{"id":6585,"date":"2010-03-20T14:16:26","date_gmt":"2010-03-20T18:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/03\/20\/random-thoughts-from-todays-republican-debate\/"},"modified":"2010-03-20T14:16:26","modified_gmt":"2010-03-20T18:16:26","slug":"random-thoughts-from-todays-republican-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/03\/20\/random-thoughts-from-todays-republican-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Random thoughts from today&#8217;s Republican debate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, the candidates for the 5th District Republican nomination had their third in a series of debates sponsored by the area TEA parties. I was able to attend the first half of the debate and here are some random thoughts that came out of the first half. I&#8217;m sorry that I wasn&#8217;t able to attend the second half, but I had to host a TV show at 5PM and had to get to Reidsville. That being said, let&#8217;s go to the thoughts&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We&#8217;re LIVE! at DCC for today&#8217;s 5th District. Republican Debate. LIVE! Comments follow and we&#8217;ll clean this article up later tonight.<\/li>\n<li>Opening from Nigel Coleman. Good speech,  but I disagree that &#8220;shouting down your Congressman&#8221; is part of the American way.<\/li>\n<li>Chuck Vipperman explains the rules. Now comes each candidates&#8217; opening statements.<\/li>\n<li>Ken Boyd says he can bring the Charlottesville votes in and if that had happened last time, Goode would still be in office.<\/li>\n<li>Ron Ferrin does well. Robert Hurt&#8217;s up next and does well too. McKelvey does a prop joke to start, and pushes the FairTax and 4 year self-imposed term limit.<\/li>\n<li>Mike McPadden pushes military and his outsider status. Funny thing, his wife (beside me) leads off applause and the audience follows, so it seemed that McPadden really won the crowd. Well played.<\/li>\n<li>Feda Morton&#8217;s up and she&#8217;s nowhere as bad as others have said. Laurence Verga goes last and pulls a smooth move and comes out in front of the table to do his stuff.<\/li>\n<li>All seven candidates passed the opening test.<\/li>\n<li>First question is from Catherine Amos about compromising and little experience.The field all had decent answers to that question except Jim McKelvey. McKelvey said that if elected, he&#8217;d immediately get with the other incoming freshmen Representatives and start forming an agenda based on their mandate. Sorry, Jim. That sounds great, but that&#8217;s not the way Washington works.<\/li>\n<li>Second question is from Chuck Vipperman about term limits. Hurt &amp; McPadden actually hit the bullseye by saying term limits just don&#8217;t work. Ferrin agrees and pulls another joke. And now some follow-up on this&#8230; Self-imposed term limits by our representative will do nothing but doom the 5th District to mediocrity unless the entire Congress imposes universal term limits. In Washington, seniority has its benefits and if our Representative self-limits themselves out of office, we have to start back with a freshman member. Mike McPadden is on the money with his thoughts on another front. He&#8217;s very leery of amending the Constitution for any purpose and I can&#8217;t argue with him on that. Term limits are a great concept&#8230; for everybody else and not for your guy.<\/li>\n<li>Third question is from Gracie Gunnell and it&#8217;s about foreign aid vs. domestic programs.All of the candidates answer that question in the standard conservative matter. McPadden comes out with the most interesting answer of cutting out foreign aid completely.<\/li>\n<li>***This debate is running way over scheduled time and I&#8217;m going to have to leave at halftime for a TV show. ***\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And of course I need to clarify that&#8230; I had to host a LIVE! TV show at 5 PM over in Reidsville NC. Work has to take precedence over SouthsideCentral, until SC pays the bills.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Overall, the format was good. I&#8217;m pleasantly surprised that Danville&#8217;s TEA party (in partnership with the local Republican committees) were able to put an event like this on. Chuck Vipperman did a great job moderating the debate, and Gracie Gunnell &amp; Catherine Amos each had a good question for the field.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s the recap from the first half of the debate. We&#8217;ll have an article on how the candidates performed soon.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, the candidates for the 5th District Republican nomination had their third in a series of debates sponsored by the area TEA parties. I was able to attend the first half of the debate and here are some random thoughts that came out of the first half. I&#8217;m sorry that I wasn&#8217;t able to attend [&#8230;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-livecentral","category-politicscentral","odd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwqFk-1Id","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6603,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/03\/20\/so-how-did-the-candidates-do-at-todays-debate\/","url_meta":{"origin":6585,"position":0},"title":"So, how did the candidates do at today&#8217;s debate?","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"March 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"All righty then... we just completed some random thoughts on today's 5th District debate in Danville. It's time to see how I think the candidates did. We'll recap the candidates in the same alphabetical order that they sat at today's debate. Ken Boyd - Today was the first time that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;OpinionCentral&quot;","block_context":{"text":"OpinionCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/opinioncentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6184,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/16\/so-that-happened-down-in-south-hill\/","url_meta":{"origin":6585,"position":1},"title":"&#8220;So that happened&#8221; down in South Hill&#8230;","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"January 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Ever seen the movie \"Vantage Point\"? It tells a story from the viewpoints of multiple people, each with their own motivations. If you'd like to see a local version of \"Vantage Point\", it happened this week in South Hill during a Q&A session with the seven candidates for the Republican\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;NewsCentral&quot;","block_context":{"text":"NewsCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/newscentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6612,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/03\/22\/photo-gallery-from-saturdays-5th-district-debate\/","url_meta":{"origin":6585,"position":2},"title":"Photo Gallery from Saturday&#8217;s 5th District debate","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"March 22, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"We've compiled a gallery of photos from Saturday's 5th District Republican debate at SCC.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;PhotoCentral&quot;","block_context":{"text":"PhotoCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/photocentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6133,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/07\/robert-hurt-plays-a-strategy-card\/","url_meta":{"origin":6585,"position":3},"title":"Robert Hurt plays a strategy card.","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"January 7, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Gotta admit, I called this one as soon as he proposed a set of five debates... Hurt declines Charlottesville debates Last week, Robert Hurt proposed a series of five debates for the candidates for the Republican 5th district candidates. The various Tea Party groups had proposed their own series of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;NewsCentral&quot;","block_context":{"text":"NewsCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/newscentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6247,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/23\/lets-recap-fridays-tea-party-debate\/","url_meta":{"origin":6585,"position":4},"title":"Let&#8217;s recap Friday&#8217;s Tea Party Debate","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"January 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Five of the six candidates for the 5th District Republican nomination met in Charlottesville last night. So what happened, who won and who lost? Laurence Verga, Feda Morton, Ron Ferris, Mike McPadden, Ken Boyd & Jim McKelvey attended the debate, with Robert Hurt passing on this one due to General\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;OpinionCentral&quot;","block_context":{"text":"OpinionCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/opinioncentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6924,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/05\/19\/5th-district-republican-primary-update-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":6585,"position":5},"title":"5th District Republican Primary \u2013 Update #2","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"May 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"(Last update: 5th District Republican Primary \u2013 Update #1) Ten days from our first update, let's see what's been going on in the 5th District. Let's kick it off with an update on each of the candidates (in random order). Jim McKelvey - McKelvey is starting to spend (his own)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;OpinionCentral&quot;","block_context":{"text":"OpinionCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/opinioncentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}