Last night I watched the Republican YouTube debate – strange lighting, clever songs and all. But even if someone forgets to have enough light to show their entire face, it is the question that was the important thing. Just don't hire some of these producers to make your next film.
I thought the youTube questions were extremely thoughtful, intelligent and pointed -- just the types of questions candidates need to answer – and probably wouldn't be asked in a "normal" debate format. Nothing like making candidates squirm onstage.
It does appear that Republicans and Democrats inhabit two different planets at the same time. One is obsessed with Iraq; the other with illegal immigrants.
Both seem to be incapable of figuring out a centrist approach instead of "withdraw immediately" or "all illegal's are bad" -- even the Mexican guy who saved an American kids life when his (American) mother died in an accident in a remote part of the desert and the alien chose to protect the kid and build a fire even if it got him deported (it did). Come on guys.
Last night I was convinced that illegal immigrants were the end of our existence when not a single person in that room had lost a job to one. I doubt any would sign up for a stint in a meatpacking plant or whatever nasty job these folks take and Americans avoid as if it were Typhoid.
We have farms that can't get laborers in to pick the lettuce we all like to eat. Tancredo said last night: "Tough, let them go out of business" to a farmers question about getting work visas to get their crops in. He said: "if they can't find an American to take those dirty jobs, then its too bad. "
No American is going to pick lettuce I can tell you that. Do you know anyone who wants that job? Or wants to lug 200 lb meat slabs and kill cows in a meatpacking plant? I haven't met a single Republican who has lost a job to an illegal immigrant.
On the other side of the spectrum we have over 500,000 high tech jobs that can't be filled by Americans – and no law to allow skilled people from elsewhere to take them. So our economy suffers on both ends. How does that help us? This doesn't even make sense.
The other thing I noticed is that no Presidential candidate seemed to have a global strategy – something I didn't detect among the Democrats either. Come on guys - jobs, immigration, etc --all these have international causes and effects. When Mexico's east coast was hit by high water like Katrina, thousands lost homes and jobs. Did we help? No. So guess what - they will come north looking for work because there is none there. If we helped them, it would cut the numbers of people looking north for their future survival --walls with machine guns or not. It's as simple as that.
It is smart to have a global strategy to deal with it, and foolish not to. (a wall is not a strategy; getting jobs in Mexico to keep people there is).
There was a lot of backbiting between the candidates – same on the Democrat side.
I'm ready for a positive, centrist candidate who doesn't pander to either fringe (left or right), who has a global strategy to return America to its premier position as a world leader and builder of peaceful relations among nations. That's the only thing that will truly give us national security.
Who is that person? No one so far has been that extraordinary…on either side.
Oh yes, I did pose a couple questions to the candidates. Here's a link t0 one that applies to both Democrats and Republicans...
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