The Brian Lehrer Show

Not a one of them stood up for truth, not a one of them promised to prosecute the war criminals.

Rudy told lies, as expected, Ron Paul told more truth than any other, and the rest need to get real lives and allow citizens to replace these professional politicians with citizen legislators, a fast and powerful answer to regaining our government....

... and this we knew ten hours before the debate started.

You are totally right Dellni. There is something else we already know: the CNN peoeple kept their arrangement with the GOP and didn't have the guts to select some of the really challenging questions that were posted in youtube. We are going to hear the same lame questions but from different people.

I am all for change. Most of the Leaders of song in the Catholic church are not trained. Many times it is painful and difficult to follow and participate as we would like to do and are asked to do. Most times the leaders are volunters with no or miminmal music training. HELP is needed.

how did people post comments before the debate. do they access to future knowledge? I want an investigation.

"Debate at 10pm Wednesday on AM 820"

...

Winner and why: Huckabee. His answers are impeccably organized and thorough. He is a good actor for the camera (despite the lazy eye?). And, he is not falling into the usual conservative ideologies: he's not neoconservative, which looks good since W. Bush's neoconservative failure; he's not traditional conservative since he's adopting new views outside of tradition like on immigration and taxation; he's not libertarian. He may be the newest form of conservatism for an incumbent party that desperately needs a make-over.

New Thinker: Hunter. His answers on 2nd Amendment and sexuality in the military were weak but new. On 2nd Amendment, to call that a traditional right, instead of a Constitutional right, was a new thought. It weakens the justification for the right but its a new thought. On sexuality in the military because the military's conservative leanings... Its playing on that traditional idea, but over half the nation might find it a little offensive.

Questions: Great questions! A redemption for CNN after Blitzer bombed in the last debate. Interesting to see how the YouTube questions had a much longer perspective than the candidates did. The questioners were looking ten or twenty years down the road, while the candidates were a little obsessive with tomorrow or two weeks down the road.

Yeah, hjs is on to something. What's with the 10:20 am post?? How is that a Listener Comment?

McCain came off looking like a president. He was very knowledgeable on all the subjects and seemed like he was telling it like it is, not giving a pre determined answer to please the public.

Every time Rudy said "september 11th" I thought of this video (at the 1:30 mark):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=5k8YVYFBhew

Myself, I'm with the Ron Paul revolution 100%. Democrats rally together for Ron Paul! This is too important to play the party line game.

As a NATIVE New Yorker Ghouliani does not come off as a New Yorker to me any longer but rather a right-wing fascist who will say anything to win and will make alliances with people who believed the New Yorkers who dies on 9/11 had it coming due to their sins...what a disgusting hypocrite.

Why is this Confederate flag thing so difficult to grasp? Forget about the racial aspect. That obviously is too controversial. Let's focus on the fact that it is the symbol of a REBEL GOVERNMENT. You are part of the USA or you are not. If SC wants to go its separate way, that's fine by me. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, but if they want to be a part of this country, they can't be paying homage to a separatist government that collapsed almost 150 years ago.

So disappointed at this debate, I was actually looking forward to it. The analysis is right cnn was trying to paint republicans, candidates and voters as caricatures.

I don't care if romney and guialiani are leading in the polls, that does not mean that they should get the majority of the questions, i guess i can't depend on cnn to give me a fair reading of each candidate so i a can make an educated choice, but i guess i already knew that before the debate. They were obviously trying to pain ron paul as the crazy candidate, but he is the one that actually give honest true answers.

Politics is all about performance and cnn demonstrated this better than anyone, too bad i don't make decisions on how i feel about a candidate or how well they do in a debate, yes too bad i actually vote on the actual issues.

People don't seem to understand the issues at hand, booing during any notion of legalizing people that are here illegally is the angry mob mentality, or booing at the notion of getting out of iraq?

I did not know conservative meant that i was a bible reading, war loving, gun owning, anti abortionist, with a curiosity on why guialini rooted for the red sox when the yankees lost. Thank you cnn for setting me straight.

Yeah...just forget the racial aspect of the Confederate flag...I mean just throw it out the window...after all..the racial aspect doesn't matter at all...it's after all irrelevant, as are all the feelings of every person of color. Wow, what an enlightened viewpoint!

Mitt Romney answer to a direct You Tube question regarding “Black-on-Black Violence” shows that is he racially prejudiced:

“Most of the kids involved in Black-on-Black Violence

“Were born out of wedlock”; “We all need to go back to family value.”

No doubt, Mitt is spontaneously biased.

Also, there isn’t much Black or Hispanic on administration as governor anyway.

We want somebody in the White House Non-biased and capable to solve problem realistically.

ab, give me a break. You seek to be contrarian whenever possible, and you know full well that was not what I meant. What I meant was that some people won't hear the racial sensitivity issue. For them, they consider it be a part of the heritage. But even IF you give them that, you're still left with the fact that it's the symbol of a rebel government which hundreds of thousands of American soldiers died fighting against. The point is: it's unjustifiable no matter how you look at it.

It blows my mind how questions like "What do you think about the confederate flag" and "Do you believe in the bible" get chosen as relevant question in this important time. Do we need any more evidence of a media conspiracy to keep us from thinking about things that matter?

I think the real problem is that when you open the floor for anyone at all to ask a question, those screening them are going to start picking those that are "quirky" or "fun". Sensationalism is the name of the game, and user-based content provides that certainly. I think the country's epitaph will probably read: "Strangled by its own democracy."

Pat Robertson finished second to Bob Dole in the 1988 Iowa Caucus.