the smoldering rubble of empires

Looks like John McCain needs a history lesson. And a dictionary so he can learn the difference between isolationism and non-interventionism.

I took some time to watch the CNN/Youtube Republican debates online, and they didn't seem like an enormous waste of time. There were some decent questions and most of the candidates had me either rolling my eyes or shaking my head in disgust most of the time, but there was some worthwhile information to be had.

Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have been the two top-tier candidates (according to the mainstream media), and both look like huge sleezeballs. These men are fantastic politicians; giving actual answers to questions is unimportant, as long as you can create a good sound bite. Everything out of Giuliani's mouth either relates back to New York or 9/11, and it looks like he's content to try riding his popularity from those into the White House. Romney also avoided answering most of the questions directed his way; the worst example of this came when he was questioned about waterboarding. He made it clear that he was against torture, but then refused to classify whether tactics like waterboarding are or are not torture. Kinda hard to stop torture if it isn't clearly defined, isn't it, Mitt?

I'm surprised that Mike Huckabee isn't the Republican front-runner. I don't trust him one bit, but he does a decent job of sounding sincere. He says all the right things to win the support of most Republicans: he makes sure to throw out the religion card, he still supports the war in Iraq, and he promised to cut taxes. I think he gives off the impression of being the most electable candidate and I'm surprised that the Republican Party and the media aren't pushing him more. I don't actually believe most of what he says, but I think he's great at playing the political game.

Fred Thompson seems like a scumbag as well. His attitude and swagger just oozes the stereotypical figure of the old Southern aristocrat sitting on his porch in a clean white suit, sipping whiskey while plotting his way into political office, not really caring about average people at all. I'll admit that the man has a good sense of humor, but I could never take him seriously enough to want him leading our country.

McCain is the saddest figure in the run for the Republican nomination. I used to like the way he refused to follow the typical Republican mantra and simply follow what he thinks is right. Now I feel that he's invested his reputation far too strongly into the Iraq war and has lost of lot of his renegade spirit. He split his time at the debate between sniping at Ron Paul, giving a passionate and well-spoken thrashing to Romney over the use of torture, and looking depressed and defeated the rest of the time.

Ron Paul was fantastic, in my opinion (not that I'm biased or anything). Obviously an audience full of war supporters and people who still think Bush is a good president booed half of what Paul had to say, but there was still a surprising number of supporters cheering very loudly for him. One of the things that most stood out to me is that Paul may have been the only one in the debate who didn't take shots at the other candidates. He was there to argue his point, not to sling mud at his rivals. The amount of time given to Paul over some of the other candidates was very limited--Paul himself pointed out to CNN in their post-debate interview that almost thirty-five minutes went by without any questions being directed his way. Despite this, he had a strong finish at the end and he got his message across well in the limited time he had.

To be fair, I'll mention two other candidates on the far right and far left of the stage. I admit I didn't remember either of their names without going back and looking them up, and both got about as much time to talk as Ron Paul. Neither made much of an impression, although I thought Lefty (Tom Tancredo) was dead-on when he criticized Huckabee for promising to cut government spending while also promising to fund a NASA mission to Mars. Righty (Duncan Hunter) had a great smirk and spent too much time talking about his father's old rifle that he used to own instead of saying something important.

I wanted to end this with the clip of Ron Paul on the Daily Show (to quote Jon Stewart on Ron Paul, "You appear to have consistent, principled integrity... Americans don't usually go for that") but I couldn't find a good clip online. Paul's visit to the Colbert Report wasn't quite as good at getting his message across, but it's still entertaining. I suppose I should watch the Democratic debates from a couple months ago as well, although watching that much Hillary will be difficult.