An Old Hoosier's View of the GOP Debate

Well, it's been a while since I've stopped by here but my time has been pretty well occupied by important stuff like watching the Republican debate on the tube. I did this alone because Jackie just came right out and stole one of my lines by saying that before she'd watch a debate on the tube she'd choose to be buried up to her neck in sand beside an ant hill and have somebody pour honey over her head.
Now that seems a little extreme although along about halfway through this debate the thought did cross my mind. For one thing, nothing seems to change so if you've seen one debate you don't miss a thing by not watching the others although last night's was one of those You Tube debates. The idea behind them, I think, is to show the audience that those up on the stage doing the debating really aren't the most stupid people in the world. No sir, those asking the questions have them beat by a mile in that respect. Take this fellow who held up a Bible and wanted to know if all the debaters believed every word in it. That's all anyone would need to know about them, he said.
As might be expected, this threw them all into a tizzy. The former mayor didn't do too bad because he said some of those words were allegorical. The Baptist minister did even better when he said the Bible didn't really mean you should go off somewhere and pluck out your eye. A lot of us were in agreement about that.
But then it was the turn of the former governor of Massachusetts and as usual he hemmed and hawed around and everybody could see he was kind of shook up. The moderator would have none of it, though, and pinned the governor right to the mat by demanding to know if he believed every word in the book. By then the sweat was beginning to show and the governor looked around a little wild-eyed like he was hoping a bomb would go off or something like that to attract everybody's attention away from him. It didn't happen so a sickly smile showed up on the governor's face and he came right out and said yes. So right there with that one word he lost a couple of million votes although knowing how some people are, like the guy who asked the question in the first place, he probably picked up a few.
All in all it wasn't a good night for the governor. He replied to some questions by saying that as president he would consult the experts for the the answer. Now just about everybody knows presidents do that but folks kind of expect a candidate to at least pretend he has a mind of his own. And then he got pinned right to the mat again by a senator when the governor was asked how he felt about torturing prisoners and he said he'd consult the experts.
There was a congressman who stood at one end of the line and it took so long for the moderator to notice he was there I was beginning to wonder if he had got huffy and left the hall. Another congressman who is a little guy seems to have more sense than the rest of them put together but he comes across as Gomer Pyle with a brain. Then there's an actor who seemed to be in a fog for the first hour so he brought to mind Ross Perot's running mate who stood there on a stage and said, "Where am I, who am I?" much to the annoyance of Ross. That may have been overlooked by most folks because actors are used to having a script to read from.
Well, it was enlightening and all that but I was shaken up at the end when I realized that if forced to vote for somebody out of that bunch it would be a Southern Baptist minister who went on to be governor of Arkansas. That's enough to make an old Hoosier philosopher say, "I'd rather be buried up to my neck in sand and . . ."

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