THE REAL DEBATE

The most ridiculous part of the GOP candidate debate last Tuesday night (10/17) in Vegas has been the hilariously irrelevant commentary on it by much of punditry left and right.

So while everyone else is focusing on silliness like claiming Perry is finished because he was a bully for interrupting Romney too much, you and I are going to focus on the real debate that took place and draw some substantive lessons from it.

First, load the full debate transcript in another browser window so you can refer to any part of it as we go along. 

We’ll start with this question:  would you go to Vegas and put your entire wad on one spin of the roulette wheel coming up red?

For that is exactly what Herman Cain did with his 9-9-9 gamble.  Just between us, I warned him not to do this.  The afternoon of the debate, Cain’s debate coach Mark Block had this note of mine in his hand, which said:

"Mr. Cain must not be perceived as a Johnny One Note on his 9-9-9 plan.  Its main flaw as a campaign theme is that it will take considerable time to effect, and our economy’s dire problems need immediate solutions. Perry’s energy plan, by contrast, does just this, and by Executive Order is effective immediately.  

"Mr. Cain has said in interviews that he would ask for repeal of and executively block implementation of Sarbox and Dodd-Frank in addition to Obamacare.  This is exactly what is needed — getting our economy and people working again quickly by getting the government out of the free market’s way quickly. I suggest he emphasize his plans to do this and soft-pedal 9-9-9."

Ignoring this advice, Cain got defensively angry when Bachmann, Santorum, Perry, Romney, Paul, and Gingrich all chewed 9-9-9 into mincemeat.  Gingrich then applied the coup de grace:

"I favor very narrow, focused tax cuts, such as zero capital gains, (and) a hundred percent expensing, because I think, as Governor Romney said, jobs are the number-one challenge of the next two or three years. Get something you can do very fast. Change on this scale [Cain’s 9-9-9] takes years to think through if you’re going to do it right."

Gingrich said what Cain should have.  Strike One for Herman.

Strike Two was a demonstration of his political amateurism.  When asked what health-care solutions he has to replace Obamacare, he said he would start with "HR 3400," which "was introduced back in 2009, but you didn’t hear a lot of talk about it," and which "allows the patient and the doctors to make the decisions, not a bureaucrat."

What’s amateurish about this is that it’s old, useless information. There’s no such bill now as it was in the last Congress.  A savvy politico would have named the current bill for this Congress, HR 3000 (so you can look it up in Thomas), provided the bill’s name – The Empowering Patients First Act – indentified Georgia Republican Tom Price as its sponsor, and praised him for being a medical doctor.

Herman’s Strike Three was his humiliating walk back when Cooper asked him:

"A few hours ago you were asked by Wolf Blitzer [regarding Israel’s trading 1000 captured Palestinian terrorists for one Israeli soldier], if al-Qaida had an American soldier in captivity and they demanded the release of everyone at Guantanamo Bay, would you release them? And you said, quote, ‘I could see myself authorizing that kind of a transfer’."

All he could do was repeat a mantra that he’d "never negotiate with terrorists," which was a total fail as an excuse.  Such foreign policy ignorance and amateurism alone will disqualify Cain in the eyes of many for the presidency.  He may have struck out in this debate. 

But baseball is not cricket where you get only one at-bat.  Cain is diminished, not finished. 

The big loser of the debate was Mitt Romney.  Santorum simply took him apart on Romneycare, and all Mitt could come back with was, "the people of Massachusetts like it by about a 3-to-1 margin."  Gingrich then went for the kill:

"Your plan essentially is 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 Medicaid program as lavish as yours and no other state got as much money from the federal government under the Bush administration for this experiment."

One reason Romney is about as exciting as an enema is that he comes off as a pre-programmed human robot, not a hair or an answer out of smoothed-down place.  Perry, however, decided to rattle Romney’s cage, and he succeeded.  He got Romney to be like the class pansy in grade school who whines to the teacher, he’s bothering me, tell him to stop!

After Perry responded with a classic Texas put-down – "Have at it…" – Romney made an unforced error that may cost him the game. 

Perry had accused him of hiring illegals via this company.  Romney explained, "We went to the company, and we said: Look, you can’t have any illegals working on our property. I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake, I can’t have illegals." 

Ooops.  Suspicions confirmed that Romney has no principles, that he’ll do, say, or advocate whatever he thinks will get him elected.

Then near the end, he provided an ugly display of how duplicitous he can be. 

Cooper asked Perry (emphasis added): "Governor Perry, Mitt Romney asked you to repudiate the comments of that pastor who introduced you on that stage. He didn’t make the comments on the stage. He made them afterward in an interview [about Mormonism being a cult and not Christian].  Will you repudiate those comments?"

Perry gave an eloquent answer about faith, and stated clearly he didn’t agree with the comments.  But Romney couldn’t let it go.  He looks at Perry and says:

"What I actually found that was most troubling in what the reverend said in the introduction was he said, in choosing our nominee, we should inspect his religion… And it was that principle, Governor, that I wanted you to be able to say, no, no, that’s wrong, Reverend Jeffress. Instead of saying, as you did, that introduction knocked the ball out of the park."

Cooper had just said, clearly, that Jeffress’ comments were not in his introduction of Perry – that they were after Perry’s talk in a private interview with the Politico about which Perry knew nothing at the time.  Yet Romney willfully smeared Perry by claiming Jeffress’ comments were in his intro of Perry and that Perry praised him for it.  This is disgusting. This is not a man of integrity.

Where did other folks go wrong?  Michelle Bachmann said something really dumb:  that as president, she would "build a double-walled fence with an area of security neutrality in between" along the entire border with Mexico to keep out illegals.

The US-Mexico border is 1,969 miles long from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.  Almost two-thirds of it – 1,255 miles – is in Texas and is not a land border:  it is the Rio Grande River from its mouth in the Gulf to the junction of Mexico with New Mexico and Texas upstream from El Paso. 

Perry well knows the insuperable practical and legal difficulties (such as access to the river by private property owners on either side) with a fence in the middle of a big river for 1,255 miles.  It’s crazy.  Bachmann hasn’t a clue.  Perry would do it with Predator drones and armed Texas Rangers’ boots on the ground.

Rick Santorum’s craziest moment is when he claimed he would carry Pennsylvania because he’s "someone who’s defeated and been matched up against three Democratic incumbents. I’m 3 and 0" (in Pennsylvania).  What?  He won his Senate seat in 1994 and 2000, then was wiped out by Dem Bob Casey Jr 59-41% in 2006.

Ron Paul’s most disgraceful moment came when he asked all those who criticized Cain by saying we should not negotiate with terrorists: "Are you all willing to condemn Ronald Reagan for exchanging weapons for hostages out of Iran? We all know that was done."

Again, what?!?  To conflate Iran-Contra, Ollie North’s scheme to trade weapons for money from Iran to be given to the Nicaraguan Contras (which was rogue and hidden from Reagan), and the US embassy hostages released by Iran as Reagan was being inaugurated is proof Paul is either senile or disingenuous at his core.

Santorum, who chose to respond, demonstrated his non-expertise on foreign policy by accepting Paul’s revolting smear that Reagan "negotiated for hostages."  The entire crisis of 444 days took place in Carter’s presidency.  All negotiations were done by Carter and his State Dept. 

As President-elect, Reagan said he would not pay "ransom for people who have been kidnapped by barbarians."  The mullahs released them the literal instant he became president because he made it clear to them that once he was Commander-in-Chief, either the hostages would be free or the mullahs would be dead in 48 hours.

OK, so much for the bad stuff – what about the good stuff?  It turns out there was quite a bit.  This was the real debate that most all the pundits missed.

Take a look, for example, at the cogent, substantive discussion by Gingrich, Paul, Romney, and Perry (who compliments Romney, saying he "hit the nail on the head") regarding nuclear waste storage and states’ rights.  Really excellent.

Or Santorum’s moving comments on how faith and family are the bedrock of society, and how conservatives and Latinos both believe in them.

Or Cain’s absolute refusal to back down from his "blame yourself" admonition to the Occupy Wall Streeters:

"I still stand by my statement, and here’s why. They might be frustrated with Wall Street and the bankers, but they’re directing their anger at the wrong place. Wall Street didn’t put in failed economic policies. Wall Street didn’t spend a trillion dollars that didn’t do any good. Wall Street isn’t going around the country trying to sell another $450 billion. They ought to be over in front of the White House taking out their frustration."

When Paul wackily accused Cain that he had "blamed the victims" as everything is the fault of the TARP bank bailout, Romney responded:

"Well, we can spend our time talking about what happened three years ago and what the cause was of our collapse, but let’s talk about what’s happened over the last three years. We’ve had a president responsible for this economy for the last three years, and he’s failed us. He’s failed us in part because he has no idea how the private sector works or how to create jobs. On every single issue, he’s made it harder for our economy to reboot… Instead of dividing and blaming, as this president is, let’s grow America again and have jobs that are the envy of the world."

To which, Michelle Bachmann added:  "President Obama’s plan has been a plan for destruction of this economy." Which is the exact truth:  it’s not incompetence, it’s been on purpose.

Gingrich’s finest moment was this gem.  It was to a question regarding the deficit reduction measure to cut defense spending by $500 billion:

"If you want to understand how totally broken Washington is, look at this entire model of a supercommittee, which has now got a magic number to achieve, and if it doesn’t achieve the magic number, then we’ll all have to shoot ourselves in the head, so when they come back with a really dumb idea to merely cut off our right leg, we’ll all be grateful that they are only semi-stupid instead of being totally stupid.

"Now the idea that you’ll have a bunch historically illiterate politicians who have no sophistication about national security trying to make a numerical decision about the size of the defense budget tells you everything you need to know about the bankruptcy of the current elite in this country – in both parties."

One of Perry’s best was on foreign aid:

"I think it’s time for this country to have a very real debate about foreign aid.  I think it’s time for us to have a very serious discussion about defunding the United Nations. When you think about the Palestinian Authority circumventing those Oslo accords and going to New York to try to create the conflict and to have themselves approved as a state without going through the proper channels, it is a travesty. And I think it’s time not only to have that entire debate about all of our foreign aid, but in particular, the U.N. Why are we funding that organization?"

Most enjoyable was Perry telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper who is boss:  "You get to ask the question. I get to answer like I want to."

At the end, Cooper allowed the debate to descend into babbling chaos, and giving almost no time to Perry to rebut Romney’s ludicrous charge that his job creation record in Massachusetts was better than Texas’ under Perry.  Gingrich closed it by condemning Cooper:

"Maximizing bickering is probably not the road to the White House.  And the technique you’ve used maximizes going back and forth, over and over again."

If you put the Cooper-promoted bickering aside, and take a look at the real debate, you’ll see that despite their warts and flaws, each one of these GOP candidates would make an infinitely better president than Zero. Just for openers, none of them hates their country and wants to do all he (or she) can to destroy it culturally, militarily, and economically.  Every one of them is an American, and would act accordingly as president.

We will have to choose among them.  My choice would be Rick Perry.  From my view, he clearly won the debate Tuesday and is coming out with a solid plan to rescue the economy (e.g., a flat tax and drill-baby-drill).  Romney lost it as did Cain.  Gingrich continues to do well.  But neither he or Cain, or Bachmann, or Paul, or Santorum have the necessary combo of money and organization to carry on for a long haul.  Once again, the race will be between Perry and Romney.

Yet the caution here is not to get all wigged out on one person – especially to the extent of condemning folks whose choice is someone else. We’re all on the same side here, America’s side – you, me, and all those on that Vegas stage last Tuesday (well, except for the CNN guy).  We’re all for America – it’s Zero and his supporters who are not.  That’s the real debate.