It appears that in preparation for tonight’s third Republican presidential debate, each candidate read from the Ronald Reagan play book: if you want to score points, attack the government. If you remember, Saint Reagan famously said, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem.”
Geez! Why would any of those ten Republican candidates want to be the head of our big bad government? To make it less effective? To shut it down? To kill it from the inside? To shrink it in size so it “can be drowned in a bathtub?”
This whole “government is bad” meme is getting old. But the political consultants must believe it’s a winner with Republican voters. Frankly, I would have more respect for any candidate who openly said he or she just wants to privatize all government functions except for providing a national defense.
Of course the American voter is upset with their government’s performance over the last eight years. Republicans have done everything within their power during Obama’s presidency to gum up the works of government; to make it dysfunctional, thereby proving big bad government is worthless.
Did any individual candidate stand out? I don’t think so but look for supporters of each candidate to claim their guy (or gal) smoked the field.
Tonight’s debate was a big moment for the presidential hopes of Jeb Bush; perhaps more so than anyone else on the debate stage. I do not believe he helped his cause one bit.
I do not know which candidate “won” the debate but I can tell you who was the loser: the American public. As Mike Huckabee observed at the end of the debate, “This is just a big game, and we’re the players.”
To View / Post Comments
Photo | Mark J. Terrill/AP
Leave a Reply