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CNN Tea Party Debate results

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PGA and politicians take note! And everyone else, consider taking out some insurance.

Last night, CNN and the Tea Party Express hosted their first Republican primary debate. Herewith the results of the CNN Tea Party Debate.

CNN Tea Party Debate prizes

Transcripts (Parts One, Two, Three and Four) come from Politisite.com.

Disclaimer: your editor apologizes to the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine for using two “awards” that it makes each year to a teacher and a student. Readers may guess which award goes to whom.

The Shovel Award

This goes to the man who can “shovel it on” with the greatest eloquence. Winner: Mitt Romney. He made you want to cry out in outrage, “That’s a lie!” But he never batted an eyelash nor missed a trick.

The Bucket Award

Governor Rick Perry joins the CNN Tea Party Debate

Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) addresses the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference. Photo: Gage Sizemore, CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic License.

This goes to the man who can catch it with the greatest dexterity. Winner: Rick Perry. Everyone ganged up on him (even Michele Bachmann). Sometimes he deserved it—like when he had to defend ordering teen-age girls to get a vaccine against an STD (see below). Or when he tried to defend his “Texas DREAM Act.” At other times, he didn’t. But he handled himself very well. His defense of his Social Security position was brilliant. He alone (except maybe for Dr. Paul) was willing to give the American public a hard dose of the truth. (Hint: it is a Ponzi scheme.)

The Of Thee I Zing Award

This award takes its name from Laura Ingraham’s book of that title. It goes to the man who fired the “zingers” that struck home most often. Winner: Newt Gingrich. At every opportunity, he delivered a good one-liner. For example, Wolf Blitzer asked Gingrich whether it was “fair” for “oil companies” to get lots of “government handouts.” His reply:

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You know, I thought for a second, you were going to refer to General Electric, which has paid no taxes.

The president of General Electric is one of Barack H. Obama’s cronies, and everyone knows it.

The Comeback Award

This goes to the person who made up the most lost ground. Winner: Michele Bachmann. She made up, at the CNN Tea Party debate, for the bad press she got after the “submission question” at Ames. She also gained the ground that the MSNBC moderators did not let her gain in Simi Valley.

Best Throw-back of a Red Herring

Ron Paul at CPAC. He stepped in it at the CNN Tea Party debate.

Ron Paul speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, February, 2010. Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic License

This goes to Dr. Ron Paul. It was also Wolf Blitzer’s low point as moderator of the CNN Tea Party Debate. “But—but—but Mr. Congressman, should society let an uninsured man die?” What tripe. Blitzer knows that the rule on a person who cannot pay for medical treatment is: treat him first, and collect from him later on. And Dr. Paul reminded everyone sharply that the members of a sound society know how to take care of themselves. (Even the Bible, though it tells everyone to help out with a really big load that no man can carry alone, also tells each man to carry his own regular-sized load.)

On the other hand…

The Order of the Lead Balloon

This also goes to Ron Paul. Rick Santorum challenged him about Jack Hunter’s blog post blaming America for the September 11 attacks. And Paul’s answer was an unmitigated disaster. First he said that if America did not stop offending the radicals, she would expect more of the same. Then he repeated Osama bin Laden’s grievances against the United States. When Paul got to the part about American support for the Republic of Israel, the crowd drowned him out with boos. And when he went on with what he had to say, he made a statement (about “hundreds of thousands of Iraqis” dying at American hands) that was simply not true.

A broken clock tells the correct time twice a day. Paul showed that even the best-designed clock can fail if one spring fails.

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The Order of the Gadfly

Michele Bachmann. She made up lost ground at the CNN Tea Party Debate.

Michele Bachmann poses before an American flag. Photo: United States House of Representatives

One hardly need describe this award. Winner: Michele Bachmann. She attacked Mitt Romney on his hypocrisy on running socialized medicine in Massachusetts while campaigning to repeal it nationwide. Likewise, she attacked Rick Perry for (by executive order, yet!) ordering adolescent girls to accept a vaccine against Human Papilloma Virus, a sexually transmitted disease. With regard to that last: everyone knows that the best protection against any STD is a scrupulous chaperon.

The Life of the Party

This one goes to Herman Cain. No matter what he said—and he has some good ideas and better perspectives—he said it with his trademark smile. Even his voice smiles. And without him, the CNN Tea Party Debate might have turned into a knock-down drag-out brawl.

The Scapegoat

Who else but the man now holding office as President, Barack H. Obama. He took the worst abuse of anyone, though he was not even present. The one thing that everyone agreed on: whichever of them wins, all eight will pull together to make sure that Barack H. Obama will fail of re-election.

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Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.

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Dante

So when Osama bin Laden said he was inspired to attack the Twin Towers after Israel destroyed the towers of Beirut in the 1982 Lebanon War, he was lying? That didn’t actually bother him and his true motivation for attacking America was because he hates our freedom?

The Clinton sanctions killed an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children. Madeleine Albright admitted to this when pressed in an interview, but she said it was justified. I think that counts as “thousands of Iraqis.”

Like Perry, Paul unabashedly speaks the truth no one wants to here. Just because the Tea Party is too jingoistic doesn’t make it any less true.

Dante

The Bible says literally the same thing. It tells you to kill (usually by stoning) anyone who isn’t a Christian (Deuteronomy 13:7-12, Deuteronomy 17:2-5, Deuteronomy 13:13-19, 2 Chronicles 15:12-13).

Most old religious texts tell you to kill anyone of an opposing religion.

So let’s say the Chinese imposed a bunch of sanctions that ended up killing 500,000 American children (more than 150 times the number of people who died on 9/11). Would you want revenge against the Chinese because they killed mercilessly killed hundreds of thousands of your own people or because the Bible tells you to kill people who aren’t Christians?

Dante

Taken out of context? It explicitly tells you to kill non-Christians! If you can arbitrarily say those quotes are “taken out of context” why can’t Muslims? In fact, I did you one better. I cited which passages in the Bible command you to kill non-Christians. Can you cite which passage in the Qur’an tells you to kill non-Muslims?

Anyway, this is a waste of time. You didn’t answer my hypothetical. My point was that people don’t want to kill someone because of a different religion, whether they’re Christians or Muslims. bin Laden was a murderer and he deserved to die, but that doesn’t excuse the crimes the US has inflicted against the Middle East for the past 60 years.

Myke

The fact of the matter is you are both right. Yes those Bible references are outdated, and you can tell from the context. So too, however, are the “commandments to kill” found in the Q’uran. Times have most certainly changed since the writing of both texts, and followers of both religions know this. Now to the real point, which is that we have committed crimes in the Middle East, it is NOT our business, and they had their reasons for attacking us. If someone killed your wife and you shot them in the head, I think you are guilty of murder. I don’t agree with murder. But I do think that THE REASON YOU KILLED THEM IS BECAUSE THEY KILLED YOUR WIFE. Freaking people act like America can do no wrong, and everything we’ve ever done was for the right reasons and the betterment of humanity… Get a clue..

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