Watching the GOP debate last night was terribly discouraging. A huge chunk of valuable time that could have been used learning about specific policy ideas from the candidates was wasted in the spat between the two front-runners about McCain's misleading charge that Romney called for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.
Meantime, the other two candidates, Huckabee and Paul, sat and fumed about being mostly ignored. If CNN didn't intend to let them speak, they should not have invited them to participate. It was the most poorly moderated debate I've ever seen.
The saddest realization for me was that we will most likely have to choose between the Democrat Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton ticket and a McCain/?Huckabee? ticket. There is really no substantive difference between McCain and Clinton, other than McCain might be less corrupt than Hillary.
There is no candidate for me in this race. If Indiana was involved in Super Tuesday, I'd probably consider casting a protest vote for Huckabee. Not that it would matter.
How is it that Republicans are getting behind a candidate that is only Republican in the sense that he's hawkish on Iraq. In most other matters, McCain's mostly a Democrat. Not to mention part of the Washington establishment we're all so incensed about being out of touch. McCain's the poster child for out-of-touch senators.
The conventional wisdom is that the Democrat nominee, whether it's Clinton or Obama, will win in the fall because Democrats are energized and Republicans are demoralized. I'm thinking that's probably true.
The country's about to re-learn a painful lesson most people seem to have forgotten from the Jimmy Carter days. I'm actually hearing some who actually are suggesting that's the only way to wake up the population.
Disappointing.
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