OPINION: The Fox Debate, Another View

Sub­mit­ted by George McClellan 

Fox’s Bret Baier is a fair enough debate host but he’s not con­ser­v­a­tive. In the 2020 elec­tion when ear­ly on he announced that Ari­zona went for Biden, I knew at once he was lurk­ing in the shad­ow of the evil ones. There is evil in this world and evil has a ten­den­cy to hide in plain sight. Accord­ing­ly, I saw last night’s Fox News Repub­li­can debate as an exer­cise in dis­sim­u­la­tion, skirt­ing America’s real prob­lems, an old Demo­c­rat trick, to get Repub­li­can wannabe’s squab­bling about non­sense issues of no prac­ti­cal impor­tance to Amer­i­can dilemma. 

There was not one debate word about America’s social and eco­nom­ic decline, or Joe’s econ­o­my destroy­ing ille­gal immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy, or the ascen­dan­cy of Marx­ist cul­tur­al­ism in our schools cur­ricu­lums, or Joe Biden’s woe­ful exec­u­tive order pol­i­cy, or the immi­nent mil­i­tary dan­gers Chi­na rep­re­sents. Not a men­tion of our own declin­ing mil­i­tary enlist­ments over the impo­si­tion of per­vert trans­gen­derism in the ranks. Nei­ther was the issue of Biden’s open bor­der pol­i­cy men­tioned let alone debat­ed. Yet the issue of abor­tion was. Why go there when abor­tion is no longer a fed­er­al issue? To give Democ­rats and their media acolytes, script with which to attack Repub­li­cans. How about the proxy war we’re con­duct­ing with Rus­sia over Ukraine? It’s dri­ving both Amer­i­ca and Rus­sia into near bank­rupt­cy. Who ben­e­fits by ren­der­ing both super pow­ers as beg­gar states, the New World Order? No one asked what the end cost will be, but more impor­tant­ly, why? Not one debate ques­tion about ener­gy pol­i­cy was posit­ed from from Bret or Martha yet it’s the pri­ma­ry eco­nom­ic issue that can restore Amer­i­c­as eco­nom­ic engine to pro­vide pros­per­i­ty for all, as Trump did. What are the GOP’s goals? Were they on dis­play last night or were we watch­ing a uni-par­ty try­ing to stay relevant? 

Hav­ing said all that, I see three who will not make the cut. I do not demean any of these three because they were artic­u­late, smart and appeared basi­cal­ly knowl­edge­able. It is the gov­er­nors of Arkansas and North Dako­ta and unfor­tu­nate­ly, Sen­a­tor Tim Scott. I like Tim Scott but Tim sound­ed like a politi­cian telling us what he thought we want­ed to hear. I don’t care about his poor roots, mine were poor too and like him, I escaped it too. I reck­on they’re build­ing the log cab­in he was born in. Suc­cess­ful pres­i­dents have at least been gov­er­nors with track records, gen­er­als or bil­lion­aire devel­op­ers like Trump. 

Nik­ki Haley sur­prised me more that any­one with her pit bull attack against that fast talk­ing, Indi­an-Amer­i­can Vivek Ramaswamy. I’m not at all enchant­ed by some­one who talks so fast and so loud you can’t get a word of con­tra­dic­tion in to have a debate. When Nik­ki cor­rect­ly point­ed out that Vivek had no expe­ri­ence in for­eign affairs “and it shows,” he didn’t hear her because he was try­ing to out shout her. It was like plung­ing a red hot nee­dle into his eye because she was cor­rect and has the real time expe­ri­ence to say so with­out con­tra­dic­tion. Whether she was real­ly good enough is anoth­er ques­tion but Nik­ki made one attack against Don­ald Trump. In the end she’ll have to if she expects to unseat him. 

DeSan­tis did what he had to do, set the para­me­ters as he sees them for the Party’s future under his lead­er­ship. He high­light­ed his own pos­i­tive polit­i­cal achieve­ments in pre­vent­ing the State of Flori­da from going com­plete­ly “woke.” DeSan­tis’ cre­den­tials as well as being a suc­cess­ful gov­er­nor, include his mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence serv­ing as a lawyer assigned to a Seal team oper­a­tion in the Mid­dle East. 

Mike Pence came off as a con­tentious pho­ny. I hear John Kasich there and I just can’t believe that Pence didn’t real­ly under­stand how the 2020 elec­tion was manip­u­lat­ed and do what the con­sti­tu­tion allowed, to chal­lenge the count. 

No dis­cus­sion can be com­plet­ed with­out Gov­er­nor Chris Christies input. I thought his mis­sion was to destroy Don­ald Trump but no, I think he heard screwy ideas about for­eign pol­i­cy vis‑a vis Tai­wan and Israel from Vivek Ramaswamy that alarmed him enough so that he took his eyes off Trump and went after the youth­ful Ramaswamy. 

Last, but not least was no debate about Joe Biden’s dis­as­trous Afghanistan pull out that ruined any trust our allies might have had in Amer­i­c­as ’future sup­port or how each would restore Amer­i­c­as posi­tion as a trust­ed leader in world affairs. Evil is every­where and It has to be fought! 

Remem­ber, free­dom is the goal, the Con­sti­tu­tion is the way. Now, go get ‘em! (24Aug23)