An Ordinary Guy’s Look At The Republican Debates

I usually never get involved in commenting on things like presidential candidate debates, but after watching the Republican presidential debates last night, 16 September 2015 and reading the conclusions of the pundits I felt it might be appropriate to review some of what was said and give the opinion of an ordinary person who is not involved in either politics or reporting politics. The first thing I want to say is one has to admit that while Trump might not be qualified for president, or might be, he is a genius at advertising himself. He has managed to get onto the news just about every day since he began to run and he is doing this on the cheap. When he tweets on Twitter millions watch and then comment in blogs and the news media spreading his fame everywhere without his spending a cent.
For those who support Jeb Bush, I sort of fell sorry for them. Most people do not want another Bush in the White House. As a person without any loyalty to any of these candidates I can say Jeb Bush looks weak. His attempts at getting angry look staged and as an outsider I sort of feel his heart is not really in the race. To me it looks more like he doesn’t want to let his family down. The governors and former governors are scrambling to give us the image they are outsiders because they don’t want to be linked with the do nothing congress which is run by members of their own party. It is very hard to overcome this because the common person believes that it is time to shed professional politicians and what they don’t seem to realize is the people are sick of all politicians, whether they be on the federal or state level. A few years ago you never would have seen a situation like the one faced today where a Trump, Carson or even a Fiorina could have made it this far.

As I watched the debates as an outsider it struck me there didn’t seem to be a lot of differences between most of the candidates and I think this is the reason most of them have such low numbers. To the average person many of them were interchangeable. There were a few exceptions however and they were Rand Paul, Carson and Trump. Rand Paul’s beliefs seem to be at odds with many of the main stream candidates but this hasn’t helped him in the race. What I do like about him is he sticks to his guns and seems to be digging down deeper into the cause of some of the problems in Washington like the Federal Reserve and the division of power. I don’t think he has a chance being a senator and viewed as one of the old establishment who is second generation.

Carly Fiorina doesn’t have very good numbers either. She is not a politician, but a failed CEO. Why anyone thought she could make a good showing just because she is a woman makes me wonder. There are far more qualified women out there who should be up there. She has no way of making anyone think she can run the country and indeed she was not able to run corporations and when pressed about a couple of corporations she headed which had to fire her, she gave a lame excuse that someone had it in for her. Give me a break, is this what a legitimate candidate should say. I could just see people watching the debate and laughing at that statement. She is the golden girl of the party right now so I don’t expect to see what she said about someone having it in for her as an excuse for being fired repeated in the media very much. I think this was a turn off for the average person.

Dr. Ben Carson seems like a nice enough person, but he doesn’t seem very forceful. I thought he might try and change this image by being more forceful last night, but he wasn’t. Some of his ideas seem interesting, but does he really want to try and implement them if he is elected? I think people want to see someone with more conviction who is ready to defend his position with more fervor. On the other hand those who say he has no experience as an elected official make me laugh. What good has all that experience done us? We have a terrible congress and a disappointing president. The control is from two different parties so all are to blame.

Then there is the Donald. He shoots from the lip, seems to insult with impunity and doesn’t care about convention. If he is nothing else, he is a complete change from the politicians we are used to seeing and since he never held office he is viewed by many as chance to change things. Being a businessman he has assured the electorate he will bring in experts if he is elected and will take their advice and use it to solve many of our problems. He said he will get along with all the world leaders instead of butting heads with them and repair our relations with our allies. Many people like this, but some are afraid he is too hot headed to be president. He also has a habit of denying what he said in the past. When the race first started he was viewed as a joke and a blowhard, but now many are taking him very seriously and this is frightening the Republican Party.

The rest of the candidates are not memorable. I know if someone asked me the difference between the stated views of several different candidates from this pack I would be hard pressed to say what the differences were. Pataki seemed like a no show. Scott Walker tried to make his record look much better than it was. Chris Christie has too much baggage but at least he mentioned the middle class and how they were suffering. Marco Rubio is a party favorite and his big deal is immigration and it seems to me absorbing all the illegal immigrants. He also seems to be hawkish as do many of the other candidates. Even Fiorina rattled off a bunch of number pertaining to the strength of our forces. She said we had only about 250 ships, but I believe the number is about 430 or there abouts with more under construction.

The big problem to me was the fact it is almost impossible to differentiate many of the candidates from each other and only a few stand out. I think it is time to cull the herd down to a more reasonable amount of people and if it was me and I had any say, I would think the top five most popular candidates should be the ones on the stage. Having said this I think Rand Paul who is at the bottom of the heap keeps things interesting in the debates.