All posts tagged "Republican Debate"

Republicans will flock to Florida Wednesday for a presidential debate in Gov. Ron DeSantis's home state, but according to the Miami Herald editorial board, the coulda-been contender shouldn't count on a home-field advantage.

Indeed, the board wrote Tuesday, this could be the coup de grace against the DeSantis campaign, facing fierce competition from former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

"It’s Nikki Haley who’s got momentum — at least a bit — largely because of two previous debate performances that included a clear display of her foreign policy knowledge and some memorable zingers," wrote the board. ...

WASHINGTON – This week, when Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) told the GOP presidential primary audience “America is not a racist country,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) says he heard a whistle loud and clear.

“That was Tim Scott completely pandering to the conservative Black audience to position himself to be Donald Trump's VP choice,” Bowman exclusively told Raw Story.

“Now the fact that he would want to be VP to a racist, fascist person is beyond me, but that was him pandering to the Sambo section of the Black community,” Bowman continued, using a derogatory term for people of African descent. ...

On the day before Donald Trump, who's leading the GOP primary field by an average of 41 points in the polls, is expected to surrender to Georgia authorities, eight of his competitors took to the debate stage to kick off what promises to be a long and painful election cycle.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was leading Trump in some polls as recently as February and has since crashed spectacularly as voters got to know him better, and “anti-woke” entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — whose surprising rise to third place in the crowded field has been fueled by effusive coverage in the conservative press and who may prove to be the Andrew Yang of the 2024 cycle — came into the debate vying for sole possession of second place among GOP primary voters.

They did so in the hope that as Trump's indictments work their way through the courts, the Republican base, which currently believes that President Joe Biden is so weak that electability shouldn't factor into their choice of a nominee, will get skittish and seek an alternative. ...

I expected, going in to the Republicans having a debate on MLK day in the first state to secede and fire shots in the Civil War, that there would probably be a few jaw-dropping dog whistles blown to race-bait a crowd that's got a lot of people still bitter about a federal holiday honoring the civil rights movement. Seems to me that the whole point of the scheduling by Fox News was to stoke racial hostilities and keep Republican enthusiasm for kicking the black President out of office high, especially since Romney's presence is hurting Republican enthusiasm in the polls. So I was a bit surprised that Juan Williams broke the rules that require race to be discussed through dog whistles and insinuations, and tried to get it all out on the table. I mean, his personal motivations for that are obvious---the whole scheduling thing plus the candidates' increasingly racist rhetoric is just plain offensive, and the urge to call bullshit must have been high---but considering how much Fox pays him, I was still mildly surprised that he decided to use the debate to actually provoke the candidates into being more blunt. Of course, the flip side of that is that he had to have known that if he did provoke one of them into saying something super racist, his picture would be on the front page of every newspaper today.

Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry will unveil a national flat tax as part of his economic plan, according to the Washington Post.

Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas said Tuesday on CNN that businessman Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan was "dangerous" and would place a burden on the poor.