THE “MCCAIN-ROMNEY” DEBATE – Alias CNN Republican debates

I watched this with interest in full last night. It should have been called The MCain-Romney Debate.

Throughout the debate little time was given to Huckabee and Paul to answer questions. Ron Paul was cut off short more than once by Anderson Cooper, and towards the end of the debate Huckabee even became vocal about the appallingly unequal opportunity for him and Paul to contribute. 

OK, so McCain and Romney are in the lead in the polls out of all the Republican candidates, but why bother to even have Hucakabee and Paul up there if CNN didn’t really want them to talk?

What was also interesting was that Paul, when he did talk, seemed to be the only one willing to be honest about and want to tackle head on the core issues which Americans need to be addressing for their future. This is what he said in response to the question if he agrees that the US may need to keep troops in Iraq for the next 100 years maybe 

“I don’t even think they should have gone, so keeping them for 100 years, where’s the money going to come from? (APPLAUSE)

You know, the country is in bankruptcy. And when I listen to this argument, I mean, I find it rather silly, because they’re arguing technicalities of a policy they both agree with.

They agreed with going in; they agreed for staying, agreed for staying how many years? And these are technicalities. We should be debating foreign policy, whether we should have interventionism or non-interventionism, whether we should be defending this country or whether we should be the policemen of the world, whether we should be running our empire or not, and how are going to have guns and butter?…And we have these silly arguments going on about who said what when. I think it’s time to debate foreign policy and why we don’t follow the Constitution and only go to war with a declaration of war. “

(Transcript from  http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0801/30/se.01.html )

I’m not American citizen and so I won’t be voting in any elections, but I watch with interest to see who the American people will choose for their Republican candidate. I suspect McCain will come out on top – he seems to be the kind of guy Americans like to choose for their President, and boy did he lay it on thick about why he is ‘right’ to lead the country, based on his background. Will he be a Bush mark II I wonder…?