The only thing that really, truly stuck with me from the Republican presidential debate was Rick Santorum misspeaking and saying “court the illegal vote” before correcting himself to say “Latino vote.” I sometimes find myself discussing with other people whether I identify as Hispanic, and the answer is that I’m really not that strongly identified with my one grandparent’s Cuban heritage but this kind of thing really does piss me off more than being offensive about other groups of people would. I like living in an America where I can show up at a polling place, give my Spanish last name to whoever’s working there, and not be immediately operating under a cloud of suspicion. Apparently that’s not Santorum’s America.
But wasting a paragraph on Rick Santorum is a reminder of how frustrating it is to have so much airtime taken up by nonsense candidates. It was interesting when Rick Perry and Mitt Romney went head-to-head. There appear to be some real policy disagreements between the two of them, and it would be good to see them hashed out thoroughly. The moderators of the MSNBC/Politico debate seemed to have the good sense to discriminate in favor of the serious candidates and against the grandstanding of Santorum, Gingrich, etc., but Wolf Blitzer unfortunately played it straight. I think it would be smart for Romney to challenge Perry to a mano-a-mano debate.