Those of you adverse to right-wing insanity can just wait until tomorrow for "Utopia" and "Voyage of the Damned." I promise this time.
It's with considerable trepidation that I even approached news of Republican primary debates at all. This is mostly for the same reason that I stay away from live entertainment: I really don't like seeing people screw up. But at this point it's pretty much inevitable: those of us who lean to the right need to find someone to go head-to-head against Obama in 2012.
I never for one second thought that Palin would be in the running, and sure enough, she's not. Everyone's opinion of her, mine included, is somewhat tainted by her abysmal performance as John McCain's running mate three years ago. (Then there are the lunatics who think she cost McCain the election. That's simply not true. McCain's doubly-abysmal strategy of neither attacking Obama nor securing a conservative base during the primary - which forced him to spend the entire election cycle pandering to the right instead of the center - cost him the election.)
I had a discussion with a friend of mine right at the start of the campaign season. My general impression is that my friend Bill was for Romney right from the start, because, and I quote, "he'll run America like a business."
I was less sure. I thought Romney was the right choice in 2008, as far as the center-right-moderate-with-an-iffy-record-but-a-solid-message-and-great-communication-skills category goes. (Not that it would have mattered; a potted plant could have run against the Republicans and won. Actually, a potted plant could have run a better campaign than McCain.) But given the slew of attacks against Romney from the right, I figured we'd probably end up with a more conservative.
Some conservative pundit once said that every time the Republican candidate distinguishes himself from the Democrat - that is, every time the Republican tacks right - he wins, and every time he doesn't, he loses. Look at Reagan. Look at what happened to Bush I. Bush II doesn't count, seeing as he lost the popular vote to a global warming liar and then ran for re-election against a man who had less charisma than my desk. Look at what happened to McCain.
Now, the fact of the matter is, there's a glass ceiling when it comes to the presidency. Sarah Palin probably did considerable damage to female (vice-)presidential hopefuls (and this from a guy who voted for her). I'm not that excited about another shrill caricature* running around the campaign trail. And even if Michelle Bachmann hadn't imploded a while back, she just threw away her last chance to be VP at the most recent debate when she threw out a number of at-best-misleading-and-at-worst-blatantly-untrue "facts" about Gingrich and Romney. I never really had high hopes for her in the first place, although my father apparently did.
*Hyperbole.
When Bill - my Romney-supporting friend - asked who I'd want for President, my first thought was "gee, it's a shame Paul Ryan's too young." This is the guy who's spent the most time going toe-to-toe with Obama's policies at the legislative stage. He's the guy who punched holes in every plan the President came up with and came up with fiscally sane alternatives. I don't know too much about his other politics, but if you want someone to nail Obama to the wall... well, it's a shame Paul Ryan's too young.
I never took Cain seriously, and even less so once it became obvious that his entire agenda was "9-9-9, I refuse to take Foreign Policy 101." Huntsman who? And Santorum was the only candidate at last weekend's debate that I didn't recognize on sight. It's not going to be him, although he's apparently brown-nosing for Gingrich's VP slot.
Rick Perry looked like a contender, but he completely dropped the ball on illegal immigration, and when he ran away from his liberal position, it was too little too late. His other policies would be good, but this country isn't about to elect another inarticulate Texan (by "inarticulate" I do not mean that he cannot string two words together without the aide of a teleprompter but rather that he seems to have a really hard time communicating what he means; Santorum made better use of his floor time in the most recent debate).
A nice word to use in describing Ron Paul would be "cantankerous." "Abrasive," "crank," "lunatic," or "nutty libertarian gasbag* with a foreign policy worse than Obama's" would also be accurate, but considerably less kind. Frankly, if not for his dogmatic adherence to the Constitution, he'd belong squarely in the other tent. His announcement that he'll run as a third-party candidate in a year where any vote that's not for the Republican candidate is a vote for Obama essentially amounts to treason.*
*Hyperbole, but much less so than above.
Let's be honest here, at this point it's Romney or Gingrich. At various other points, it's been Romney or Bachmann, or Romney or Perry, or Romney or Cain, but in each of those cases the anti-Romney went and self-destructed. Gingrich is way too smart to do that. Republicans - especially Tea-Party Republicans - are desperate to nominate anyone but Romney, and after their first three heroes, it's hard to see why. Gingrich is considerably better, but he doesn't come baggage-free either.
Conservative author/pundit/troll* (delete according to personal taste) Ann Coulter wrote a highly controversial column that basically amounted to an endorsement of Romney. Her argument was essentially: "Don't vote for Gingrich because he's a center-right moderate with a lot of baggage. Vote for Romney, even though he's a center-right moderate with (admittedly considerably less) baggage." I didn't exactly buy it, and neither did most of the rest of us on this side of the aisle.
*Hyperbole. I read her stuff, but I take it with a massive grain of salt.
So over the weekend, Santorum, Perry, Romney, Gingrich, Paul and Bachmann gathered together for various purposes. First and foremost, everybody except for Romney and Gingrich were invited so they'd bring in their supporters, who could then decide between Romney and Gingrich because that's what it's down to at this point in the game. But there were other reasons as well:
Santorum was there to ingratiate himself to Camp Gingrich, because he really wants to be Gingrich's VP. (If that's not what his strategy was, he needs to fire his strategist immediately.)
Bachmann was there to demonstrate her utter lack of political acumen; she wasted an entire question sniping at Santorum, who is never going to be the nominee, and most of the rest of her time sniping at Romney and Gingrich. Since the nominee is going to be one of those two people, she just blew her last chance at being VP.
Perry was likewise there because he thought he still had a horse in the race. The whole "moderate president, conservative VP" didn't work last time around, but that's also because the presidential candidate refused to go on the offensive while the vice-presidential candidate refused to do her homework. It'll never happen for a number of reasons, but it would be nice to see Perry show up in the number-two slot on the ticket.
Ron Paul was there so that Mitt Romney could use words like "federalism" and phrases like "Article I, Section 8" without being the Constitution's biggest cheerleader on the stage. He was also there to churn out pithy slogans like "we can't have a government that'll save us from ourselves," which other, smarter candidates (I'm thinking mostly Romney here) were able to turn into actual talking points. Seriously, you could probably run an entire campaign just by listening to what Ron Paul says about the Constitution and then watering it down for a more moderate, sensible audience. I'm not saying you would win, but you could certainly do it...
Gingrich was there because his campaign lives and dies based on his debate performance. Also, suddenly being the front-runner helped. And Romney was there because he's going to get the nomination if Gingrich loses any traction... which, by the way, is exactly what Perry, Bachmann, and yes, even Paul were all trying to accomplish.
Romney and Gingrich were there to differentiate themselves from each other, which makes it all the more alarming that Romney stumbled when he was asked to... differentiate himself from Gingrich! The horror! I really couldn't see that one coming! Talk about blindsiding a candidate with a trick question! I assume he went home and fired someone after the debate. Somebody dropped the ball there, and as someone running against a man who rarely makes mistakes, Romney can't afford any.
Now, the number-one issue in this country is what Joe Biden thinks is a three-letter word: jobs. However, the number-one issue in this election cycle is not jobs. Those will come later. The number-one issue this election cycle is ObamaCare, which will, incidentally, make the economy much worse and will therefore destroy jobs. Since both Romney and Gingrich have previously been in favor of the individual mandate - the most flagrantly unconstitutional part of ObamaCare - they have a lot of 'splainin' to do.
There was a lot of talk about this. Romney made an politically unwise but economically sound $10,000 bet that he didn't endorse the individual mandate in his book, and that seems to be about the only thing anyone took away from this debate, which is a shame.
Both Romney and Gingrich were asked about their past support of the mandate, and they both responded with the time-honored "yes but..." For Romney, it was "yes but, under Federalism, each state gets to decide what's best for that state, so if other states don't like the mandate, they don't have to take it." For Gingrich, it was "yes but, it was better than HillaryCare."
Now, I know that Gingrich is a master deb... um, he's very good at debating, but frankly, this was not his strongest moment. The fact that Romney's dodge included a nod to federalism endeared him to me a lot more than Gingrich's allusion to a failed piece of legislation from 18 years ago.
I expected that Romney's mention of federalism was just a clever political calculation, meant to endear him to that wing of the party that gives a rat's about the Constitution (oh, hello*). But after poking around on his website for a little bit, it appears that he's serious: federalism and states' rights are actual planks in his platform, or are at least the fibers woven into those planks.
*The fact that I give a rat's about the Constitution is the number-two reason I'm a conservative. The number-one reason is that I once took an Economics course and aced everything except the section on Keynesian economics. Keynesian economics struck me as being a lot like everything I had to memorize in Biology: made-up, nonsensical, illogical, and useless. Mild hyperbole.
But look at those answers. Romney: "yes, but X, and here's a brief explanation of X." Gingrich: "yes, but Y." X is federalism, as in "the political philosophy our nation was founded on." Y is a piece of failed legislation from 18 years ago. I would hope that the average voter knows more about the former than the latter. (I don't know, maybe it came up in the Bam-Hil debates back in 07.)
So, yes, Romney fumbled his way through the "what do you and Newt disagree on" question. Yeah, he made a $10,000 bet when the average American is tightening their belt. I still thought he was able to make a number of valid points, whereas Gingrich had to spend most of the time on the defensive. Yeah, I know he was the frontrunner and all, so everyone ganged up on him, but that's just how the cookie gets stepped on and obliterated.
No comments:
Post a Comment