Dick Cheney put on a debating clinic in Tuesday's contest with John Edwards. Edwards appeared as a second-stringer on a high school debating team taking on F. Lee Bailey. Edwards's personality grated after the first half-hour, whereas, though Cheney's grim demeanor may not endear, it struck the right serious tone for serious times.

Cheney delivered memorable line after memorable line. Noting his opponents' change in attitudes on the Iraq war in the wake of the Democratic primaries, Cheney asked, "If they couldn't stand up to the pressures Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to stand up to al Qaeda?" Cheney explained that as president of the Senate, he appears in the Capitol on an almost weekly basis. Despite this, he told the oft-absent Senator Edwards: "The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight." Ouch!

Cheney's clear victory put a stop to the momentum Kerry-Edwards picked up when the Massachusetts senator defeated the president in the first debate of the general election season. The only consolation for the Democrats tonight is that the debate was for an office that John Nance Garner famously compared to a bucket of warm, well, you get the picture. In other words, tonight's debate drew less viewers than Thursday night's affair and swayed few voters. After all, who votes for the guy at the bottom of the ticket?

Now that was entertainment! I really love Cheney's style and his very sharp and acerbic wit. Too bad he is a menace on foreign policy.

The supreme frustration of this election for me is that I so enjoy when Cheney or Bush get one over on the liberals and left b/c they are my natural opponents as well, but yet I still can't support the GOP.

Yes, Cheney was masterful. He really is in control of the issues and of his thoughts. It's very confusing to me. I love his direct intellegent style. He seems to talk the conservative talk so well, and he's so in command of his own positions and their justifications . . . YET his office is known as the most extreme neocon office in the administration. And he and his people in the administration are willing to sacrifice any other conservative issues for the sake of their strong-arm utopian empirialistic foreign policy goals. I'm very conflicted about Cheney.

"...but yet I still can't support the GOP."

Do you mean that you cannot vote for the GOP? Granted Bush has spent like an LBJ liberal, but do you expect better from Kerry? Granted you believe that Bush's foreign policies are misguided, but do you seriously expect Kerry to improve matters? The way I see it, from your perspective Bush and Kerry are a wash on spending and foreign policy.

Now compare the two on the important issues of abortion and taxes. Or forget taxes and just consider the lives of millions of unborn children. On that score alone, isn't a vote for Bush your moral duty?

That's bs. Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was the most fiscially conservative president since WW2, in large part due to his treasury secratary Robert Rubin and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Allen Greenspan. Kerry will hire the same economic team that Clinton had, with Rubin at the head. They will insitute the same sound economic policies that Clinton used in the 90's to make the best economy in American history. They will turn around this economy. I'm so sick of these taxcut and spend Republicans!! Bring in kerry. Bring in sanity.

"I'm so sick of these taxcut and spend Republicans."

I am as well. I am a tax-cut and spending-cut conservative. However, given the choice between a tax and spend liberal and a tax-cut and spend social conservative, I'll take the latter.

Kerry plans to raise taxes on those making $200,000 and up. Problem is, most small businesses file via individual income tax returns. As a result, Kerry's tax hikes will nail small business.

All this, however, is irrelevant to my main point. For those of us who hold the abortion issue above all others, there is a moral duty to vote for the pro-life candidate, or conversely, to prevent the pro-death candidate from victory.

The difference is that personally, you are forced to be fiscally conservative which means being smart and organized with your money.

The government, not matter who is in charge, could care less about being responsible as it is not their money.

Croketts revenge?

Don't give me that moral abortion copout. if you conservatives really cared about saving lives you would be out there on the streets counciling women to not have abortions. Instead you just whine, bitch, and claim the moral high ground for doing nothing but wasting your presidental vote on a issue the president has no control over anyway. What a hypocracy!

DB, it's spelled "hypocrisy." Buy a dictionary.

Whatt a relevint anaylesis!!

It is a good thing I can read phonetically.

DB-
As I said before in a previous post the pres. does have control over the issue of abortion by appointing supreme COurt justices, restricting stem cell research, etc.
SO a pro-lifer in the white house does matter. and it is important to be involved directly in pro-life missions but it is also important to outlaw it.