I listened to the GOP debate last night this morning while I was working via YouTube. Naturally, I probably missed several points, but what I got from it was about what I expected.
What I mean by this is that most debates are fairly predictable and more often than not are not a good way to showcase your political platform. This is because it more about theatrics and not about substance. If anything, this was proven when John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon because of their televised debates. I could say that this was probably the beginning the age of style over substance.
Another thing is that in debates, you have little time to make your case. Now, I have never been a member of the debate team, but you cannot explain the complex concepts such as the Austrian Business Cycle theory in less than a minute. In many cases, you have to assume that people will know what you are talking about and just go with it.
Because our nation is a full of dunces and morons who have not read a book outside of what was required of them in government skool, they often do not understand what the candidates are talking about. This leads to them being misrepresented by their opponents who do understand what they are saying but choose to mislead in order to orient people away from a candidate.
The fact is, many of the candidates have good ideas and all those ideas should be laid out and people should analyze them and decide which set of ideas are best. Unfortunately, the debate structure also precludes a look over the history of a candidate. When it comes the candidate’s past, their past actions will indicate what their current actions will be, not anything that they say. As a politician, what you say is irrelevant. It is what you have done that counts.
At least, ideally that is what should happen. You should judge candidates based on their past actions and what effect they have had. This is much easier for governors, whose policies often directly affected the state for which they looked over. However, for Congressmen, it is more difficult as most legislation they propose gets shot down or completely changed in a committee. Still, we can view what kind of legislation that they authored from the beginning as well as check their voting record.
That being said, I found that most of the candidates were just clones of each other with a few stand outs. Michelle Bachmann kept on relating personal experiences, which only works with limp-wristed weenies who vote Democrat(ick) anyway. Herman Cain kept on harping about his solutions, which sounded all right, but I would have to look into it. John Huntsman thinks that science should dictate government policy, which worked so well in the USSR and China. Note that I am not anti-science, but that his claims of science are nothing more than a circle jerk of scientists approving each other’s works without much outside, objective verification. That is no way to dictate government policy.
Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum were boring and spouting the same recycled ideas that have not worked, although the initial cat fight between Romney and Perry was entertaining but intellectually vapid. Newt Gringrich stood by calling out the debate moderators and stating that no there wanted to keep Obamacare, which is true. However, I doubt the majority of them would repeal it, especially if they allow John Boehner to keep his position as Speaker of the House.
Finally, Ron Paul was inarticulate (as usual) but was able to get coherent ideas out despite the time constraints. That comment on the silver dime though was a bit on the stupid side. No gas station would accept a silver dime in exchange for a gallon a gas. Yes, I get that he was trying to illustrate the problem with inflation, but it was still a stupid comment.
That being said, I still support Ron Paul because I support his ideas of privatization and constitutional government. My wife, who is largely apolitical, states that she likes listening to Ron Paul because when he is given the opportunity to speak, he sounds like a teacher rather than a politician. Even someone who does not regard substance as much as style can get behind him.
In any case, I do not expect Ron Paul to get the nomination. But the fact that he is much closer than he was back in 2008 tells me that his ideas are catching on more and more these days and that we may see another Ron Paul type of a candidate in the future.
Hopefully this one will be able to articulate the ideas in a manner that is easy to understand and able to fit in a one minute timeslot, considering that is all the dumb masses really care about.