TennWatch/Volitics

John Farmer: District 8 Republican Primary Debate

This is a summary of the comments made by candidate John Farmer during a debate between him and one of the other two candidates, James Hart. Read my summary of the overall debate.

Farmer started off with quoting the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This was, no doubt, intended to set him apart from his white supremacist opponent.

Iraq:
The War in Iraq is not an embarrassment; the true embarrassment would be to cut and run. Iraq is part of the larger war on terror. We must defeat the ideology. It is a far-reaching ''shadow war" and we are failing to seal our borders.

NAFTA:
Free trade opens markets and give consumers what they want. The reason that we are losing manufacturing facilities is that consumers vote with their pocket book and so jobs go overseas. The answer is not to declare war on Mexico (a reference to Hart's recommendation). Rather we should enforce the laws currently on the books to penalize employers and act to seal our borders.

Immigration:
Amnesty certainly is not the answer, nor is instituting punitive tariffs (another Hart reference). The truth is that in spite of the large number of illegal aliens, unemployment is at one of the lowest rates in a long time. But we need to seal our border to stop illegal immigration.

Affirmative Action:
All men are created equal. If you can do a job then you should get the job. Farmer related that he was raised in a welfare family (he then joked that he must be a "lessor race" — a dig at Hart). However, welfare should not be a lifestyle. Dependence on welfare has ruined our inner cities.

Constitutional Rights:
Farmer said that he has a handgun permit and believes that it is not a privilege — it is a right. The politically correct movement is robbing us of our freedom of speech. Eminent Domain: the concept is good but it has gotten out of hand. The foundation of freedom is property rights. In all, we need to get back to the original concepts, what the Framers had in mind, such as that of States Rights.

Closing comments:
Farmer wrapped up by once more asserting that all are created equal. The right to life comes from God. We cannot take God out of the equation; our country based on the concept that there is a God. And by the way, God does cause the weather (see Hart's closing comments to get the reference).

On the topic of immigration, Farmer reiterated his support for legal immigration and said that low wages stifle innovation. For support of this view, he said that the cotton gin and other innovations had been invented as a result of the abolition of slavery.

Editor's Comments:
I thought Farmer did a pretty good job. His answers were reasoned and concise, and he was not rattled by either the anti-Bush tone of the questions nor the rantings of his opponent.

Not only that, I found it difficult to disagree with much of anything that Farmer said. At this point, he is the AlphaPatriot Pick in the race.

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