Saturday, March 22, 2014

Eagle Forum follow up

At the Eagle Forum last night, I think I distinguished myself, gave food for thought to many, opened the minds of a few, and maybe will trigger some campaign helpers to step forward.

Tom Vignuelle spoke first and made emphatic reference to the government being broken.

I spoke pretty much along the lines of the video I did and posted yesterday.  See entry Eagle Forum.  I acknowledged Tom Vignuelle's reference to broken government and said that it was important to diagnose the causes.  My talk contained my diagnosis.

Also, at the end of my talk, I said that I was not an advocate of public funding of elections that had the effect of abridging the right of free speech, and that I thought the money monster problem could be tackled in other ways. (I don't think that is in video.)

After the candidates made their presentations, three questions submitted by the audience were posed to the candidates, and all the candidates gave their answer to each question.

The first question was to the effect of "what could or should be done to keep conservatives who are elected to Congress and who go to Washington from getting 'squishy' when it comes time to take a stand?"  I answered the question by saying to the effect, "this question is part of the 'us against them' mindset, the money monster was on the backs of the whole country, on the backs of Democrats as well as Republicans, and if steps were taken to tackle the money monster problem, dialogue with the other side would become more reasonable, and there would be less concern about squishiness."

The second question asked where the candidate would try to cut spending.  The answer I gave was to the effect of, given Congressional dysfunctionality and a Congress that was not able to pass budgets, or address entitlements, or take up Simpson-Boles, it was almost academic to talk about where spending should be cut, and instead primacy needed to be given to fixing Congress, and after that got going, attention could be given to what spending should be cut.

The third question was whether the candidate, if elected, would vote for John Boehner as Speaker (assuming the Republicans retained control of the House).  My answer was that, given my platform and approach, I did not have a strong view on the matter.

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