So we had another debate, this time Republican, and this time divided to four at the kiddie table and eight at the big one. It was the best GOP debate so far, closer to a debate than a shouting match, but still not a debate.
In the early tussle all the candidates had a lot to say about taxes and regulations, especially how they are going to get rid of all regulation so that small business can grow. This is prime bullshit. Christie says that if he wins he is going to cut all regulation on businesses for the first hundred and twenty days. Well my wife and I own three small businesses and regulation of big business is all that is keeping us alive. Small businesses greatest enemy is big business because big business doesn’t believe in fair competition only in screwing who they can to get ahead.
Then Christie is asked what he would do about China stealing our intellectual property and hacking into our businesses. He goes off on a rant about how Obama’s foreign policy has put us in China’s debt, proving that he has no knowledge of foreign or economic policy. We went into debt to China long before Obama even got to the Senate, a fact that everyone but Christie has known almost forever. It’s one thing to exaggerate like Carson but it’s another to outright lie.
Rick Santorum wants to do what no one else in the country does, get the Federal Government out of the infrastructure business. I hate to tell Rick but they already are. That’s why our infrastructure is so rotten. Our roads are impassible, our bridges are falling down and our grid is a half-century out of date. Santorum is an idiot. He should stick to saying his rosary and forget about running for an office he hasn’t the sense to fill.
Then they talked about taxes. Each one had an idea that had some good points and some bad points, all except Mike Huckabeee. He wants to eliminate all taxes except sales taxes, which is so regressive as to be only for fools. It seems that God-fearing Mike has a bad suggestion on almost every subject. Makes one wonder why he is still in the mix.
Then we got to the big kids table. The first question dealt with the minimum wage which Trump, Carson and Rubio all were against. When job creation was mentioned Jeb Bush was stupid enough to attack the job growth under Obama. Really? Is he really too dumb to understand that any job growth problems we had during the last seven years were a direct result of the staggering stupidity and incompetence displayed by his brother, in dealing with America’s economic situation during his administration. How about starting two wars and never paying for them? How about taking a surplus and turning it into a trillion dollar deficit? It’s one thing to love your brother, it’s quite another to have him turn you into a mindless zombie.
When talking about the Federal Reserve, Rand Paul says that the low interest rates hurt people in general because they don’t earn enough interest on their savings. This is true but it is more than balanced off by allowing for cheap borrowing which is the basis for almost all business and job growth. Low interest rates are good for job growth, which accounts for much more individual growth than savings interest. With no job you have no savings on which to worry about interest.
Then they got down to it. Trump started up with his nonsense about sending eleven million people out of the country. Both Kasich and Bush exposed his idiotic plan for what it is, demagoguery, and Trump responded to intelligent criticism they way he usually does, as a bully and a punk. If this campaign goes on long enough, the rest of the country will learn what New Yorkers already know, that Trump is a loud mouth, a bully and a small time chiseler, and they will grow to feel the way almost all New Yorkers do; to know him is to despise him.
But it was when Cruz chipped in with his opinion that we saw why he is considered the snake he is. His facts were all lies, his points made through those lies all invalid. He tried to claim that the immigrant class from Mexico and South America was driving down wages when they are actually doing jobs that no American wants to do. When they do actually drive down job prices it is more often than not because the American workers they are replacing had driven prices up way past a functional level, simply because they had been operating without competition or in collusion. American gardeners in North West Connecticut had been charging fifty to sixty dollars an hour to cut grass. They hollered blue murder when Hondurans came in and cut grass for thirty dollars an hour. Do you think someone is worth fifty or sixty bucks an hour just to just cut grass? Do you think they’re worth even thirty?
Then Carly Fiorina speaks on Obamacare and as is her habit almost everything she says is a lie. She accuses the plan of being corrupt without mentioning it was the lobbyist bribed Republicans that held Obama up to let the insurance and drug companies write parts of the law to their own benefit so that he could get the rest of the law passed.
It’s hard to believe but Bush did it again! He stated that six million people have been stuck in poverty since the beginning of the Obama administration. Six million. How did they get there if they weren’t there when Obama took office? They got there because his dumb brother put them there with his idiotic policies. They weren’t there when Clinton turned the country over to him.
Who were the winners and who were the losers? Well, it’s pretty clear that no one either crashed or triumphed but taking in both debates, Christie did very well and so did Cruz if you are naïve enough to believe what he said. Kasich made a lot of sense as he always does, but he is too complicated for audiences to follow which is a great drawback.
Both Trump and Carson showed that they have no concept of foreign policy nor do they really have any policy plans at all. Each has espoused some issue, Trump with immigration and Carson with tax policy and both are so far off base and so unrealistic as to look like fools. Trump was asked five times on Morning Joe how he was going to export eleven million people. His answer was, “we’ll just do it.” Is he really too dumb to understand that, that’s not an answer. No. He knows it’s not an answer. He just doesn’t have an answer. All he has is the big noise and a lot of empty promises.
Jindal came off like an obnoxious little creep as he always does and Christie was very nice to him by not pointing out how, despite his criticism of everyone else, he has run his state into the ground.
Bush looked calm and contained but he really doesn’t have any energy and Carly Fiorina was so hostile that she turned off many while getting great response from many others. When Marco Rubio finally got to speak, he was eloquent about the fact that everything is changing and that in order for our nation to be successful with these changes we have to completely change our technology and the way we educate to meet the challenges of that new technology. Unfortunately his policy ideas are so flawed and he’s such a neo con that he can’t be a serious contender. The rest just disappeared into the woodwork and really shouldn’t be considered further. It will be interesting to see who stays and who goes.