So, having watched the political debates with Sabrina, I've noticed that most of the candidates say much of the same things over and over again:
Question: What would you do about ____?
John McCain: Well, I'm glad you asked that. Back in the day I worked with so and so on this problem and we came up with a great solution. If you really needed an answer, I'm sorry, I won't be giving you one. And now, so and so supports me and I'm so cool because I have all these people that I'll name off to you that support me.
Mike Huckabee: You know, I'm going to avoid the question because that doesn't really matter. This is a three conservative race, not a two person race. What matters is that I have consisitently voted for unborn rights and the marriage amendment and I work to support the Republican conservative values. Vote for me!
Ron Paul: Everyone is spending too much, we need to get away from foreign dependence on goods and services and quit being an empire, interfering with people around the world. P eople need to deal with the consequences of their decisions. Oh, wait, I'm not done yet... (as he gets cut off)
Mitt Romney: You need to remember that we need to be fiscally responsible. We need to get rid of excess spending. When I was governor of Massachusetts, I got health care for everyone in my state. I saved the bankrupt Salt Lake Olympics. Oh, and Senator McCain's facts are wrong.
Alright, so we're now back to Brett's take. I think that they should keep a running tally of points and any candidate who refuses to answer a question directly, especially a yes or no question with a yes or no answer, should lose points. If you answer the question with a reasonable answer (again, a yes or no answer to a yes or not question or something similar) you should get points. The person with the most points at the end of the night wins. I'm tired of people ignoring the question and giving a rote speech that they selected from the 50 or so they've already prepared. Be frank, be honest. Unfortunately enough voters are uniformed and apathetic enough to not even care about the evasiveness or unwillingness to say the truth, even if it might be politically compromising. A mute button for the candidates' microphones would be nice too.
27 comments:
Yes, I agree with you Brett. I don't know why Ben keeps making me watch these. We could just TiVo one and Ben can watch it over and over again. I'm surprised to hear that Sabrina actually listens to debates. My take on it is that anyone who supports Ron Paul must know absolutely nothing about him. He does make the debates humorous though.
Leilani, I love Ron Paul in the debates. All the rest of them just say what the people want to hear, but aren't sincere, at least in my opinion, but I guess we all get different impressions.
I love him too. Especially the way he destroyed McCain last debate. I also agree he is sincere. Sincerity is nice, but this is a Presidential election and we have to make decisions like grown-ups. There are now [barring extraordinary circumstances] 4 people who could be the next President of the United States. Two are socialists. One is too old and has betrayed his party repeatedly and is wrong on many issues. The last one has a slightly off-constitutional view of the second amendment. You have to pick one of the 4 and even if you don't, you will pick one by default. In other words, one of these things is not like the others; one of these things just isn't the same. [Of course, even if you do everything right, you may still get one by default; this is similar to every case where the Lord has punished a city for its general wickedness. The correct course is of course to do whatever you can to defend the right even if that's going to happen and then the Lord will bless you in your afflictions.]
Brett, great analysis. The solution I'm afraid won't work.
Imagine the debate (scored by the same clown who ran the one tonight):
Yes or No round.
TC: Mr. Paul, are you a kook?
RP: No, and +2
TC: [interrupting] JM, were you in the Senate in the 80's.
JM: I was a member of the Reagan revolution. I knew Phil Gramm. +1
TC: MH, do you Believe in Christ.
MH: Yes, and MR worships Satan. +5
TC: MR, will you stop beating your wife if elected?
MR: What?
TC: I'm sorry, -2, question again, will you stop beating your wife if elected?
MR: That's ridiculous.
TC: And that's all the time we have for tonight. Our final score:
JM: 10
MH: 5
RP: 2
MR: -4
You have to remember it's not a level field.
My solution is one of two things.
Swords [a la Camelot, it'd be progress, and it would eliminate McCain]
or
Lincoln Douglas style with no moderators fewer people and no rules.
Yeah, I agree Sabrina, they do all say what they think the people want to hear. Some of what they say I don't want to hear but they seem to say it anyway. I'm glad someone loves Ron Paul because it seems the moderators don't. He should probably stick up for himself more though.
btw, congrats on Adie walking. She'll be running soon...watch out!
I love it, I actually like the debates, and yes I watch the state of the union/state addresses too. Half the reason the debates are so stupid is because the media can tailor them as they see fit. Since main stream media has chosen McCrazy as their candidate that is how the 'debates' will often be broadcast.
They could just go with the candidate that looks the least crazy, then Romney would be a shoe in.
Put my vote in for the Swords version.
You know your right. They do say the same things over and over. Now the question is..why do they have so many freakin' debates????? I think maybe 2 or 3 would be plenty!
You have nicely described the TV show "Around the Horn" on ESPN hosted by Tony Reali ("stat boy" from PTI). He has 4 people on TV screens in front of him and asks them questions. As they give answers he awards them points for their answers. If they start saying stupid stuff, they get muted for 10 seconds and lose a point. Another great feature is that as the show goes on, the person with the low point total gets booted off the show.
And that was an excellent description of what they all say.
[The following is definitely not an endorsement of McCain...]:
I tried the "he's too old" argument when I told my dad why I wouldn't be voting for McCain. He was sure to mention how wise and hard-working President Hinckley and all of the older apostles are/were. I had to agree that while old-age is often stigmatized, unless the person is verifiably crazy (which many would peg McCain as) then it is not a good reason to dscount that person.
On another note, McCain is only slightly older than Reagan was when he was elected...
Tysqui (do I know you?),
McCain is too old, Pres. Monson is not. Of course, Pres Monson is several years older than McCain. It's the particular 71 year old that makes the difference.
But then age is only one of so incredibly many reasons that McCain is a problem.
I'm curious: what does everyone hate about McCain? I don't know that much about him, and I'm undecided as of now.
I think this is so true. Except you can now add the phrase, "I have worked in the private sector for...blah blah blah years." to Mitt Romney's quotes.
Allison,
McCain comes from a fairly conservative western state and yet has been responsible for some of the most liberal bills to come through the Senate. Since he has basically betrayed conservatism so often, many conservatives don't trust him.
He's solid on national defense and doesn't draw much criticism there.
He also recently stated he doesn't know much about the economy and then denied it in a debate. In general he's been anything short of impressive which has a lot of conservatives saying they'd rather vote for Hillary/Obama.
There is of course much more, but that's a nice start.
So why would people vote for Hillary over McCain if he's too 'liberal'? She's way more liberal.
I tried to post this link before, doesn't seem to have gone through.
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/JohnHawkins/2008/02/01/why_youre_going_to_vote_for_john_mccain_in_november_and_like_it!
And I also found this one.
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/DavidLimbaugh/2008/02/01/mccain,_the_anti-conservative?page=2
Tysqui, In what sense doesn't McCain flip-flop? He's the worst flip-flopper on the Republican side.
But more fundamentally, your whole point misses the issue. The choice between Romney and McCain is more than what is your number one issue. McCain and Romney have the same position on National Security.
Allison, actually some people think McCain would result in a more liberal term of government than Hillary for reasons that are too detailed to go into here.
But the big push of conservatives is more, Clinton or McCain will cause serious damage to the country. If that happens while Clinton is President, we have another 1994 (which is still paying dividends). If it happens while McCain is president we have a massive shift to socialism.
This platform doesn't seem to like links...
try googling
why_youre_going_to_
vote_for_john_mccain_
in_november_and_like_it
but without the linebreaks. That seems to detail a small subset of the problems.
May I add that both McCain and Hillary have connections to numerous special interests, and really don't appear to have the American public in mind? They can talk all they want about helping the American people, but they will use the office of President to cater to those people who done them favors in the past. McCain is part of the Good Ole Boys club in Washington and that's what is really important to him. It is well-known that the Clintons are affiliated with a lot of very wealthy, influential people that also really don't have the US as their top priority. They want Hillary in office so she'll do their bidding, and she would.
Which just brings us back where we started, Ron Paul good or bad is irrelevant, and you have to take sides in the actual battle being fought.
Unless the actual battle being fought is between two egomaniacs. Liberty to choose is an amazing thing. That includes being able to choose a "un electable" fringe candidate that would be "electable" if fear and ridicule didn't come as a side effect of that choice!
As Benjamin Franklin said, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
I like listening to the democratic debates, mainly because I like hearing Barack Obama. I admit I'm not enthralled with Hillary Clinton, mainly because we've had the same 2 families in politics for too long! Time for a change. All the republicans want to continue Bush's bad legacies, and I'm ready for something different, which is why I'm voting for Obama.
Karen, you may the liberty to choose who you want, but you will still get stuck with one of 4 people as President and one well armed sheep (even with three cute kids running around, or more accurately, especially with three cute kids running around) isn't going to be able to make one bit of hindrance if you elect the wolves. Until we get IRV [probably never], the spoiler effect will remain very real and supporting Ron Paul may well result in Hillary Clinton becoming President.
Of course, having one candidate who is not an egomaniac but is ridiculously qualified should make the decision a lot more palatable anyway.
So are you saying that you should vote for a mediocre candidate just to prevent a worse candidate from being elected? Vote for a more popular candidate just because they have a greater chance of winning? I think McCain has the republican nomination in the bag at this point, but I'm certainly not going to vote for him (or Hillary for that matter). I think people should be honest with themselves and vote for the candidate they most relate with. I also don't endorse Ron Paul, but I think people who do should feel good about voting for him, even if he doesn't "have a chance". By the way, I think Mitt Romney is a bigger flip-flopper than McCain, but I still like the guy. McCain seems to change more for the sake of compromise, while Romney does for political gain. (Hey, Millars, I bet you've never had 20+ comments on a post before!)
Allison, yes, absolutely. Consider this scenario. Romney has 49,999,999 votes to be President. Ron Paul has 10 and Clinton has 50,000,000 but you and your best friend relate to Ron Paul and it all comes down to your vote. At that point you have only two choices, which is all you ever had, but because of how our elections work you can have the illusion that this isn't true.
Yes, but how do you know exactly how many votes each candidate has? And the winner is based on electoral votes, not necessarily overall votes. And that would only be if Romney & Clinton each won their party's nominations and if Paul ran as an independent.
Make that 12 for Ron Paul, and I hope Ron Paul decides to run as an Independent! (As for number of supporters, Ron Paul has way more of the vote,percentage wise, than alot of people realize. Well, actually the main Rep. candidates do, and that's why they trash him every chance they get.)
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