September
13th 2011
Vote in this Post-Debate Poll
RedPhillips

Posted under Election 2012 & Polls & Republican Party

Vote here.

And discuss the debate below if you wish.

delicious | digg | reddit | facebook | technorati | stumbleupon | chatintamil

16 Comments »

16 Responses to “Vote in this Post-Debate Poll”

  1. Brock Townsend on 13 Sep 2011 at 3:29 am #

    B.S.
    ======

    Mitt Romney

    63%
    Rick Perry

    13%
    Ron Paul

    9%
    Jon Huntsman

    7%
    Rick Santorum

    3%
    Michele Bachmann

    2%
    Herman Cain

    1%
    Newt Gingrich

    1%

    Total Votes: 383

  2. Woden on 13 Sep 2011 at 10:09 am #

    It was very satisfying to see Perry roasted by the other candidates and booed by the audience for his support of benefits for illegal aliens and opposition to a border fence.

  3. Alice Lillie on 13 Sep 2011 at 2:17 pm #

    Ron Paul has all the right ideas. Wish the neo-cons would just listen instead of booing when he spoke words of wisdom about the *true fact* that 9-11 was caused by our meddlesome presence in so many countries. It makes sense because it’s true. If they’d *think* a little bit…

    I would like to see him in the White House along with that bushel of common sense. Too bad common sense is not that common.

  4. Jean LeTennier on 13 Sep 2011 at 2:37 pm #

    Are you guys on CRACK? only one person up ther etold the TRUTH and that was RION PAUL.. Whether Americans like it or not.. BIN LADEN made it clear since 1992 that he wanted American Troops off of Muslim Holy lands.. SO WHAY ARE WE THERE? Imagine IF RUSSIA DECIDED TO PARK a FEW NUCLEAR Missles on the White houise LAWN, I think we wouold be a biot upset..

  5. RedPhillips on 13 Sep 2011 at 3:28 pm #

    Jean, who is this directed at? The poll takers I guess. We tend to be supportive of Ron Paul on this site, especially regarding foreign policy.

    BTW, the results have changed. Ron Paul is now leading by a large margin.

  6. Aaron on 13 Sep 2011 at 6:50 pm #

    Here’s what I don’t like about Ron Paul. (The things I do like about him are the same as what you all like, so I’ll skip those.)

    1. He’s an ideologue. I wouldn’t want an ideologue running the country even if I liked his ideology (and I don’t like libertarianism). Even a “true” ideology doesn’t tell you how to govern. For instance, believing that America should not be an empire (correct!) does not tell you how to dismantle the empire. Even an ideologue like Reagan was often flexible.

    2. He takes the Constitution too seriously. I’m all in favor of strict construction and originalism, OK? Now, I don’t follow the Ron Paul campaign (because he has zero chance of being elected) or the debates, but has anybody asked him whether he’d enforce laws that he as president determines are unconstitutional, which is about 90 percent of federal laws? Radicals say, yeah, shut it down! I say, people would go hungry.

    3. He’s old. Older than John McCain. The fact that nobody talks about his age proves that even his supporters don’t take his campaign seriously.

    4. Radical economic ideas scare me. I don’t know anything at all about that dismally boring science, so I have no idea whether the Austrians or the Keynesians or whoever else has the truth. But any radical change in economic policy seems scary. I admit, I’m conservative.

    5. He doesn’t seem really smart. He’s definitely nowhere near the dumbest congressman, but he’s nowhere near the smartest either. A president should be really smart. Also, while a congressman doesn’t have to be all that smart, the congressional leader of a political movement, such as libertarianism, ought to be.

    6. He’s goofy.

    None of this means you shouldn’t support Ron Paul. Just because he’d probably be an awful president doesn’t mean he’s a bad presidential candidate. Supporting him is probably a good way to get certain paleoconservative ideas out there. But if I could cast the deciding vote between Ron Paul and Barack Obama for president, then as a conservative, I would vote for Obama.

  7. Not Libertarian on 13 Sep 2011 at 7:55 pm #

    There are a lot of things you can say about Ron Paul but saying he’s not smart is comical.

  8. Woden on 13 Sep 2011 at 8:04 pm #

    Honestly, Romney probably did win this debate. Bachmann second maybe.

    Perry had a bad night due to the constant attacks on him and his awful immigration answer that got him rightfully booed.

    Santorum, Gingrich, Huntsman, Cain, had their moments but neither failed to make any huge impressions or break away from the pack.

    I actually thought Paul did better in this debate than he did last week but I still doubt he won any new converts.

  9. Matt Weber on 14 Sep 2011 at 12:26 am #

    Aaron,

    1: Maybe. One thing about Ron Paul is that we really have no idea how he would govern, him never having been put in that position. It’s not a strength–ideally you want your president (our current one notwithstanding) to have had some exposure to the political game from an executive point of view, just so you have some idea of what he’s about.

    2: You’re right of course that we aren’t going to go back to a sane reading of the Constitution tomorrow, but Paul’s stridency has to be better than the blaise assumption that anything the government wants to do is Constitutional. Someone should really ask Obama et al what they think is unconstitutional. Further, while the refusal to enforce a law because it’s unconstitutional might be bad, it’s certainly better than the Obama policy of not enforcing laws he just doesn’t like.

    3: He is old, and I have wondered before why no one has ever mentioned it. I don’t remember it being a huge issue for McCain though, mainly making him the butt of jokes. No one really thought he was going to die prior to 2012.

    4: I don’t know anything about economics either, so I can’t rate Paul on that. It kind of goes back to the first point…how ideological is Paul really? What would he really try to do? Who knows?

    5: He is smart, but not very suave. He has trouble putting his ideas in soundbite terms–a crucial skill these days. I think he always wants to explain and qualify; a sign of intelligence but not of rhetorical skill.

    6: He is kind of goofy.

    I don’t know…even with Paul at his worst I still couldn’t vote for Obama.

  10. Julian on 14 Sep 2011 at 12:48 am #

    “But if I could cast the deciding vote between Ron Paul and Barack Obama for president, then as a conservative, I would vote for Obama.”

    And you call Ron Paul goofy?

    With friends like Aaron…

  11. Aaron on 14 Sep 2011 at 4:11 am #

    To clarify, I do think that Ron Paul is fairly smart, like your typical congressman is smart. But I think a president should be a lot smarter than the typical congressman.

    Julian, yes, I call Ron Paul goofy and I call myself conservative. I’d pick Barack Obama over Ron Paul, but I’d pick Pat Buchanan over Obama or any of the Republican candidates (with some hesitation about his age). Again, this is not because I’m ideologically closer to Buchanan than to Paul (which I am). It’s because I think that Pat Buchanan could govern and Ron Paul could not.

  12. Chris Hewlett on 14 Sep 2011 at 12:04 pm #

    Obama’s smart – he went to Harvard.

  13. Chris Hewlett on 14 Sep 2011 at 1:41 pm #

    Let’s just face it – Ron Paul is hopeless and abysmal when it comes to immigration. I think we all wish it were different, but it’s not. He simply will not consider it important and I think it must be because control of immigration requires governmental controls (men in uniforms) and that goes against his idelogically libertarian views.

  14. RedPhillips on 14 Sep 2011 at 5:53 pm #

    Aaron, Paul graduated from Duke Medical School. They don’t let dummies in there. His problem is not smarts. It’s that his answers tend to be scattered and not soundbites.

  15. Aaron on 15 Sep 2011 at 7:30 pm #

    That shows Ron Paul was smart half a century ago when he went to medical school. On second thought, though, I shouldn’t have phrased it in terms of smart or not smart. The point is, I’ve never seen any evidence of Ron Paul really thinking. Spouting libertarian ideology is not thinking. Everything I’ve read and heard from Ron Paul could have come straight from reading lewrockwell.com. Ever see that guy “Judge Napolitano” on TV? No thinking involved. Ron Paul reminds me of kind of a lower-key version of him.

    George W. Bush is pretty smart – yes, he is – but he doesn’t think anywhere near enough. Einstein was one of the smartest guys on the planet, but he turned off his smarts when talking about politics. Barack Obama thinks. Pat Buchanan thinks. Even Michelle Bachman thinks, when she wants to. Ron Paul, no matter how smart he might be, doesn’t seem to think.

  16. Dr. Tony on 16 Sep 2011 at 6:33 pm #

    I like Ricky Santorum because he supports gay marriage in Iran.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS

Leave a Reply