Kucinich debates himself

While the Republican presidential candidates spent last night in Florida debating their interpretations of the Bible, not to mention the status of those people with "funny accents" who "look different" that happened to be working on Mitt Romney's lawn, Dennis Kucinich attracted a meager audience in person and online at a townhall session in New Hampshire, where he spoke about health care and relations with Iran. It could have been fun to see Ron Paul alongside the anti-war democrat in New Hampshire instead of the republican debate; seeing the two share their polar opposite views with each other (outside of the war, of course), could have been an interesting experiment in seeing how those outside of centrist positions could actually sell their ideas to skeptics. As it were, Ron Paul instead got sucked into the trap last night of trying to appeal to the values of the audience, even if they didn't quite match his own. The usually strictly libertarian congressman stooped to criticizing our relations that extend south of the border with crazy-talk of a North American Union, but he later went on to declare himself all for trade and internationalism. He wasn't the only one to fall in the trap of hypocrisy, though. Fred Thompson tried to make himself out to be the economic conservative but later stumbled and stalled when asked which federal bureaucracies he'd trim down first. Romney contradicted himself just about every time he opened his mouth. Giuliani, McCain and Huckabee seemed to keep to their principals and consequently, were able to put forth more substantive ideas about what kind of presidents they would be. Unfortunately, Tom Tancredo stuck to his principals, too, and even got everyone else to adopt them. "All I've heard is people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo," he gleefully observed at one point. I'm glad Dennis was vocal last night about the issues missed at the debate, even if not many were listening.