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Watch 1st Presidential Republican Debate Here

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Watch 1st Presidential Republican Debate Here for those that missed it. It was on Fox News tonight(May 5) at 9pm EST.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t0kARR4WWM&sns=fb

Ron Paul was like 84% on the Fox News website poll asking: "Who Do You Think Came Out on Top of the First Republican Presidential Debate?". Herman Cain was in second place with I think it was 14%. The others were all around 2%

EDIT: I had lost the poll link before. The poll is here: http://foxnewsinsider.com/2011/05/05/poll-who-came-out-on-top-in-the-first-republican-presidential-debate-2/

Edited by CapitalistSwine
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I definitely think Herman Cain did the second best, but whilst I was watching it, the applause was most often (to me, I might be wrong) for Ron Paul and Cain also got a good deal of applause because he knows how to publicly speak and how to debate. As far as his ideas, he seems like a status quo republican that is almost groomed to look grassroots. Compared to Ron Paul or Gary Johsnon he is not the ideal candidate as far as the Objectivist point of view on Politics is concerned. However, Herman Cain does seem like he would be a better pick than the big system-endorsed candidates, Romney, Palin, Huck-dub, and so on, and of course Obama, but Rick Santorum is a weasel and Pawlenty is a robot to the electorate values and they both are good at doing the politician talk. Johnson has the most impressive background and policy set in my opinion, but he's not all that charismatic (though he won twice in democratic 2-1 state without ever using his candidates name or attacking their policies and with I think even a democratic candidate being the incumbent. He has the most impressive track record as far as getting things done and done well. Ron Paul is very experienced in the political sphere and considering his age with respect to that experience. He has significant grass roots support thanks to the 08 elections, a lot more than I think a lot of people realize. He is also closer than Johnson to the GOP base as far as general ideology. CNN also did a shock national poll and Ron Paul was the best competitor to Obama, although this of course is a very early poll. Either way, this has a long ways to progress still and a lot of the major candidates haven't really joined in yet, so this could evolve quite a bat. We will just have to see.

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Thanks for reminding me about this. I finally got around to watching it.

Here's how I would order my opinion of the candidates after hearing them speak, in order from worst to least terrible:

Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain, Gary Johnson, Ron Paul.

Rick Santorum was just a dreadfully typical bible thumper. Heralding the family as a fundamental unit of society, saying rights come from God, and that no one is perfect.

I had to really focus at times just to tell Santorum and Pawlenty apart. Pawlenty was like a slightly less terrible clone of Santorum. They made me think of that bit in Futurama with the identical politicians debating each other.

Herman Cain has his bright moments where he gets it right, but he also steps uncomfortably into religion at times like with gay marriage. And then his closing statement just struck me as weird on a number of levels.

Gary Johnson I'm not real familiar with, I really enjoyed his flat out simple rejection of any tariff. There were times I liked his answers better than Ron Paul's and others I thought his were worse.

Of course Ron Paul is well known, and I have definite issues with him, but of the speakers presented I preferred him most of all. I don't need to get into long details but I don't agree with his default stance of punting rights violations to the state versus the federal govt. And I don't like his borderline pacifism or latent Christian influences on things like abortion.

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I will be supporting Ron Paul because he is the only one who understands the gravity of our financial situation and the only one who understands the cause of the crisis and the solution. I also credit him with being the driving force behind the recent resurgence of interest in Austrian economics. It was because of his 2008 presidential campaign that I became interested in politics and economics, and subsequently found my way to Objectivism. While not a perfect exemplar of liberty, I believe that the net effect of his influence is very positive.

Edited by iflyboats
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