My Notes on the “First in the Fall” Republican Debate

The “First in the Fall” GOP Presidential debate (actually, the fifth debate thus far) was held last night at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. Eight of the ten Republicans from the previous debates returned for this one hosted once again by the Fox News Channel (Tommy Thompson and Jim Gilmore have both dropped out the race).

With the evening being moderated by Fox News’s Washington team of Brit Hume, Chris Wallace, Wendell Goler, and Carl Cameron, I felt that this was a debate to watch closely and that the questions asked would be serious and relevant — in contrast with many of the ones posed at the MSNBC and CNN debates. I was not disappointed; like the previous Fox News debate, this one was informative as well as entertaining and gave me several additional insights into the minds of the men who want to be the next leader of this country.

Since I was anticipating a good debate, I sat down to watch the ninety-minute program with pen and paper in hand in order to take notes on the candidates’ positions and performances. Here are my observations and comments.

• The debate began with Brit Hume mentioning the absense of Fred Thompson, who chose to go on the Tonight Show instead. All of the candidates then got the chance to take shots at their fellow Republican who has taken his time getting into the race; there were plenty of one-liners at Thompson’s expense. I don’t necessarily agree with the attitudes expressed by several of the candidates; a man shouldn’t feel obligated to announce that he is running for office at the beginning of 2007 when the election won’t even take place until near the end of 2008.
• Illegal immigration was the first important topic of the evening.
  • Mitt Romney was asked a tough question about what he did to stop sanctuary cities when he was governor of Massachusetts, and I thought he answered it well. Romney is in favor of cutting federal funding to cities which proclaim to be sanctuary cities; I like that idea.
  • Rudy Giuliani has a different view than Romney on sancuary cities and illegal immigrants; like his view on abortion, one could call it “nuanced.” Honestly, I don’t understand exactly what his view is. Giuliani did not say that he condones the act of entering the U.S. illegally, but he did say that he wanted the people in New York City to feel safe while he was mayor. He wanted residents of New York to feel like they could report a crime committed against them without fear. As Chris Wallace noted, Mayor Guiliani stated back in 1994 that it was unfair for illegals to have be on the run like fugitives; he also made the comment that he wanted hard-working undocumented immigrated to come to New York.
  • John McCain stated that no one is for amnesty. Really? I could have sworn that there are plenty of open-border folks here in the U.S. — most notably, the millions of immigrants who have crossed the border illegally. Senator McCain also said that according to the dictionary, amnesty is forgiveness, and the immigration bill he supported was not amnesty because it included some penalties for illegal aliens. That is technically true, but the bill also allows all undocumented workers to say in the country indefinitely — whether or not they have a criminal record. That may not meet Webster’s definition of amnesty, but it does make for really bad law.
  • Mike Huckabee thinks that some who oppose illegal immigration are racist. I don’t deny that; it could very well be true, but so what? The vast majority of those who are against illegal immigration have legitimate concerns which ought to be addressed. I think Huckabee was skirting the real issue.
  • Tom Tancredo got a little fiery when describing his feeling that some of his fellow Republicans are not sincere when it comes to border control. Tancredo is of the opinion that some (he didn’t offer any names) are only speaking the political rhetoric about illegal immigration because the subject appeals to the base of the party. I don’t know that to be true, and honestly, neither does the congressman. As with Huckabee and his comment on racism, Representative Tancredo is talking about thoughts in others which he cannot prove. It adds little to the debate.
  • Duncan Hunter wants to build a wall — a really big wall. Hunter was asked about the practicality of building and maintaining a 854-mile border fence which would span California to Texas, but he did not really address the issue in his response, instead saying that building the fence is the law, so it has to be done. The congressman also dodged the part of the question which raised concerns about the property rights of ranchers whose land the border fence would cross.
• After a lengthy round of immigration-related questions, the next topic was about family values and the disgraced U.S. senator Larry Craig, who has said he intends to resign but may still choose not to do so. Sam Brownback finally got a chance to speak and gave a nice response about ethics and family values. Brownback thinks that Craig should stick by his planed resignation, and Duncan Hunter agreed with him. Interestingly, Congressman Hunter addressed the same point that I did in a blog post last week — about the divergent attitudes regarding corruption in both political parties. In Hunter’s words: “When our guys have problems like this [referring to Larry Craig’s sex scandal], they leave — they leave the Senate or they leave the House. When the Democrats have problems like this, they often make them chairman of their respective committees.”
• The next topic of discussion was abortion. Mitt Romney wants Roe v. Wade overturned so that states can draft their own pro-life legislation in its place (although some states like New York and Romney’s home state of Massachusetts will no doubt create pro-abortion laws instead). While refusing to call it murder himself, Romney acknowledged that abortion is the taking of a human life and said that he wants “to change hearts and minds.” In slight contrast, Mike Huckabee is not so much about changing people’s views on abortion as he is about stopping it altogether. Huckabee favors a human life amendment to the Constitution, which would state that life begins at conception. I actually agree with both men. Overturning Roe v. Wade is a good first step to ending abortion, but instead of stopping there, I think Huckabee is right that a Constitutional amendment is needed in order to permanently protect life in all fifty states.
• Rudy Giuliani, who is for strict gun control laws, received a question about people being allowed to carry guns to deter crime. Giuliani did not give an opinion one way or the other, instead using his time to once again remind everyone that he reduced crime in New York City. According to Giuliani, the drop in crime, including a seventy-five percent reduction in shootings, was the result of focusing on criminals instead of guns.
• Ron Paul thinks that the problem with airline security is that the federal government is in charge of it. He said that airlines should be responsible for the protection of their passengers, not the government. Paul also said that there would have been less chance of 9/11 taking place if passengers had been allowed to carry guns. I can’t argue with that. There are many areas where I disagree with Congressman Paul, but this is not one of them. Personal responsibility is an important component of any truly free country. We cannot expect the government to take care of us.
• Sam Brownback seems to get most of the questions about family values. His next question was about gay marriage. Brownback said that he supports a Constitutional amendment banning homosexual marriage, which resulted in a mixed response from the audience. The senator acknowledged that there was division on the subject but asserted that permitting same-sex couples to wed would take the sacredness out of marriage and cause marriage rates to drop. Brown noted that thirty-six percent of children in this country are born out of wedlock, and while that doesn’t spell immediate doom for those kids, the absolute best environment in which to raise a child is a family that includes “a mom and a dad bonded together for life.” Well said.
• The war in Iraq and beyond was the source of several questions. With the exception of Ron Paul, the Republican candidates are pretty much in agreement that we cannot leave Iraq right now.
  • Mitt Romney said that there should be no timetable for getting out of Iraq. He does hope that our troops can be pulled back to only a support role in the near future.
  • Governor Romney also made the point that the surge in Iraq “is apparently working.” John McCain seized the opportunity and jumped on Romney’s statement for its lack of resoluteness: “Governor, the surge is working. … Not apparently — it’s working.” McCain’s tatic to make it seem as if Romney doubted the effectiveness of the surge was silly. Romney simply meant that he was holding out final judgement until General David Petraeus gives his report to Congress, and he said so.
  • Ron Paul just cannot get out of Iraq fast enough. He is totally unconcerned with the condition of Iraq if we leave now and believes that suggestions of a “bloodbath” in the event of a premature withdrawal of U.S. forces are wrong. In Representative Paul’s mind, the whole war was an illegal invasion waged by misguided neoconservatives, and 9/11 happened because the U.S. has a bad foreign policy. I could not disagree with the congressman more. Although I appreciate Paul’s views on a limited federal government and adherence to the Constitution, I believe that his isolationist philosophy in the matter of world affairs would be so detrimental to the interests of the United States and our allies that I could never in good conscience vote for the man.
  • Much like fellow senator and Presidential candidate Joe Biden, Sam Brownback has a plan to create three separate states within Iraq, separating the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds. I am not sure that Brownback’s proposal is the best way or that it would make the political situation in Iraq any better than it is now. I am no expert, but it seems to me that isolating groups with differing views would make it much more difficult for the country to ever come together under one government.
  • Mike Huckabee believes that we must continue with the surge; I agree with him on that point. But Huckabee also thinks that the United States “broke” Iraq, and we should continue our efforts in the country because we “bought it” when we “broke it.” I think Huckabee is wrong, wrong, wrong! To say that the U.S. broke Iraq is to imply that it was unbroken before the war, and that is far from the truth. Iraq was hardly in pristine condition under the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein, who murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people. Whatever condition the country of Iraq is in right now, it is tremendously better than when Saddam was controlling it.
  • Duncan Hunter declared that the right way out of Iraq is through victory. He also believes that we will not be there for a really long time because of the determination of the American forces to finish the job. I hope he is right.
• Romney is a proponent of wiretapping people or locations within the country for national security reasons and said that preventing a terrorist attack “means good intelligence work.” In response to concerns about infringing on civil liberties, Romney stated, “the most important civil liberty I expect from my government is my right to be kept alive.”
• There is some disagreement among the candidates about the definition of torture. Tom Tancredo has no problem with waterboarding enemy combatants to get information out of them. Although he opposes torturing detainees, Tancredo said that he does not consider that particular technique to be torture and that he “would go to great lengths” in order to keep America safe. John McCain is — as he has made known in nearly every debate — fiercely opposed to torture. But the senator doesn’t seem to make any distinctions between torture and non-torture techniques. He didn’t express it plainly, but I infer that McCain considers waterboarding to be torture and therefore would never permit its use. McCain asserts that torturing prisoners would harm our country’s reputation around the world. I don’t disagree with him, but I still think Senator McCain shouldn’t view every method of intense coercion as falling under the blanket term of torture.
• Rudy Giuliani would not close the prison at Guantánamo Bay if he becomes President. He made the excellent point that we would have no safe place to keep the detainees if the prison were closed down; it would be unwise to move them inside the U.S., and other countries will no take them.
•  Duncan Hunter has no problem with holding enemy combatants indefinitely. He attempted to make his case by stating that in some cases, the U.S. has been “too liberal” with releasing the enemy, and terrorists who have been let go have gone back to fighting our troops. While that is certainly true, I hope that Representative Hunter is not saying that detainees shouldn’t be provided with any recourse for proving that they are not a threat to the United States.
• Senator Brownback said that he would not give his Vice President as much authority and independence as Dick Cheney has had. What exactly does he think Cheney has been doing?
• Since this was a Republican debate, there were plenty of questions about lowering taxes. I think this may be the one point where all the candidates were in complete agreement — taxes should be low.
  • Two of the eight Republicans have not signed the pledge from the interest group Americans for Tax Reform to oppose tax increases: John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Neither of the two candidates has any plans to approve a tax raise as President but still will not sign the pledge. McCain said he stands on his record, and that should be enough. He also said that tax cuts are only part of the equation for fiscal responsiblity; Congressional spending must also be cut. Rudy Giuliani stated that he won’t take the pledge as a matter of principle. If he signed that pledge, then every lobbyist group in Washington might expect him to sign pledges for their issues. That is why the former mayor has decided to only take one pledge as President: to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Giuliani’s view makes sense to me, and I have no problem with either him or Senator McCain choosing not to sign any pledges that are put before them.
  • Mitt Romney will work to make the Bush tax cuts permanent and will “kill the death tax once and for all.” No complaints here.
  • Mike Huckabee wants to eliminate all income-based taxes and the IRS and enact the FairTax, which is a plan for a national sales tax. I haven’t yet read up on the FairTax in detail, but I know enough to realize that it would definitely be better than our current tax system. I have personally been opposed to the notion of taxing productivity since the first day I ever held a job, and I would welcome an overhaul of the way that Congress collects taxes.
• Unsurprising, Ron Paul would work toward eliminating most of the federal government if elected President, including but not limited to: DHS, the CIA, the IRS, the Fed, ED, and DOT. Paul’s primary motivation for shrinking the government to its essential functions is the inefficiency of the bureaucracy which has burgeoned in the past century. I am in favor of a limited federal government myself, but I tend to think that Paul is taking it to the extreme, wanting to do away with government functions like foreign surveillance and homeland security which have become essential in this current age. I would be glad to see the size of our government bureaucracy shrink, but I don’t think it should return to its 1789 level.
• Throughout the evening, Carl Cameron interviewed Durham residents at the local diner Young’s Restaurant. While the opinions of the locals and their questions toward the candidates were somewhat interesting, I could have done without the distraction. I watched the debate to see and hear the Presidental candidates, not the patrons of Young’s. No offense to the people of Durham, New Hampshire, but they are not running for the highest office in the land, so I don’t particularly care about their views.
• I was pleased to see the return of the “plausible scenario,” where Brit Hume lays out a realistic situation and all the candidates get the opportunity to describe how they would respond. This was a component of the previous Fox News debate, and I thought it worked well both then and now. This time, the scenario centered on Iran being able to produce a nuclear weapon, ordering UN inspectors to leave the country, aiding the insurgency in Iraq, and making threats against the nation of Israel.
• I thought most of the candidates gave good responses to the scenario. Senator Brownback described the scenario as “all too likely” and unfortunately, I agree. Of course, a couple of Presidential hopefuls felt the need to attack the question instead of just answering it honestly. Representative Hunter said he hate answering hypotheticals but still offered a decent response. But Mike Huckabee completely stonewalled and refused to address the scenario, calling it “hypothetical” and “very detailed.” The next President of the United States will likely have to deal directly in Iran, so this is an important issue which I don’t think candidates should be dodging.
• Obviously, since Ron Paul’s foreign policy is essentially to leave the rest of the world alone, he would not do anything about a nuclear Iran. Not only that, Paul also asserted that Israel “can take care of themselves.” Nice. You know, I can appreciate the fact that Representative Paul does not want to get in the middle of every conflict in the world, but there is such a thing as being isolationist to the point that it is detrimental to our own security. I don’t think Paul understands that we cannot just close ourselves off from the rest world and expect everyone to leave us alone.

In closing, I really enjoyed this debate. For me, the Fox News Channel has proven twice now that they know how to organize and moderate an excellent Presidential debate. I have grown tired of the ones conducted by other networks, which seem monotonous and irrelevent, but I like that the Fox News debates have challenged the candidates and really addressed the important issues. The Democrats should take notice and get over their bias against Fox News; not only will the Democratic candidates be treated fairly and respectfully, but they will also have a larger audience to express their ideas in front of since FNC has more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined.