I just want to give a shout out to Robert Fitzgerald the independence party candidate for the Minnesota senate race. Last night the League of women voters held a debate betwixt him, Amy Klobuchar and Mark Kennedy and I have to say that Robert did a spectacular job. His strongest issues are the occupation of Iraq and Economics (corporate welfare, tax system bullshit) which are the best issues to be strong in. Additionally, I couldn’t agree more with his stance on immigration, both Klobuchar and Kennedy are for the fence between us and Mexico, which is a colossal waste of money. About this Robert said: “Show me a 50 ft fence and I’ll show you a person with a 51 ft ladder”.

It was his rhetoric style that I really liked. He did use some lame political clichés (the fence line is one of them—although I agreed with it) at least he didn’t repeat them over and over again like Kennedy, and he sounded far less forced when he used them than Klobuchar. He also used them more sparingly than the other two candidates (continue this practice).

Ultimately he sounded very knowledgeable and very professional, sure he seemed a bit nervous at some points—and he caught himself saying “terribly effective” when he wanted to say “extremely effective” towards the end. In my opinion terribly would have worked fine. He only made those little screw ups when he got nervous which is understandable. The other candidates didn’t seem as nervous but they made screw-ups like that way more often and also repeated themselves quite a bit more. So the nervousness just made Robert look human and justified his speech foibles (which were very few) whereas when the other candidate screwed up they just looked dumb—especially Mark Kennedy who is a whiny bastard that seemed to ignore everything going on and just repeat the same attacks that were complete lies (obvious to the viewers as well). He even linked Iraq and al qaeda a couple of times…. HEY MARK!! EVEN BUSH DOESN’T DO THAT ANYMORE! YOU’RE A WHINY IDIOT!

One of the highlights of the debate had to be when Kennedy challenged Amy to a debate just about Iraq and Robert came back and said that he would love to and then didn’t drop it and Mark had to just ignore him. It was great, and I hope that debate happens because Robert obviously knows more facts about the situation and is able to articulate them better than either of the other candidates. In addition the war in Iraq is a big loser for republicans and Mark Kennedy is terrible at debating the issue. Amy really needs to accept this challenge because Kennedy will be left bloody.

If you’re reading this Robert please clarify your stance on Campaign finance reform. I understand that your afraid of stepping on free speech but there has to be some way to get the big corporate money (or bribery as I like to call it) out of politics, or at least diminish it… throw me some kind of bone here. I think that the money in politics is perhaps the single most damaging thing we have happening now, what will you do to fix it if finance reform isn’t the way? Also start talking about the instant runoff voting initiative. This needs to pass and no one is talking about it, you have the platform and your party stands to benefit most.

Now that I’m talking to you Robert I want to say one last thing: keep it up! Your style is becoming more natural and you seem far more in control than you have in debates in the past. Relax and continue to do what you did last night. You’ll go far.