Policies and Posture
The second GOP Presidential debate was held last night at the beautiful Reagan Library in California. There is considerable irony in that. I doubt the great Ronald Reagan would recognize the US if he were alive today. This time there were seven candidates qualified to stand on the stage. It was televised on Fox News Channel, The Fox Business channel and I'm happy to say the Spanish speaking station of Univision. There were no home runs and other than Chris Christie who seems to be motivated by a hatred of Donald Trump, everyone else did well.
This is the way I graded it:
Sen. Tim Scott got an A for telling the American people that the policies of LBJ were actually a disservice to Black Americans.
Gov. Ron DeSantis got an A for refusing to take part in the silly idea of telling why other candidates shouldn't be up there. He closed well and got praise from the Univision moderator, Ilia Calderon for providing Spanish translation to his campaign. DeSantis emphasized what he would do on the border and stated what many believe is the real democrat position on abortion.
Nikki Haley gets an A for asserting herself, though she got involved in one too many battles with Ramaswamy and Sen Tim Scott. She delivered the night's funnies line when she told Vivek Ramaswamy “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber from what you say.”
Mike Pence got B for looking Presidential and not making any mistakes.
Vivek Ramaswamy got a C for getting in too many side arguments and talking over people.
Chris Christie got a D for bringing nothing but his disdain for Trump with him.
Gov. Doug Burgum got a D for sparring with the moderators. Obviously, he was looking for a breakout moment and nobody had one last night.
The voters did learn more about the candidates and for most of the candidates, they ended the night a little better than they did in the last debate.
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The highlights:
how depressing when most of the remaining leadership can't stand up for the country. a majority of gutless cowards...
Ramaswamy keeps saying he is the only one who can "unite" the country? What planet is he on? Or maybe he's in the 27th dimension.
Tim Scott looks unprepared and ill informed, even though he has been running for months.
DeSantis keeps pushing his extremist ideas, which is a non starter in a general election, not that he will get to that point.
Mike Pence does "look" presidential, in the mannequin sense of the word. Then he opens his mouth.....
Nikki Haley's obsession with China and her pandering to the far right make her the logical choice among this pitiful crowd.
Chris Christie is the most "presidential" of them all, but being able to belly flop over that low bar is not much of an achievement.
Ramaswamy, Scott, DeSantis and Pence all get F's, I'd give Haley a C, and Christie a C+.
Ok, big props to Haley for the best line of the night to Ramaswamy: “honestly, every time I hear you I feel a little bit dumber for what you say”.
Kind of like coming across a clown car wreck on the highway to hell.
Anyone of them is 100% better than the radical tool in the White House.
Besides being a democrat, what has Biden done wrong?
Please, no baseless lies or fascist propaganda.
Could it be that the far-right wing is listening to the same Russian disinformation that they listened to about Hillary?
The GOP might just as well call themselves Putin light beer.
Bowing to extreme fascist authoritarians is all they seem to do.
That is an awfully stupid question. You don't want an investigation of influence peddling? There is clear evidence of that.
That is the corruption part. As president he opened the borders, all but shut down fossil fuel production and blew Trillions causing inflation.
Please, no baseless lies or fascist propaganda.
Please, no more Marxist authoritarian bull shit.
Everybody knows that is a baseless lie. Didn't happen.
Your "whistleblower" is a documented longtime criminal and can't even be found these days. Devon Archer is in hiding from the GOP.
Jordan lied about Archer's testimony and covered up his transcript that exonerated President Biden.
Seems all in the GOP are liars these days. Sad that it has come to this.
Trump is documented as being the most prolific liar on the planet yet he still leads the GOP into hell with his idiotic rhetoric.
Republicans have sold whatever honor they might have ever had.
The GOP is now only the party of extreme fascism that has swallowed every piece of propaganda that Putin feeds them.
Make no mistake. We are still in a cold war with Russia.
These days Putin has the GOP fighting for him through propaganda.
Like Trump, Putin has realized that the far right are extremely gullible
There is no question of influence peddling. The only question is whether Joe Biden was in on it. It would be very hard to believe that Hunter Biden sold all that influence without the buyers getting anything in return.
Hunter gave the illusion that he had influence even though no politics were discussed when he would call dad with his business partners listening in.
I still have a six pack of Billy Beer in my wine cellar even though Jimmy Carter never drank alcohol in the White House.
Trump gave his idiot kids powerful jobs in the white house that they were seriously not qualified for.
Which is the best example of corrupt nepotism?
PROVE IT!
Lol. Calling your dad in the middle of a business meeting to demonstrate your access is the opposite of an illusion. It's proof of concept.
It's amazing how naive and gullible democrats are willing to publicly be to protect their chosen one.
Prove that Joe colluded with his drug addled son. You can't!
The far right is grasping at straws because they know that they can't win in 2024 without innuendo, propaganda and lies.
Joe Biden has a long history of being scrupulously honest.
The far-right GOP might as well try to slander Mister Rogers.
The vast majority of politicians across the aisle will testify that Joe Biden is one of the most honest politicians they have ever met.
Proof that the vast majority of politicians lie.
Joe is known for lying.
It is quite clear what the Bidens were doing.
Selling access to Joe.
That's funny as hell. Liars and crooks vouching the integrity of one of their own.
How can you tell when a politician is lying? When his lips are moving...
Last night Trump was in Michigan speaking to a crowd of unknown affiliation (what reason is there to believe any of those people in his audience are actual members of the auto workers union) , at a non union location to which he was invited by a "right to work" group. In his words to the striking workers, wherever they were, his message was "vote for Trump", only he can save your jobs.
Trump long ago announced that he would speak to the UAW workers today.
One of Biden's handlers then directed Biden to get out there the day before which was yesterday.
The UAW bosses welcomed Biden with open arms.
Today the UAW members will embrace Donald Trump.
That's the difference.
Uh, he spoke yesterday. Whether it was a union crowd or not is anybody's guess. A newspaper found people in the crowd who were holding signs related to the strike who admitted they were not union members.
Trump has pulled such shit before. Remember his "escalator" crowd at his campaign announcement at Trump Tower in 2015? Most of them were paid to be there.
Whether it was a union crowd or not is anybody's guess.
Yes, yesterday was Wednesday, wasn't it. Trump did plan that. Biden's handlers made Biden go out on Tuesday, the day before, otherwise only Trump would have been there!
You refuse to believe that workers have fled the democrat party?
It all happened during the 2016 campaign. I'm sorry that you missed it.
Biden marched with UAW folk on the lines.
Trump didn't even know he was speaking to a non-union shop that weren't even auto workers and most were paid to be there.
This is typical of the war that Trump wages against We the People. His ignorance and mendacity are legend.
“His ignorance and mendacity are legend”
Historians and sociologists will fill tomes explaining the phenomenon.
Every time I look at ND Gov Burgum, I try to remember who he looks like.
It just came to me: Spencer Tracey as Mr Hide
Perfect
My favorite lines of the night were:
“I want to look at the camera right now and tell you, Donald, I know you’re watching. You can’t help yourself. I know you’re watching, okay? And you’re not here tonight not because of polls and not because of your indictments. You’re not here tonight because you’re afraid of being on this stage and defending your record."
“You’re ducking these things. And let me tell you what’s going to happen, you keep doing that, no one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore, we’re gonna call you ‘Donald Duck,'” Christie said.
"Mike Pence got B for looking Presidential and not making any mistakes."
I gave him a C+ for successfully looking and sounding like the undertaker for the Adams Family.
Nikki got a solid A for kicking anyone who claimed to have a pair.
DeSantis a C- for his dismally inept channeling of former President Polk.
If one can get an A for being obnoxious, take a bow Vivek and do have your teeth removed.
... and a D- for the GoP, this ain't supposed to be daycare guys 'n gals.
Good for him, actually. The best way to fuck Donald Trump - or any narcissist, for that matter - is to ignore him.
Meaning he made some shit up? How is bullshit like that any different than the accusations of “dog whistles?”
She should learn that lesson from DeSantis about Trump.
Amen, Sister. I don’t recommend she get distracted by that imbecile, but she is speaking the truth there.
That’s a shame because he’s actually an intelligent person who could be a decent president, if he just focused on that. Same for Nikki.
I would guess almost no one planning on voting for Trump was actually watching.