Wednesday night's debate held at the University of NH revealed nothing substantially new about the positions of the respective candidates. Certainly some did better than others, but this was largely due to the sophomoric and deviously Straussian behavior of those entrusted to neutrally moderate the debate.
The prime story of the night was the shamelessly brazen attempt by Fox News Channel to assassinate the candidacy of Ron Paul and, to a lesser degree, Mitt Romney. You may ask what these two candidates have in common. The answer is – not much; however, everyone by now knows that Ron Paul maintains a traditionally conservative foreign policy of non-intervention. Romney, on the other hand, refused to draw conclusions that no one could validly draw yet concerning the success of the surge and the Iraq war in general. Both were therefore placed on the firing line; only Ron Paul dodged the bullets and defeated Fox's childish antics with sophisticated reasoning. While we all knew Fox News had neo-conservative proclivities, one may not have known the ideologically zealous nature of such views. The latter is now conspicuously obvious.
The assassination began by ignoring Dr. Ron Paul for just about the first half hour of the debate (not counting of course the irrelevant question asked of all the candidates at the outset) while the candidates ordained by the liberal media as frontrunners recited rehearsed answers to questions they probably knew the content of before hand.
Then, when the not so fair and balanced folk over at Fox News did get around to asking Representative Paul a question or two, they either misrepresented a position (airline pilots carrying handguns, CIA, FBI etc. inquiry, marching orders question, interjection by Chris Wallace) that he holds while stating the premise of the question or they giggled and scoffed like third graders just before very serious issues were to be discussed.
On a less substantive level, the moderators commonly allowed the front-runners and most conspicuously, Rudy Giuliani, to answer questions long after the allotted time period expired, while strictly cutting off those they consider rabble when the buzzer sounded.
With regard to Mitt Romney, Fox news dipped to a new low by drafting a serviceman's parents to condemn a slip of the tongue that Romney already acknowledged as such and that he already apologized for at length. Fox just had no qualms stoning the repentant sinner, I suppose.
As for the other GOP candidates, it was much of the same. John McCain was calm and well spoken, but completely wrong. The success of the surge is rather irrelevant being as though it is the larger issue of policy and not the particular issues surrounding tactics and strategy that are of primary concern. We need to reverse the foreign policy blunder of the present administration, not exasperate it. And to suggest that there is no need to sign Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge, both Giuliani and McCain manifested an air of arrogance and aloofness that can only but engender disdain, especially when you are on record as having voted against tax cuts in the past. The rest of the lesser-known candidates really just fail to distinguish themselves from the anti-constitutional GOP status quo.
Fox News channel's behavior merits nothing but the most serious reproach and condemnation and should be considered a gross violation of the news media's purported ethical obligation to be neutral. Their agenda was crystal clear and sadly a very far cry from being conservative. From the station's loaded and lopsided questions to their rude and uncivilized behavior, we can quite easily determine that Fox News wants Rudy Giuliani (who is a traditional liberal in every sense of the word, save maybe his preference for supply side economics) in the White House. And I can only but figure that they want him there because, of all the candidates in the field, they think he is most likely to win and thereafter most likely to give them the war they so ardently desire against Iran, and perhaps, Syria. And then to rescue all the social conservatives who just jumped ship because a liberal got the nomination, they want a servile Mike Huckabee in tote as Vice President, who may want to bomb Iran more than Giuliani and even the neoconservatives themselves.
All in all Fox News disgraced themselves and revealed that they can't even get the mantle of conservatism off the ground as it has been dragging in the dirt ever since they infiltrated the Republican revolution. Constitutionalists are still without a major news media outlet, but not without an advocate. Congratulations to Rep. Ron Paul of Texas for answering the questions asked as honestly, civilly, and rationally as possible – notwithstanding the bullets of the establishment GOP's war machine.
