Presidential Debates

      I have watched both the Republican and Democratic Presidential debates.  CNN was a little hard on the Republican candidates.  CNN openly said they would concentrate on the candidate’s vulnerabilities and try to pit them against each other.  I was not happy with this agenda, but understood that CNN was going for maximum ratings.  

When CNN hosted the Democratic Presidential debates, they stated they did not want to pit the candidates against each other because these were serious candidates that wanted to discuss the issues.  Was CNN saying the Republican candidates were not serious candidates? 

Let’s take a look at the candidates.  The Republican candidates included seven governors, five senators, two medical doctors, two CEOs, one woman, two Cuban Americans, one Asian American, and one African American.  Most were well known to the politically informed.  The Democratic candidates included one woman, one socialist, and three old white men that most people had even heard of.  This is interesting, considering the Democratic Party tries to present themselves as the party of diversity.  Talk is cheap.

  As with most politicians, the Democratic candidates tried to shout out about all of their accomplishments, both real and imagined.  The exception was Jim Webb, who is actually a war hero and never made a big point of it. 

Because of the self-proclaimed socialist on the stage, all the candidates leaned toward socialism except for Webb.  He obviously was the big loser.  They all promised everything imaginable for free, but never mentioned how to pay for it. 

If the Democratic candidates were serious about the issues, why did the issue of Islamic terrorists never even come up?  The topics included the mythical global warming, but never addressed the serious issues facing this country like, out of control government spending and debt.  I would like to hear a real debate and not a scripted one, but most politicians will say and promise whatever their advisors tell them to say with no intentions of keeping their promises.

For me, one of the scariest things about the Democratic debate was when Anderson Cooper asked the candidates to name their worst enemies.  Hillary Clinton said Republicans were her worst enemy, and also said she was proud of it.  This is at a time when we need a President that will unite and lead this great country.  Clinton’s elitist partisan attitude is the last thing we need at this time.