I watched most of the Republican debate on Tuesday, November 10, 2015.  It was hosted by Fox Business Network.

First, it was a bit more tame than previous debates.  The debate moderators purposely kept it mostly on policy questions instead of more personal questions.

CNBC took a beating during and after the last debate.  It gave Ted Cruz a great opening to attack the media and the questioning.  When I briefly tuned in to anyone associated with Fox News after this recent debate, it is no surprise that they were patting themselves on the back.

Still, I do think the moderators did a half decent job.  It wasn’t all of the questions I would have asked, but it was about as good as I could have hoped for coming from the mainstream media.

I thought Donald Trump basically held his own.  That doesn’t mean I agree with him on most things, but I think he will hold his lead in the polls for now.  He is toning things down a bit, but he better be careful not to get too conservative with his words.  It was amusing when he told Carly Fiorina to stop interrupting when she was interrupting Rand Paul.

Rand Paul did a much better job.  I’m not sure I liked the smirk on his face a few times because a few of his lines came across as too scripted.  Still, he did an overall better job than he has done before and his message was a bit closer to libertarianism.  Unfortunately for him, it was probably much too little and much too late.  He should have been pounding away on his father’s message this whole campaign.  Instead, he abandoned it and his campaign has been a disaster.

As things go deeper and closer to Iowa and New Hampshire, it is looking less likely that one of the hardcore establishment candidates will get the nomination.  John Kasich was really annoying and he can throw in the towel now.

Jeb Bush is also on his last legs.  He may not even make it to the New Hampshire primary.  It will be nice to see the Bush dynasty taken down, hopefully for good.

Ben Carson was boring and tired as usual.  I think as people get to know him, they are liking him less.  We’ll see if that holds.  He looks like the one person that may challenge Trump in Iowa though.

The new establishment favorite is Marco Rubio.  He is a slick speaker.  At this point, it looks as though the establishment may just completely abandon Bush and put their hopes in Rubio, who they can at least control.

Ted Cruz has been doing well, but I’m not sure that he can get the nomination.  He still looks and sounds like an alien.  He is really good sometimes on domestic policies from a libertarian point of view.  Unfortunately, it all gets canceled out and more when he starts on foreign policy and all of his militarist solutions.

Perhaps the most interesting one to listen to was Carly Fiorina.  After her initial surge in the polls, she has fallen back quite a bit.

She is really articulate.  On domestic issues, she made some really good points.  She was talking about baseline budgeting and how we need to get rid of that.  She was talking about taking law-making powers away from federal bureaucracies.  This is a subject that I hold dear.  It goes along with the proposed Write the Laws Act by DownsizeDC.org.  If Congress would stop delegating its power to make new laws, then we would be so much better off and the economy would be so much better off.

But just because Fiorina is articulate and sounded good on some economic issues, it doesn’t mean she isn’t a crazed militarist.  She said she won’t talk to Putin.  It is coming out now that she lied about how she met him somewhere other than a Green Room.

Florina said she wants to build up the military to intimidate Putin.  She said she wants to conduct very aggressive military exercises in the Baltic States.  In other words, she is nuts.

By the way, this was Rand Paul’s missed opportunity (well, one of many in this campaign).  He should have called her a nut.  He should have called her crazy.  He should have said that she purposely wants to start World War 3.  He should have absolutely hammered her after she made these statements, but he didn’t.

I know that many of these candidates talk a good game on economics, yet they would be horrible once in office.  It is easy to constantly trick a lot of the Republican voters in this matter.  “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.”  What can you say about Republican voters who get fooled every election cycle?

Still, Cruz and Fiorina are quite articulate when it comes to economic policy and their rhetoric is pro free market in a lot of cases.  It is too bad that they are also two of the biggest war hawks up there.  It seems that the more conservative one gets, the better they are on economics and the more blood thirsty they are in terms of foreign policy.

I miss the last two presidential election cycles when we had Ron Paul running.  It was a rare time in history that people could hear a consistent truth.  He stood for free market economic policies and a non-interventionist policy.  We had it good then.

Now I always have to give disclaimers whenever I agree or disagree with someone.  I have to say that even though I like some of what he or she has to say on domestic policies, I don’t like them overall.  It is the same with Bernie Sanders.  I like some of what he has to say on foreign intervention (even though he is not a complete non-interventionist), but his economic policies are everything I stand against.

It is still easy with Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.  I disagree with almost everything they say.  And for the little I might agree with, I know they are lying.