Last week’s debate among the eight Republican contenders for their party’s presidential nomination proved that human performance usually improves with practice.
The topic was foreign affairs.
It featured a prolonged discussion of immigration policy and gave Newt Gingrich — who now leads in the polls — a chance to paint himself as a supporter of the failed George W. Bush immigration reform bill which would have allowed some of the milions of undocumented workers who have been in the U.S. for decades a legal way to stay.
Gingrich said he couldn’t see the U.S. breaking up families who had raised children here, held jobs, paid taxes, been contributing members of communities for years and deporting one or more of them because of a “crime” they committed maybe 25 years ago. Such people, he said, should be given legal residency — not citizenship — and allowed to stay.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney disagreed. Taking such action, he said, would be a magnet which would draw still more people to cross the borders illegally, depending on that new policy to allow them to stay.
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, said all such talk was beside the point. Sealing the border had to come first before reforming policies dealing with the undocumented who are already here.
Michele Bachmann took a hardline stand against all illegals, including children brought into the U.S. by their parents as infants.
GOV. PERRY said establishing a no-fly zone over Syria along with many other sanctions would help bring about regime change there and should be done. He also advocated sanctions against the bank of Iran. Ron Paul disagreed, saying the U.S. should mind its own business, adding that the last thing this country is another war to meddle in.
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who also was an ambassador to China, agreed with others on the stage that China was a long term threat to the U.S. but insisted in a passionate statement that the way to meet that threat was to tackle the weaknesses at home. We no longer believe in our institutions, he said. We have a Congress that can’t even agree on how to reduce the national deficit. We have a president who can’t unify the nation and whose leadership is coming under doubt abroad because other nations are alarmed at what they see as an increasingly dysfunctional United States of America.
Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum defended the unbending Republican opposition to any increase in taxes by stating that raising taxes would slow the economy and reduce employment. It doesn’t make sense, he said, to agree to a compromise which would, in effect, make the objective — stimulating the economy — more difficult to achieve.
Gingrich and Huntsman said cuts in defense spending had to be on the table as ways to reduce the deficit are considered. But Romney, Perry, Cain, Santorum and Bachmann were opposed to defense cuts. Only Ron Paul said the proposed cuts wouldn’t hurt the Pentagon but would only reduce its rate of growth.
EVEN THOUGH THE question-and-answer session lasted for two hours — minus commercial time — none of the well-thought-out questions were answered by all eight candidates because there wasn’t enough time to allow a genuine debate to occur.
That said, last week’s program was an improvement. There were only a few gross errors. The candidates handled themselves well. There were several one-on-one disagreements that showed where the speakers stood on important issues.
Huntsman had his first debate chance to display his broad knowledge of China and Pakistan and his understanding of how U.S. interests are intertwined with those of the rest of the world. Romney demonstrated his devotion to what has become the new Republican platform. Perry stood out as the most militaristic of the crew. Gingrich took reasoned stands, well stated.
The others, in my opinion, took more small steps toward the land of Also-Ran.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
