Last night the three Republican candidates for the 18th Congressional District participated in another debate — this one sponsored by the Peoria Young Republicans and televised live on WMBD-TV. Video clips of the debate are supposed to be posted on centralillinoisproud.com sometime today.

The candidates gave opening statements, then answered one question on a litany of topics ranging from agriculture to education. After each round of questions, the candidates had an opportunity for rebuttal. There was no opportunity for the candidates to ask each other questions.

I thought Schock and McConoughey tied as winners of this debate. I’ve been very disappointed with Morris. His answers lack substance on many issues, and he makes up for it with rhetoric and doublespeak. He seems preoccupied with trying to get in little jabs at Schock.

One need look no further than the first question for a perfect example. It was about the farm bill. Schock said he would like to see a stronger safety net for farmers and increased promotion of ethanol. McConoughey wants to fully fund risk insurance, and talked about what he’s already done to help farmers by creating a Port district to help reduce input and output costs. Morris? Oh, he’s “excited about representing farmers,” he’s going to “work hard to protect the interests of farmers and America’s food supply,” and he’s going to “continue to work with farmers.” And he’s “known farmers his entire life.” His whole answer went on and on like this. That’s called doublespeak, and it tells me that he doesn’t know anything about the farm bill, whereas Schock and McConoughey do.

On the next question, on foreign policy, Morris said he has a “full-blown proposal on national security.” Unfortunately, he didn’t share any of it at this debate. He said we need a “serious approach to foreign policy.” We need to “support our troops” and “get the job done.” He said that we shouldn’t de-fund the troops. He mentioned a second time that he has a “full-blown proposal.” And he used his rebuttal time to blast Schock for his nukes-to-Taiwan faux pas again. Schock and McConoughey, in contrast, offered specific policy initiatives that went beyond just Iraq, but also included securing our borders.

The whole debate was like this. I really don’t understand those who are coming away from these debates as big Morris supporters. I like Morris personally, and I was actually hoping to like his positions and support him in this race, but after hearing his answers in these debates, I’ve been driven to support McConoughey instead. I thought McConoughey spoke much better this time — this might be because this is the first time I’ve seen him while he was speaking (which makes a difference). The last debate was on the radio.

Schock is clearly a bright guy, and if it weren’t for a couple of things I might have been able to support him. But I really can’t trust a guy who lied to the Illinois House about Senate Bill 2477, saying the entire city council supported it, and helped push through a bill that was in essence a property tax increase on Peoria residents. Remember that when he says he’s for lower taxes — he strongly supported a bill that gave District 150 the ability to raise your property taxes without a referendum through the Public Building Commission. And of course, the nukes-to-Taiwan thing showed some frightening lack of judgment.

McConoughey isn’t the perfect candidate. He was a little weak on the education question, not seeming to understand “No Child Left Behind” very well. He either forgot to answer or evaded the same-sex marriage question. But of the three Republican candidates, I would trust him the most to represent me in Congress. He has the best understanding of economic and agricultural issues of the three, he’s strong on national defense, and he’s conservative on social issues.

I say, vote for Jim.

The Peoria Area World Affairs Council sponsored a foreign policy debate with the three Republican candidates for the 18th Congressional District seat being vacated by Ray LaHood. It was broadcast live on WCBU (you can hear the debate in its entirety by clicking here), and was moderated by Jonathan Ahl. The questioners were Ahl, Illinois Central College President John Irwin, and Peoria Journal Star editorial writer Mike Bailey.

I finally got around to listening to the whole debate Sunday evening. The only way I could stay awake through the whole thing was by taking notes and eating Fritos. The notes came in handy afterwards, however, when I was trying to decide who won the debate. I developed a little scoring system and rated each of the answers, then summed the scores to see who came out on top. To my surprise, it was McConoughey.

It was a surprise to me because McConoughey is not a very effective speaker. I don’t mean that as an insult. He’s just kind of quiet and doesn’t come across on radio as particularly engaging like Morris or Schock. His opponents have a lot better delivery and poise. But when that was stripped away and I looked at what each of them had to say in response to the questions asked, I thought McConoughey came out on top overall. Schock came in second, and Morris last.

Naturally, each candidate had his pluses and minuses. One of Morris’s best answers was in response to Jonathan Ahl’s question about whether there comes a time when the U.S. should decide that democracy isn’t possible in a given country. Morris responded that he believes, like the Declaration of Independence says, that all men — not just Americans — are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that freedom is the destiny of the world. He also had good responses to questions regarding immigration and determining the accuracy of intelligence information.

But as the debate went on, Morris became less and less effective. His answers on Taiwan, Canada, and Lebanon were all weak — meaning he didn’t really answer the questions posed. He’s for free trade to a fault; he favors limiting trade only in “extraordinary circumstances,” such as “hot war” and “gross violations” of trade agreements. Only McConoughey cited human rights violations as a trigger for restricting trade. Finally, several of Morris’s answers bordered on jingoism (some questions were answered with nothing more than “I’m an American” and “I will vote in America’s best interests”).

Schock had a terrific answer to Bailey’s question about immigration — the one where he asked how the candidates reconciled their immigration stance with their family/religious values. He said, “God is a God of order,” and “Locking your door at your home and requiring that someone get permission to enter before coming into your house does not make you a bad neighbor.” An apt analogy. He also had the best answer as to how the U.S. can improve its relationship with Lebanon, which was to deal head-on with the Hezbollah problem and its Iranian funding.

Some of Schock’s answers, coupled with other statements he’s made, gave me the impression that he’s been reading up on former president Reagan and sometimes gets the past confused with the present. One example is his infamous suggestion (now retracted) that we sell Pershing missiles to Taiwan, even though Pershing missiles were destroyed by the early 1990s. In this debate, he evaded Ahl’s question about whether democracy is possible in some countries by talking about U.S. missteps toward Iran in the 1970s. A curious reference.

The only questions McConoughey didn’t have a good answer for were Ahl’s question on what the U.S. needs to do for Canada on issues such as sovereignty of the Arctic Ocean and air pollution from midwest coal-burning plants and Bailey’s question about ideas to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians. However, none of the candidates had good answers to those questions. McConoughey’s “new” idea on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was using Turkey as an intermediary to try to negotiate peace, but in fact Turkey is already a partner in that effort.

On the rest of the questions, however, McConoughey did well, showing a good understanding of our economic ties to other countries (including Canada), how to strengthen the dollar, and free trade theory.