Awkward Befuddlement Rules Saturday's Wilson-Pearce Debate

It bores me no end to watch Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce debate (video) as they did this past Saturday in Roswell. Judge for yourself but, to me, the event's most telling moments came with the general befuddlement produced by Wilson arguing that the moderators weren't following the rules set for the debate. Heavy. Lots of back and forth over nothing, like most of the GOP rhetoric we hear today.

The biggest tussles, according to the AP, were over Pearce's vote for the humongous farm subsidy bill and Heather's vote against it, as well as Wilson's vote of "present" on the Iraq occupation funding amendment, which Pearce voted for despite Bush's orders from on high to oppose it because of a requirement in the measure that troops start being withdrawn from Iraq in 30 days.

Heather and Steve seem to be scraping to come up with small differences between their twin-like conservative agendas, mostly making suspect and strained accusations that the other voted against something within a huge bill going through complex maneuvers in the U.S. House. Bottom line: both of them are proponents of continuing the Bush-Cheney agenda. They're against almost everything a majority of Americans are for today and for almost everything most Americans are against. That's according to extensive and detailed polling over months and months that consistently shows that most Americans agree with Democratic positions -- if they actually get a chance to hear them in the mainstream media in between the shouting heads or buried in the generally shallow print coverage.

Granted, Pearce is a smidgeon farther to the right than Wilson. Heather does cave at times on issues like health care for children or stem cell research meaning to show some compassion. And granted, Pearce's public personna is much more nasty and domineering. But both of them are all for continuing the Iraq occupation into infinity, he-man saber-rattling against Iran, virtually unlimited blobs of money for anything that can be tagged as "national defense" or "homeland security," walling off our Southern border, giving the government free rein to surveill its citizens without meaningful oversight and shielding the elite economic class from paying its fair share of taxes.

They both want to make our health care system more profitable for the profit makers and to hell with any citizens' rights to affordable, accessible, quality health care. They both are for inserting the government into the process of women making personal health care decisions with their doctors. They both believe that GLBT citizens should be denied equal rights under the law. And they both claim to detest government spending except when it happens in New Mexico.

For the most part, Heather and Steve content themselves with trying to out-butch one another's claims to be willing and able to get more defense and lab funds than their opponent, regardless of what they are used for. Yes, if we can only cement the labs' hold on the past and deflect the juggernaut that's pushing for a change in mission to renewable energy and other green technology research, all will be well in New Mexico. I guess that's why they call themsleve "conservatives," as in trying to keep the power and money where it currently resides rather than opening things up to a future that requires innovation and thinking out of the box. They are both in the box and are dedicated to keeping the narrative inside that well-defined, virtual prison of stale and greed-based thinking. I can't wait until one them has to face Tom Udall.

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