FOX-Comcast Republican debate

4 hilarious guys discuss 4th Republican debate

I found Gabriel Malor's podcast with Ace, John and Drew worth a listen. They offer three different links to it.

Ace is often somewhat taciturn during these calls, on other podcasts disappears briefly, but this time, I'm telling you when Ace gets wound up he is the funniest guy ever. I can see Gabe evoking Clinton during the discussion at the beginning with the hope of prompting Ace's impression of Clinton that he knows to be straight up hilarious. He wants to hear it again. And it is hilarious. Top comedy. You don't hear a routine this funny onstage anywhere. Good Lord, if you can imagine getting a few drinks into this guy there's no telling what will come out. He is talking about Christie speaking a style of New Jersey nonsense that he's pulling each time, Mr. Every Guy "The public doesn't want to talk about substantive matters, they want to talk about ... meatloaf." Here Gabe sees a chance to provoke Ace into Bill Clinton imitation since Ace is on a roll, Ace is dissing liberals in general, he's ridiculing observable reliable liberal behavior, using Bill Clinton's crackled broken voice Ace says that Clinton sounds super intelligent to liberals, and it's irritating, by one simple formula of taking any standard policy problem and break it down into smaller policy problems without addressing anything specific policy-wise by merely identifying the sub-areas of policy. This has the conference call panel cracking up, in a good Bill Clinton imitation, "Now take education, that's a problem we can fix with five major steps. First you gotta improve the schools. Then you gotta improve the curriculum. Then you gotta improve the parent / student ..." The guys are laughing too hard for Ace to finish, he goes on to another example and in this manner the entire debate is discussed, the observations and remarks about Huckabee and Christie are comedy gold. It's all very good.

Recommended.

post-debate analysis

There is universal agreement among conservative pundits and observers that the CNBC hosted debates reflected poorly on CNBC and especially poorly on the moderators, that the questions and the whole setup is hopelessly biased. Observers didn't like anything about it. Campaigns complained to Reince Priebus as the debate was happening and Priebus was ready with his and their litany when the production ended. Observers are commenting even CNBC was so embarrassed by their mess that they cut short post debate production for a rerun of The Profit. Others noticed the three chief moderators have gone radio silent on Twitter except for the worst who lied twice regarding one of his questions. They hated it. All of them do. Ben Shapiro writing for Breitbart demonstrates the liberal bias in both question and manner of questioning. He provides a lengthy summary of questions they asked and his mostly negative analysis of all of them. It is a thorough summary. Ben Shapiro is nothing if not serious.

Everything I've seen on television today aligns with this view. Except Democrats and liberal media are dismissive to Republican complaints about media bias. Honestly, paying attention to them today review the debate is like listening to fish discussing how the dry weather is hard on their dry cleaning expressed through dry fish-wit over dry martinis.

Everything that I've read and heard today is at variance with my own perception.

These are all serious people. They want a serious discussion. They yearn to hear policy. They want to hear each candidate' s position on tax reform and on immigration. They want to hear specific plans of action regarding entitlement spending and the budget, national debt, Federal Reserve policy, foreign policy. They are very eager for the most boring debate on Earth: Republicans talking about policy.

Nobody else wants to hear that.

Except serious people. Conservative pundits. Nobody else cares to hear it. They cannot listen. Those were the most boring parts of last night's debate. Face it, this is the idiocracy they aspire to lead. This is the idiocy they must deal with. From my point of view the questioning was perfect. This is what liberals talk about. This is what they write about on their sites. This is real life to them. This is the crap that must be dealt with. It's all they care about. The moment Republicans get serious then unserious people tune out and that is everybody. Everybody tunes out when Republicans start talking about taxes and fiscal responsibility.

I am well satisfied the candidates can handle any silly nonsense thrown at them. The things that people actually talk about, and they talk about liberal concerns interfacing with their cartoon version of Republicans. Now the candidates are battle proven and capable of delicately addressing and steering off the nonsense that circulates and into the space that they want to discuss. We saw a lot of that already last night.

It is not just liberal nonsense either. I see the exact same things circulating among the most strident Right wing commenters and especially Libertarians. They pick these up too and test them on Twitter and in comments throughout, all over the place. It may be unclear who their choice candidate is but they retweet these exact same attacks, and they are attacks. Challenges. Chances to persuade.

Republicans will use what they're calling disaster to contrive a format more suitable for them. Carson is attempting to subvert the stifling and rigid process from Priebus. I am glad this debate happened as it did. I was well pleased to see all these liberal-warped issues addressed directly and powerfully. It is still the best debate I've seen for the reasons given. Republicans didn't like it, and they'll get what they want for the rest and they want much more boring debates. Only serious minded people can tolerate that so expect viewership to decrease, nobody likes boring old numbers, those debates will satisfy Republicans only. These are the people after all who accept government adjusted figures and run with them, these people will recite debunked government and party supplied numbers and statistics until your ears turn to stone. No, best to have them present their liberal challenges as they did. Now go on and show us how grown ups will do it. We'll see how many viewers tune in for that. When the numbers diminish considerably we can say, "Well, people are familiar with candidates by now," when in fact only serious minded people can care about policy-driven statistics. It's a shame, but it's true.

CNBC Republican debate

Best debate ever.

I still think it is the best debate I've ever seen. Excellent responses all around.

Chris Christie is doing surprisingly well. I don't like him but I must admit he is practiced and appealing.

CHRISTIE: I don't see a lot of weakness on this stage, quite frankly. Where I see the weakness is in those three people that are left on the Democratic stage. You know, I see a socialist, an isolationist and a pessimist. [trained pause as we visualize the trio and match them] And for the sake of me, I can't figure out which one is which.

Fiorina gave a very solid defense of her record at Hewelett Packared CNBC's Becky Quick who cited by name the individual Fiorina only mentioned she had a dispute and who fired her, and who later remarked he was mistaken and that Fiorina performed excellently shouldn't have been fired. Quick, having interviewed the president who fired Fiorina knows the man says a lot of strange things, thinking this her zinger for the night she listed a few. Fiorina said, "thus our disagreements."

Ted Cruz, instead of answering a question directly, quickly summarized the questions asked each candidate to that point, all common liberal attacks and nothing of substance, the same things discussed on right-wing sites as well, pointing out the obvious media bias contrasted with tongue bath of Democrat debate.

Candidates are demanding they're allowed to finish.

Rand Paul, somewhat disgusted.
John Kasich much more aggressive than before.

Uh oh, talking about marijuana now in Boulder. Kasich blowing it, switches subjects.

Each candidate gets so little time they feel they have to spill it all out at once. It doesn't work well for most who each get into blabber battle with moderator trying to corral them, more interested in time management than in having a coherent message completed. Carson handles this very well. CNBC's Carl Quintanilla asked Carson a bogus question regarding his board associations mentioning one place where he only gave paid speeches. Quintanilla defended his question, time's up, audience boo's Carson says, "They know" and the audience erupts, yes, everyone there is aware of bias so obvious that is simply cannot be disguised by the lines of questions asked by them and the audience erupted applauding.

The candidates are doing very well, I think. They're representing a vigorous party. They're all doing well at addressing liberal bias inherent in questioning, "Don't you think government must do _____ (anything reasonable). Fiorina delivers great conservative position statements, moderators with few exceptions as it goes on, appear impervious to responses, more move on to the next item and less follow up as when listening.

Even Jeb seems reasonable and somewhat attractive. I'm impressed.

They're getting applause for contrasting with Hillary and with Democrats and with establishment Washington. There is a great exchange of ideas, two very separate approaches for addressing entitlements from Huckabee and from Christie both defended by various candidates. It's showing a lot of vigor and a good deal of intelligence and grasp. These are my perceptions so far. The thing is still going. Please comment.