Rand did terrible in this debate.
It was his worst performance in the debates so far to be sure, but it was far from terrible.
He is a liar, and a bad one at that. Listening to him tying to make his "iran threat" flip flop not a flip flop made me cringe.
His point about intellectual dishonesty is that when you take a quote out of context and draw your own conclusions, you paint him as a flip-flopper. The quote "Our national security is not threatened by Iran having one nuclear weapon" has been used to imply that Rand isn't
concerned about a nuclear Iran, which is false. I think his point was rather that we shouldn't
invade over Iran having a nuclear weapon -- that the threat of a nuclear Iran does not justify a preemptive war.
It's really hard to communicate that in fifteen seconds. I do wish he'd be clearer on it, and I'm sure he wishes the soundbite wasn't out there, because there's a huge difference between his point and the soundbite.
I dunno, really...the problem is that any well-reasoned and nuanced position will get you killed in politics.
Reporter: "If Iran has a single nuclear weapon, is our national security threatened?"
Candidate: "No, not in that very specific case."
Reporter: "Wow, you support a nuclear Iran!"
Candidate: "No, that's neither what I said nor what I mean. My point is..."
Reporter: "And that's all the time we have!"
Drives me crazy.
On the other hand Trey comes across as very likable and reasonable.
Trey comes across as a smarmy douchenozzle who's more concerned about "scoring points" than fixing the very real problems our nation faces.