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View Full Version : A Preview Of Thursday's Debates-Monday's NH Program



Kathianne
08-04-2015, 09:38 AM
One guy's scorecard. Interesting grades, at least to me. My current bias is towards Walker, he doesn't fare too well in this scoring.

I know some think debates are a waste of time, I don't. It gives me a place to start on comparing what they say, to what they've done or tried to do.

http://pjmedia.com/diaryofamadvoter/2015/08/04/14-no-trump-grading-the-candidates/


14 No Trump—Grading the Candidatesby Roger L Simon

Something called the “Voters First Forum” was held Monday night at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, with 14, count ‘em, 14 Republican candidates doing a kinda, sorta rehearsal for Fox’s big debate on Thursday night. For that one, only the top 10 (by polling) are invited, the others being remanded to an early show that afternoon, an electoral Siberia watched primarily by baby sitters.


For this one, three were MIA — Mike Huckabee (“scheduling conflict”), Jim Gilmore (“declared too late”) and Donald Trump. His Trumpesty was apparently miffed the New Hampshire Union Leader, one of the sponsors of the event with newspapers from Iowa and South Carolina, had mocked his treatment of John McCain in an editorial, so he demurred. Or perhaps the frontrunner is already “doing a Hillary,” making himself inaccessible. Someone should warn him that hasn’t worked out so well for Our Lady of Chappaqua.


Whatever the case, the amazing thing is that The Donald was not even mentioned by any of the candidates and only referred to once, in a veiled way, by moderator/host Jack Heath. The Republican candidates’ forum may have been the only place Trump wasn’t discussed Monday night. If Donald himself was watching, half way through he would have turned it off. How boring.


But it wasn’t that boring, even if it was a CSPAN event par excellence (video available here (http://www.c-span.org/video/?327157-1/2016-republican-candidates-voters-first-forum&live)). I made it through the two hours with a minimum of multi-tasking. So here’s my review of how the candidates fared. CAVEAT: My views are biased and inconsistent, like almost everybody’s if they would admit it. Or as they say on the Internet, YMMV, especially if you drive a Tesla. Also worth noting is no one made a gaffe of any substance and there wasn’t much to choose ideologically between the candidates. They all wanted to secure the border, balance the budget and defeat ISIS. And they didn’t have much good to say about the Iran deal, which Ted Cruz deemed catastrophic. (I would agree.) All things considered, I would prefer any of them in a heartbeat to any Democratic candidate from Chappaqua to Chappaquiddick.


The candidates appeared in a random order by lot and that’s how I will discuss them. (Actually, they appeared twice.) Here goes, right after the page break.

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Perianne
08-04-2015, 10:06 AM
I watched much of it and tend to agree with the grading. Just listening to them on this platform caused me to dislike Bush and Rubio less, but not enough to vote for them. Neither Bush nor Rubio will make any moves towards solving the immigration problem.

Kathianne
08-06-2015, 07:16 AM
For anyone interested in some things to watch for in the debate tonight:

http://pjmedia.com/diaryofamadvoter/2015/08/06/debate-predictions/


Debate Predictions—Passing the Trump Testby Roger L Simon
AUGUST 6, 2015 - 2:55 AM

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Thursday’s opening Republican debates are fast upon us (5PM for the so-called undercard and 9PM for the overcard; both on Fox, obviously, and both times Eastern) and here are my promised predictions.

Well, they’re not really predictions, because these aren’t really debates. They have far too many people for that — ten on the overcard and seven on the undercard, which might make the latter more debate-like, but only slightly. Actually, these are more like serial press conferences. So what follows are what might be called pre-press conference observations.

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