Live-blogging the Ben Quayle/Jon Hulburd debate
It’s over.
Simons says the tape will be up on the KAET web site, but it’s not there yet.
I assume it will be on this page.
PHXated will post when it becomes available.
Incredibly, it’s almost over. Closing statements. Schoen goes on some more about manufacturing jobs.
Quayle says he wants to “bend the cost care curve down” in health care. Yeah, that’s always been a big GOP priority. He says he’ll work to repeal the health care bill.
Hulburd says repealing health care is a fairy tale. He says he’s going to go back and act like legislators.
Will Quayle kick the new kids on the health care rolls off? Hulburd says he likes part of the bill, not other parts.
Elect someone who will deal with this as an adult, he says. Hard to argue with that.
Simons asks about immigration reform. A bad question: “Is it needed, how do you do it?”
Quayle wants “a barrier from the Pacific to the Gulf.” He natters on about drug cartels. He wont' talk about reform until “we secure the border.”
Hulburd tries to attack Quayle from the right on this, saying that Quayle has been arguing for a guest worker program. Quayle says only after the border is secured.
Hulburd hits Quayle hard; he notes Quayle’s getting a lot of his money from Cerebrus capital.
Quayle says Hulburd’s getting money from a union. Hulburd says he’ll give back his $10K in union contributions if Quayle gives back the $80K he got from Cerebrus.
Tarp was not the way to go, Quayle says. He says the banks were that much in trouble.
Jesus these guys are bush league. Tarp was a Bush initiative supported by both parties and economists on both sides.
Hulburd says Tarp was a terrible idea, a disaster. Simons says, so should we have let the fire burn itself out? He says yes, the rich people got bailed out by the Titanic. He’s wrong.
Schoen notes than Greenspan has said you can’t cut taxes with borrowed money. He says the tax cuts are jsut going to blow out the deficit. He should be asking both Quayle and Hulburd to address that issue.
Tom Schoen
Simons asks a hard question of Quayle: Business, he notes, aren’t putting their money to work; they husbanding it, buying back shares and the like.
He babbles in response, not answering the question. None of it makes sense.
Simon turns to Schoen, who says he was once sued for defamation, too. I don’t think he needed to volunteer that. But he seems not to be an idiot on the economy.
Hulburd sounds good on the economy too. Even under Simons questioning he sticks to his support for extending the Bush tax cuts.
Quayle keep[s nattering on about “uncertainty.”
(This is a bullshit Republican talking point. Rich people had certainty. They knew their tax cuts were going to end this year; the only uncertainty was whether they could con Congress isn’t extending them.)
Quayle says Hulburd was using blatant lies in ads. When asked, Quayle says it was a lie that he’d pretended to have kids in a mailer. (Which he did.) Hulburd notes that it wasn’t a lie.
The moderator keeps hitting Hulburd, not Quayle. “He says he’s regrets the association,” he says to Hulburd. “Why isn’t that good enough?”
Jesus.
Quayle says he’s been tested in the primary. He says he’s been candid the whole time. (He hasn’t.) He has a deer in the headlights look.
He attacks Hulburd for having been sued for defamation and fraud. Hulburd says the suits were nuisance suits and dismissed with prejudice.
Quayle says something stupid, too: “It didn’t go through the proper trial.” He tries to make it sound suspicious. Well, if they were dismissed, they wouldn’t have “gone through the proper trial” … because they were dismissed.
The moderator asks a dumb question of Hulburd: Why harp on Quayle and Dirty Scottsdale? Hulburd says because character matters.
To that question, Quayle says it’s because he’s going to go to D.C. and fight for the people. Jesus. He says watching actions in D.C. the last year and a half is the best experience anyone could have.
Moderator Simons asked Hulburd why he’s qualified. Hulburd says it’s a fair question, and notes his social, business and personal experience. He stresses he work as a lawyer and family man and volunteer work for Children’s Hospital.
Schoen, the libertarian, shows a chart, demonstrating the decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs.
Hulburd begins, and goes on the attack. He ridicules Qualye for an ad with a wildly inaccurate ad about the federal deficit and goes after him for his involvement in Dirty Scottsdale.
Quayle says it’s “one of the most important elections in the country’s history.”
Quayle tries to attack Obama and the health care initiative.
It’s starting. An “open exchange of ideas,” moderator Ted Simons says. Interruptions are allowed. there’s a libertarian there, too, Michael Schoen, a former prosecutor.
The Ben Quayle-Jon Hulburd debate is scheduled to last for an absurd 30 minutes.
It will be broadcast on Phoenix’s public TV station, channel 8, KAET.
Stay tunes for live-blogging when it begins at 7 p.m. PDT.
(Out-of-state readers please note Arizona doesn’t recognize daylight savings time, it being a comminist plot of some sort, and is a consequence operating currently in the Pacific time zone.)
PHXated’s complete coverage of the life and times of Little Benny Quayle is here.
The complete Brock Landers story is here.
PHXated’s interview with Jon Hulburd is here.
The weird little story about whatever it is that Ben Quayle’s wife does is here.
Braham Resnik to Ben Quayle: “What have you ever done to ‘knock the hell’ out of anything?”.