I missed the debate live but Fox News has the entire debate in 8 installments here, at least for now, and I listened to all 8 installments and the after show with Greta VanSustern and the USC students from both parties.

I’m not going to give you a blow by blow description of the debate as I watched it to be able to hear it and see the body language of the candidates.

My first impression is that, even though Fox News is perceived as a Republican network, there were no softball questions and when a candidate didn’t address the question Mike Wallace, in particular, brought them back in focus and asked them to answer the question.

There were no stupid questions such as what do you not like about America or do you think America would be better off with Bill Clinton in the White House that were asked in the last debate.

My second impression was it was too short a time frame for ten candidates to really say anything meaningful.

Huckabee did well, but he’s not going to be nominated. I can say the same for Jim Gilmore. Otherwise none of the seven bottom candidates really impressed me and Ron Paul least of all.

John McCain is not a choice in my book, so I discount him immediately.

That leaves Giuliani and Romney.

I know Giuliani’s stand on a lot of the social issues are not conservative, but since my big hot button issue is national security I’m satisfied enough with his answers that, if the primary in South Carolina were held today, I would vote for him.

I was surprised to be as impressed with Mitt Romney as much as I was, although I kept wondering if he had on that weird underwear under his shirt.

Romney certainly has the looks and the voice to look and sound presidential, but his religion bothers me. He has also changed positions on so many issues that I’d really like to know where he really stands on the issues and not just what he says to please the base.

My biggest question for Mitt Romney, and I would love to be able to talk to him personally about it in order to get a real feel for what he’s saying, is because he is a Mormon he is duty-bound to abide by the rulings of the president of the church.

It is my understanding, from what I have read about Mormonism, that if a member disobeys the prophet, the president of the church, he can be excommunicated and lose his place to become a god in the hereafter.

Would he be willing to go against the demand of his church leader, knowing it would condemn him, if the leader told him he had a “vision” and he should do such and such as president, and Romney knew in his heart the such and such would be detrimental to the United States?

I think this is a big problem he is going to have with a lot of evangelicals. Of course, people in 1960 thought if John Kennedy won the presidency, the Pope would govern our country and it didn’t turn out that way.

But Romney’s religion is very personal to him as a Mormon, much different from Kennedy’s Catholicism was to him in 1960. This is what makes his candidacy so troubling to me.

On the other hand, I know Orrin Hatch and Harry Reid are also Mormons and hardly agree on anything, so it’s something I’m going to have to pray about and see where the Lord leads me.

Bottom line is if Fred Thompson doesn’t join the race I will vote for Giuliani. Forget about Newt Gingrich, who may be the best political mind in the country. He carries too much baggage and would be a rallying cry for all liberals to come out and vote for him. I don’t see him as a viable candidate.

That’s my take, and I thought Fox News did an excellent job and can’t imagine why the Democrats are afraid to be questioned by them in a debate forum.

As usual, we welcome the readers who visited us via the Anchoress. Take a look around and maybe come back sometime soon.

Of all the declared candidates in the two major parties’ races for nomination for the office of President of the United States is there just one who is actually qualified to be president if we start picking apart their stands on issues important to us?

It appears to me we are being forced to choose between bad and worse.

Does our country still have any Washingtons, Lincolns, Roosevelts, Trumans or Eisenhowers left? And if we do where are they hiding?

Are we to again go to the polls and hold our noses while we vote for the lesser of two evils?

I don’t know about you but I want to vote for someone instead of against someone else.

I can’t pretend to speak for the Democratic side of the political spectrum, but the only candidate I can half-way support at this time is Rudy Giuliani, and he seems to be making it tougher and tougher to do that every day.

I knew I didn’t agree with him on social issues a whole lot, but felt he had what it takes to defend us against terrorism. I still feel that way but I’m not pleased with his undying support of abortion that seems to be his big news this week.

Fred Thompson, are you going to run or just play around with us as a kitten plays with a ball of string? And if you do get in are you going to be what we hope and think you are or are you going to be just another member of the pack?

I just read this article at Newsbusters.

It talks about the silly questions asked of the Republican candidates in Thursday night’s debate:

In a debate packed with silly questions and ones matching left-wing attack points on GOP candidates, in the first “Interactive Round” of questions submitted by the public on Politico.com, a co-sponsor of the debate, Mitt Romney got the most bizarre. The Politico Executive Editor Jim VandeHei, a Washington Post political reporter before jumping to The Politico earlier this year, found this one worth posing: “Daniel Dekovnick [sp phonetic] from Walnut Creek, California wants to know, ‘What do you dislike most about America?’” Romney responded: “Gosh, I love America. I’m afraid I’m going to be at a loss for words…”

Does a presidential candidate have to dislike something about America? What are these guys smoking?

How about this one from Chris Matthews:

And finally, near the very end of the 90-minute plus session, moderator Chris Matthews seriously proposed to all ten candidates: “Would it be good for America to have Bill Clinton back living in the White House?”

What kind of question is that to be asking Republcan candidates? Why didn’t they ask the Democrat candidates if it would be better if Reagan were back in the White House? It makes as much sense.

I’m glad I didn’t bother to tune in.

As usual, we welcome the readers of our good friend the Anchoress. Make yourselves at home.

According to this report evangelical Christians are dissatisfied with the current crop of Republican presidential candidates.

Evangelical Christians have long been a key constituency for the Republican Party, but leading religious conservatives are expressing dissatisfaction with the party’s current crop of presidential candidates.

“What’s different is that evangelicals had desirable candidates in 2000,” said Marvin Olasky, who helped define the “compassionate conservative” message that was central to President Bush’s 2000 campaign. “Now, many evangelicals are negative about the whole leader board.”

Eight years ago, Christian conservative stalwarts Gary Bauer and Alan Keyes sought the Republican nomination in a presidential field led from start to finish by Mr. Bush, who proudly proclaimed his born-again faith.

Each of the three Republicans most often mentioned as front-runners for the 2008 presidential nomination — Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — present significant problems to evangelical voters, said Mr. Olasky, a University of Texas professor and Christian journalist.

“The question is what will be less distasteful to many evangelicals: Mitt Romney’s one-wife Mormonism, Rudy Giuliani’s marital mayhem or John McCain’s recent disdain,” he said.

I am an evangelical Christian Republican. I’m not overly excited about our choices so far but that doesn’t mean I am more satisfied with what the candidates on the other side have to offer.

I hope and pray Fred Thompson decides to run so I have a clear-cut choice, but if he doesn’t…well, sometimes you have to suck it up and vote for the one you think better believes as you do on the issues.

At any rate, I won’t stay home on election day. A lot of Republicans did that last November and have come to rue the day.

Off topic, but I’m wondering if anyone knows about these presidential and congressional popularity polls. Are they polling all people, registered voters, or likely voters? Likely voters are the ones to poll because they are the ones who really matter.

The others just want to express an opinion but don’t bother to either register to vote or to vote at all.

DJ Drummond has a great post up Stolen Thunder. It is also cross-posted at Wizbang Politics.

I am thoroughly disgusted with the rash of upstarts claiming they have a right to vilify and smear the sitting President of the United States, merely because Dubya has declined to obey their whims and (often ill-considered) demands for certain policy and executive decisions. I do not mean just the Speaker of the House, who can find no time to meet with the President on pressing matters of state, but who can and has broken Federal law in order to chat with a state sponsor of terrorism. I do not mean just the Democratic Party, which pledged to the public to be honest, forthright, and to support the troops, but which since their election has performed to a moral standard somewhat below Bluto’s level in the Toga Party during the movie “Animal House”. I do not even mean just the “gotcha” media which has been trying to bring down officials in the Bush Administration ever since he was sworn in, nor the spittle-flecked blogs of the Extreme Left, whose sense of morality is almost as absent as their knowledge of History, Grammar, or personal hygiene. No, here I am talking about ostensible members of the Republican Party, who have become so obsessed with their ego and arrogance that they have forgotten every lesson taught in word and practice by Ronald Reagan.

No, he’s not fussing about the Democrats but is fussing about certain Republicans. Go read the rest.

We’ve heard what some of the news reporters had to say about John McCain’s recent trip to Baghdad, and that he lied about the conditions there. In an op-ed piece for the Washington Post today McCain tells us basically why he said what he said the other day:

I just returned from my fifth visit to Iraq since 2003 — and my first since Gen. David Petraeus’s new strategy has started taking effect. For the first time, our delegation was able to drive, not use helicopters, from the airport to downtown Baghdad. For the first time, we met with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province who are working with American and Iraqi forces to combat al-Qaeda. For the first time, we visited Iraqi and American forces deployed in a joint security station in Baghdad — an integral part of the new strategy. We held a news conference to discuss what we saw: positive signs, underreported in the United States, that are reason for cautious optimism.

I observed that our delegation “stopped at a local market, where we spent well over an hour, shopping and talking with the local people, getting their views and ideas about different issues of the day.” Markets in Baghdad have faced devastating terrorist attacks. A car bombing at Shorja in February, for example, killed 137 people. Today the market still faces occasional sniper attacks, but it is safer than it used to be. One innovation of the new strategy is closing markets to vehicles, thereby precluding car bombs that kill so many and garner so much media attention. Petraeus understandably wanted us to see this development.

I went to Iraq to gain a firsthand view of the progress in this difficult war, not to celebrate any victories. No one has been more critical of sunny progress reports that defied realities in Iraq. In 2003, after my first visit, I argued for more troops to provide the security necessary for political development. I disagreed with statements characterizing the insurgency as a “few dead-enders” or being in its “last throes.” I repeatedly criticized the previous search-and-destroy strategy and argued for a counterinsurgency approach: separating the reconcilable population from the irreconcilable and creating enough security to facilitate the political and economic solutions that are the only way to defeat insurgents. This is exactly the course that Petraeus and the brave men and women of the American military are pursuing.

The new political-military strategy is beginning to show results. But most Americans are not aware because much of the media are not reporting it or devote far more attention to car bombs and mortar attacks that reveal little about the strategic direction of the war. I am not saying that bad news should not be reported or that horrific terrorist attacks are not newsworthy. But news coverage should also include evidence of progress. Whether Americans choose to support or oppose our efforts in Iraq, I hope they could make their decision based on as complete a picture of the situation in Iraq as is possible to report.

Be sure to read the entire op-ed here.

Hat Tip: California Conservative.

On our sidebar, right under the Newspaper Rack and just above the Playhouse ad, is a straw poll hosted by Pajamas Media.

Please click on the ad and cast your ballot for your favorite Democrat and favorite Republican in the straw poll.

You can vote only once a week and only from one site. If you’ve voted this week on another site you will not be able to vote again on this site. After voting you can check our “precinct’s” votes and check all votes.

Our precinct currently has no votes because I already voted on another blog.

Now don’t vote for the weakest candidate in the other party, but vote for the one you think is the most ideal candidate for each party.

Mitt Romney, a candidate I could never support BTW, was in the Cuban part of Miami the other day, but got into some trouble when he tried to speak Spanish to the Cuban exiles.

People chuckled when presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a Mormon raised in Michigan and elected in Massachusetts, bungled the names of Cuban-American politicians during a recent speech in Miami.
But when he mistakenly associated Fidel Castro’s trademark speech-ending slogan — Patria o muerte, venceremos! — with a free Cuba, listeners didn’t laugh. They winced.

Castro has closed his speeches with the phrase — in English, ”Fatherland or death, we shall overcome” — for decades.

”Clearly, that’s something he was ill-advised on or didn’t do his homework on,” said Hialeah City Council President Esteban Bovo. “When you get cute with slogans, you get yourself into a trap.”

Romney’s fumble demonstrates the potential snags for state and national politicians trying to navigate the Cuban-American community of South Florida.

I think the bigger question is when are we going to stop being hyphenated Americans?

Most conservative Republicans I know are hoping and praying former Senator Fred Thompson will run for president.

He is a classic conservative and satisfies most of the base moreso than his possible competitors who have already announced.

In this Jonathan Fund opinion piece we get a glimpse of Thompson’s ideas about our country.

But Mr. Thompson appears serene about all the speculation swirling around him. “Those running are all good guys, and would be good presidents,” he says leaning back in a recliner. “But there are truly vital issues–from the looming entitlement crisis to nuclear proliferation–I’m not afraid to talk about. Lots of people have such a low regard for politicians that they’re open to a campaign that would be completely different.”

So how would a possible Thompson campaign be distinctive? “Politics is now one big 24-hour news cycle, but we seem to spend less time than ever on real substance,” he muses. “What if someone harnessed the Internet and other technologies and insisted in talking about real issues in more depth than consultants would advise? What if they took risks with their race in hopes that the risks to our children could be reduced through building a mandate for good policy?”

Children are a lot on Mr. Thompson’s mind–especially his own. In 2002 he lost his daughter after she failed to come out of a drug-overdose-induced coma. Already frustrated with the Senate’s endless maneuvering over minutiae, he decided to retire at age 60 only two months later and change his life. In June of that year he married his second wife, Jeri (his first marriage at age 17 ended amicably in divorce in 1985). In 2003 they had their first child (a second was born last November).

“Within the space of a year and a half, I experienced the ultimate tragedy and the ultimate happiness,” Mr. Thompson sighs. “I count my blessings, and I have a real focused sense of purpose now.”

That brings us to some of the knocks critics have about his possible parachute drop into the “Survivor 2008″ competition. Bluntly put, Fred Thompson had a reputation for being lazy in wanting to do the political chores that come with office. People openly question if he has “the fire in the belly” to really make a serious race.

“They used to say I moved slowly,” he chuckles. “But I move deliberately. I won every one of my races by more than 20 points in a state Clinton carried twice.”

But what about his well-known reputation for dating up a storm as a bachelor senator in Washington in the 1990s? “I plead guilty,” he says. “But everyone I knew is still a friend, and if somehow they aren’t I guess we’d hear about it. I’m happy with my life partner and children now.”

…

The next president, according to Mr. Thompson, needs to exercise strong leadership “and get down in the weeds and fix a civil-service system that makes it too hard to hire good employees and too hard to fire bad ones.” He doesn’t offer specifics on what to do, but notes the “insanity” of the new Congress pushing for the unionization of homeland security employees only five years after it rejected the notion in the wake of 9/11. “Should we tie ourselves up in bureaucratic knots with the challenges we may have to face?” he asks in wonderment.

The challenges, he says, are numerous. On Iraq, he admits “we are left with nothing but bad choices.” However, he says the “worst choice” would be to have Osama bin Laden proven right when he predicted America wouldn’t have the stomach for a tough fight. The costs of Iraq have been high, but they could be even higher “if we have another stain on America like that infamous scene from Saigon 1975 in which our helicopters took off leaving those who supported us grabbing at the landing skids.”

He’s blunt, he’s amicable and as far as I know he’s honest. With the current crop of candidates in both parties he stands head and shoulders above them all.

Go read the entire article.

I’m a few days late and a few dollars short, but finally we have this blog up and I can express my opinion on the possibility of Fred Thompson running for president.

Of all the announced Republican candidates he’s the one I can get behind and support the most.

I remember him from the Watergate hearings when he was the minority counsel on the Senate Committee. He struck me as very thoughtful (it may have been his pipe), was the one who encouraged former Sen. Howard Baker to ask the famous question, “What did the president know and when did he know it?”, was the one who found out from Butterfield there was a taping system in the Oval Office, and let the chips fall where they may.

He is pro-life, fiscally conservative and seems to be the ideal candidate. Unfortunately, or maybe not, many people today think of him only as an actor on “Law and Order”.

I urge you to do a search on his name and take a look at his record as a politician and attorney. He’s worth taking a second, third and fourth look and if he runs I would say he gets my vote in the primary as of now.