The Republican Revels Begin

Energy policy was nearly absent during the two-hour show in Cleveland, and none of the top 10 candidates mentioned President Obama’s controversial Clean Power Plan. She clearly believed everything Romney said in the 47 percent video and wanted the dark horse candidates to vouchsafe all of it. To their modest credit, none of them took the bait, exactly.

“I think Rand Paul is interesting to younger people because he constantly is touching on these issues of diversity, things that Democrats have actually highlighted”, said Birckhead, mentioning the Black Lives Matter movement.

“This primary won’t be about climate change”, he said. There is a lot of Bush fatigue in the wake of the presidencies of his father and his brother.

“I don’t have a frontrunner, it’s way too early, we have a long time“, he said.

More importantly, he’s the first GOP candidate in Georgia to name what looks like an entire statewide operation. Not a single substantive question was asked by Fox News moderators about global warming or energy. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) if his previous support for cap and trade jeopardizes his candidacy. Maybe you can print out a drinking game and play along?

People came to the Charlottesville Democratic Headquarters to watch the Republican debate. They were just two in a crowd of about 4,500. Whether they are curious, critical or nervous remains to be seen.

The fact that the debate was being held on the anniversary of the Voting Right Act posed some irony, they noted, since Republicans have been zealous in attempts to restrict access to the ballot box over the last five years. They even had a poster with a hashtag, #WhatstheGOPClimatePlan. There were no Republicans on the floor to provide an answer. “Great entertainment for television, but not good for the future of America”.

“When you completely dominate with one ideology and one set of ideas you are not going to get the best possible outcomes”, he said.

It’s a rare Republican who talks about ways to address rising temperatures. Bernie Sanders and former Virginia Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in the fall of 2009.

He’s not completely alone. But the policies they are proposing have been drowned out by the excessive news coverage given to the demeaning verbal antics of their erstwhile challengers.

Others won’t go that far. In 1972, the dawn of the primary-dominated nominating system, Democrats had 16 declared candidates, the largest field until this cycle’s Republicans, while Richard Nixon quickly fended off challenges from congressmen to his left and right. As a Democrat, I might be pleased, but as an American, I am deeply troubled.

What accounts for the number and variety of Republican candidates? “But they got to have something at some point”.