First Republican Debate

It's no secret that Ron Paul is my candidate, so I'm not going to post this under the guise of  being impartial. I liked Ron going into this, and I like him even more coming out. As for the rest of them, here's what I thought.


Tim "T-Paw" Pawlenty:

This dude reminded America no less than five times during the debate that he grew up in a meatpacking town. He is really trying his best to paint a good picture of his personal life. He wants to be the everyman, the stately next door neighbor. And while I am personally not buying it, it's an interesting strategy. To me, Tim Pawlenty is "President in a can". Every time he opened his mouth, the answers sounded, quite literally, canned. He brings nothing new to the table, just your usual conservative talking points. Here he is talking about how he used to be for cap and trade.






Rick Santorum:

This guy, to me, is the scariest presidential candidate. At one point during the debate, he said something to the effect of "I'm against foreign aid, unless it is used as extortion against nations to get them to do what we want." Although he is running as a "social conservative," what it comes down to is that he's an authoritarian. He openly said that he wants to go back to a Bush foreign policy. Why anyone would come out and say this, I'm not sure. Luckily, I'm rather certain that he isn't going to be the nominee. Perhaps the silliest thing he did all night was when he was asked about social issues. You can see it for yourself in the video below, but he basically talks about how we need to defend liberty by only defending exercises of liberty that Santorum agrees with.











 Gary Johnson:


Let me start out by saying that I like Gary, he's a good guy, and I agree with a lot of his views. I didn't think he had a very strong first debate, partially because Fox didn't ask him many serious questions. It was almost cute the way he would stop talking as soon as his time was expired, you could definitely tell that this was his first debate.  He did have a few shining moments though, and I'm sure he gained at least a few supporters due to the fact that no one even knew about him before tonight. In any case, I certainly prefer him to the two above. Here is Gary talking about drugs:




Herman Cain:

Herman, Herman, Herman, what can be said about this guy? His only credentials are that he is the former CEO of Godfathers Pizza. If you watched the debate (and if you haven't i hope that you do) you probably noticed that for almost every question, Herman found a way to incorporate counting out the solution. For example, the moderator would ask "Mr. Cain, how would you solve problem X" and Herman would reply "Well, there are three things, first," and when he said this he would point to his first finger and explain the first step. He would proceed to count out 3 to 4 steps for each solution. My friend, with whom I was talking on facebook, at one point said "This cat loves to count," and this was spot on. To me it was kind of funny so I encourage you guys to watch for this when you see the debate. As to the content of what Mr. Cain was saying, I found it to be mostly talking points with no real solutions. I think he did better than Pawlenty though, because at least Cain's talking points were original and not your average conservative ones. Cain was actually declared the winner by Fox News' infamous "focus group", but they've been wrong before and I found them to be wrong this time as well. Cain almost never offered a specific fix to the problems he was asked about, he merely said things that sounded good. Here is a clip from Cain in arguably his best moment from the debate.




Ron Paul:

This brings me to my man, Ron Paul. Yes, I think he won. And luckily, so does the only scientific poll to my knowledge that asked people who they thought won the debate. This can be viewed here. He really just seems on a different level than the other candidates intellectually. Ron's main weakness is his tendency to stammer. My theory is that he has an encyclopedia's amount of knowledge in his head, and he struggles finding the best way to let it all out in a timely and efficient manner. However, for the most part tonight, I thought he did a pretty good job of maintaining his composure and speaking clearly. I understand him even when he stammers though because I almost always know where he's going with a thought even if he doesn't complete it, so please let me know if you feel that he was unclear in any of his answers. I genuinely thought it shined through to the average viewer that Ron had clear philosophic principles to back up all of his stances on issues. Here is Ron when they asked him about legalizing drugs at the federal level:




Here is the debate in it's entirety, let me know what you think.

For Liberty,
Ryan Vest