Western Republican Presidential Debate

The debate in Vegas earlier this week was full of heated moments between the candidates. All seven Republican candidates collided with one another at the presidential debate on several important topics, such as immigration, taxes, and healthcare. There was frequent tension between Rick Perry and Mitt Romney. The two were at it with each other in just first hour of the debate and we could definitely see the anger in both of their faces. It seemed to start when Perry criticized Romney for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants and in response Romney laughed in Perry’s face. Perry told Romney that he lost all his credibility to stand up there and talk about how he is strong on immigration. This was just the start of their quarrel. When Romney tried to respond Perry kept interrupting him and not letting him answer. The two went back and forth with Perry accusing Romney and Romney trying to tell him to let him speak. You could tell from Perry’s face how heated he was getting that it seemed to cloud his judgment in letting Romney speak in his appropriate thirty second time limit. Romney, although he seemed very frustrated, handled the encounter much better than Perry in my opinion. He made a few remarks on Perry’s inability to let others speak but for the most part he tried to stay out of the banter and stick to the points. When he finally got the chance to respond to Perry, he pointed out that Texas had a 60 percent increase in illegal immigrants and said, "If there's someone who has a record as governor with regards to illegal immigration that doesn't stand up to muster, it's you, not me." It’s hard to say how much Perry’s attacks will affect voters. Perry may have come off as a bit rude and wrongly accusing Romney but on the other hand he stood his ground and got his word across. After all this was a debate not a pleasant conversation among friends.

Cain also got a lot of attention during the debate. All of the candidates criticized his 9-9-9-tax plan. They all said it was too risky. Newt Gingrich said that Cain’s plan was much more complex then he was leading on to the public, while Romney called it “dangerous” and though it would increase taxes on low income people. Perry said he has a plan that will work better than Cain’s. He said, "I will bump plans with you brother, and we will see who has the best idea about getting this country working again, it's not going to fly." Cain responded to all the criticism by saying the reason his plan is being attacked so much is that politicians don’t want to replace the current tax code with a new more simple and fair one.

I thought the debate was really interesting and exciting. It’s a great way to see the candidates put on the spot with questions that the people want an answer to and seeing the candidates interact with each other says a lot about the person and how firm they are on their policies.