I'm voting for McCain.

...was awful. CNN chose questions that made Repbulicans look like a bunch of narrow-minded Yahoos. It is no surprise that prominent conservatives like Fred Barnes are irate about this debate. However CNN is an equal-oportunity offender. After the Las Vegas debate, liberals who did not support Hillary were also irate that her opponents were not allowed to complete the answers to their questions and that the post-debate commentators were all Hillary supporters. However, this was actually worse because it really made the Republicans look like they had not come to grips with the twenty-first century. CNN's choice of questions made me wonder if they had heard of the establishment clause to the constitution, if they were aware that a good number of Americans do not believe in Jesus, or anything for that matter, and by boxing the candidates in with these questions, CNN made these Republicans look inept. One last thing, Cooper's question to Guiliani and his non-follow up should be cause to send him back to journalism school to learn how to ask a question. Another terrible performance by America's best political team. I hope they'll quit before we have to endure another evening like this.

The forum of having 6-8 people on stage giving short responses to complex questions is just not very effective. I'd like to see 3-4 different credible people interview each candidate on a variety of important issues with the ability to ask follow up questions and push the button when they evade the question ... then take all that taped information and edit it into a truly effective way to see how the candidates respond to different issues. Then, allow the candidates to truly debate one another in 10-minute segments ... for instance, Rudy against Mitt on immigration for 10 minutes or Ron Paul against Rudy on the economy for 15 minutes. This would give us a much, much better view into how the candidates think and a deeper perspective into their vision. I've watched at least 5 debates and have no idea what the vision of any of the candidates is. I know what they're against, but have no idea what they're for. They do each seem to try and promote short phrase image-isms of themselves like "fighter against poverty" or "bring the country together" or "the anti-terrorism" candidate, but that just isn't enough. What about their positions on size of government, government spending, focus on domestic vs. foreign issues, role of American military, energy independence, pollution, corporate influence on politics, etc? We need a much better system to get their ideas onto the television without it being a shallow, sound bite driven exercise.

....whatta joke!

Huckabee playing God....Giuliani playing Tony Soprano, Romney just playing...toss in a few gays,McCain who is as right wing as the rest, and Thompson who seems to hate women....stir, and what do you have?

Just the same thing we have now....a godforsaken mess!

...except for the few boomers who seemed to love seeing themselves on tv....even if they did come across as dumb as hell.

Believe it or note, I intended no offense with "democrat", I am happy call them the Democratic debates - see? I just did it. I don't think any sort of point can be made with perjoratives. That's not my style. I'm just a product of the public school system, what can I say? I don't always capitalize my proper adjectives the way I should, no matter what political party I'm discussing.

No need to cuss at me, or for heaven's sake, bring in Mrs. Thompson's bustline.

JB states, "Germany may have won the war, but it is doubtful they would have ruled the continent." then asks, "Even fi the did end up ruling Europe, so what."

Is that a serious question? Are you unaware of the carnage the Nazis unleashed on millions of people? That would be ok with you?

Kotonchiic said

Even when a former PRESIDENT (Theodore Roosevelt) ran as a "Progressive" Third-Party Candidate in 1912---he was trounced and merely succeeded in denying William Howard Taft a second term (and a seat on the Supreme Court).

Actually Theodore Roosevelt did fairly well in that election. He finished second to Woodrow Wilson. If my numbers serve me well, poor Taft won only two states in that election. Roosevelt was really only held back from winning because Wilson had the Solid South behind him.

There's also of course Ross Perot, who was in fact leading the polls before he dropped out and seemed to go a little crazy

You could argue that these are just exceptions that prove the rule, two successful but losing campaigns in the last 140 years or so from a former president and an eccentric billionaire.

Still Ron Paul has a lot of enthusiastic support behind him this time around from a lot of different parts of the political landscape. Plus he has a lot of money coming in, and even people who disagree with him respect him.

I'm not saying I would vote for Ron Paul, but in an election between, say, Mitt Rommney and Hillary Clinton, I could see someone like Ron Paul pulling a lot of support from alienated voters, particularly independents and liberal Democrats(This would be a serious issue. Think the Democrats are going to be able to argue they're anti-war with Hillary at the lead? Don't bet on it.) I won't guarantee a win, but he'll have a fighting chance. And hey, maybe the social conservatives will do what they keep threatening, and form their own party too which will split up the Republicans. And hey, there are those rumours about Bloomberg too. We could have a five person race!

Good news for us Democrats, of course, would be that such a race would almost certainly end up in the Democratic House of Representatives (doubt anyone would win the electoral college outright). How could this possibly go wrong?

Ever have one of those out-of-body moments when you wonder where you are and what world you have just landed on?

That was the feeling I had last night watching the Republican YouTube debate.

In the first place, most of them looked like the undead. Maybe it was the lighting, or the makeup. Then again maybe it was them...

In the second place, most of them (with the exception of Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul) answered questions like you'd expect the undead to answer. Even McCain's lecture of Mitt Romney on torture seemed labored.

The audience contributed to my feeling of unreality. I've never thought of Republicans as having any emotion but anger in their repertoire and they certainly didn't let me down -- booing everybody on stage at least once when the answers didn't agree with their personal biases. On the other hand, maybe their boos were symptoms of short attention span.

By the way, where were the questions about the economy? Health care? Housing and credit problems? Global warming? No wonder I felt as if I'd been dropped onto a strange planet with alien beings.

Michael Sherer got it right in his minute-by-minute analysis. After last night's torture session, I can't wait until seven of these people are put out of their misery by voters. At least then voters will only have to deal with one of the undead.