Republican Debate (9/22/11)

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Eric080 Posted: Thu, Sep 22 2011 11:36 PM

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A little nugget I saw posted on the "Ron Paul 2012" Facebook page:

Tonight: The opportunity FOX allowed each candidate to speak:
Romney– 16
Perry– 11
Bachmann– 9
Huntsman– 9
... Santorum– 9
Gingrich– 7
Cain– 7
Paul– 6
Johnson– 5

Huh.  Does Ron Paul even exist?  The number three candidate gets the eight-most time allotted.  That is absolutely ridiculous and I hope Fox News never hears the end of it.  I realize that with the 30-second rebuttals granted to each candidate that the frontrunners will get extra time to fend off attacks from the rest of them, but Paul isn't even being treated as second-tier seeing as how Huntsman and Santorum got 3 more minutes.

That said, I think Paul needs to explain his foreign policy better to those on the right who are unwilling to budge.  Gary Johnson may take some of the libertarian attention away from Paul, but two heads are usually better than one, if only for the psychological effect of reinforcing a viewpoint.  It's easier when your'e not the only one railing against defense spending (I could visualize the neocons squirming when Johnson brought up drastic cuts in the military budget).

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Michelangelo replied on Thu, Sep 22 2011 11:40 PM

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Doesn't anyone else love how they asked Johnson how he'd be a better candidate for libertarians than Paul and he responded that he didn't think he was?

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Eric080 replied on Thu, Sep 22 2011 11:46 PM

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I thought he was kind of ambivalent on that question.  I didn't come away from that with a discrete answer.

The good thing about Johnson getting into this debate is that he should be polling regularly above 1% now, so maybe this is what he needed to get his foot in the door and get invited to the remaining debates.  The shovel joke will at least score some popularity points, so that was a good calculation on his campaign's behalf.

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John James replied on Fri, Sep 23 2011 2:00 AM

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Here's my breakdown.  I think it's more accurate.

Again, count 1 tally as a full minute question and a half tally as a 30 second rebuttal, it went like this:

(Links to previous debate times)

This blew me away though....He's getting even less time in the debates than before, but look at the impeccable change in the way Hannity treats him:

this is just amazing

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Anarcho-libertarian replied on Sat, Sep 24 2011 3:41 AM

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Wow, that was amazing. I remember in '08 Ron Paul told Hannity at the end of one of these interviews, "You'll come around." I've kept that in mind ever since he said it and it looks like Hannity now admits he's 95% there!