I didn’t watch the GOP debate tonight, but I understand that once again the audience stole the show. This time they booed a gay soldier who appeared on camera to ask the candidates about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The debates might help Republicans choose their candidate, but the boorish audiences are probably costing them potential votes from independents.
Since the debates are a carnival side show, complete with shills in the audience to revive flagging interest and stimulate pointless excitement, I didn’t watch either.
I didn’t watch either – was going to but couldn’t find any indication of channel or time on my Dish Network channel guide, and the evening news, ABC and NBC both, didn’t mention it either – probably because Fox is their competition (as I realized later).
Seems to me our political institutions are in an economic death spiral. We are two nations, the unemployed on the dole and the hunkered-down employed, both disgusted with Capital Hill gridlock.
The Republicans have nothing to offer but cutting already low taxes and vague “regulations” while refusing to tax billionaires. The Dems want to jumpstart the economy with another TARP, but haven’t the courage nor the political capital to do it big enough to be effective. And neither party has had the courage to even recognize the elephant in the room – the desperate need for entitlement reform, and especially healthcare.
My prediction is that either Romney or Perry will be elected out of pure desperation by a public thinking, “Obama (who was doomed from the start by his legacy of Bush’s downward momentum) has been unsuccessful, so any change at all has to be better.” That is if the GOP is smart enough to avoid talking specifics, because they don’t have any.