Debate Madness

I skipped out on last night's debate.  Trans Siberian Orchestra was in town and they were fantastic!  From the sound of it, the debate was a the embodiment of "same thing, different day".  Consider:

I honestly don’t see any point in trying to sugar-coat this: why are we letting the enemy moderate our debates? If the big networks aren’t willing to hire any non-liberal-Democrats full-time, they should at least have access to some who are willing to moderate GOP debates on a contract basis.
Most of the questions Stephanopoulos and Sawyer came up with tonight were clearly designed to do one of two things:

1) Throw out more heat than light, and set the candidates to squabbling over non-issues, while making sure there is as much bad blood on the stage as possible; and

2) Put each potential candidate in a position such that he/she had to either throw out red meat to the base (which can be used in attack ads next year in the general election, to turn independents against whoever the candidate is), or stand there holding their dicks/boobies looking stupid.

I am not opposed to the debates.  We need to know both where the candidates stand and how they will handle themselves in a race against Obama.  The Republican nominee must be able to deal with a partisan Main Stream Media that will pull all the stops to get Obama re-elected.  That doesn't mean that the candidates should allow themselves to be used as punching bags.  In 2008 John McCain refused to punch back.  He may have believed that he was taking "the high road"  but the country ended up with a Marxist as president.  Newt is doing well with the Tea Party because he is viewed as a fighter and somebody who will not only punch back but punch back twice as hard.

Read Joy's review of the debate.