The Republican debate last night seemed like a social club, singing to the tune of “let’s cut taxes”. The only variation was McCain wanted to cut spending and Ron Paul wanted to eliminate everything except the Washington Monument maybe.  My conspiratorial feeling about MSNBC favoring Mitt Romney in last night’s debate has some merit.  Overnight polls placed Mitt Romney ahead in Florida. Was it because Mitt Romney received the most questions?  Mitt Romney had 21 questions, and Ron Paul had six.  I think John McCain had 18 questions.

I thought Rudy Giuliani seemed timid and was not willing to engage. Rudy may just have 9/11 himself out of this contest.

Tim Russert asked this one important question of all the candidates was it a good idea to go to war in Iraq and “worth the price of blood and treasure?”  All, but Ron Paul said yes. This will be huge  in the general election. I guarantee we will have that debate.  Do we continue to stay?  Or do we make it responsible withdrawal.  A case could be made for staying if the political reconciliation is just around the corner.  Democrats will argue that we are creating a state of dependency.

Florida has a huge retirement population, so candidates tread lightly when the subject of Social Security reform comes up. I don’t think Mitt Romney or Ron Paul, picked up senior vote last night.

A lot of people think that cutting taxes puts more money into the pockets of ordinary citizens. This is only true if tax cuts are structured toward the middle class. Newt Gingrich once said “We should let Medicare wither on the vine.”  Ever since the era FDR, the Republican’s goal is to keep reducing taxes, to force the government to eliminate the entitlements of FDR namely Social Security.  If you watched the debate last night. you heard a lot of cutting corporate taxes, and only Mike Huckabee talked about at taxe cuts for the middle-class. Mike Huckabee hurts his case when he proposes the Fair Tax, which is unfair to the working poor.Conventional wisdom: Huckabee and Rudy support John McCain when they drop out ,making outside Washington Romney against beltway McCain.

Many Republicans such as, David Frum and Newt Gingrich are trying to change the GOP of old. The working middle class is not asking anyone to feel their their pain anymore, they want the pain to go away. The corporations of the past would come back and tell their workers “we’ve added a 401(k) to our pension plan and we will match your savings up to 6%” today the same corporations come back and say “We have eliminated your pension plan and increased the portion that you have to pay in your health benefits.”  Then they read  due to layoffs and benefit cuts  their CEO got a hefty 20 million dollar raise.  The corporations of today are not our father’s companies, they will take all the tax cuts and continue to shelter their profits in offshore accounts .

Tim Russert brought out a charge against Rudy Giuliani and the same could be said of Mitt Romney. If those candidates are running on a “English only” platform, why are so many of their ads in Spanish?  Are they saying it’s okay if it’s to pander to the Spanish-speaking Cubans in Florida?

Tax Cuts down to zero, while calling for increase in military spending and adding weather castrophy insurance for coastline taxpayers; is like saying lets cut the Democrat programs and replace them with ours. No wonder the taxpayers are tired of both parties.