Solutions Day & the PBS Debate Thoughts

Good evening!

It's been a busy evening in front of the old compy and the tube. Here are some thoughts.

To kick off the night we had Newt Gingrich and the kick-off of Solutions Day. Red State has a good handle of the whole thing as they had a few folks live blogging the even down at the Cobb Galleria. Very well done. I enjoyed every minute of it. Newt is a very brilliant man. Not only was the webcast available in Spanish but he als did a similar presentation in the Online world of Second Life. Don't ask me to tell you about that cause I really don't know. My computer doesn't have the memory or the graphics card to be able to get in there. However I do know it is immensely popular and including them in Solutions Day is absolutely brilliant!

The Solutions Day kickoff ended 5 minutes ahead of schedule (around 8:25 PM) so downstairs I went to do the dishes so I could be free for the next event of the evening, the PBS debate. I have some early thoughts on that.

- There was a very tight schedule since we were dealing with a network. I appreciate the pleasantries and the pomp and circumstance but all that ended up douing was rushing the end of the debate and keeping a few candidates fro not even answering the last question.

- Speaking of the last question - Why even ask a question that not all the candidates will have time to answer due to the constraints of the PBS schedule? That was stupid!

- Alan Keyes - Would you please stop screaming so much? You're giving me a headache. I must say that hearing that he is not invited to the debate in Michigan does not sit well with me. No matter how loud and obnoxious he is when he is screaming, he is a candidate and he deserves to be invited to debates. The inclusion of a man of color on the stage is definitely an asset for the GOP if there is a candidate that meets the qualification.

- this was the first televised debate that only one question was asked about Iraq. Finally they get it! There were questions about health-care for the first time and one on education (that was the last question that not all candidates got the pleasure of answering, which I still think was unfair).

- Mike did very well. He answered his questions with his usual class. There really wasn't room for jokes this time since everything felt so rushed. Who cares! Ron Paul was also impressive. Why? Because only one question was asked about Iraq. He scores points with me by default because of that. I think tonight was Brownback's best showing. He's still not on par with the other top-tiers though (and some of that was his communications skills). Brownback may have had the best line of the night at the very beginning asking the viewers to send a political message during the Primary and vote on the GOP side for one of the six who attended the debate tonight. I couldn't agree more!