Debate-A-Thon

I was perusing through Facebook Tuesday night, I saw that one of my friends from grade school had made a comment about the debates. The gist of what she was saying is that there have been too many and she was getting bored with them. My initial, and highly subjective, response was that all of this fighting in the GOP is pretty much them giving the playbook to the Obama reelection team. Every little detail about these guys is on display so that whoever actually gets the nomination, the left is ready for him. To quote part of my response directly, " Let the primary slog on and the blood-letting continue to the convention." 

It should also be noted that I am an out and proud political nerd (hence me having a political blog) and have been for at least 10 years, so this stuff is my bread and butter.

Now let me give a far more objective response. Looking at the big picture, the problem is that when a candidate is stumped in one of these debates, it tends to get personal. The entire tone of the discourse turns very negative. At the risk of sounding  like a Republican politician, the media doesn't help. In fact, it tends to hurt. As I was watching the debate in Florida on Monday, during the first 30 minutes I felt something I had not really felt before in any of these debates during this election cycle: complete and utter boredom. That entire half-hour plus had zero substance in it. It was 100% personal and 0% policy. I'm not sure exactly how many debates there have been so far (I have heard somewhere in the high teens), but this is essentially what this cycle has devolved into. Chances are if these had been Democrats instead of Republicans, the same scenario would have played out. There was also a Saturday night debate, followed by a Sunday morning debate. I'm not sure that has ever happened in presidential politics here in the States. This is what I would call overkill. In a recent interview on CNN, I Senator John McCain (R-AZ) put it quite well (and I'm not prone to agreeing with him).

However, there are many more primaries and caucuses yet to go, and this nomination process will most likely go on for several more months. That means that there will most likely be many more debates between now and the Republican convention this Summer.