Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Thom Hartmann: No Republican debate is complete anymore without the crowd booing the downtrodden

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Republicans fought it out last night in a CNN hosted debate in Las Vegas. Before the debate - about 100 Occupy Las Vegas demonstrators surrounded the Sands Expo Center where the debate was being held to protest corporate corruption in our politics. But their message didn't make it inside the debate - where all the candidates on stage battled each other to see who supports the 1% the most. It was a lot of the same - a debate over who will cut taxes more for the wealthy and for corporations - who will cut more regulations that keep our air, water, and food safe - and who would repeal Obamacare first.
Some of the most heated exchanges of any debate so far took place between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry over illegal immigration and whether or not Romney hired illegal immigrants for yard work at his home. And of course - no Republican debate is complete anymore without the Conservative crowd stepping in to boo the downtrodden and discriminated. That happened when Herman Cain - referring to the Occupy Wall Street movement - again said unemployed people should blame themselves for not having a job - leading the audience to cheer wildly. I hope the million people who applied for a job at McDonalds earlier this year - when there were only 60,000 positions - were listening to Herman Cain tell them it was their own fault they're out of work. There are five unemployed people for every one job opening in America today.
So - no matter how much Republicans insist it is - it's not the fault of the jobless that big corporations moved their jobs overseas - it's the politicians who've pushed Reaganomics and so-called Free Trade over the last 30 years - and sabotaged economic stimulus over the last 3 years. And many of those politicians were on the stage in last night's Republican debate.
-Thom
(Who do you think won the debate? Tell us here.)

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