I’m watching the New Hampshire Republican Debate right now. I was going to resist watching it, but I thought it might be interesting to see how they all stack up against each other.
Boy, nothing could have been further from the truth. One thing the Democrats have going for them this Presidential election cycle is that they’re at least a diverse group of candidates. A woman! A black dude! A hot young southerner! Just looking at the competitors, the Democrats look like the real party of change, and the GOP is looking just as Grand and Old as ever. Just what I wanted to do early on a Saturday night, a bunch of old, pasty and deflated White dudes.
So far, everything is going as planned– no real departures from the usual political pandering. The real star of the show as far as I’m concerned is ABC moderator Charles Gibson. At one point near the middle, he called out all of the candidates one-by-one and brought them to task for wavering their platforms according to poll results. So that was pretty interesting– if only I were there to yell, “Treated!” I swear, I would have. And at another point, when talking about healthcare, Gibson said something to the effect of, “If we can spend billions of dollars on Iraq, why are we still the only industrialized nation to not provide its citizens with health coverage?” And basically, he just accused John McCain of only mentioning South Carolina because of the upcoming primary. I thought that was pretty damn slick of him, injecting his politics into the debate, but aren’t you not supposed to do that when you’re moderating? Or if you’re a journalist? I guess I don’t know for sure, but you’d think something would hold him back.
