Tag Archives: debate

Bring Back the Gephardt Rule

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Ted Cruz, the freshman Senator from Texas and Tea Party firebrand, is channeling his inner Don Quixote and promising to filibuster the clean debt limit that was just passed by Democrats in the House.

By taking this worthless step, Cruz is taking a huge problem for the Democrats and making it a problem for the Republicans.

The debt limit vote is universally unpopular and it always has been unpopular. The American people aren’t comfortable with extending the limit on the national credit card. Continue reading →

Shooting the Messenger

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I didn’t believe the polls in 2008.  I thought there was a secret group of voters who would come out to vote and propel John McCain to the White House over Barack Obama.

I believed the polls in 2010 because I thought that the American people were all on board to reject the President’s signature achievement, Obamacare.

I didn’t believe the polls in 2012. I thought the methodology was wrong. How could they oversample Democrats so much and how could independent voters skew so much towards Romney and have him still losing? Continue reading →

Great Debate Coming on Syria

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The Congressional debate on Syria, if not trumped by a United Nations resolution confiscating that country’s chemical weapons, and hopefully it will, could well be one of the greatest national debates in some time. It will certainly be instructive. The American people may learn a lot about how their government functions, or doesn’t.

Let’s just hope those who participate in the discourse, including the media, will keep in mind that the United States response to the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government on its own people is more about who we are as a people than how we respond as a nation.

Fortunately, the debate should transcend partisanship and electioneering. The issues don’t break along party lines and it is doubtful punishing Syria will tilt an election in 2014, even a primary, one way or the other. Continue reading →

Duck Sex and Essential Government (Part II)

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

When last we commiserated about the sex life of ducks, we questioned why taxpayers were being billed (billed—ducks—get it?) for million-dollar National Science Foundation (NSF) research into the corkscrew-like genital appendage on the female duck that deters the unwanted advances of the male.

The study, now in its eighth year, is just one of hundreds of taxpayer-funded projects that presumably hold the promise of scientific discovery and the eventual benefit to society worth the investment. And maybe that will turn out to be the case.

Though science projects are a budgetary breeding ground of questionable spending priorities and outright waste, there are others much worse.

Remember the Las Vegas retreat for General Service Administration employees? How about the Internal Revenue Service spending $49 million on conferences? Continue reading →

Security Leaks Are Not Us

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

A 29-year-old kid, and I can call him a kid because I’m a 66-year-old grandparent, decides he should strike a blow for liberty and release highly classified information to the media and maybe directly to our adversaries.

So we’re again having an emotionally, politically, and ideologically charged debate over government secrets, national security, the public’s right to know, and the peoples’ right to privacy. It’s a good debate to have and keep having until we resolve some of the serious questions these incidents raise. Unfortunately, it will peter out soon after the next crisis erupts in the headlines.

It would be helpful, though, to break down those questions and focus on the most relevant.

The first question can be dispensed with rather quickly. Is Edward Joseph Snowden a hero or a criminal? Here’s a hint: Socialist filmmaker Michael Moore, libertarian Senator Rand Paul (who is already exploiting the incident to raise money), technology terrorist Julian Assange, the Russians and the Chinese think he’s a hero. Most legal and intelligence experts we’ve heard from think he’s a criminal. Senator Diane Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee called him a traitor. Continue reading →

Debate Backwash

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The first debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney changed the direction of the campaign. In the two-plus weeks since that debate Obama’s lead in national polls and nearly every battleground state poll has shrunk or Romney has pulled ahead.

The second debate, which most observers believe Obama won on style points, has had no effect on the race whatsoever.

At least so far. Continue reading →

Presidential Debate, Channeling Al Gore

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Naomi Wolf must have called Barack Obama and given her two cents about how the President could seem more macho in debate number 2. He certainly was channeling his inner Al-Gore at the beginning of the “Thriller on Long Island,” when he moved aggressively into Mitt Romney’s personal space.

Romney followed suit, and at a few points, you thought that maybe something bad was going to happen. It never did, but this debate showed the personal animosity that the President has for his opponent.

Continue reading →

Obama Rebounds for Win

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Short answer: Obama rebounded strongly in this debate. Romney was prepared and did as well as he did in the first one, but Obama’s performance was so much better than last time, he gets the win.

Mitt Romney got the first question (from a college student asking about the availability of a job after he graduates). He walked over to “Jeremy” and spoke directly to him. Barack Obama also walked to the student and used the answer to attack Romney on wanting to “bankrupt Detroit.”

Candy Crowley busted the rules right off the bat by asking a follow-up question – what about short-term jobs – which both men used as an excuse to get on each other. Continue reading →

VP Debate Meaningless

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The Vice Presidential debates are usually meaningless. The one last night was more meaningless than most meaningless Vice Presidential debates.

The most famous debate put-down in history came when Lloyd Bentsen tore into Dan Quayle, who, let’s face it, was no Jack Kennedy. Quayle looked like a fool, but his playing partner still won the election.

The highest-rated Vice Presidential debate had can-I-call-you Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. Palin exceeded all expectations and won the debate on style points, but that had no measurable effect on the trajectory of John McCain’s ultimate defeat. Continue reading →

My Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

We were somewhat amused by President Obama and his political consultant David Axelrod ‘accusing’ Mitt Romney of ‘exploding the deficit’ with his ‘$5 trillion tax plan!’

Well, they should know, shouldn’t they? President Obama and his Administration have broken the world records for the accumulation of debt over the past 4 years. They are veritable experts at ‘exploding the deficit!’

President Obama and David Axelrod accusing Mitt Romney of ‘exploding the deficit’ is like Chicago mobster Al Capone ‘accusing’ squeaky-clean G-man Eliot Ness of illegally running bootlegged liquor during Prohibition. Continue reading →

Obama Performance: Excuses Keep Coming

BY WILLIAM I. GREENER  III

The first presidential debate Wednesday, Oct. 3  confounded the narrative of the mainstream media that Mitt Romney was a dead man walking and that President Obama was on his way to a significant victory. It rendered that view obsolete, at best.

Never mind that the most recent surveys already had indicated the race had tightened back to something pretty close to a dead heat. In the world where the media and the liberal chattering class reside, only a nitwit could pretend that Mitt Romney stood a chance to prevail. Continue reading →

The Big Debate: REE-Act

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The pundiferous universe was acting as if the laws of political physics had been repealed as it tried to make sense of Barack Obama’s abysmal performance in his debate with Mitt Romney Wednesday night.

Why didn’t Obama respond? Why didn’t Obama mention the 47 percent? Or Bain Capital. Or that dog-on-the-roof-of-the-car thing?

Why, at a minimum, didn’t Obama challenge Romney on the facts? Continue reading →

Presidential Debates and Other Matters

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted by Mullings.com

With most of official Washington on nitroglycerin tablets awaiting tonight’s D*E*B*A*T*E between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in Denver, there are other things going on.

To start with, those pesky polls are beginning to tighten up again. Remember just about 10 minutes ago how the worldwide cadre of official political pundits, reporters, hangers-on, and operatives said this race was over and Obama could just take a knee for the next five week? Continue reading →

Romney, Obama, Comparing Candidates

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from The Hill

You never really get a chance to size up two candidates for office until they stand shoulder to shoulder on the stage.

Mitt Romney is about an inch taller than Barack Obama. Usually, the taller candidate wins elections in American politics. They are a study in contrasts, Obama and Romney, but united in a singular purpose: They want to run the country.

Obama is aloof in person and warm onstage. Romney is warm in person and stiff onstage. Continue reading →

Judging Presidential Campaigns

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

No campaign for President is a straight line upward. Some campaigns are a flat line; some are a straight line down, but no Republican in a contested cycle has ever run the table.

Didn’t happen in 2012, either.

There is a theory in politics that the proper time to judge a campaign isn’t when everything is going well. The time to judge a campaign is how they recover from a stumble.

Ok. That’s not really a widely held theory, but I say it all the time and I think it’s true.

Last week Mitt Romney got skunked in South Carolina by Newt Gingrich. Over the course of five days and two debates Gingrich returned a punt, a fumble, and an interception, scored on a safety and pinned Obama deep in his own territory – everything an opposing candidate could have done within the football metaphors of Superbowl week. Continue reading →

Newt, News, & Palestine

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

Newt Gingrich apparently let loose with some puzzling pronouncements  about Palestine and Israel in a cable television interview recently and again in the Iowa debate. Before the debate, the Washington Post quoted him saying, “Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire…We have invented the Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs and are historically part of the Arab people…”

The Post reporters went to Ghaith al-Omari, executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine, for this response:  “Besides being factually and historically wrong, this statement is unwise,” and from former national security adviser Elliott Abrams: “There was no Jordan or Syria or Iraq, either, so perhaps he would say they are all invented people as well and also have no right to statehood.”

Gingrich’s remark threw the spotlight on one of the most profound, turbulent and impactful political, religious and human conditions of the 19th,  20th and 21st centuries. The hot and cold wars of the Arab-Israeli conflict have affected the lives of millions of people throughout the world, as dramatically and injuriously as some of the greatest events of our time.

The Gingrich story, then, served as a wonderful opportunity for the Post to both inform and educate its readers on the history and the complexities of the conflict. Continue reading →

Media Focus Flounders…10 Tips for Improvement

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The media made another contribution to the ‘dumbing down’ of American politics this week in their coverage of the Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas.

If you saw the debate, ask yourself a question. What piece of information conveyed during the debates will be most important to you in making a decision at the polls in 2012? The discussion of Herman Cain’s tax proposal? Foreign aid to Israel? Cutting defense spending? Securing our borders?

Not to Carl Cameron of Fox News or Brian Williams of NBC or Scott Pelley at CBS or the Washington Post or the Washington Times.

The most important piece of information in the debate for the media was the exchange between Gov. Rick Perry and former Gov. Mitt Romney about a meaningless lawn mowing incident four years ago. Apparently, back in 2007, Romney hired a lawn-mowing company that employed an illegal alien. Yep. Romney didn’t hire the worker and when a reporter exposed his employment, Romney ordered the company to fire him. When the company failed to, Romney fired the company. We weren’t told whether Romney had to mow his own lawn. Nothing in the exchange was new. The incident had been thoroughly vetted and reported years ago. Continue reading →

GOP Debate: Duds, Dirt, and Division

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

This debate was actually watchable. I’m not certain if it was because Anderson Cooper was such a good marshal, because the candidates have now done 274 debates, or both, but it was fun to watch.

As you saw, the first 30 minutes (or so) were all about Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan. As I Tweeted, if this were a straw poll, then Cain lost because the other six candidates didn’t think 9-9-9 was so swell.

The next 20 minutes was Romney and ObamaCare.

Rick Santorum, attempting to get noticed, kept interrupting Romney and drew boos from the audience. Continue reading →

Where’s the Outrage?

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

In one of the GOP Presidential debates the number of prisoners who had been put to death in Texas drew applause from the audience. In a subsequent debate, the issue of the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was being discussed and, during a short video of a Marine talking about being openly gay, two members of that audience booed.

None of the candidates on stage reacted to the boos which led to a week of projectile sweat outrage by Liberal commentators as to why no-one told the boo-ers to put a sock in it. Note, please that the moderator(s) didn’t ask the candidates about it after the fact.

During my tour de force performance on the Bill Maher show later that week, they showed the same clip with the two people booing and I said, “It was only two people. It wasn’t like the whole audience stood up and waved its collective fists at the screen” or, as Dr. Samuel Johnson was wont to say, “words to a like effect.” Continue reading →

Christie or Bust

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from mullings.com

This Gov. Chris Christie. Is he running?

Yes, he’s running. No he is not running. Former N.J. Gov. Tom Kean says he’s running. Christie’s brother says he’s not.

This very strange turn of events was driven by the results of a non-binding straw poll in Orlando, Florida last weekend. For those who were out searching for wherever that dead climate satellite crashed, Herman Cain won the straw poll; with Perry coming in second and Romney third.

Nevertheless, the Punditocracy immediately determined that the results proved the GOP was dissatisfied with the field and were looking for someone else to get into the race. Continue reading →