The Republican debate on 9/7/11

I watched the Republican debate earlier this week.  For me it was the first time to see all the challengers together--with Perry and without Pawlenty.  Hosted by MSNBC and Politico at the Reagan Library, it was an interesting meld of ideologies for the venue.

I thought the moderators did a very poor job of fostering debate--they asked very pointed questions of specific candidates and then moved on to an entirely different topic for a different candidate.  That being said, overall I thought the questions were more or less fair, without too many below-the-belt hits.  A note--I have no problems with this type of forum, just not when it is masquerading as a debate.

On to the candidates themselves.  Overall, I was only mildly impressed.  I'd say a good 60% of the time, they actually answered the question that was asked.  While that's a pretty low percentage in the grand scheme of things, I've seen plenty of debates in the past where the answers given rarely had anything to do with what was asked of the people.  Unfortunately, the other 40% of the time they either skirted around the question or ignored it completely in order to give a campaign sound bite.  I missed about 15 minutes of the debate due to a pretty spectacular thunderstorm in the area screwing with my DirecTV reception, but I think all were guilty of that, with Bachmann and Huntsman being the most egregious with it that I saw.

I did get a kick out of how some of them would use 10 seconds of their alloted 30/60 seconds to answer the question, then go back and actually engage in debate with other candidates on previous questions.  In my opinion, THAT'S what the debates should be about--the mods ask a question and then the candidates debate it.

In terms of policy pitches and campaign platforms, I think there were some good ideas, some great ideas, and some ...not so great... ideas. 

Good ideas: Cain's idea of Social Security reform--going to the Chilean model of personal accounts.  However, there's a gap between now and that end goal, so I'd need to see more specifics of his plan, but I like the gist of it.  Overall, they all had a good idea of what to do with immigration reform and strengthening the border, but NONE of them dared to answer what to do about the millions of illegal immigrants who are currently in the country.  That ticked me off.  They all offered a fair number of platitudes on job creation, but not too many specifics.  I liked what Santorum had to say about welfare reform, about it being a transitional program, not a lifelong program.

Great ideas: Herman Cain's 9-9-9 taxation plan.  I like it a lot, although I'll need to see more specifics before throwing my support behind it.  That was the only "great" proposal I got out of the debate, although more great ideas might have been presented during the time my tv was out.  Ron Paul's idea about reverting a lot of stuff (such as FEMA) to the states was a good idea that several other candidates touched upon, but it was lacking specifics, so I'd count it as a good/great idea.

Not so great ideas: I'm sorry, but I really don't get Ron Paul's appeal.  He gets high marks in my book for his ideology, but on the political realism front, a fair number of his ideas mean he's trudging along at the bottom.  For example, his idea to completely deregulate the airplane/airline industry--I think that is lunacy and correctly falls under the interstate commerce clause.  Could it be done by private industry?  Probably, yes.  But what if each state says that airplanes that fly through their airspace need to meet different safety requirements?  That's where I think federal regulation has a role, and where I firmly disagree with Ron Paul.

Conclusions on each candidate:

• Rick Santorum - a few good ideas, but I don't see why he's still in the race, since his platform is quite small from what I've seen
• Newt Gingrich - same thing
• Michelle Bachmann - some good ideas, but some flat out looney ideas ($2 gas, anyone?)
• Mitt Romney - he's got some pretty good ideas, but he's got a pretty mixed record.  I give him props for the business background, though
• Rick Perry - he's got some pretty good ideas and has extensive executive experience running one of the largest economies in the US.  He's also the only one of the candidates with the guts to call Social Security a ponzi scheme (and rightly so, in my opinion)
• Ron Paul - he's got some good ideas, but others are rather looney, as I mentioned above
• Herman Cain - he's got some great proposals, but didn't offer too many specifics.  I give him props for the business background
• Jon Huntsman - a LOT of campaign sound bites and very little offered in the way of specific ideas (unless I missed his substantive stuff during the downtime)

So, if I had to pick a President/VP ticket from the eight candidates today, I'd pick Perry as the President and Romney or Cain as the VP.  However it ends up, I think we need at least one of the two to have extensive business experience.  Political experience is all fine and dandy, but business experience is just as, if not more, important these days.