About That 'Debate'

My old friend David Franke, one of the founding fathers of the conservative movement, is always fascinating. I appreciate his observations, even when I disagree with them, as below, on Ron. However, I do agree with what I might call David's underlying point: that the bloody militarists of the Republican party do not deserve Ron Paul.

The CNN/Tea Party Debate

Monday, September 12, 2011

Observations by David Franke

Tonight's debate was vigorous and fast-paced, technically the best of the four debates so far.  But it also served to remind us that the debates are entertainment, not education.  If you want an education into how and what the candidates think, watch a video of Jim DeMint's Labor Day forum, where each candidate was grilled for 22 minutes while the others were sequestered so they wouldn't hear his or her answers.

There is constant chatter today about which candidate is most "electable" against President Obama.  This gives too much importance to day-by-day developments, which of course is what the cable news media want—they have to talk about something 24 hours a day, every day of the week.  I have said for three years that the election will hinge on the state of the economy in November 2012.  Judging from that, and how I expect the economy to get worse in the next 14 months, Obama will lose.  Either Romney or Perry will win.  All else is theater and bread and circuses.

Winners and Losers

There were no big winners, only two small winners.

Bachmann was a small winner because she got some of her mojo back—forceful answers, aimed directly at the Tea Party audience in the hall.  That was absolutely necessary after her disappointing performance in the last debate, and her sinking poll numbers.  I cannot see her getting the nomination no matter how well she does, however.  With four governors in the race this year (one of them now out), it is obvious that they have the executive skills necessary to succeed as president.  And Obama's abject failure as president (I'm not talking ideology here) reminds us every day how we need something more than a couple of years in the Congress.

Romney was the other small winner.  No knockout—especially with a hostile Tea Party audience.  But he held his own and made no big mistakes, which is all that he needed to do tonight.

Cain, Gingrich, and Santorum put in good performances, but it will not increase their market share enough to make them serious contenders.  The most they can hope for is to be picked as the vice presidential running mate of the winner, but the winning nominee usually picks someone who hasn't been bruised by months of primary battles and exposure.  How many of us knew who Sarah Palin was before John McCain picked her as his running mate?

Huntsman was Huntsman.  If you have never risen at all, there is little room to fall.

Finally, there were two losers—one big loser, one small loser.

The big loser was Perry.  He didn't suffer a knockout—far from it—but the golden boy of the conservatives and Tea Partiers now has some tarnish on his armor of fake gold.  Michele Bachmann told the Tea Partiers what they wanted to hear.  Rick Perry stumbled badly on his vaccine mandate and on immigration.  No matter that he has admitted he was wrong on the vaccine issue; his discussion of this is so poorly constructed, he fails to put it behind him.  And I happen to think he is on the right side of the immigration issue as it was addressed tonight, but again he doesn't know how to present his case.  If it's true that only four Texas legislators voted against his Texas version of the DREAM Act, why didn't he confront the hostile (on this issue) Tea Party audience by saying, "Look, virtually every conservative politician in Texas voted for this.  Don't you believe in states' rights?  And the taxpayers of Texas are making this investment, not any of you in the other 49 states."

Let's face it—Rick Perry is good at barnstorming, but bad as a debater.  As a barnstormer he can preach very effectively to his choir with his memorized spiel.  Debating requires more knowledge and quick thinking.  I've never thought that debating skills are the most important qualification for a president, but they sure come in handy in a debate.

The small loser was Ron Paul.  Since he has never risen consistently above 15% (and more often 10%), he doesn't have that far to fall.  I don't think he fell tonight, but it was very clear that he will not be able to break that 15% barrier—not in the Republican Party primaries.  If by some miracle he could get the GOP nomination, Gallup and other polls show he would be competitive with Obama.  But the Republican Party is a militarist party, which puts a ceiling on how far he can go.  He probably got as many cheers as boos when he talked about foreign policy, but the boos were what you noticed.  They served as a reminder of just how militarist the Republicans are.  They want to cut spending, but not the military budget—impossible!  And this is why I think the Republicans would be basically as hopeless as the Democrats at handling the crises ahead.

After the debate, I noticed liberal Democratic mouths blabbering about how the Republican candidates talked about things like vaccines when all the American people are interested in are jobs, jobs, jobs.  Well of course they answered the questions posed to them in the debate.  The best questions were the ones that came from Tea Partiers in the audience.  The Tea Party's strongest issue is cutting spending and cutting the size of government, but those subjects were not on Wolf Blitzer's agenda.

As usual in all the debates, the media moderators and questioners are primarily interested in gotcha' moments and creating fights between the candidates.  Yes, ideology plays a part, but the few conservative media involved in the debates have been little better in this regard.  Let's face it, the media are not interested in a civics lesson.  They want theater and bread and circuses.  Don't expect anything else from the debates.