Republicans rumble in Vegas
THE DAILY BLADE: As in last week’s debate, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain was front-and-center instead of way off to one side – but this time, he wasn’t standing in between former MA Gov. Mitt Romney and TX Gov. Rick Perry. As in last week’s Bloomberg debate, CNN should have separated Perry and Romney, who obviously loathe each other and brawled several times throughout the Western Republican Leadership Conference debate in Las Vegas. But Cain was dancing around the ring defending the national sales tax portion of his 9-9-9 tax reform plan – which the other candidates attacked as being one 9 too many – to have to worry about being a human shield.
Perry threw the first punch during the candidate introductions with a jab to Romney’s glass jaw (“I’m Texas Governor Rick Perry, a proven job-creator and a man who is about economic growth, an authentic conservative, not a conservative of convenience.”).
For her part, Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN) finally figured out that she has to get past Cain to vie for the nomination. So she used her introduction to remind the audience she is a tax attorney and immediately hit Cain’s tax reform plan with a combination (“If we give Congress a 9 percent sales tax, how long will it take a liberal president and a liberal Congress to run that up to maybe 90 percent? … [A]t every step and stage of production, you’d be taxing that item 9 percent on the profit. … [T]hat’s a tax plan, it’s not a jobs plan …).
Moderator Anderson Cooper, anchor of CNN’s “AC 360,″ then asked former Sen. Rick Santorum (PA) to critique Cain’s plan. He cited an analysis that found 84 percent of Americans would pay higher taxes, and pointed out that the plan undermines families because there is no built-in incentive for people to have and raise children.
Cain ineffectually rebutted Bachmann’s and Santorum’s “knee jerk reactions” by inviting people to go on his Web site to read the plan and “do their own math.” Cain has to step it up. For instance, he should have countered that Art Laffer, for one, thinks the 9-9-9 plan restores the tax code to its original function of “raising the necessary funds to run government” by removing provisions and loopholes that result in “income redistribution, encouraging favored industries, and discouraging unfavorable behavior” – and tax breaks for getting married and having children is a form of social engineering.
During subsequent re-rebuttals and questions to other candidates, Bachmann again called the national sales tax imposed by the 9-9-9 a value-added tax (“at every level of production you have a profit, and that profit gets taxed”); Perry echoed Santorum’s argument in last week’s debate that NH does not now have a state sales tax and the state’s residents will start paying a tax on everything they buy; Rep. Ron Paul (TX) complained the tax proposal was regressive and that the federal government should not be collecting income tax in the first place; and Romney reprised the last debate’s gimmick of candidates directly questioning each other by asking Cain whether the state sales tax will be replaced by a federal sales tax.
Cain tried to explain that existing states sales taxes and the new 9 percent federal sales tax were “apples and oranges”; that people will still pay whatever sales tax the states have imposed; and that all the hidden taxes people now pay on goods they purchase will be replaced by a single, transparent 9 percent tax. But he had only 30 seconds to rebut each specific objection to his plan, which wasn’t enough time to develop his case. Consequently, Romney slammed him with the observation that “I’m going to be getting a bushel basket that has apples and oranges in it because I’ve got to pay both taxes.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (GA) was in top form. When asked why he recently said Cain’s 9-9-9 plan would be “a hard sell” he pithily answered, “you just watched it.” But he softened the blow somewhat by noting that Cain “deserves a lot of credit” because he has “the courage to go out and take a specific very big idea at the right level.”
Though Cain clearly needs to fight harder for the 9-9-9 plan and defend each of its components in 30 seconds or less, in the end he suffered only glancing blows. A significant chunk of time in the last two debates was spent discussing his 9-9-9 plan – which Gingrich noted as well (“he has us at least talking about something that matters as opposed to the junk that all too often is masquerading as politics in this country.”).
When the candidates were asked about the merits of Romney’s 59-point economic plan Santorum threw the most vicious punch:
[Y]ou just don’t have credibility, Mitt, when it comes to repealing Obamacare. … [Y]our plan was the basis for Obamacare. Your consultants helped Obama craft Obamacare. And to say that you’re going to repeal it, you just – you have no track record on that that – that we can trust you that you’re going to do that.
Romney tried to rebut, but Santorum got him in a clinch and kept throwing one jab after another. Romney finally did get to have his say, but then Gingrich delivered a body blow to RomneyCare:
[It’s] one more big government, bureaucratic, high-cost system, which candidly could not have been done by any other state because no other state had a Medicare program as lavish as [MA], and no other state got as much money from the federal government under the Bush administration for this experiment.
Surprisingly, Romney parried successfully: “Actually, Newt, we got the idea of an individual mandate from you … and the Heritage Foundation.”
When Cooper asked Perry to counter Romney’s observation from last week’s debate that one million children have no health coverage in TX, Perry threw a sucker punch with an allegation from the last presidential campaign that Romney hired illegals to do landscaping work at his home. Like Santorum, Perry kept interrupting Romney as he tried to rebut. While Romney declined to punch down in Santorum’s case, he went toe-to-toe with Perry (“This has been a tough couple of debates for Rick, and I understand that. And so you’re going to get testy.”).
During this bare-knuckles brawl, Romney put his hand on Perry’s shoulder in a gesture meant either to show his dominance or to calm Perry down, but it could have easily had the opposite effect. The Stiletto drew her breath in half expecting Perry to knock Romney’s hand off of him – and perhaps he should have because it was either an emasculating or aggressive gesture, depending on your point of view – but he did not. The whole thing had the effect of a submissive wolf exposing his throat to the alpha male and has symbolically, if not in actuality, knocked Perry out of contention for the nomination. Perry neither has Romney’s verbal skills nor his machismo – imagine, the carefully coiffed Romney being the more manly guy.
After the referee moderator restored order, Cain had a chance to redeem his wobbly performance with a very strong answer on border control:
[W]e should secure the border for real, and it would be a combination of a fence, technology, as well as possibly boots on the ground for some of the more dangerous areas. … [P]romote the existing path to citizenship by cleaning up the bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. … [E]nforce … the immigration laws that are already on the books. And here’s another one of these bold ideas by the non-politician up here. Empower the states to do what the federal government is not doing in terms of enforcing those laws.
Unfortunately, Cain found himself on the ropes with a foreign policy question about Israel’s trade of 1,027 Palestinian terrorists for the release of its young soldier, Gilad Shalit, who had been kidnapped by Hamas five years ago. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer earlier in the day, Cain seemed willing to release Gitmo prisoners in exchange for an American soldier captured by al Qaeda. Cain bobbed and weaved and never clearly articulated whether he absolutely would or would not negotiate with terrorists (“[Y]ou would have to consider the entire situation. But let me say this first, I would have a policy that we do not negotiate with terrorists.”)
Predictably, most everyone else tried to out-do each other in professing they would never, ever, ever, ever negotiate with terrorists – at which point, Paul inexplicably punched himself in the head by asking the others “Are you all willing to condemn Ronald Reagan for exchanging weapons for hostages out of Iran?” Santorum could barely contain his contempt:
Santorum: Iran was a sovereign country. It was not a terrorist organization …
Paul: He negotiated for hostages.
Santorum: [W]e negotiated with hostages (inaudible) the Soviet Union. … [T]here’s a difference between releasing terrorists from Guantanamo Bay in response to a terrorist demand …
Paul: But they’re all suspects. They’re not terrorists. You haven’t convicted them of anything.
Santorum: … than negotiating with other countries, where we may have an interest, and that is certainly a proper role for the United States, too.
Paul always comes out strong (“I work on the assumption that government’s not very capable of managing almost anything”) but this exchange with Santorum shows why he will always be a palooka.
Neither former NM Gov. Gary Johnson, who was not invited to participate in this debate, nor former UT Gov. Jon Huntsman, who decided to disinvite himself, were missed. It’s time to cut them and the other fringe contenders – Bachmann, Paul, Perry (who once again promised a plan “at the end of the week”) and Santorum – from the fight card. They’re just plodders.
Gingrich is a stylist whose forte is intellectual power, and Cain is the bold upstart. While Romney is fast on his feet and can take a punch, going up against these challengers will determine whether he is just a journeyman or a champion.
Cause and effect
Biden continues to warn of rapes and murders if jobs bill isn't passed
- The Weekly Standard, October 18, 2011
‘Occupy Cleveland’ protester alleges she was raped
- CBS Cleveland, October 18, 2011
Comments