Posted on 05/03/2007 10:53:00 AM PDT by Sleeping Beauty
As much as Iraq or health care or any other issue, the question of how to deal with President George W. Bush is vexing the Republican presidential candidates.
Do they embrace him as a means of appealing to the conservative voters who tend to decide Republican primaries? Or do they break from him in an effort to show that they will lead the United States in a new direction? Do they applaud his policies or question his competence - or both?
Already, the leading candidates are showing clear divisions on that score.... Aides to the candidates, who spent Wednesday in Southern California preparing for a debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Thursday, said they expected Bush and his record to be present in spirit when they begin taking questions.
Advisers to both Giuliani and Romney said it was foolhardy to attack a president who remains so popular among Republican primary voters and that McCain, whose position with this group was already shaky, was making a mistake by in effect moving to a general election strategy before he had won a primary.
...It is hardly a coincidence that none of the Republican presidential candidates have appeared in any high-profile public settings with Bush in recent months. But - and here is the problem for all 10 Republican candidates expected to attend Thursday night - just 32 percent of overall respondents in the New York Times/CBS News poll said they approved of Bush's job performance.
It is his policies - the war in Iraq, the surge in federal spending, his proposals on immigration - as well as his failings, in such areas as Katrina, that are going to set the framework for the debate and the discussion ahead.
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
Many of the questions are going to be hardball Bush questions. Will the candidates defend Bush's policies?
Who will defend Bush the most?
Who will be the biggest defector?
Will the candidates try to appeal primarily to their Republican base -- or to all Americans?
Any surprise flip flops?
Which question/topic do you dread most?
Which candidate will be most adept at evading questions or changing the subject?
Who's going to come from behind to win national prominence?
Chris Matthews: Have you stopped beating your wife?
I just hope we see an actual debate instead of a bunch of speeches.
What time is the debate?
just the opposite, when Matthews starts bashing Bush some one needs to point out what a Dem hack he’s being. Gives whoever does it a leg up on the night IMHO.
5:00 PM Pacific Time
The Dems did little but parrot their memorized canned responses, and most of those were vague. None of them actually broke from the pack. Obama showed that his responses were relatively shallow. He needs more depth to show his something more than an empty-suit ala John Kerry with 19 years of do-nothing in the Senate.
Agreed. Attacking the MSM is always a plus towards the base.
mainepatsfan — the rules are pretty strict. I watched the Dem Debate a few days ago.
The candidates have a light they watch — that goes yellow, then red. I believe they have only one minute to answer questions. They have 30 seconds for a rebuttal.
The questions have been preselected by a large alliance of news reporters.
This year, the general public will also have their questions read. I believe about 30 public questions have been selected from the MSNBC website.
I would just like to see one of the candidates say something critical about one of the others.
I have a couple of predictions:
McCain will be critical of Bush.
The candidates won’t be as hawkish as expected on Iraq.
Ron Paul may have surprising answers.
If Mitt Romeny doesn’t falter, he will be the most charming.
Several will be confronted about flip-flopping.
Gun control questions will elicit surprising answers.
There will be NO softball questions — they will be hard.
There will be some Dem bashing, although the questions will try to eliminate that.
Immigration issues will elicit some liberal answers.
“Bush has tried very hard to find common ground with the Democrats, and it hasn’t bought him anything but grief. I’m less interested in finding common ground with a party that wants to surrender to terrorists, and is consistently wrong on every issue of importance. If I’m going to get pounded every day for the next decade anyway, I’d rather be pounded for being right, and I intend to stand firm on principle.”
All these candidates have been on Chris Matthews show and have had the opportunity to do so.
This time NONE of the questions are from Chris Matthews. Nor is Matthews going to "detate" with the candidates. He has only been hired to read the questions written by others to the candidates.
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