Probably the only thing I liked about last night’s GOP debate was the setting.  No one could have picked a beautiful and more significant location than the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.  Setting the four potential nominees in front of Air Force One from the Reagan era and having Nancy Regan in the front row was both powerful and reminiscent.

That being said, maybe the memories of the good ole days were too much for the public.  Will this hurt the GOP in the long run as people remember how good things were under Reagan and contrast it to the current GOP president.

My second big observation about this particular debate – and similar to observations I have had about other recent debates – is why invite people you don’t want to let have a chance to express themselves?  I realize that the GOP deserves to hear all those still in the hunt for the party’s nomination.  I am not sure that Anderson Cooper or CNN realizes this.  Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee had very little air time.  Paul even asked and, without permission or blessing of Cooper, started to answer a question on conservatism that all three other participants answered.  He was cut off with the guarantee that in a couple of minutes, no a couple of questions more and he would be given the chance.  This chance never came.  He should have kept going while he had the change, regardless of Cooper talking over him.

While I am by no means a Ron Paul supporter, I was drawn to his opening comments on a question that I will paraphrase as are we better or worse off now than eight years ago.  He took the question into our monetary system.  He quickly discussed that a country and economy that lets its monetary system become devalued allows itself to wipe out its own middle class.  Being an economist, I am sure he has studies of cultures other than ours to support this but look at the truth here.  Who is being squeezed by our current economic problems?  The middle class.  Who is having trouble paying their mortgages?  The middle class.  Who is taking the brunt of gas increases and thereby, paying double and triple for the increase in food and other necessity increases also?  The middle class.

I also want to know why – this is really rhetorical as I know why – no one dares admit that the mortgage crisis, the subprime problem should not be baled out.  What person with any intelligence – and this may be where the problem lies – who makes $100,000 a year truly believes a banker or mortgage broker when they say that person can afford a $1million dollar mortgage?  The federal government cannot bale out stupidity.  They can attempt to prosecute those in the mortgage industry who lied to people but the people themselves are not the government’s problem.

John McCain tried to address the subprime mortgage crisis.  He didn’t answer the actual question asked about it but danced around it.  He said the current plans were laudable.  My guess is someone briefed him on these plans as he has not been in Washington in weeks – fodder for a different blog on sitting politicians running for higher/different office.  He invoked names from the Reagan era – Kemp, Graham, Rudman – who were fiscal conservatives.  He, still in answering a question regarding the economy, said that the loss of the GOP congress in the 2006 elections was due to the economy and over spending being out of control, not over the Iraq war.  Maybe he doesn’t see the connection between the two.

There was a spat between Mitt Romney and McCain on Iraq and the surge.  McCain made it clear he had put his career on the line supporting a surge and complained that Romney wouldn’t comment on it in December of 2006.  To be honest, I don’t know why anyone would care what the outgoing governor of a state the size of Massachusetts thought about a federal policy like the military surge in Iraq.  I am not even sure why anyone asked Romney about it at that point in time.  He would not have had enough information to make a coherent statement on it.  As a governor – even one who was already contemplating an announcement of a run for his party’s presidential nomination, he would not have gotten briefings on matters of national security unless these matter directly affected his state.  I think McCain made a mistake making this an issue.  Evidently, Ron Paul thought so too as he wanted to know why the debate was fighting over these trivial details instead of actually discussing what foreign policy the potential presidents would have.

The end of the debate was blurry.  I was getting sick of the banter back and forth between McCain and Romney who both evidently thought they were on the dias alone.  All four did discuss pullout of troops from Iraq.  They did so in response to a quote from McCain regarding having troops there for a hundred years.  Of course, McCain said this was false and that it was all about casualties.  I didn’t understand this tact on his part.  Huckabee was upfront in saying we would live with victory and honor and he hoped it didn’t take 100 years.  He also realizes, though, that what happens here is going to effect an entire region – the Middle East.  This is a region that is volatile and needs to be handled with care.  Romney went off on there being four pieces of a puzzle called the world.  I also did not follow his tact on this.

I don’t know that anyone won the debate.  I think it did turn a lot of people off to politics.