CNBC Republican Debate Thread - 90 Minutes of Not Mentioning Obama's Jobs Bill

Eat it You Nasty Pig.

Like, if he had just said "wait, did I say three? Sorry, I meant two," it blows over in two days and the only people interested are some particularly uncreative partisans. But just freezing up like that, yeesh.

Xenogear_0001

Eat it You Nasty Pig. wrote:

Perry's not a teenager memorizing a play, though, he's the governor of one of the largest american states.

It's also not as though he just flubbed on a fact or a citation or something. We're talking about defunding entire federal departments; the decision to do so (we assume) springs from some system of beliefs about how government ought to work. The issue isn't that Perry said three instead of two or that in the moment, he couldn't get his mouth to produce the words "department of energy" or whatever. The issue is that given the opportunity to extemporaneously explain what he was talking about, he couldn't do it.

Oh, I get that. I laid into him after the fact. But just for a moment, it reminded me of my own flub. So in that way, I can kind of sympathize. That sort of thing sucks. But yeah, him not being the front-runner is a good thing, make no mistake.

Henroid

Preacher wrote:

He did take pauls epa prompt and the realized what he said and then said its need to be rebuilt? (I wasn't aware it had been destroyed, let alone a republican wants it stronger? perhaps more packed with corporate cronies to let another gulf coast oil spill).

And getting rid of the DOE would be crippling on our country because they manage our nuclear energy tech and no other department could feasibly take that over. So you'd have to shut the reactors down.

His comment about the EPA was pandering to the right-wing idea that no facet of the government is working "like it should" (which is a phrase that means different things depending on your political positioning). If he had said "The EPA is fine!" opponents of his from his own party would've started picking at things that make it not fine, whether true or not, and he would've had a shitton to answer for.

Tofystedeth

Xenogear_0001 wrote:

You know, I actually sympathize with Perry a bit here. This goes back to my time in theater while still in High School.


Suffice it to say, two weeks isn't a lot of time to memorize an entire fucking movie script (we ended up just using the screenplay without really doing much to adapt it to stage besides adding blocking).

Wait, why didn't you just use the play?

Xenogear_0001

I'm not entirely sure. Maybe it was the play but not much was changed from the movie? It had a run time equal to the movie, and the dialogue was the same, that much I do know.

Crakes

Wasn't it Romney who said "EPA"? I thought the only thing Paul said was "Five....five...*makes bear claw at crowd*"

Magus`

Thought it was Paul.

Xenogear_0001

That's true, it was. He agreed with EPA then retracted said agreement after the moderator asked him if that's what he really meant.

Oops.

Xenogear_0001

D-d-d-d-double Post!!!

Kana

Preacher wrote:

He did take pauls epa prompt and the realized what he said and then said its need to be rebuilt? (I wasn't aware it had been destroyed, let alone a republican wants it stronger? perhaps more packed with corporate cronies to let another gulf coast oil spill).

And getting rid of the DOE would be crippling on our country because they manage our nuclear energy tech and no other department could feasibly take that over. So you'd have to shut the reactors down.

More to the point, that he says we need to shut down the department of energy, but then that some OTHER department can easily take all those duties over.

So he's not actually shutting anything down, he's just changing the official stationary.

This is the whole irony of the republican position. They hate big government, but love the things that big government does. So you get these debates where every candidate is promising to reduce government size, and everyone involved knows that's never going to actually happen (except for benefits to the poor, because they're mostly democrats).

Magus`

So their big issue is compartmentalizing?

Kana

Magus` wrote:

So their big issue is compartmentalizing?

Their big issue is they don't actually know wtf they want

EDIT: Well, they know they don't want to pay taxes, but the base refuses to understand that taxes pay for things they want. So the republican leadership invents all these mythical wastes of money, where the department of justice spends 45 billion dollars a year on muffins or something, and if it only wasn't for those damn Big Government Bureaucrats we'd all pay nothing for taxes AND get roads and hospitals. Which is what cutting the department of energy is all about. Some politician says "I'll get rid of the DoE!" and the base cheers, right up until someone intelligently asks, "So we're not going to be monitoring nuclear facilities anymore then?" and then it suddenly doesn't sound like such a good idea. So the politician, who knows perfectly well he's never actually going to get rid of the DoE in the first place just goes "Oh, well, we'll just have some OTHER department deal with that." Hooray!

And even if a geniunely insane person got elected, like Bachmann or Paul, they'd still never get rid of an entire department, if for no other reason than chairing committees on energy give power to members of their own party, and the congressional branch isn't gonna stand for their buddies losing a chair like that. Especially since they're the ones who actually pass the budget.

Cantido

We'll just power our cities with A Man's Fighting Spirit.