New Hampshire Republican Debates

B-Daddy here. Stupid me; I switched channels during the Steelers-Jaguars games and found the Republican debates. I spent the rest of the game channel flipping between the game and the debates. Both events got me increasingly agitated. The kids and Mrs. Daddy were yelling at me to get some ice cream and watch a movie, but I couldn't pull myself away from either train wreck. (We eventually watched Danger: Diabolik, an Italian 60's thriller based on a comic book series. Lot of fun.)

I dropped in on the Republicans talking about health care and was appalled. Finally Mitt Romney said something decent about the free market, but I thought they were all incoherent and statist, except Ron Paul, who was merely incoherent.

Some quick takes. Most of the candidates had sharp barbs for Romney, whether out of personal enmity or because they judge him the front runner, I can't tell. For his part Romney looked just too defensive. This will never get him the presidency, because he doesn't look like the guy with sunshine on his face. (That had to go to Giuliani tonight.) McCain attacked the big pharmaceuticals as if he were Edwards. (To his credit, Romney fired right back that the pharmaceutical companies were doing good work trying to save lives.) Huckabee was very smooth, but sounded like a liberal to me on health care and more bizarrely, could only explain how he was actually like Obama, when asked to highlight the differences between himself and Obama. Fred Thompson was principled, conservative and occasionally seemed unprepared. He flat out refused to get suckered into calling for a special profits tax on Exxon-Mobil, but did a bad job explaining why. Also, I want to tag him as Still-in-Bed Fred, for just being too slow with his responses and lacking a grasp of meaningful detail. I liked the way Rudy Giuliani handled himself, again, but he's got a lot of 'splainin to do over immigration. Ron Paul was very erudite on immigration and health care, but I think he lost the audience. I could not fault him on his economics. But he just couldn't help himself from coming off as a crank later when asked about the price of oil he launched into some "we went to Iraq" to get the oil diatribe that I know in my heart he doesn't really believe. I'm really starting to hate this guy.

Best quote of the night: Mitt Romney, quoting P.J. O'Rourke (and giving credit): "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it's free."

BTW, I have not read or listened to any other reactions to the debates, so if I sound like a country bumpkin, too bad, I haven't yet had my re-education from the spin doctors.