Here are my notes from the debate. I watched about 2/3 before we were suddenly summoned to appear at Clyde’s in Gallery Place to hang out with a friend in town from NYC.
- Good for McCain being the only one with the courage to say that he doesn’t hate Mexicans. I mean, that English shouldn’t be the national language
- The Republican crowd applauded about 300 times as much as the Democrats.
- Lightning struck not once but three times while Guliani was speaking, interrupting the feed on his mic. A sign of something.
- The wife is proud of Guliani for sticking by his guns even if it kills him in the polls – that he’s personally against abortion, but thinks states should decide.
- Huckabee actually got up on stage and said he believes that God created the world.
- Wolf is not being equal in his time allotments – McCain, Romney, and Guliani get as much time as they want, the others get cut off.
- The wife really likes Ron Paul.
- Romney thinks that oil companies should use profits to reinvest in infrastructure, as if he as President should be able to tell private companies what to do with profits. That’s pretty insane.
- No one thinks gays and lesbians should be able to serve openly in the military. It boggles the mind who people DON’T want to allow to die for our country.
- Tommy Thompson made a funny joke about not sending Bush to the UN.
- Duncan Hunter is a coward and won’t answer a question about pardoning Scooter Libby.
- No one would pardon Libby “without an appeal process”, which is actually less insane than what Guliani and Romney had to say on the subject. Guliani thinks Libby’s sentence was way too harsh. I forget what Romney said, but it was equally insane.
- Ron Paul wants out of Iraq now, which is the first thing he’s said that I disagree with.
- Tommy Thompson has some good things to say about working for wellness before you’re sick to take some pressure off the health care system. You know the old saying about “An ounce of prevention . . . ” – well, he’d like to implement that with our healthcare system. I don’t imagine it’s quite that simple, but a good idea.
- It’s really too bad Ron Paul is unelectable. I like almost all of what he had to say, and he’s not nearly as crazy as the fringe Democratic candidates are.
- Romney speaks really well. A debate between him and Obama would be really fun to watch. Romney deflected a rather obnoxious but relevant question about religion pretty well.