Posted on 01/24/2012 1:35:45 PM PST by Merciful_Friend
Last night's GOP debate in Tampa probably did not shift things dramatically. Neither "frontrunner" had a particularly great night, so I guess NBC and Brian Williams were the winners, for their assist in having the candidates make each other look bad. Rick Santorum had a reasonably strong night, but I don't know that it's going to fundamentally alter his candidacy's increasing sense of irrelevance.
Mitt Romney obviously took some of Mark Steyn's advice and displayed more "fire in the belly;" at least when it came to forcefully attacking Newt Gingrich on multiple fronts. However, attacking other candidates in these debates has never really rebounded well for the attacker, and I don't sense that it will help Romney all that much in this case. Gingrich was obviously a little thrown by the intensity of Mitt's punches, and had to visibly think about how to respond. He seemed to prefer responding to a policy issue like the Medicaid prescription drug benefit rather than the more personal accusations. Whatever chits Mitt Romney may have been collecting in his effort to get to the right of Gingrich, I think he probably cancelled them out with his line about how illegal immigrants would "self-deport" under his immigration plan. Even NBC couldn't prevent the audience from cackling at that.
Newt Gingrich's defense of his career in the House of Representatives and what was actually achieved under his leadership is pretty strong, and would probably have earned him very good applause last night if the audience hadn't had their hands chopped off by Brian Williams. I have to say, however, that it's getting pretty amusing when Newt goes through his litany about his political career, and the name of Ronald Reagan keeps popping up more frequently. Last night he noted that he "met Ronald Reagan" in 1974—this in advance of all the ways in which he "worked with him" later on. I'm ready to hear him say next time that he gave young Ron an assist in rescuing all those people from the ocean back in the day. "And finally, in 1988, I met with Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office and performed a Vulcan mind-meld with him. Ladies and gentleman, for all intents and purposes, I now am Ronald Reagan."
Yes, I think it's well past the time in this process to utterly surrender to being punch-drunk. When one of the moderators asked Romney or Santorum a question about NASA, I got worried: What's Gingrich going to say to this? But in the event his answer was quite mild, and I was even disappointed that he didn't bring up my own suggestion which I have submitted for his "21st Century Contract with America;" that is, wind farms on Jupiter. It's a no-brainer. All the technology exists already to do this. Nowhere is there better wind than on the fifth planet from the sun, Jupiter (take a look at that Red Spot), and only the most super-sensitive types will be able to hear the hum of the rotating rotors from that distance. There's enough energy there to power hundreds of Earths (and when Callista gets done terra-forming Venus and Mars we'll need the extra). The only challenge that I can see is transmitting the energy from the wind turbines back to Earth. While a very long power cable would certainly be an elegant solution, it may run into practical difficulties, particularly in the asteroid belt. So we just have to work on some other mode of power transmission; I'd suggest looking into microwaves and such.
It's eminently achievable. I mean, we won World War II in four years. How long can this take? And no more bowing to the Saudi kings. The Jovian Overlords, of-course, will be a different story.
And the next debate is in Jacksonville, Florida, on CNN, Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern.
I’ve stropped watching them. These near endless debates merely fill the ammunition dumps of Obama and his media guard dogs.
Okay, so now he comes across as a servoed computer with mechanical limbs.
He's still fake and speaks only platitudes because he is trying to come across as something he isn't......a conservative.
Cables are really expensive nowadays. Plus no sooner than you’d put them out and they’d be cut and in some scrap yard on their way to China. Totally impractical.
Three words on Newt last night:
Rope A Dope
(Thanks for the laughs)
As it turns out, the huge number of debates is the less affluent candidates’ equalizer. That is how Newt used it, and I’m in favor of more debates as the primary season progresses to Super Tuesday.
No reason a candidate should glide to a presidential nomination purely on the basis of wealth.
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