Friday, February 08, 2008

Best Super Tuesday Quote

All the psychic energy tied up in "Tsunami Tuesday" was released as atmospheric phenomena such as tornadoes, rather than tsunamis. I guess it is more of a hot air thing than something that would make the earth move. My favorite take-away of the day, overheard on CNN from Paul Begala, was…

BEGALA: Nobody is more conservative than Huckabee. He don't believe in evolution or gravity or photosynthesis or anything.
For a bit more context…
BEGALA: …Romney wants to be the conservative, and the conservative poobahs like Limbaugh and Coulter and Dr. Dobson of Focus on the Family, they've all anointed Romney to try to stop McCain, but the voters got in the way. I love it. Sometimes voters just don't listen to the big shots.

ROLAND MARTIN: But he's also not, McCain is more conservative than Romney.

BEGALA: Nobody is more conservative than Huckabee. He don't believe in evolution or gravity or photosynthesis or anything.
These comments may have been a bit too hyperbolic, and Begala didn't get much additional time on the air, it seems. However, it got me to wondering how many candidates could explain gravity, or photosynthesis. It might be instructive to have all of the candidates in a Jeopardy!-type situation where they would have to answer questions question(ize) answers in relevant categories such as American History, World History, Global Issues, Science, Civil Rights, and so on.
Alex, I'll take World Leaders for 3 delegates.

"Islam A. Karimov."

Who is the President of Uzbekistan?

That's correct!

In a perfect world, the parties would agree to award the delegates-in-limbo from Michigan and Florida to the winner of the Jeopardy!-formated debate. We would learn more about the candidates than in the current "debates". Wonkier candidates like Hill-Rod may have a slight advantage and sock puppets like Bush would have gone home with a consolation prize of tickets to Disneyland if this format had been used in the past. It is a bit late to play now, but the fallen players like Edwards, Richardson, Rudey, Kucinich, etc could all be invited back for a round and if awarded delegates, would be able to "throw" their delegates to whoever they think is a worthy candidate. Obama should resist calls from Hill-Rod to debate unless she agrees to a Nomination-Jeopardy!-format.

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