The 'Pub debate - Rudy v. God; McCain; Paul; Tancredo

Last night's Republican presidential primary debate wasquite interesting. While it lacked a stellar moment for my candidate of choice (Ron Paul), it had some moments of humor and was instructive on several candidates.

The humorous moment of the night was clearly when Rudy was talking about abortion. There was a thunderstorm going on that knocked out the sound several times. When Rudy was equivocating on the issue (I agree generally with Rudy on this one), a major lightning strike hit and the sound went out. All the other candidates backed away from Rudy, holding their hands up to shield themselves from him. Rudy then pointed upwards and made a comment about how his parochial school upbringing and the timing of the lightning strike made him somewhat nervous. The Hand of God indeed!

LEADERSHIP

John McCain showed real leadership last night. I don't like him at all because of his incumbancy protection law that he is so proud of (aka campaign finance; aka no-one can criticize a candidate as an election draws near). I will NOT vote for him under any circumstances because of this - even if it ends up being McCain v. Hillary. That said, he showed a strong defense of his immigration bill and showed that he has real leadership abilities for the war on terror.

ON AVOIDING ASKING THE QUESTION

Health care was a major topic in last night's debate. There was ONE doctor on the stage. When discussing morality, they immediately turned to the one minister on the stage. But for health care, for some reason the moderator ignored the only doctor present: Ron Paul. How in the heck could this happen? Oh wait, it would have showed all the other Demopublicans and Republicrats that have spoken on this over the last few days to be playing with a 51 card deck. Check that. They would have been shown to be playing with a 2 card deck - the 2 jokers. All the real cards would have been with Paul. But the MSM doesn't want the public to see a real health care alternative - eliminate the perverse incentives that drive up health care costs by having people pay for their own insurance. Currently, because of tax incentives (to have employers foot the cost of insurance which then foots the cost of the care), most Americans pay only about 5% of their health care costs out of pocket. So they want more and don't understand what the costs are! Give the same tax incentives to private individuals for buying insurance or for paying out-of-pocket without buying insurance. If people know what health care actually costs, they can make rational decisions about how to live and what medicine they actually need. But hearing that would harm the chances of getting long Canadian and European and Cuban type lines for the emergency room (ie, nationalized health care). The Demo plan (they are all the same) and the Romney plan are both anti freedom plans designed to further mask the true costs of health care so that people want more without seeing the real price, which is going to have to come out of taxpayer wallets.

THE ELIMINATION OF TANCREDO AS A SERIOUS CANDIDATE

Tancredo came out and said he wants to put a stop on illegal immigration. I applaud him. His stances against pork-barrel spending are also applaudable. But when the jack-ass says he wants to stop LEGAL immigration in addition to illegal immigration, he has now eliminated himself from serious contention for the presidency. At least I hope he has. It would be a very poor reflection on the US and our race relations if he were to actually get elected after taking a stance like that. Kill the damn 'spics! So much for "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddle masses yearning to be free...". The guy needs to take a trip to NYC and relearn what it means to be an American. Unless his parents are Navajo, that is.

Prior to that statement, Tancredo had done such a good job in the debate I was actually considering putting him on my approval list along side Rep. Ron Paul and Gov. Bill Richardson (d). Now - the guy went off his rocker on a nationally televised debate. To hell with him. The mic should have gone out on him the way it did on Rudy.