Earlier today we talked about the rather sad spectacle of the Democrats’ debate last night and one of the key points which showed up across the media spectrum was the fact that none of the three contenders seemed very comfortable talking about the Paris attacks, terrorism or what to do about ISIS. Little did the viewers know exactly how opposed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was to the idea. In fact, in the hours before the debate took place, one of his worker bees was on the phone with CBS complaining bitterly about the change of topics. (Yahoo News)
A top aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., one of the three candidates, got into a lengthy dispute with executives from CBS, the network hosting the debate, during a conference call on Saturday morning. A staffer for one of the other campaigns who was also on the call described the exchange to Yahoo News as “heated” and even “bizarre,” and a second source on the call confirmed the nature of the exchange.
“It was a little bit of a bizarre scene. The Sanders representative, you know, really laid into CBS and basically … kind of threw, like, a little bit of a fit and said, ‘You are trying to turn this into a foreign policy debate. That’s not what any of us agreed to. How can you change the terms of the debate, you know, on the day of the debate. That’s not right,’” the staffer recounted.
I suppose one might refer to it as a snit fit.
This peek behind the curtains makes it all the more shocking that any of our nation’s special snowflakes showing up at all of those Sanders rallies are actually taking this guy seriously as a potential leader of the free world. I refuse to believe that Sanders is actually embarrassed about his foreign policy positions, doveish as they may be. His base eats that pablum up like candy. Clearly he has no interest in fighting a war with anyone, no matter how obvious it may be that we’re under attack. But this backstage fighting wasn’t about foreign policy at all. Sanders was just upset that the topic was changed at the last minute. He’d probably spent plenty of time memorizing all of his catch phrases to use for the topics which were originally proposed and was worried that he wouldn’t be prepared to deal with an entirely different set of questions. (That worry was well founded, as anyone who sat through that debacle could tell you.)
But underneath it all, what does that say about Sanders’ preparation to be the Commander in Chief? He can’t think on his feet fast enough to deal with a different set of debate questions on 24 hours notice? What does he plan to do when some hotspot on the other side of the world blows up on a moment’s notice or one of our embassies goes up in flames again? Will he send a strongly worded letter to ISIS letting them know that he requires a week’s notice prior to any military engagements?
It’s episodes like this which make it no surprise that Rasmussen recently found that most of the country doesn’t believe that either party has a clue about where they are taking the country.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 41% of Likely U.S. Voters think the Democratic Party has a plan for where it wants to take the nation, and only 38% say the same of Republicans. Forty-one percent (41%) say Democrats don’t have a plan for the future, and even more (46%) question whether the Republican Party has one. Nearly 20% are undecided in both cases.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on November 9-10, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
Yes, they don’t feel that great about the Republicans either, and listening to some of the folks on stage at the last debate I can’t blame the respondents much on that score either. But seriously… Bernie Sanders? Rand Paul may be a serious isolationist, but Bernie makes Rand look like a giant foreign policy hawk with blood on his claws. And Sanders is by no means fast on his feet. The guy can’t even keep control of his own microphone at a rally and yet he wants to run the most powerful nation on the planet.
You may now return to banging your heads on your desks.
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