The YouTube debate: Content

I don’t want to go too far into specifics, because I think that this so-called debate was a debacle. It was pathetic.

I do think that Gov. Romney looked terrible. Almost as bad as Mayor Giuliani. Sen. Thompson never passed on an opportunity to lob verbal bombs at the other candidates, which is not the way to run a real campaign.

I think that John McCain actually did very well. In the opening bickering over immigration, it was — strangely enough — McCain who came out doing the best. Even if I think that he was substantively wrong, he sounded good, he sounded like he took the issue seriously. That’s far more than I can say for Romney or Giuliani.

Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo were, as usual, generally ignored. Rep. Tancredo did very well with the time that he had, but that wasn’t much.

I was working on posting about this piece by piece, segment by segment, and then I realized that it wasn’t worthwhile. I learned NOTHING by watching this debate. There wasn’t as single word said that hadn’t already been said, except those which were totally unimportant (such as that Sen. Thompson owns gun but won’t tell us which ones).

I have to give Gov. Romney credit for his reaction to the Confederate flag question — he seemed incredulous that he was actually being asked that. He went on to answer the question, but at first I thought he was saying that he wasn’t going to waste his time on such a question.

He would have been right to do so. It was a waste of time for him to answer, and for those of us who were looking for information from candidates to have to sit through that foolishness. Since no one is talking about hanging a CSA battle flag at the White House, that time should have been spent on a responsible question — “Do you believe that the FBI should be allowed to use executive warrants and national security letters without judicial approval?” comes to mind. “Do you believe that it should be a national priority to find Usama bin Laden?” might be good.