Watched some snatches of the ABC GOP debate Saturday - as much as I could stand, which wasn't much.  What a dismal field; whoever the Dems put up will have to screw up pretty badly to avoid winning by a landslide.  (Unlike in Sunday's Fox set-to, Ron Paul was not excluded - but the only remaining palatable candidates who participated in earlier debates - Keyes and Hunter - naturally, were locked out)

 

The candidates were asked about gas prices, and not one mentioned allowing drilling in ANWR, 1,000 miles from the nearest igloo, where we've got about as much oil as Saudi Arabia (whose gas is something like 30¢ a gallon), and where the leftists in Congress continue to block drilling on "green grounds," in spite of copious evidence that the gas pipeline work in those parts actually improved the life of the toad toed caribou, or whatever.

And no mention of offshore drilling or any other kind stateside, other than a vague Giuliani reference to "domestic production," buried among his countless recommendations for tilting at windmills and sunbathing for salad oil.

 

And not a word about the recent Brazilian discovery of a petroleum motherlode so far beneath the ocean floor it couldn't be "fossil fuel," validating Jerome Corsi's premise (in Black Gold Stranglehold) that the stuff comes from deep within the earth and is practically inexhaustible.

Nothing about freeing our companies to exploit the God given oil resources that could liberate us from the communists and terrorists who are charging us usurious prices for the gunk.  Not even from that supposed great free enterprise advocate, Ron Paul.

 

No, instead we had to listen to John McCain's audition for an Oscar via his reverential portrayal of Al Gore on global hot air.  (He also reaffirmed his commitment to citizenship for invaders, so they can vote McCain's party into oblivion and America into a North American Union headed by a Chavez-style strongman.)

 

And when the subject turned to health care, every single "solution," however disguised, came down to some form of HillaryCareLite.  Mitt Romney's protests notwithstanding (he wouldn't, he said, mandate a federal law requiring everybody who could supposedly afford it to purchase health insurance whether they want it or not - he'd just twist the states' arms until they did so), he confirmed once and for all that he's indeed a hardcore socialized med maven (he's more parseworthy than even Bubba).

Nary a word came from anyone about malpractice award caps, without which doctors' insurance costs will remain out of control, unnecessary expensive coer-your-butt procedures will contunue to bolster bills, and health care costs will keep driving us inexorably (and by design) toward socialism.  Just a few short years ago this was the GOP position on this issue.  Then one sorry excuse for a feeeble attempt at "tort reform" failed and the goal posts were moved back another ten light years.
 

Later Paul reverted to his "America as Great Satan" spiel.  He actually had the nerve to aver that we bomb any country that doesn't do what we tell it to do.  (Can anybody cite one example where anything close to that ever happened?  Aren't we in process of surrendering what lilttle of God's green earth we have to the one worlders at the UN?)

What a bestower of aid and comfort upon our evil enemies!  I'm so sick of hearing this border fence opponent tell bald faced whoppers it wouldn't bother me a bit to see him tried for sedition.  (In the old days, say the early '40's, we'd have done that, and would have been right in so doing.)

 

But I'm no wearier of him than I am of the other five charlatans (with the slight exception - again - of Thompson, the only one who hasn't yet totally worn out his welcome with me, but give him time).

A question about core convictions unloosed an avalanche of meaningless platitudes from several of these impostors, most notably Romney and McCain, although Huckabee did make a passing relevant allusion to God given rights.  Thompson did better than some (focusing on the Constitution in a rambling, only semi-coherent statement), then Paul started out strong, admonishing the others to practice what they preach in this regard.  But he couldn't resist an awkward segue into his bull about Uncle Sap being the world's bully.

(You'll recall he has this view even of Vietnam, where he sees the Vietcong - capable of making Al Qaeda look like Al Schweitzer - as our innocent victims.  But then he sees Al Qaeda as our innocent victims, too, so at least he's consistent.)

The question actually produced the debate's highlight (okay, it was also fun to watch Rudy squirm and equivocate when he had to answer -courtesy of Thompson - to having taken the feds to court trying to overturn a '96 law against sanctuary cities - one he should have known everybody was going to ignore anyway).

But I digress.  As to core principles / guiding beliefs, we now know that:

- McCain and Romney have none (actually, we already knew that, especially in the latter case),
- Huckabee claims to have one (though his eight years as socialist governor of Arkansas give testimony to the fact that we don't have to worry about that belief influencing his governance),
- Thompson may have some, but he hasn't thought about them recently enough to be able to articulate them,
-Giuliani had published twelve campaign promises (that he thinks he can pass off as "core beliefs"), of which he can recollect about four or five, and
- Ron Paul's only guiding principle is that America is the one threat to the world's well being (we definitely already knew that).

At that point, I had to turn back to the NFL game...

I did flip over to the Democrats' lovefest during subsequent commercial breaks.  As usual, the main arguments were over who would make our government omnipotent the quickest and most thoroughly, and who could best approximate Ron Paul in causing our thousands of deaths in Iraq to have been in vain.

To paraphrase Irving Berlin, heaven help America.