Doug's Sounding Board

First I have to say that I like having both the Democrat and Republican debates back to back. I also liked there being distinct discussion and direct question sections. All that said, watching four hours of debates is pretty tiring.

Republicans:

I  haven’t really kept up to date with the Repuiblican candidates except blurbs I hear in the news. I knew next to nothing about Huckabee, Romney, or Thompson. The biggest surpise of the night for me is that out of the Republican field I liked Huckabee the most. He seems the least like a follower of the Fox News platform and most sincere in his answers. McCain was my second favorite  overall  though I like the moderate  non-campaigning McCain a lot better than the campaigning McCain. I wish Rudy Giuliani would go away, fortunately I don’t think it’ll take too long. He seems to be a lot less important than early in the campaign season. Ron Paul was asking good questions and I’m glad he’s there for that. Hopefully he’ll get some other people to think about those things when making policy. Mitt Romney comes off to me as being too slick. Like he has the answer for everything already and nothing needs new thought.  Who cares about Fred Thompson? Well I guess he thought he was being clever by suggesting that Mitt Romney liked man dates.

Democrats:

I think Clinton was strong throughout and will probably get a boost from it. I think Obama held his own but who knows how it will affect his outcome. Edwards came across to me as wanting to be president but at the same time positioning himself to be a vice-presidential candidate. Richardson seemed to start out slowly but by the end he was able to list all his experience and explain how that will help his presidency. His list of experience is indeed impressive and he managed to help make Clinton’s point that having the experience will help create change.

I still have no idea how it’ll all turn out but the coming weeks should be interesting.