Former Gov. Jon Huntsman (R-UT) and Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) are going in opposite directions. Not their positions on the issues, which are an odd blend of conservative and RINO, but in how well they perform in the Republican debates. Huntsman has been getting steadily better – he didn’t come off as creepy or squirrelly last night, for a change – while Perry has trended downward from good in his first debate to meh in his second to ugly in Orlando.

Though he performed much, much better this time out, Huntsman was hardly flawless – and this has more to do with his worldview than his debating skills.

To cite one example, noting that he doled out millions of dollars of tax credits to promote clean energy while he was governor, moderator Chris Wallace wanted to know how that was different from the Obama administration giving a half-a-billion dollars in federal loan guarantees to the now-bankrupt solar panel company Solyndra. Huntsman seemed to disavow his own record (“We have learned that subsidies don't work and that we can no longer afford them,”) before feeling his way through the landmine (“we can move toward renewable energy, but we're going to have to have a bridge product … today the economics [for solar and wind power] don't work”) and then settled for Obama’s approach, but with a “a quick phase-out.”)

The right answer would have gone something like this: “There are scores of entrepreneurs out there trying to build a better mousetrap. Using taxpayer dollars to pick winners and losers is wrong. The best thing we, as a nation, can do to foster innovation is to improve our science and math education and to create a regulatory and tax environment that encourages risk rather than punishes results.”

Once again, Perry was the piñata at the Fox News-Google GOP Presidential debate in Orlando, FL, with former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) taking turns whacking his positions on Social Security, the crony capitalism behind his executive order to inoculate schoolgirls with a Merck vaccine that protects against the sexually transmitted disease HPV and illegal immigration.

At one point, Perry observed that his and Romney’s tit-for-tat attacks were “like badminton” while Huntsman predicted “when all is said and done … Romney and Perry, aren't going to be around, because they're going to bludgeon each other to death.” Huntsman also reminded us that “about four years ago, we had two frontrunners in similar situations … Rudy Giuliani [and] Fred Thompson. They seemed to disappear altogether.”

To be sure, the media is pitting Perry and Romney against each other because it makes for exciting TV and an endless supply of sound bites they can replay and chew over ad nauseum and instead of toughening up the eventual nominee to go up against President Barack Hussein Obama the end result may be to provide the opposition with ready-made attack ads and dispirit a fired-up base enough to dampen turnout. As each of the candidates is flawed – some more deeply than others – Repubs ignore Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment at their collective peril.

Getting back to Perry’s performance, he stumbled from the git-go. Following a question from a small business owner about incentivizing hiring, moderator Bret Baier noted that “most people who submitted questions … wanted specifics” and that “[m]ost of [your] opponents, have a specific jobs plan on paper that people can read.” When he asked, “Where is your jobs plan?” Perry gave a stock answer about his record of lowering the tax and regulatory burden in TX. What worked in TX may not work nationwide – especially as 40 percent of the jobs created during Perry’s tenure have gone to illegal immigrants – and even taking into account his late entry into the campaign it’s amateurish not to have put out a jobs plan by now, as the economy is the Number One issue driving this election.

Romney filled the vacuum by touting his 59-point plan, and during the proceedings businessman former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain got a chance to expound on his 9-9-9 plan, Romney commented further on his proposal for middle-class tax relief (“anybody earning under $200,000 and not pay any taxes on interest, dividends or capital gains, zero tax on their savings”) and Huntsman mentioned that his tax plan (phases out loopholes and deductions for individuals and taxes income at 8 percent, 14 percent, or 23 percent; phases out corporate welfare and subsidies, cuts the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent) was “endorsed by the Wall Street Journal.” Perry’s lack of an economic plan that addresses jobs and/or taxes was glaring.

Perry also fumbled Romney’s attack of his characterization of Social Security a Ponzi scheme – which he should have expected and prepared for. Perry started out by assuring current and soon-to-be retirees “don't have anything in the world to worry about” – which suggests that everyone has something to worry about – then winged the rest of his answer, giving Romney – of all people – the opportunity to call him out for flip-flopping (“There's a Rick Perry out there that is saying … the federal government shouldn't be in the pension business, that it's unconstitutional … and it should be returned to the states. So you better find that Rick Perry and get him to stop saying that.”):

[W]e never said that we were going to move this back to the states. What we said was, we ought to have as one of the options the state employees and the state retirees, they being able to go off of the current system, on to one that the states would operate themselves.

As a matter of fact, in Massachusetts, his home state, almost 96 percent of the people who are on that program, retirees and state people, are off of the Social Security program. So having that option out there to have the states – Louisiana does it, almost every state has their state employees and the retirees that are options to go off of Social Security.

In the end, Perry had talked his way into a public pension formula which, if anything, is an even bigger Ponzi scheme than the federal entitlement program, but luckily for him Romney did not capitalize on his mish-mash of an answer by pointing out that state pension plans are an unfunded liability and in TX, for instance, taxpayers are on the hook for $42 billion. And for his part, Huntsman could have touted the 401(k)-style public pension plan in UT, which is serving as a model for other states.

Herman Cain hit the question out of the park a few minutes later:

I have proposed the Chilean model. It's been around 30 years, and it works. It's a personal retirement account. And in the last 30 years, not only has Chile succeeded with that model, but 30 other countries have done so. I don't think we're doing a service to the American people to keep bantering about what you call it and what you don't call it. The solution is: Fix it.

Perry damaged himself badly – perhaps fatally, in this election cycle – when he responded to Romney’s attack on granting of in-state tuition to the children of illegals (“if you're an illegal alien, you get an in-state tuition discount [of] $22,000 a year. … If you are a United States citizen from any one of the other 49 states, you have to pay $100,000 more [to go to the University of Texas]. That doesn't make sense to me.”):

[I]f you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they've been brought there by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart. We need to be educating these children, because they will become a drag on our society.

Perry then pointed out that the state legislature approved giving the children of illegals a tuition break (“Out of 181 members of the Texas legislature, when this issue came up, only four dissenting votes. This was a state issue. Texans voted on it.”). Fair enough – Romney is now saying that the legislature in his state made changes to RomneyCare that he opposed and they are to blame for the mess it has become – but then Perry added: “I think that's what Texans wanted to do. And I still support it greatly.”

Santorum, who turned in a strong performance last night, immediately jumped on Perry:

[N]o one is suggesting up here that the students that are illegal in this country shouldn't be able to go to a college and university. I think you are sort of making this leap that, unless we subsidize this, the taxpayers subsidize it, they won't be able to go. … They can go. They just have to borrow money, find other sources to be able to go. And why should they be given preferential treatment as an illegal in this country? That's what we're saying.

And Perry fell flat on his face in the one foreign policy question he got (“if you were president, and you got a call at 3 am telling you that Pakistan had lost control of is nuclear weapons, at the hands of the Taliban, what would be your first move?). Instead of a tick-tock of world leaders he would call, the members of his cabinet and West Wing staff he would roust out of bed, and assets he would bring to bear he gave this incoherent answer:

[O]bviously, before you ever get to that point you have to build a relationship in that region. That's one of the things that this administration has not done. Yesterday, we found out through Admiral Mullen that Haqqani has been involved with [explanatory link added by The Stiletto] – and that's the terrorist group directly associated with the Pakistani country. So to have a relationship with India, to make sure that India knows that they are an ally of the United States.

For instance, when we had the opportunity to sell India the upgraded F-16s, we chose not to do that. We did the same with Taiwan. The point is, our allies need to understand clearly that we are their friends, we will be standing by there with them.

Today, we don't have those allies in that region that can assist us if that situation that you talked about were to become a reality.

Perry proved out Santorum’s dismissal of his foreign policy chops ("I've forgotten more about Israel than Rick Perry knows about Israel") a couple of days earlier.  

Finally, in a truly bizarre turn of events, Perry could not make an attack on Romney’s numerous flip-flops stick because he started speaking in tongues or something:

I think Americans just don't know sometimes which Mitt Romney they're dealing with. Is it the Mitt Romney that was on the side of against the Second Amendment before he was for the Second Amendment? Was it – was before he was before the social programs, from the standpoint of he was for standing up for Roe v. Wade before he was against Roe v. Wade? He was for Race to the Top, he's for Obamacare, and now he's against it. I mean, we'll wait until tomorrow and … and … and see which Mitt Romney we're really talking to tonight.

The weirdness continued when Romney responded by insisting that “one reason to elect me is that I know what I stand for.” Um, yeah. The problem is no one else knows what he really stands for (see second item), which is why when he said that America will rebound when we have a leader “who tells the truth, who lives with integrity” The Stiletto immediately thought, “Well then, that knocks you out.”

In any case, after this disastrous showing, The Stiletto thinks Perry is Texas toast. The choice for conservatives is now back to having to settle for Romney – whose smooth performance in these debates often crosses over to slickness – or getting behind a yet-to-be determined ABR candidate (even one who may not be in the race yet).

Update: Herman Cain won the FL straw poll on Saturday by a huge margin over putative frontrunners Rick Perry and Mitt Romney: 37 percent, 15 percent and 14 percent, respectively. Michele Bachmann came in dead last, with 1.5 percent.


Media Irrelevancy – A Self-Inflicted Wound (Part II)

With one exception, which The Stiletto will get to later, the questions posed by workaday Americans in the Fox News-Google GOP Presidential debate in Orlando, FL, were much more on-point and of interest to Republican voters watching a Republican debate than the biased (if not outright hostile) and “gotcha” questions the media insists on asking.

The questions included one asking how the candidates would incentivize small business owners to hire new employees in this “troublesome economic environment” and another asking “Out of every dollar I earn, how much do you think that I deserve to keep?." Other people asked about:

† a federal right to work law;

† the tension between federal pre-emption vs. states’ rights;

† which federal government the candidates considered expendable;

† federal education mandates that interfere with how and what teachers teach;

† whether the candidates would mandate across-the-board use of E-Verify and impose penalties on employers who continue to hire illegal workers;

† what U.S. should do to support Israel considering “the existential threats it faces from Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and now the Palestinian Authority?”;

† why the U.S. keeps sending gobs of taxpayer money to “countries that hate us”; and

† how repealing ObamaCare will affect people who are uninsurable because of a pre-existing condition.

Without a doubt, one of the most original, thought-provoking – yet entertaining – questions ever asked in a presidential debate was this one from a voter in Richmond, VA: “If you had to choose one of your opponents on the stage tonight to be your running mate in the 2012 election, who would you choose, and why?”

Perhaps because these questions came directly from potential voters, the candidates were more likely to answer them (Romney was the exception; he refused to quantify the income level at which someone can be regarded as “rich” and refused to state whether he considered Obama a “socialist.”).

The media seem to think that Repub voters are ignorant boobs, but this audience was well-informed – much to the surprise of Chris Wallace, when former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain was asked to explain his 9-9-9 plan the crowd already knew the particulars. And the quality of the questions that were posted on You Tube suggest that the voters who planned to tune in to the debate were also well-informed (that that, Jon Stewart!).

One question that was booed – and to be clear, it wasn’t the questioner being booed, as some have claimed but the self-indulgent question itself – was posed by a gay soldier serving in Iraq:

In 2010, when I was deployed to Iraq, I had to lie about who I was, because I'm a gay soldier, and I didn't want to lose my job. My question is, under one of your presidencies, do you intend to circumvent the progress that's been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?

Although the question was seemingly directed to all the candidates, moderator Megyn Kelly asked former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) to respond – no doubt since he is considered hostile to gays by the media,   gay activists and some Republicans. Santorum pointed out that fraternizing is forbidden in the armed forces (“any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military”) and that ending the “don't ask/don't tell” policy “ inject[s] social policy into the military. And the military's job is to do one thing, and that is to defend our country.” Pressed by Kelly about “what would you do with soldiers like Stephen Hill?,” Santorum said he would reinstate the policy because a person’s sexuality “should not be an issue … keep it to yourself, whether you're a heterosexual or a homosexual.”

The question smacked of Brian Williams asking Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) in a previous debate how he could sleep at night with his state having executed 234 inmates during his tenure, and was both irrelevant to the audience and disrespectful of their time. 

Update: The MSM doesn't like it when we, the people, ask the questions.