voters that each is the most conservative candidate in the race for the White House.

The line that makes my heart sing:

Other than Hillary Clinton, Ron Paul has been the only presidential candidate to receive audible disapproval from the crowd tonight.

:mrgreen:

Video of the high points (including the booing!) at Ian Schwartz’ site.

• Huckabee on Hillary
• Ron Paul booed
• McCain on Woodstock: “I was tied up at the time”
• Fred, Rudy, Mitt argue about who’s “more conservative”