Saturday, January 21, 2012

GOP Debates To Date The Loser? The Softball Tossing Media!

          With polls almost closed in South Carolina and numerous debates completed of the candidates for the GOP nomination there is one big loser in the field.  The loser is the media for never asking tough questions and for lobbing softballs at the candidates.

          Other than Ron Paul all of the candidates feel a need to show their toughness against Iran and to threaten to use military force against Iran in order to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons.  When were any of the candidates asked how they were would pay for the actual cost of any such military option when they all want to cut taxes which reduces revenues is constant dollars?  A reduction in overall revenues will meant that in order to finance the cost of the military action there would have to be cuts in other federal programs.  What programs would they cut to pay for attacking Iran?

          All of the Republican candidates want to cut short term deficit spending to revive the economy.  That has been tried in Ireland and has failed.  Ireland has shown that governmental austerity leads to a shrinking and not and expansionary economy.  What economic model are they using to determine that governmental austerity in a recession will revive an economy?

          A Nobel Prize winning Keynesian economist has argued that the amount of spending in the Obama stimulus was too small and that there were too many tax cuts in it.  These arguments were made prior to the enactment of the stimulus plan and not a 20-20 hindsight critic.  What economic model are the Republican’s relying on to show that a sufficiently large enough stimulus with more spending and less tax cuts would not have helped the economy?

          These are policy questions that should have been asked of the candidates but were not.  Instead we had to hear meaningless questions about what the candidates would be doing if not debating in New Hampshire on a Saturday in January or about how a candidate treated his ex-wives.  Maybe they will be asked in a future debate, but I doubt it.

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