Memorable Moments of the Republican Debate

I managed to sit through the 1^st official Republican presidential debate last night even though I would have rather sat for 2 hours watching a static-filled screen and listened to white noise.

The frustrating thing about the whole thing is that Republicans were allowed to spew absolute falsehoods unchecked and uncorrected for all that time. Here are some of the memorable quotes and falsehoods that went unanswered because no one was there to answer them.

Mitt Romney: “I can't wait to debate (Obama) and say, 'Mr. President, if, in fact, you did look at what we did in Massachusetts, why didn't you give me a call and ask what worked and what didn't.”

Could it be, perhaps, that President Obama didn’t need to call him because he had Ezekiel Emanuel on his staff to go to with questions? Romney may have signed the bill into law, but Emanuel was the architect of Romneycare.

Tim Pawlenty: “And this idea that we can't have 5 percent growth in America is hogwash.”

Well, perhaps since a 5% sustained growth per year over a decade has never been achieved in modern times - even under the Clinton and Reagan boom years the growth rate never exceeded 4.9% - calling Pawlenty’s economic “plan” hogwash is not so off the reservation.

Michele Bachmann: “Unlike how the media has tried to wrongly and grossly portray the Tea Party, the Tea Party is really made up of disaffected Democrats, independents, people who've never been political a day in their life, people who are libertarians, Republicans -- it's a wide swathe of America coming together.”

…that will never poll over 22% of registered voters.

Herman Cain: “This economy is stalled. It's like a train on the tracks with no engine and the administration has simply been putting all of this money in the caboose. We need an engine called the private sector.”

Which is it? Either the auto industry isn’t in the private sector, or the auto industry is stalled on tracks?

Newt Gingrich: “As each new state becomes right to work, they send a signal to the remaining states, don't be stupid ... If you believe in the 10th Amendment, we ought let the states learn from each other. And the right-to-work states are creating a lot more jobs today that they heavily unionized states.”

Unions brought us child labor laws, the 40 hour work week, workplace safety standards, and so much more that we take for granted these days. They made the very existence of the middle class possible. "Right to work" is a euphemism for "Right to fire you."

Ron Paul: “There shouldn't be any government assistance to private enterprise. It's not morally correct, it's not legal, it's bad economics. It's not part of the constitution.”

Not part of the constitution… Know what else is not in the constitution Dr. Paul, government support of the exploration of the moon, yet we have NASA.