This thread is your opportunity to post comments on the second (9PM eastern time) Repbulican candidates’ debate, in real time as the debate occurs. I might or might not find the stomach to participate.
Keep in mind the guidelines I posted yesterday:
I will have zero tolerance for comments that contribute nothing to the enterprise. In other words, anything of the form “Ha ha! I knew so-and-so was an idiot” will be deleted as soon as they appear. Ideally, all comments will contain food for thought. Bonus points for pointing out subtle self-contradictions. If you insist on posting pure insults, they should at least be hilarious.
Now have at it.
Trump: “in trade, we lose to Mexico; we lose to China”. In other words, he doesn’t understand that trade is win-win.
Trump said no one has brought up illegal immigration till he did?? really?
Kasich completely failed to answer the question about government expansion. Question (paraphrased): “How will Republican voters know you will not use the St. Peter mandate to expand government?” Answer: “My Medicaid expansion worked.” In other words, we can rely on Kasich to expand government, if elected.
Walker getting questions about abortion and immigration — I wish they’d ask him about public unions.
Cruz on immigration: “If they come legally, great”. Oh! So he’ll support legalization?
Glad to hear that Trump understands that a trade deal is not always a good deal.
Huckabee wants to keep social security in its current form, and also convert the income tax system to a consumption tax. Those are not compatible and he gives no clue how to reconcile the two.
walker’s plan for iran: impose harsher sanctions *and convince our allies to do the same*. ummmm…..how, exactly?
putting content aside and judging style alone: christie and huckabee really stand out, i think.
MOderator suggesting in question to Bush that there’s some conflict between opposing govt support for Planned Parenthood and supporting private contributions to it. !?!?!?!?!?!?!
trump changed his mind on abortion because he observed a child, originally marked for abortion, who was not aborted and turned out well. So … until he saw an example of this for himself, he hadn’t realized this sometimes happens?
walker asked about what is “the civil rights issue of our time”. i wish he’d said it’s the assault of the public unions on the civil rights of the taxpayers.
incidentally, i think the moderators are doing great.
@Steve,
I’m curious what your position on immigration is now.
Completely free immigration has huge downsides – there are between 2 and 4 billion people who might currently benefit from emigrating to the US, so you’d have a flood of something like 50-100 million (mostly uneducated and non-English speaking) immigrants p.a. which would continue until conditions in the US have become so horrible for new immigrants as to approach conditions in the various African countries torn by famine and civil war.
Any attempts by the US to improve the domestic situation through investments in public order, education, infrastructure and social services would immediately trigger a new wave of immigration until the natural equilibrium state of misery is restored.
Public investments in improving the public sphere are rendered pointless, and crime would be uncontrollable.
In the absence of restrictions, mass immigration continues until being a criminal in the US is no longer significantly more attractive than being a criminal in, say, the Democratic Republic of Congo.
What are your views on these problem and do you still advocate unrestrained immigration?
And it’s over. Lots of good moments. These are strong candidates.
Agreed on the moderators and Trump on abortion. He’s clearly prevaricating due to flip-flopping for political purposes. Missed the Walker question.
@Advo,
You are viewing each immigrant as a net cost. That is the wrong way to look at it. Immigrants are on average a net benefit.
On style, Rand comes across much better than his father. I was pleasantly surprised. His closing bit was particularly good.
@HenriHein:
You didn’t address any of the points I made. What do you imagine is the equilibrium condition resulting from the annual immigration of 50 million extremely impoverished, uneducated non-English speakers into the US?
Submitted on 2015/08/06 at 9:14 pm
Trumps attack on political correctness resonates. You cannot have a debate if an off hand comment can kill a candidate.
Landsburg: “incidentally, i think the moderators are doing great.”
I agree. I wish we had this in my country.
The last round of questions about God made me cringe though.
I wonder why people like Donald Trump so much though. I think the others were actually more concrete in what they said, which is odd since they are professional sophists. I don’t know if it is his silly trade talk that is appealing to people, or if it is the fact he looks more authentic than the others. Of all of them, Trump acts more like the guy next door. The Cruz guy in particular would blatantly fail the Turing test.
Steve L. @ #12:
“the civil rights issue of our time”: the assault of the public unions on the civil rights of the taxpayers.
I’ll be stealing this, thank you.
I wonder why Rand Paul don’t ask the voters if they really want to send more US soldiers to the middle east to killed and maimed.
Submitted on 2015/08/06 at 9:17 pm | In reply to Floccina #20
Floccina: Agreed.
Submitted on 2015/08/06 at 9:24 pm
Bush basically acknowledging that illegal immigration is on net a good thing, then talking about how he’s going to stop it.
Submitted on 2015/08/06 at 9:25 pm
Trump totally ignoring request for evidence re Mexico.
Submitted on 2015/08/06 at 9:33 pm
Rubio: “This is the most generous country in the world when it comes to immigration.” As if there’s something generous about letting people come here and trade with us.
Submitted on 2015/08/06 at 9:40 pm
Christie said “That is a completely ridiculous answer” just as I was thinking “What a shame that nobody will point out that that’s a completely ridiculous answer.” He was great.
Submitted on 2015/08/06 at 9:43 pm
Bush seems to be stumbling on Iraq question.
Submitted on 2015/08/06 at 9:45 pm
Wow, did I get that right? Did Cruz say he wants to put someone in a USA prison for 5 years (at a cost of $40,000/year) for being caught in the country illegally twice? More than a little excessive!
Submitted on 2015/08/06 at 9:48 pm
Trump: No answer on why he changed his mind on single-payer. But he’s right that Rand Paul was apparently not paying attention.
Submitted on 2015/08/06 at 9:51 pm
huckabee: we can get rid of the irs if we tax consumption, not income. i’m all for taxing consumption, not income, but you’re still going to need an enforcement agency.
Submitted on 2015/08/06 at 9:52 pm
carson: if you make 10 billion, you pay a billion; if you make ten dollars, you pay a dollar — that way everyone is treated equally. what’s “equal” about paying a billion times more than your neighbor?
Submitted on 2015/08/06 at 10:00 pm
The questions they are showing from the voters show ignorance. One woman asked how can you make me feel safe in my country again. The real answer is you are safer than you have ever been in the USA but a politician has to say something like we will go wipe out ISIS and/or read more emails search more bags at the airport.
Submitted on 2015/08/06 at 10:09 pm
Christie wins this debate, I think.
Submitted on 2015/08/07 at 1:53 am
Re Steve at 9.52pm #33
Or, flipping it around, “what’s equal about being left with nine billion times the net income of your neighbour?”.
Submitted on 2015/08/06 at 10:39 pm
They are a rather negative group.
@Advo,
I did not address your other points, because they are all premised on the “immigrants is a net cost, or disadvantage” assumption. Once you fix your premise, you will see that your other points are invalidated. Take social services, which you mention as a concern. The additional taxes an immigrant pays improves the public finances around social services. In fact, massive immigration is one of the few plausible ways to finance the entitlement spending at the Federal level over the coming generations.
The “50 million immigrants a year” number is a straw-man scare tactic. It’s exactly like the environmentalist “40,000 extinctions a year” number. It’s made up out of whole cloth. In terms of the relative immigration rate when borders were open, 1907 was the record year. We saw 1.2 million immigrants in that year, out of a world population of 1.8 billion. Extrapolating from that, I can see how you can get to 5 million, and that is as a max. There is no way you will see 50 million immigrants in one year.
About the debate, I was disappointed with Ted Cruz. I forgot all of what he would do his first day in office, but on that shortlist was Planned Parenthood. After discussing issues like the economy, terrorism and health-care, Planned Parenthood is his priority? In general, the issues he decided to talk about on open-ended questions seemed strange.
The immigration situation in the US in 1907 and 2015 is vastly different.
In 1907, the US was itself in many ways a third-world nation, and a highly racist one at that.
Before the New Deal, there was little in the way of public infrastructure or public services, and a substantial part of the population (particularly in the black rural south) was chronically malnourished (not to mention abused).
In other words, the improvement in the living standard an uneducated immigrant from impoverished African and other non-European countries could expect from emigrating to the US in 1907 was MUCH, MUCH LOWER than it is today.
In addition, in 1907, there was neither internet nor TV, which today show people everywhere what life can be like, and which have been a great driver of popular discontent and migration movements in poor countries.
Because of these factors, in the absence of immigration restrictions, immigration today would be on a wholly different scale.