I thought we were done, but today there was another tedious debate (tedious transcript), there’s always another tedious debate – indeed, it seems that there’s a Democratic debate tomorrow, which I will happily watch and write about upon receipt of one million (1,000,000) dollars via the PayPal link. Even with the added crazy that only Alan Keyes can bring, it was not exciting, is what I’m saying.
The first question was about the national debt. Giuliani said that he’d solve the national debt by cutting taxes. Oh, he also wants to cut non-military spending 10%, which I guess is what you say if you don’t want to go through all the tedious effort of actually examining programs and figuring out what should be spent on them. Asked how people affected by those cuts should manage, he said they’d have to “figure out other ways to do it” and not rely on “the nanny government”. This is the guy who had cops walking his mistress’s dog.
Romney said the sacrifice he’s calling for from the American people is to “let the [government] programs that don’t work go. Don’t lobby for them forever.” Gosh, that doesn’t sound like very much sacrifice at all.
Asked who is paying more than their fair share of taxes, Alan Keyes said we need to get rid of incumbent politicians (Keyes wasn’t big on saying anything relevant to the actual questions). McCain said that poor people don’t pay any taxes except for the payroll tax, which will come as a surprise to poor people. Huckabee said we should have a “fair tax,” “and that means the rich people aren’t going to be made poor, but maybe the poor people could be made rich”. Whatever the hell that means. Romney said he doesn’t lie awake at night worrying about the taxes rich people are paying. Thompson said he’d like to be in Romney’s situation so he wouldn’t have to worry about taxes either. Romney said he’d like to be in Thompson’s situation. Thompson said Romney’s gettin’ to be a pretty good actor. This is what passes for wit in a presidential debate. Make that two million (2,000,000) for me to watch tomorrow’s debate. I don’t want to have to worry about taxes either.
Giuliani says we should have a flatter tax that you could file on one page. He then held up a piece of paper to show us what that would look like, in case we were unfamiliar with the concept.
Huckabee on regulation: “I can’t part the red sea, but I believe I can part the red tape.”
Asked whether the US should have economic trade with human rights abusers, McCain said hell yes, promising to “open every market in the world to Iowa’s agricultural products.” Of course he said it as a throwaway applause line, but, putting the question of human rights abuse to one side, don’t other countries have the right to set their own trade and economic policies, to not take Iowa’s agricultural products against their will?
Romney: “We call it global warming, not America warming. So let’s not put a burden on us alone and have the rest of the world skate by.” Oh I don’t think anyone will be doing much skating.
McCain said we can solve global warming with “capitalist and free enterprise motivation.” Which is like O.J. Simpson looking for the real killers.
We’ll never know what Fred Thompson thinks, because he refused to do a show of hands on whether he believes in global warming.
On education, Duncan Hunter thinks the problem is “bureaucratic credentialing” of teachers and that Jaime Escalante was hounded out of school by the
Keyes: “People talk about our prosperity, but you can’t really respect ‘em if you’re killing ‘em in the womb, it doesn’t make any sense.”
Giuliani says he has led an open, transparent life. Although what he seems to mean is that he keeps getting caught.
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