Posted by
Steve on Friday, November 30, 2007 12:35:36 PM
The uproar over the planting of questions in the Republican You Tube debate this week has not died down. CNN is trying to get the egg off of their faces. They are having a difficult time as they were caught not doing their homework. Even a simple background check on the people posing the questions would have turned up the planting of questions. CNN did not do that. They only looked to see if the people donated money to a cause or not. That, obviously, was not enough.
The result of the planted questions is that the Republicans focused on what the Democrats wanted the Republicans to be talking about. That is things that would make them look stupid or ignorant. The candidates did not have the chance to debate over the policy towards radical Islam or Iran. They were talking about the Confederate flag or the Bible.
The Confederate flag question would have been better posed to the Democrats. Democrats were slave owners. Democrats were the segregationists that kept blacks down for almost 100 years. Democrats did not vote a majority of their caucus in support of the voting rights act of 1964. Democrats still focus on ways to keep blacks in second class jobs and in second class positions. Just look at where blacks are appointed to Democrat cabinets, lower ranked cabinet positions. In Republican cabinets, they are appointed to powerful and important positions. Yet, Republicans are perceived as the party of segregation. It boggles the mind what the Democrats are able to get away with.
There has to be a better way of selecting questions for debates. When questions are posed by “journalists” you get Democrat questions. When questions are posed by “ordinary” people, you get Democrat operatives disguised as real people asking Democrat questions. Maybe we should go back to the debate standard of the Lincoln/Douglas debates. They had one person talk for a time, then the other would respond and then the first person would have the final say. That worked great for them. It would eliminate the filtering of the Democrat Party in Republican debates. Of course, with a large number of candidates it would not work very well.
It is about time to start reducing the number of candidates at these debates, anyway. There are so many candidates that the ones with a realistic chance cannot get their message out. The candidates have to give time to someone who has no chance. The Republican debates should be cut down to five candidates: Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain and Mike Huckabee. The real race is between Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. The others may have a chance in a state or two, but not overall. Either Rudy or Mitt will win the nomination. If Huckabee wins Iowa, Rudy has an excellent chance of winning. If Mitt wins in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan and Nevada, Rudy’s chance of winning the nomination is very low.
Huckabee is running to be Rudy Giuliani’s running mate. He is sounding more and more like that all the time. The fact that Rudy Giuliani is not attacking him at all is a good indication that they have come to some sort of agreement on that arrangement.
John McCain is running to be Secretary of Defense. He has no shot at being President. He would make an excellent Secretary of Defense.
Fred Thompson’s campaign is on life support. He only has a realistic shot at winning anything is in the South Carolina primary. Everywhere else, he is sinking like a stone.
My bets are still with Mitt Romney. He may have fallen into second in Iowa, but Huckabee has not had any negative press. That has just started to happen. The first negative stories appeared this week. My guess is that Huckabee will sink down to second or third within a couple of weeks. His support is thin and new. Romney’s support is solid and growing.
Overall I think Romney will win it all. Giuliani has picked the wrong strategy. You cannot lose all the early states and expect to be the nominee. People like a winner. If Romney sweeps all the early states, he will win a majority if not all the Super Tuesday states. The knockout will come in the March primaries.