Are we not entertained? Maybe … but we want substance, too!
There are approximately 2,000 people vying to be the Republican Party’s standard bearer in next year’s presidential election, and most of them were crammed onto a stage Wednesday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California to “debate” the “issues” on live television. It was three hours long, and a startling amount of it was like this:
While this makes for some seriously great television, it’s also a serious shame that this was the meat of the three-hour TV spectacle. Because while the actual election is over a year away, one of the people on stage last night – Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Donald Trump, the Noid, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Bigfoot, Ted Cruz, et al. – could very well be the next president of the United States!
Meanwhile, here’s what people want to know about, more than virtually any other issue: What are you guys gonna do about the economy?
No one answered that question last night.
- Not a word was said about the nation’s crumbling public infrastructure.
- Job creation was only talked about briefly, and then only when all of the candidates lined up to introduce their versions of a national flat tax.
- Nothing was said about the massive job loss that the U.S. manufacturing sector has suffered in recent years.
- In fact, manufacturing didn’t come up at all until very late, when Scott Walker managed to blame the loss of thousands of Wisconsin manufacturing jobs on EPA regulations.
- Even more interesting, despite a state visit to Washington, DC by President Xi Jinping planned for next week, very little was said about China, and nothing at all was said about our lopsided, wealth-draining trade relationship with the world’s second largest economy.
Entertaining television, yes – last night’s debate was the most-watched program in CNN's history – but did the candidates say anything of substance regarding trade or economic policy?
Nope. Nada. Nothing. The next GOP debate is about five weeks away. Maybe they’ll have something substantial to say by then.