# Republican Debate 2/6/16 **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [February 7, 2016, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376 "2016-02-07T01:37:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/81 "2016-02-08T13:22:46Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Ah, of course. Goes along with the meme that he has no idea what he’s doing. Other than the whole saving the country from the Bush meltdown thingy. No, we need to dispel this notion that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing… [squawk…whistle] We need to dispel this notion… ---
**Author:** ![Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barkis_is_Willin)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/82 "2016-02-08T15:11:38Z")
So yeah, Marco stumbled pretty significantly in this one. And to make matters worse it was early on in the debate. And worse yet, nobody else really had a bad showing, so his blunder really stuck out. Sure, Ben Carson is background noise, but that’s not new. Kasich and Jeb were better. Trump handled himself fine. Cruz wisely returned to his tactic of not leveling attacks on anyone - especially Trump. Christie was pretty good, obviously landed the blows to Rubio. Overall this debate was kind of bland, though. > [@drad\_dog](#): > > Why is it controversial for Maddow to moderate a debate, when Fox hosts debates on two different networks, and Ham is a questioner in this one? Is this a one way street? How can this be consistent with a putative left wing bias in media? Has Maddow moderated a debate? I know she hosted a Democratic candidate Q&A (I forget what they called the format). I don’t recall any controversy. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/83 "2016-02-08T15:36:22Z")
> [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](#): > > Has Maddow moderated a debate? I know she hosted a Democratic candidate Q&A (I forget what they called the format). I don’t recall any controversy. She and Chuck Todd did the last Dem debate. I thought they did an excellent job, as did the candidates. The mention of Maddow is enough for some Republicans to lose it. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/84 "2016-02-08T16:03:51Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > She and Chuck Todd did the last Dem debate. I thought they did an excellent job, as did the candidates. The mention of Maddow is enough for some Republicans to lose it. That was the best debate for either party in this cycle. Issue oriented, not a “let’s you and him fight” troll fest that have highlighted all previous debates. ---
**Author:** ![Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barkis_is_Willin)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/85 "2016-02-08T16:55:01Z")
Ah, I missed the last Dem debate. But having a moderator on your side and only two candidates probably does allow for more substance. Not that I think Maddow shouldn’t be a moderator for a Dem debate, I don’t care. I honestly don’t know if she’s strongly supporting Hillary over Bernie or vice versa, which would be the only potential problem. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/86 "2016-02-08T17:07:01Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > 1-Advocates defunding Planned Parenthood. > 2-Supported and signed a law making it illegal for rape crisis centers to point out to rape victims that if they become pregnant, abortion is an option. > 3-Advocates removing carbon emissions and coal-fired plants from the EPA and giving pollution control to the states. > 4-Signed a bill to do eliminate the state’s renewable energy program. > 5-Supports fracking in Ohio state parks and forests. > … IOW, I’m against pretty much everything he stands for, but unlike the others, he might actually be _competent_. Of course, given the first part of that sentence, that last part might not be a plus… ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/87 "2016-02-08T19:42:42Z")
[Simon Maloy writes:](http://www.salon.com/2016/02/08/marco_rubios_repetitive_extremism_yes_he_repeats_himself_and_what_comes_out_of_his_mouth_is_straight_up_bonkers/) > [@](#): > > It’s a deeply strange feature of politics that a candidate can be viewed as strong because he stays on message, but then come under withering fire because he never deviates from his message. But that’s where Rubio finds himself now, and all because he just couldn’t help himself and had to say over and over that we must “dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Barack Obama is undertaking a systematic effort to change this country.” For me, though, the mindless repetition is less bothersome than the actual substance of the talking point, which is borrowed from the talk-radio fever swamp and casts the sitting president as a an anti-American malefactor. > > If you’ve listened to a lot of conservative radio (or watched just a few seconds of Glenn Beck) then you’ve probably come across this theme. Each AM dial screamer has his own variation on the “Barack Obama is deliberately trying to undermine the United States” theory. Some peg it to the “Cloward-Piven strategy,” which maintains that Obama has constructed government programs with the intention that they’ll fail, which will spark societal upheaval and the downfall of American society. Others mindlessly attach Saul Alinsky’s name to everything the president does in order to give him a sheen of danger and radicalism. Dinesh D’Souza, the discredited felon, makes the insane argument that Obama is diminishing the country’s standing in the world out of deference to his father’s anti-colonial worldview. They’re all slightly different routes to the same destination: Obama is deliberately harming the country by targeting and destroying the things that make us uniquely “American.” > > It’s a dark, paranoid vision of the Obama presidency that sets up the twice-elected Democrat as a sort of supervillain whose policy achievements are rooted in malevolence. And here comes Marco Rubio, the emerging favorite of the Republican establishment, offering a very lightly sanitized version of this same lunatic message. See also [Robert Reich on “The Time-Loop Party.”](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/opinion/the-time-loop-party.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fpaul-krugman&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0) ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/88 "2016-02-08T20:10:47Z")
This is another example where both sides use the same rhetoric when talking among themselves. Just replace Obama with Bush and that’s what liberals were wondering for years. I don’t think it up ever bubbled up to any notable Dem politicians, though. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/89 "2016-02-08T20:14:27Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > This is another example where both sides use the same rhetoric when talking among themselves. Just replace Obama with Bush and that’s what liberals were wondering for years. I don’t think it up ever bubbled up to any notable Dem politicians, though. Few people exceed me in hatred of GWB, and even I never thought he was deliberately hurting the United States. And, I never heard that theory proposed by my fellow travelers on the left. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/90 "2016-02-08T20:23:04Z")
I don’t think you’ll find evidence of Democratic candidates for president in 2008 or 2004 saying anything as remotely inflammatory as what Rubio speaks of Obama today. I don’t recall anyone saying the Bush was intentionally trying to screw the pooch, more that he was personally incompetent or guided by the malevolent Dick Cheney. Even Cheney, as evil as he was, was not motivated by a desire to weaken the nation, rather he was out to line the pockets of Halliburton. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/91 "2016-02-08T20:46:03Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > Few people exceed me in hatred of GWB, and even I never thought he was deliberately hurting the United States. And, I never heard that theory proposed by my fellow travelers on the left. Ditto. I’m pretty active politically and I’ve never met anyone who believed this. I don’t even recall seeing it anywhere online although I’m sure there are a few on the lunatic fringe who believed it. Certainly I think GWB did things that were harmful to the country, but I don’t believe that harming the country was his goal. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/92 "2016-02-08T20:54:31Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [Simon Maloy writes:](http://www.salon.com/2016/02/08/marco_rubios_repetitive_extremism_yes_he_repeats_himself_and_what_comes_out_of_his_mouth_is_straight_up_bonkers/) > > See also [Robert Reich on “The Time-Loop Party.”](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/opinion/the-time-loop-party.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fpaul-krugman&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0) Very true, except for one thing - it’s not a theory so much as a rock-solid belief among many (millions, Im sure) that Obama is purposely trying to destroy/hurt America. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/93 "2016-02-08T20:55:26Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Very true, except for one thing - it’s not a theory so much as a rock-solid belief among many (millions, Im sure) that Obama is purposely trying to destroy/hurt America. Then he is incompetent, despite what Rubio says. America is thriving by most accounts. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/94 "2016-02-08T20:57:31Z")
But… but… what you guys are saying is that both sides did NOT do the same thing… but I thought it was a [del]God-given[/del] GOP-given fact that both sides DID always do the same things… Are y’all saying the GOP’s constant claim of “both sides do it” isn’t true???😕:eek: :p:D ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/95 "2016-02-08T21:00:07Z")
It’s not true and, if you think about it, it’s pretty pathetic that the Republicans find themselves having to argue that “they’re just as bad as us!” ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/96 "2016-02-08T21:12:03Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > Then he is incompetent, despite what Rubio says. America is thriving by most accounts. Yeah, but only if you ignore the most important metric, how much do I feel that America today represents the totally imaginary past I grew up with? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/97 "2016-02-08T21:23:24Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > This is another example where both sides use the same rhetoric when talking among themselves. Just replace Obama with Bush and that’s what liberals were wondering for years. I don’t think it up ever bubbled up to any notable Dem politicians, though. You mean, the same years when Pubs were constantly demanding of Dems, “Why do you hate America?!” ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/98 "2016-02-08T21:35:40Z")
> [@Snarky\_Kong](#): > > Yeah, but only if you ignore the most important metric, how much do I feel that America today represents the totally imaginary past I grew up with? You mean the one where a woman’s place was in the kitchen, colored people knew their place, and homosexuality was a disgusting perversion that was barely even discussed in polite company? That past, unfortunately, was quite real, but most sentient life forms in the U.S. are glad we moved past that. Some aren’t so crazy about the change. They don’t vote Dem. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/99 "2016-02-08T21:59:17Z")
I don’t remember liberals accusing Bush of deliberately trying to destroy America. I do recall many darkly warning that Bush and Cheney would suspend elections. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376/100 "2016-02-08T22:09:24Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > See also [Robert Reich on “The Time-Loop Party.”](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/opinion/the-time-loop-party.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fpaul-krugman&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0) That would be Paul Krugman. His point is that the entire Republican stage consists of folks who spout factually vacuous talking points, albeit generally at a higher level than the Marcobot. The litany is by now familiar: [ul] [li]Republicans claimed Bill Clinton’s tax increases on the rich would destroy the economy. Instead we got a record expansion. They claimed GWBush’s cuts would help. Instead we got mediocre job growth followed by the worst recession since WWII.[/li][li]They claimed Obamacare would destroy jobs. Fox media won’t report on the 5.7 million jobs gained since the law went into effect in Jan 2014, because their audience can’t handle facts.[/li][li] I might add that the US continues to spend more on its military than any other country _as well as the next 9 nations **combined** _. Anybody who whines about a weak US military has just disqualified themselves from eating at the adult’s table, never mind the Presidency. [/li][/ul] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-debate-2-6-16/745376.md?page=6)