ConservativeINC

9:00 - 9:30 EST:

McCain is the “Sheriff,” Rudy is great on the economy, Romney’s looking good, and Thompson eviscerated Huckabee to receive the first raucous round of applause. Rudy is talking about how the Republican party has a big tent in order to give him some cover for his liberal social viewpoints.

Rudy’s commercial is better than anything he said during the debate. It was about how he is going to propose a tax cut his first day in office.

Ron Paul is at the debate; I thought he wasn’t going to be allowed. He talked about how the country is heading towards economic doom because our interest rates are too low, we’re mortgaging our future with China as the banker, blah, blah, blah. The same things we’ve heard for a long time now.

9:35 - 9:40 EST:

Huckabee fumbles the Iran Navy incident while Thompson got a laugh out of it. Thompson: “If they [the Iranians] went one step further they would have been introduced to the power of America’s military might.” Good line. Rudy is talking a good line on Iran going more for the serious answer; talking about sanctions, making sure it doesn’t become a nuclear power, and talking up the economic difficulties inside Iran. McCain, if in the situation as Captain of one of our Navy’s ships, well, he said it’s not his place to second guess those captains.

Rudy made, and McCain concurred, that this situation was probably about Iran probing to find out how serious we are after the NIE that came out saying Iran isn’t close to getting nukes. Ron Paul said that he’s hearing a lot of overreacting regarding this incident. He doesn’t want to start WWIII over a couple of speedboats - does he remember the Cole? And then Brit Hume gets a laugh by calling out Paul over mischaracterizing the response the other candidates were calling for - they all said they put their faith in the decision-making powers of our ships Captains.

Romney gets a dig in on Paul by saying Paul has been reading Ahmadinejad’s press releases a little too closely.

9:40 - 9:50 EST:

McCain did a good job at taking credit for the surge. He is right about how Petraeus should have been Time’s Man of the Year. By the way, did you see any stories about the surge today? It is the surge’s one year anniversary.

Rudy did a fine job talking about the Middle East Peace Process. He also made the point that others supported the surge and McCain, like a stubborn child, stuck to his point that he was the only one.

Ron Paul talked his moronic talk about how the United States is the problem in the world. McCain made a joke about how we shouldn’t trade with al Qaeda because they only have one-way tickets (i.e. homicide bombers).

9:50 - 10:00 EST:

Thompson on Pakistan: first a couple of jokes about how polls suck and how since the NY Times isn’t reporting on Iraq it must be going well. He thinks that everyone is being premature in hoping for a different leader than Musharraf. “Who else are we going to get” is his basic rationale. And I think he’s right; we’re going to get someone worse if Musharraf left. We have to worry about their nukes and we have to lean on them to fight terror.

Romney brought up a very interesting name: Pakistani General Kiyani. Here’s a brief on him from a blog called IntelliBriefs and here’s a couple from Stratfor (ONE and TWO). Interesting stuff.

Ron Paul wants to treat Israel as “grown up.” He is naive. Israel is hardly a stepchild of the United States. Giuliani backs up Israel saying it is one of our most important allies and we need to protect our allies. Plus, we need to lean on Musharraf.

I guess while I was searching for the Pakistani General I missed something from Huckabee. Thompson said, in reference to Huckabee, our aide goes to training Pakistan’s military and not to the government in general.

10:00 - 10:20 EST

Romney is talking about change now. He says that people are fed up with Washington politics as usual. He will “take Washington apart… make it smaller.” *CLAPS*

McCain’s claim to being for change is - hold your breathe - the SURGE. Oh and spending practices and some other stuff. He had an Abramoff mention pointing out he doesn’t know the man. His last sentence contained the word change a half dozen times. Not nearly as bad as a speech I heard in an MBA class last semester when some guy said “like” over one hundred times, but still bad.

Huckabee is concerned not about his future but the children’s future. I thought he was about ready to cry (crying only works for girls - like Bill Clinton - HA!). He’s good with roads (ask Trucker Magazine, seriously). And he made highways accessible to every child in his state - seriously.

Thompson talked about his tenure as a Senator - about Welfare Reform and everything else. He also made his impassioned speech about personal freedom.

A Rudy joke bombed. He said that the change the Democrats were talking about was - wait - the change in your pockets. Side splitting. He also said “change” a lot; it is this campaign’s buzzword, if you didn’t already know that. Oh, and he has been an executive before, I think he was mayor or something.

Carl Cameron slams Huckabee over an ad he attached his name to about how a woman should act (subservient to her husband). Low blow by Campaign Carl. Huckabee got a couple laughs out of it. He’s a Baptist and he believes that wives should submit themselves to their husbands as should husbands submit themselves to their wives. Home run for Huckabee.

Ron Paul says he’s the only Constitutionalist and Republicans should love him. Talk about how we shouldn’t be in NATO and how we borrowed ten billion from China to give to a military dictatorship in Pakistan that overthrew a democratically elected government in order to bring democracy to Iraq. If you accept his argument there is no room to argue. But, if you have a brain, you will not accept his arguments.

Commercial break - cholesterol drugs and other goodies.

10:20 - 10:30 EST

IMMIGRATION!!!! Finally.

McCain up first. Blamed his failed immigration plan on the people’s mistrust of the federal government. Then he talked about how we should be compassionate because an illegal immigrant who is married to a serviceman is being deported and that is wrong. Yeah, it is wrong, but it is also the exception. One clapper.

Mitt says illegals should get in the back of the line if you want to live in this country. Claps.

“We need to be a nation of high gates and wide gates,” says Thompson. We also need to crack down on employers and end sanctuary cities. We would end those sanctuary cities by cutting off federal funding to those cities. Disagrees with in-state tuition for illegals. Claps.

Paul was asked whether going after illegal immigration is important enough to write off the Hispanic vote. Paul answered this question well talking about how if you subsidize something it is going to increase. Basically, if you make it financially beneficial to break the law people will break the law. And we shouldn’t automatically assume that if we support protecting the boarders the Hispanics will leave the party. Applause.

Huckabee says we should assume people are legal and not illegal. No sound.

Giuliani says it would be “absurd” to ask people about their immigration status if they are reporting a crime. He probably has a good point here; haven’t thought about it much. Illegal kids were put in schools to keep them off the streets. I think he makes a good point by saying we should focus on those illegals who continue to break the law once they broke into our country. And he kept on talking and talking. Britt cut him off and that was it.

DEBATE OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!

After Party

WINNER: Fox News had a room filled with about thirty South Carolina voters. When asked how many supported Thompson before the debate only three raised their hands. When asked who they thought won the debate nearly everyone voiced support for Thompson.

LOSER: Ron Paul. BigT

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