South Carolina Debate Review

I went into the debate last night with a preference for Mitt Romney, a good general opinion of Newt Gingrich, and a slightly bad taste in my mouth regarding Rick Santorum and Rick Perry. I have long thought that Ron Paul is quite extreme and that his ideas are radical, but I have several friends who are so ardently supportive of him, that I decided to watch the debate with an open mind about his ideas, and form a fresh opinion.

My conclusions after the debate: I still prefer Mitt Romney. I feel that his work in the private sector and in government give him the experience that is most relevant to improving the economy and increasing jobs. I also feel that he has a good record for getting conservatives and liberals to agree and work together to get things done, which Congress really needs right now. I also think he is the candidate who is in the best position to defeat Obama, which is the most important factor to me. Finally, in spite off all the criticism surrounding the Super PAC ads, I feel that Romney has been the least critical and antagonistic toward the other candidates, even when he has not been in the lead. I don't appreciate when they play dirty. However, I must mention that I strongly disagree with his statements about the National Defense Authorization Act. I certainly hope we would never have a president who would abuse these powers, by why would we want  to pass legislation that would make it so easy to so? Too late, I guess - it's already done. But in spite of that, I hope Romney wins and I think he has a chance. Nine months ago, I said he didn't have a chance, because I thought America would never elect a Mormon. Perhaps we have gotten past that.

But I was also impressed with Gingrich, Santorum, and Perry. I felt that Gingrich won the debate, hands down, and would be a wonderful debater against Obama. He is also extremely smart, has a huge amount of experience in Congress, and has some very good ideas (although when it came to the Social Security issue, I agreed with Rick Santorum, as much as I would LOVE to see Gingrich's private account idea implemented at some future date). However, I think Gingrich is arrogant, which could be a problem if he won't take advice from anyone else, and I don't really like him that much as a person. I think Romney would inspire a better sense of leadership.

I also got a better impression of Santorum and Perry than before, and came to the following conclusion: I would be happy to vote for any of these four men. I feel that they all have positive things to offer, and all of them would do a MUCH better job of improving our economy, reducing the national debt, implementing effective foreign policy, heading up health-care reform (or un-reform?), and controlling the borders than President Obama has done. 

My opinions of Ron Paul are . . . yet to be determined. Some of the things he says have seemed to make no sense to me, but after some enlightening explanations of his views by a good friend (thank you!), I am willing to keep an open mind. Unfortunately, he is not a good debater, and it seems like one has to have a prior knowledge of his views to understand his arguments in the debates. So I am going to try to obtain that knowledge and see if what he says makes more sense to me in the upcoming months.