COMMENTARY | With the upcoming GOP debate on October 18, 2011, in Las Vegas, I was curious if there was any unexplored territory. After all, big media polls say that Mitt Romney and Herman Cain are neck in neck for the Republican presidential nomination race. Since half of my family are Republicans, I decided to try and find the topics that still haven’t been fully discussed by the moderators.
To do this, I went directly to social media sources. There, I found comments about previous debates and what voters want to hear discussed in Las Vegas. After all, very few viewers will have a chance to ask the frontrunners a direct question.
Online, I saw that there was a lot of support divided between Romney and Cain and plenty of pre-GOP debate excitement. However, some potential viewers were lackluster and retweeted a meme that said, “Another GOP debate tomorrow and the only real suspense will be how tight Anderson Cooper’s trademark T shirt will be.”
Many of the current questions come from the results of previous GOP debates. While many of the popular remarks have been discussed, there are some less popular questions voters have for the Republican candidates. Some of the inquires include, “The previous GOP debates were utterly-pro Israel. As Arabs, are we out of their consideration?”
Most of the uncommon questions that voters had for Romney focused his faith. Instead of asking him whether or not he is a Mormon, social media posters wanted to understand the depth of his practicing by stating, “Does Mitt Romney pay his tithing?”
While there were a couple of comments about Romney, most of them were directed at Cain. Cain may be leading in the polls, but there is a lot of criticism about his attitude. In particular potential voters said, “I hate to think Cain’s ‘jokes’ may surface as another problem. Already driving Latinos from GOP – not good.”
Other Republicans felt slighted by Cain’s economic strategy stating, “Can you ask Herman Cain a question for me in reference to 9-9-9? Since you are anti-minimum wage, would you make your pizza chain employees work for less than minimum if you could? Also, how will 9-9-9 affect a person on SSDI?”
Finally, a small percentage of the general public wanted to know “Why was Herman Cain mangling that Uzbekistan question? This kind of thing matters when you are President.” Despite this, there were still plenty of supporters looking for comic relief. When asked what they would say if they were allowed to ask any of the GOP debaters a question, one Twitter user replied, “I would ask Herman Cain how much it cost to get Godfather’s Pizza to be name-dropped in the movie ‘The Goonies.’”