The Elephants on Stage: Observations About the Republican Presidential Primary Thus Far
The Republican side of presidential campaigning was kicked in to high gear last Wednesday, after the GOP candidates had their big FOX News debate and a certain tall bald guy finally entered the race. I haven't sided with any candidate yet, but I am certainly enjoying the show thus far.
The FOX News debate wasn't the best debate I've ever seen, but it certainly was the best so far this season (if you don't count Newt Gingrich's revival of the "Lincoln/Douglas Debates"). It did prove to be the most successful in terms of ratings, smashing any of the Democratic debates held thus far--including that silly YouTube one. The Drudge Report stated that the debate received 3.1 million viewers Wednesday night. Democrats were offered to have their first debate on FOX News a while back, and they declined; too bad they couldn't look past their preconceptions about the network, they just might have had some viewers.
The current debating process still seems ridiculous to me. I can't understand the need to have all 8 candidates debating at one time. It's time to perform some survival of the fittest, and cap off the debates to the top four or five candidates with actual support. Folks like Tancredo and Brownback have been out of this thing for a while now; they're only prolonging the inevitable.
Yet with all these guys posturing on stage, the same ones continue to stand out: Rudy Giuliani as a leader with a strong track record, John McCain as the gruff statesmen, Mitt Romney as the Million Dollar Man, Mike Huckabee as the big-eyed Southern minister, and Ron Paul as the crazy guy.
After the debate last night, FOX News had a text-messaging voting system for viewers to choose the winner of the debate. Ron Paul won 2 to 1. He also received a ton of face time during the debate, and got some of the largest applauses. Sure, he's technically the most conservative person running (moreso than Barry Goldwater was), but he's also an unkempt, undignified, unreliable loon. It's my theory that people are only supporting him ironically; the same reason people wear Chuck Norris shirts or listen to glam rock. It's funny to support the guy, and besides, he adds some color to an otherwise serious and bland debate. Dennis Miller agreed with me.
Making things even more interesting is the fact that Fred Thompson skipped the debate to announce his candidacy on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Leading up to the event, the pundits were largely in agreement that this was a bad decision... but after seeing what the man was doing, people were praising him for the "shrewd" decision. I frankly thought it was pretty clever. Not only did he reach more people, he didn't have to parade on stage and put up with scrunching his debate answers into a 30 second sound clip.
Sadly, thus far there is one man missing from this presidential race: Newt Gingrich. I openly admit that if he were running, there would be no discussion as to who I was supporting. He's extremely well-spoken and intelligent, and he has some fantastically practical ideas for drastically changing the federal government. Although he isn't currently running, his ideas (which he is sharing openly with any candidate on either side... because he's that much of a badass) are starting to show up a couple of places.
At the debate, Huckabee, while talking about the issue of illegal immigration, brought up the simple statement that if Fed-Ex can track a package all over the world, we should be able to track illegal immigrants. Of course, he got slammed for this by Human Events today... but no one is pointing out that he ripped off that idea from an essay Newt wrote months ago (An Invitation to the World that Works). The big difference is that Newt was merely passing it along as a funny joke, one that the Huckster just botched. The joke ends with Newt saying "so clearly, we have to mail a package to all of the illegal immigrants, and then we'll know where they are."
Newt's other instance of influence came during Fred's appearance on the Tonight Show. Fred was talking about how he hates the current format of the big-panel debates on FOX and CNN. He said that he preferred a Lincon/Douglas debate style that Gingrich was proposing. Newt actually participated in a debate of just the sort with John Kerry, and it was extremely successful. It was also reported that Newt Gingrich advised Fred about launching his campaign with a video on his website.
This race for the presidency began far too early, of that I am certain. Thankfully, I'm just now starting to get interested and pay attention to things--instead of being burned out by following it from the beginning. I'm looking forward to the coming months, as the primaries begin to really kick in to gear. Let's hope that Ron Paul sticks around just long enough to keep me interested in the meantime.
Posted by MikeRubino at September 10, 2007 10:52 AM | TrackBack