POLITICO Arena: What would you ask the candidates?

Get into the act! What question do you want to ask the candidates?  Post your comments here.

Politico TheArena logo

Arena Asks: Eight Republican presidential hopefuls are gearing up to take the stage tonight for the POLITICO/NBC News debate – the first major faceoff as campaign season kicks into high gear.

If you were a moderator at tonight’s debate, what would you ask the candidates and why?

My Answer: You see government as the problem. Yet you want to be not just part of it but to lead it. How would you create public confidence in its elected officials and public servants after you have you have built your candidacy on making them the enemy?

INTENTIONING

Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women
Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good

The new book from Gloria Feldt about the future, taking the leadership lessons learned from this disruption and creating a better world for all through the power of intention.

(Follow up question: how will you make up for the broadscale elimination of public sector jobs caused by your policies?)

Many Democrats and Independents would agree with you that the government is the problem when it comes to social issues you espouse, such as making abortion illegal, eliminating women’s health care such as routine family planning from insurance plans, and intruding on medical practice with gag rule measures that tell doctors what they can or cannot say to patients. Please explain why you support these measures while promising to get government out of people’s lives.

(Follow up question: These measures are all aimed at exerting government power over women’s lives. Yet you don’t support measures like Paycheck Fairness to give women an equal shot at economic self-sufficiency. How in the world do you justify that?)

1 Comment

  1. Aletha on September 10, 2011 at 1:33 am

    Ironically, most of the questions that come to my mind I could just as well ask of the President. For instance, speaking of justifying nonsense, since abortion is still legal, how can you justify making it so difficult for poor women to get an abortion? Is it not the case that poor women have the least chance of providing their children a decent quality of life?

    Do you believe women have adequate constitutional protection, so there is no need for an equal rights amendment?

    You believe it is wise to invest taxpayer money to build more nuclear power plants, develop clean coal technology, and subsidize biofuels. How can you justify these technologies, which do nothing to stop climate change, but do promise to increase the toxic burden of all life on this planet?

    How can you justify bailing out too big to fail financial institutions which have ruined the economy, so that they got bigger and learned no lessons from their mistakes?

    You support genetic engineering of crops as a great boon to agriculture and a potential source of fuel to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. Do you think biodiversity and organic farming, both of which will be destroyed by this technology, are expendable, or a necessary sacrifice for the greater good?

    That is just for starters, as examples of issues I have with the policies of both parties.

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.