I was traveling, learning about past presidents, and I missed did not see or hear the “debate” last week among Republican hopefuls for the presidency.
Old friend and commentator Pat Carrithers asked on Facebook:
What did we learn from the Republican debate last night?
We learned they all hate Obama.
We learned they have no new thoughts or ideas for economic recovery.
We learned that they still think “No” is a policy and a program.So, I repeat, What did we learn from the Republican debate last night.
I look at the Republican field, and I worry. I may have explained before that my experience is that we should hope for, and work to obtain, the best possible candidate from each party, because circumstances well may conspire to elect the lesser of those two candidates. I cannot in good conscience hope for a clown like Bachmann or Palin to win the Republican nomination.
The Salt Lake Tribunes great, sharp-penned Pat Bagley's view of the June 2011 Republican Presidential Debates. (When is Bagley going to win a Pulitzer?)
It seems odd to me that the two candidates who rate highest on my Qualified to Lead (QTL) criteria are both Mormons, both of whom have employed people I worked with. (This contrasts sharply with Texas’s Rick Perry who is not in the campaign officially yet, but who, to my mind, has abandoned most standards of propriety in his false claims about his shepherding of Texas — remember he claimed we had a budget surplus a year ago, but this year announced deficits of nearly $30 billion, which led him to propose cutting essential functions of government; Perry would be at least a third clown in the Republican race, to me.)
Let’s think of the wavering millions
Who need leaders but get gamblers instead.
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 