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Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The GOP Debate

The debate last night among the Republican presidential candidates was interesting and informative in part. Mainly, however, it was a lost opportunity, one for which CNN should be ashamed. The issue that concerns the overwhelming percentage of Americans is the bad economy and the lack of jobs. CNN only spent about 20 minutes out of 2 hours on the economy. John King (who seemed to grunt repeatedly while the candidates were talking) steered the rest of the debate to items like abortion, freedom of religion and the like. These are not unimportant, but at the moment, they just are not the stuff for presidential debates. CNN seemed more interested in finding areas where the GOP candidates might differ from president Obama than areas where they differ from each other. We could have had a debate with each candidate asked how he or she would approach restoring growth to the economy. Instead we got secondary stuff combined with a bunch of "gotcha" questions. Did Romney think that the auto bailout three years ago was a bad thing even though all the money has been paid back? romney answered clearly enough. He also did not take on King for his mistake of fact since the car companies have not paid back all that they received.

It is sad that CNN did not do a good job. There was much to learn and what we got was mostly a waste of time. Did CNN think it would be a surprise that all of the GOP candidates were pro-life? C'mon!

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