Party Mix

WHAT if they held a debate and everybody came? So far this presidential primary season, we’ve been able to watch seven Democratic and seven Republican candidate debates. Not many people, even those who like me are paid to follow the campaigns, have watched all 14 of them. Democratic debates are reported to tend to attract mostly Democratic audiences, Republican debates mostly Republican audiences.

Voters who are in the middle, who do not yet feel committed to either party — and there appear to be more of them than there were in the 2004 cycle — are presumably less willing to watch. This year’s debates seem pitched to each party’s true believers, which reinforces the polarization of our politics and leaves out a lot of voters who, polls tell us, are disillusioned with both parties.

But what if there were a debate featuring all of the leading Democratic and Republican candidates? It’s happened before, once, on Dec. 1, 1987, when Tom Brokaw of NBC News moderated a debate among six...

Voters and commentators have been complaining with some justice that our politics has become increasingly polarized. Someone listening to Democratic and Republican debates may wonder whether the candidates of the two parties are living in the same country.

A two-party debate would at least force candidates of both parties to meet in the same room, listen to one another and speak knowing that weak arguments may be punctured by those on the other side and that voters beyond their parties’ bases would be watching. It would allow voters not committed to either of the two parties to hear a wider range of views, and it would expose voters committed to one party to the arguments of the opposition. Is anyone out there willing to step forward and sponsor such a debate?

Michael Barone’s idea is based on a false premise. Many people, including many Freepers, blindly see an R or D after a candidate’s name and assume that makes them different. The Freeper poll being conducted illustrates this point very well. They fail to recognize the Republican party, in an attempt to eagerly appease the masses, has been by extension also appeasing the socialists Democratic party. Republicans view this compromise as necessary to increase its base. The GOP maybe reaching its goal but at the expense of abandoning its core Conservative values in place of socialism. The irony is during the Republican's enthusiasm to compromise the socialists have never abandon their core socialist principles. The result is socialstic creep in the GOP.

It has been a very gradual and incremental process akin to the frog sitting in a pot of cool water not realizing the heat is gradually being turned up before it is too late. In the end the frog is cooked. So to have those members of the GOP have rationalized it is preferable to offer candidates who espouse at least some socialist ideals simply for the sake of defeating a party they perceive has different ideals despite actually having the same political ideologies. That they would even consider voting for the likes of Rudy Giuliani under any circumstance proves the they are essentially one party.

Michael Barone’s idea would only result in an overwhelming of the participants talking more socialism. It would be on big socialist love fest. That type of debate is the last thing this country needs. Socialism has infected the GOP as it has Free Republic. Unfortunately those have have succumbed to its effects are the one’s who fail to see the consequences.

If somebody has not hit 10% in the polls by November (one year out from the ‘08 election, but, sadly, only two months from the first primaries, they should be gone, as in American Idol or The Apprentice “gone”). With just two or three guys left, people might start paying attention. Those left out in this process could have a “consolation debate” on PBS (like those on NFL runner-up games that decided the third and fourth place teams). Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul could be declared the “co-winners” of the consolation debate. Maybe then their followers wouldn’t bolt to the Dobson Third Party, or the Libertarians, or wherever Paul’s maniacs would go.

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