Saturday night and Sunday morning, a brisk New Hampshire electorate received two very different back-to-back GOP debates, and for time’s sake, we’ll briefly review. While the latter seemed a bit odd, given the usual priority of the day, the media do what they do, in addition to the usual attempts to derail with minor issues compared to our overall state of dysfunction under the current regime. Case in point, Saturday’s ABC debate debacle…
Since Santorum received the boost (or possible win) from Iowa, the media minds saw an opportunity to jump on the pre-defining bandwagon and dodge substance for perception, giving us a distracted display, including questions of contraceptive bans, based on a misrepresented Santorum stance, of which he wasn’t given an opportunity to clarify, but instead directed towards Romney (typical media modus operandi)…
…followed by an, again typical, discussion of gay marriage, in which Gingrich effectively shut down after pointing out the media’s hypocrisy in supporting the liberal-defined notion of equality for these unorthodox practices in a country that now openly and disgracefully discriminates against Christians…
The topic on most people’s mind, the economy, didn’t come into play until the debate was nearly over. Santorum and Perry did actually give some impressive answers within the foreign policy portion of the debate (with Santorum schooling Huntsman on withdrawal from Afghanistan & identifying who we’re actually fighting, radical Islam, without all the PC sanitization, and Perry criticizing Obama for pulling troops out of Iraq to appease his leftist base & risking a takeover by the Iranian regime). However, aside from a few instances, the benefit of the night’s worth was significantly affected by the bigoted fiasco and distractions on the part of ABC.
When unemployment is cosmetically at 8.5%, with hundreds of thousands just giving up on the workforce entirely (so they’re no longer on the unemployment roles…check the U6 numbers of our nation’s shrunken workforce before popping the cork on Friday's sure-to-be-revised facade), honestly, the majority of Americans could give a damn about gay marriage and contraceptives. So let’s do what everyone else did Saturday night…moved on!
Sunday morning’s NBC/Facebook debate (still a puzzlement to this ‘Church-goer’) actually faired quite more lively with perhaps the most invigorating moment of the entire debate season early on: planting the seeds of doubt about a Romney nomination. No they didn’t? Yes, they did…well Santorum and Gengrich did (not the moderators, don’t be ridiculous). It started with Gengrich’s campaign casting doubt on Romney’s ‘electability’ (oh how the establishment loathed that one…how dare they question Mitt about that), then it snowballed from there…
Aaron Goldstein of the American Spectator described this exuberant interaction to the tea:
Finally!!! Rick Santorum puts it point blank to Romney. If your record in Massachusetts was so great why didn't you run for re-election? Why did you bail out? Santorum went to say that while Romney bailed, he was running on conservative principles and running in a state bluer than Massachusetts.
Frankly, Romney didn't have a good answer. He life is more than politics and that he didn't want to run time and again. When Santorum countered, "So you're not going to run for re-election if you're President?" Romney had an Anderson Cooper moment and turned to David Gregory for help.
Afterwards, Newt chided Romney for running for President while he was Massachusetts Governor as he spent more than 200 days out of the state during his tenure.
Romney also took heat over his Bain Capital record (please pardon the liberal-skewed L.A. Times reporting, but it was the quickest source to dig up). Whether any of these seeds will mature in time for South Carolina is another question that we’re sure to shortly find out, but this scrutiny of Romney’s record has been long awaited in this election cycle, too long. Inevitably, issues like gay rights (which must be a huge deal in New Hampshire or something) were reintroduced into this debate as well, and both Romney & Santorum handled them swift and effectively. Regardless, Sunday’s debate proved to be a much more beneficial and effective one than the prior night’s.
Two things to consider at this point among the 'top tier': both pundits and conservatives would be unwise to count out Santorum’s staying power, and if Mitt hopes to garner favor with conservative voters, he’s got to at the very least come clean on Romneycare, the major among his many flip flops.
