Crowd at GOP debate ranks Mitt Romney, Ron Paul as favorites
When the Republican presidential debate began tonight, a crowd of about 400 people gathered at a watch party in Oakland University’s student center ranked Mitt Romney and Ron Paul as their favorites. |
Yet, as the debate went on, Newt Gingrich kept getting high marks from people for his answers, including from Paul Thomas, 35, of Rochester. |
Romney and Gingrich dominated the rankings – with each gaining big favorable numbers on a multiple questions. Also going strong were Ron Paul and Herman Cain.
|
According to an Oakland University poll taken right after the debate by those grading the candidates, Romney went from getting 25% of the 400 people in attendance to vote for him to 40%. Also making a big climb was Gingrich, who went from having 11% of the crowd’s support to 25% of the crowd. Read more at www.freep.com |
What to Watch for at Tonight’s Republican Debate
For all the carping about how there are too many Republican presidential debates, I’m actually looking forward to No. 11. It’s been more than three weeks since the gloves came off in CNN’s Las Vegas debate and the field has shifted significantly since then. Now there’s really only one thing dominating the GOP’s 2012 race and that’s Herman Cain’s potentially dubious sexual past. Here are five things to look for in CNBC’s debate tonight in Michigan: |
Who will go after Cain? So far Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are the only candidates who’ve gone negative on the embattled candidate. Bachmann slyly suggested that “this year we can’t have any surprises with our candidate,” and Santorum called on Cain to “be “forthcoming so that you are vetted.” Mitt Romney, looking to pick up Cain supporters and keep the rest of the field competing with each other, has simply said it’s a distraction — a sentiment Cain agreed with last night. But with blood in the water, will the others–Rick Perry? Newt Gingrich?–circle in for the kill? |
Gingrich, Cain Accept Tea Party Invite to Debate Fiscal Austerity
Well, it looks like the former House speaker will get his chance to reprise another famous chapter from history when he and fellow Georgian Herman Cain stage a contemporary version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates to talk Medicare and Social Security reform. |
During the last Republican presidential debate, Mr. Gingrich called for a Lincoln-Douglas style showdown with President Barack Obama should be come from behind to win the nomination. |
An organizer told NRO that the debate will be broken into a discussion over how to tame the three major entitlement programs – Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. |
Even at tea party debate, Perry likely to be on hot seat
The tea party movement is officially welcomed into the Republican mainstream on Monday as the first presidential debate sponsored by a tea party group takes place in Tampa, Fla. |
Monday night’s nationally televised encounter at the Florida State Fairgrounds, co-sponsored by the Tea Party Express and CNN, is likely to highlight the anti-government, anti-spending issues dear to the insurgent conservative movement. The debate also is likely to feature stepped-up attacks on the new front-runner in the GOP primary race, Rick Perry. |
The candidate most likely to take the offensive is Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who has been displaced as tea party Republicans’ favorite candidate by the Texas governor. And libertarian Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, will continue his verbal assault on Perry as a party-switching opportunist who once worked for Al Gore and has not been shy to use government power to suit his political purposes. |
Why The Tea Party Remains In Charge
Yet, in a style reminiscent of the Revolutionary war; totally outmanned by the Main Stream Media, and questions of their integrity by their “friends,” the Tea Party has survived, and thrived. According to a recent articles from The Washington Post and The Daily Beast, the Tea Party has won this debate/negotiation/compromise over the debt ceiling. This is a stunning revelation. The Tea Party has been maligned as uninspired and ignorant, its members attacked – verbally and physically! – and called racists and extremists. It was Sen. Reid who was saying that the Tea Party would fade away. |
For all of the Main Stream cloud cover and vicious and insulting attacks from elected leadership (including the president) the Tea Party controls the political and cultural debate in America. If it wasn’t for the Tea Party, there would have been no debate on the debt ceiling. No debate on the spending problem in the United States. No effort to make the attempts to fight the machine and make America a fiscally responsible nation. The Tea Party has forced America to have the conversation, and the MSM was unable to stop it. Yet the articles and the media spin on the Tea Party fail to pinpoint why the Tea Party is so effective, so strong and so entrenched. |
Americans are not drawn to the Tea Party because they are extremists or anti-government. This is a false premise, put forth by those who believe in insult, not investigation. The Tea Party are firm believers in government that is far smaller – in terms of dollars and scope. The Tea Party is not extremist, as there is nothing extreme about living within ones means. There is nothing extreme about the recognition that you can not spend your way into prosperity. There is nothing extreme about petitioning our government for a redress of grievances. Certainly, it would be folly for opposition Leftists to assert that utilization of the 1st Amendment is extreme….but they continue to be deluded by their false premises. |
Tea Party group to host first Twitter presidential debate
A Tea Party organization is hosting the fist presidential debate solely Through Twitter on July 20.
The debate will feature top Republican presidential candidates responding directly and in real time to questions sent in through Twitter.
The 90-minute event will unfold at 140Townhall.com between 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. EDT and is hosted by TheTeaParty.net.
Confirmed participants include Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), businessman Herman Cain, former Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.), Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.), former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.).
Candidates will be tweeting through their Twitter feeds in response to questions sent in from anyone with access to Twitter through @140townhall or email through
info@theteaparty.netThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
. |
Tea party tour audience likes Bachmann, Cain, Paul in debate
Political activists who attended an Iowa Tea Party event here Monday night gave mixed reviews to seven Republican candidates who participated in a presidential debate in New Hampshire. |
In a show of applause after they watched the debate on television at the Elks Club here, the loudest clapping went to Texas Rep. Ron Paul, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and businessman Herman Cain. No one applauded for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Read more at www.desmoinesregister.com |
Hell hath no fury like a Tea Party scorned
According to accounts from Tea Party groups in several states, since late March Republican Congressmen have been trying to manage expectations on the debate on the U.S. debt limit, by warning Tea Partiers that there would be “dire consequences” if America did not raise its debt limit. |
But the Tea Party is adamant that the Republicans win this debate and force massive cuts before they agree to raise the debt limit. This is what they worked hard for during the 2010 election campaign and they have no intention of compromising on spending cuts now. |
Tea Party anger now may be nothing compared to the fury that is likely to accompany a Republican failure to win major cuts in the debt limit debate – fury that Tea Partiers say will lead to primary challenges in 2012 for Republicans who do not make the grade. |
Obama differs with tea party
President Barack Obama praises the tea party movement for getting Americans engaged in politics, but he says he strongly disagrees with its views. |
Obama told The Associated Press on Friday that the tea party has forced important questions to the surface of political debate. They include how much government the nation can afford. |
Obama said it’s clear that he and tea party leaders differ sharply on answers to such questions. The interview took place in Chicago. |
CNN-tea party debate draws criticism
They have some things in common — the need to rebound from recent woes and to carve out identities against fierce competition — but CNN and the Tea Party Express would seem like unlikely candidates for a partnership. |
For CNN, the joint sponsorship seems to undermine the nonpartisan positioning it’s made its brand, linking it with a controversial conservative political action committee whose former chairman resigned after a series of race-baiting comments (including calling the proposed Lower Manhattan mosque a monument to worship “the terrorists’ monkey god”). |
For the Tea Party Express, the debate could damage its credibility with the tea party movement, whose followers have been leery of the mainstream media and of the Tea Party Express itself, which rival tea partiers blast as a GOP-linked slush fund. |
