Things Gleaned From The CNN Republican Debate

By J.J. Jackson

As I sat Monday night, pen and paper in hand, marking my impressions of the responses given by the various GOP contenders for President as they were asked questions, I took some things away from the debate that I would like to share with you now.

The first thing I came away with was that if there was a winner, based only on how each candidate responded, it was Tim Pawlenty. Not saying he's my man for 2012, just that he won based on the words that emanated from his mouth. His biggest misstep however came when he was directly confronted on “Obamney Care” where he shied away from driving home the obvious connections between Mitt Romney’s horrid system in Massachusetts and the nationally socialized plan pushed down our throats by President Obama.

I think a close second when the dust settled was Michelle Bachmann. Santorum, Gingrich, Romney and Ron Paul all failed to impress me. They either gave the answers they should have given, mostly, or were just too milquetoast. Herman Cain was third. He, once again, however got tripped up on TARP and failed to convince me that he was not well aware of how the money was going to be spent and used. A turnip could have figured it out. You cannot tell me that Cain could not have done the same.

The remaining two things I came away with had nothing to do with the candidates themselves.

There was a moment when one man in the audience asked a question. His name is unimportant. I did not even write it down because he was a sniveling coward. He identified himself as someone that had held various stations within the GOP and made a sickening point of making sure the candidates knew he was not a “libertarian” and that he was concerned about the Tea Party’s influence in the Republican Party these days. He made double sure to note that, at least in his own mind, he was a mainstream Republican.

So if he was not a libertarian, i.e. a conservative, then what is he? An anarchist? Some flavor of socialist? Those are the only other two options. No wonder he would be concerned about the Tea Party and how they will affect who gets the Republican Party’s nomination given this sad fact. Both those other groups hate the concept of limited government to protect inalienable rights. So of course the Tea Party frightens them.

Sounds like, if you ask me, Mr. GOP Party Hack here might be more at home in another political party; most likely the Democratic Party. But then again, this is what passes too commonly for a North East Republican. That would be a liberal who simply does not like how liberal the Democratic Party has become.

He might be mainstream among liberal Republicans from the north east. But he is not mainstream among Republicans. Just remember folks, this is the sort of gutless wonders we have to defeat in 2012 in our own party before taking down President Obama.

The other moment was when they were showing the twitter feed before one commercial break. What caught my eye was a particularly ignorant comment, no doubt tweeted by a twit without much of a clue. I will paraphrase. It bemoaned the concept of privatization saying something along the lines of how much of it can we afford? The twit whined that, what private corporation would ever build something like the Golden Gate Bridge?

The person who made this comment is one of those people I freely lump into the category of too stupid to vote and too ignorant to live in a free Republic. First of all it implies that conservatives, Tea Partiers, libertarians and Republicans want to privatize everything and everything and that there is no role for government. This is simply a false reaction common among people who want government to do everything but have no idea how to make a cogent argument in favor of such. I'll give any liberals reading this article a moment to get out their dictionary to look up what cogent means before continuing. I know it’s a fancy word.

Ok? Done? Let's continue.

The comment was stupid because we are talking about people who are running for President of the United States. The President of the United States does not authorize how money is spent. Congress does that. Bemoaning public works projects like roads and bridges at the GOP Presidential Candidate debate on Monday night was simply stupid.

But beyond that, the Constitution, something conservatives, unlike liberals and anarchists, actually believe in, does allow for the government to build roads. Granted, they have to be classified as a post road for this to be true. That means they have to be used for postal service. Almost any road in America can be classified as such. That does not mean however that federal funding should be given to every roadway project in America. I say all this to point out how inept this tweeter was.

Furthermore, the tweeter, perhaps an activist told by a community organizer what to say because the comment was so utterly vacant, completely ignores what basically are the ninth and tenth amendments. These amendments say that anything not within the power of the federal government is left to the States and the people. Again, I remind everyone that this debate was for candidates for President.

If the federal government said no to building a Golden Gate Bridge type of project, or its funding was not found to be consistent with the mandate to build post roads, could not the State of California or the City of San Francisco build a bridge if it were so desperately needed? Well, maybe not considering those two entities are so mismanaged that in a sane world they would not even be able to get credit to buy donuts for the weekly staff meeting. But yes, in a sane world with state and city governments that actually manage themselves properly they indeed could.

See? No problem for this twittering twit to get all worked up.

Well, that's my take on the happenings of Monday night. Sorry that some of it was directed at things other than the candidates themselves. But I really did not care for the love fest up on stage. The ancillary happenings were much more informative.

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J.J. Jackson is a libertarian conservative author from Pittsburgh, PA who has been writing and promoting individual liberty since 1993 and is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. He is the Pittsburgh Conservative Examiner for Examiner.com. He is also the owner of The Right Things - Conservative T-shirts & Gifts The Right Things. His weekly commentary along with exclusives not available anywhere else can be found at Liberty Reborn.

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Editor's Note: The authorities of the federal government and State governments are different. Just because the argument is made that something is not within the constitutional authority of the federal government, it does not mean it should not be endeavored. As Mr. Jackson pointed out, if something is not for the federal government to do, it simply means that the issue either belongs to the States, or should be accomplished in the free market by the private sector.

The federal government is not the end all and be all that the liberal left hopes it to be.

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