Bipartisan Debate

I didn’t watch the Republican CNN/YouTube debate last night. But as retold by Rick Moran, it was an awful lot of Democratic activists asking questions to the Republican candidates. Not that Republicans shouldn’t have to answer questions from Democrats, of course – the President has to be the President of the whole country, which necessarily means leading and governing for the benefit of people who are not of the same party as you. But all the same, it is a primary debate and Moran is right – the purpose of the debate is to help Republicans make up their minds about who will be their standard-bearer, and questions from Democrats are of substantially less utility than questions from Republicans for that purpose.

Hmm. Maybe I should videotape a question for the Democrats the next time there’s one of these things. Here’s one: “Senator Clinton, as President would you relax national security screening standards so as to issue international student visas to college students the rates they were issued before 9/11?” Her well-coiffed head would explode trying to figure out the “popular” answer to that one; there are too many contradictory algorithms to permit an easy answer: “immigration = bad”, “students = good,” “national security = be a hawk!” “diplomatic exchanges = be a dove!” Argh! Does not compute! Does not compute! *POP!* fzzzzz….