Self-deporting Grandmothers, Testosterone Toddlers and Moon Bases, it must be another GOP Goat Rodeo!
Last night CNN held another in a never ending series of Republican Goat Rodeo’s… er debates. It was a strange affair start to finish. They had the candidates come out on the stage one at a time, like some kind of Ms. America pageant event.
It was a real win for Romney because the other candidates did not have good visuals. Ron Paul finally has a suit that fits, but Newt Gingrich did not. I know it is a completely superficial thing, but you can’t look like a schlub when you are running for president.
All the other candidates had suits that fell correctly and were buttoned easily. Newt had a huge and obvious paunch and the single button that was fastened was under a lot of pressure. Now, I am fat guy, so I know I am living in a glass house here, but even I can find a suit that fits. Newt stared off the night at a disadvantage for a mistake that did not have to be made. Who knows, maybe the suit fit when he started and the pressure of the campaign has him doing some comfort eating?
And when was the last time that you saw a political event started with the National Anthem? I fully expected Wolf Blitzer to shout “Play Ball” at the end.
The debate was sponsored by the Florida Republican Party and the Hispanic Leadership Council in Miami, which is all well and good, but when questions came from Miami they brought the whole thing to a grinding screeching halt. And it was not like the candidates really cared about the questions from those folks anyway.
There were a few sparks but on the whole the Goat Rodeo circuit is kind of dying and I think I know why. When the candidates are not sniping at each other for lobbying and tax returns, they say exactly the same thing on policy over and over. And for the candidates that actually have a chance at the nomination (which basically excludes the Mad Elf of the Republican Party, Ron Paul) there is not any difference except in which area one pushes to the extreme.
On immigration Rick “Frothy” Santorum is the most steadfast in wanting to alienate the Latino vote. He keeps talking about how the act of being an informal immigrant is not one crime but a raft of crimes (being here, working without papers, identity theft) and how we have to enforce our laws on all of them.
Disgraced Speaker Gingrich is the most moderate here, but he is still not talking about citizenship for anyone and has a whole raft of conditions including an “American” family (I assume he means citizens) having to sponsor the grannies he’d let stay.
Mitt sounds less nasty but “Self-Deportation” is really just a catch phrase for making things so bad for informal immigrants that they leave. Things like preventing them from getting a drivers license, working, getting medical care. Basically treating them like something less than human so they leave.
There was some back and forth between Gingrich and Romney about the “deporting Grandmas” with Mitt getting a good line in that there are not 11 million grandmothers here without documentation (he, of course, said illegally).
This exchange was interesting because Romney looked directly at Newt when challenging him and Newt would not make any eye contact. I suspect there is some debate strategy there, like Newt gets flustered when Romney is in his face, but it while it might have helped him keep his cool, it was not a good optic. It made the former Speaker look weak in a very bad way, like he was running from a fight.
One thing that came up (again) that just does not get enough play is Newt’s idea to have Amex or Visa or Master Card run the guest worker program that he is proposing. The reason he wants these credit card companies to do it is “because they will keep fraud at a minimum, unlike the US government”.
This is an incredibly tone deaf idea for a candidate that is trying to take the populist mantle for the GOP. While most Republicans are not going to be avid supporters of OWS no one, and I mean no one, thinks that banks are the last fraud free zone in our society. If Newt gets the nomination (the same day there will be ice skating on the Lake of Fire in Hell) look for this to bite him in his ample ass.
It looks as though his impending irrelevance is really getting to Lil’ Ricky. He was doing a very good impression of a toddler hopped up on testosterone last night. He was belligerent in all his statements, almost shouting his answers out. It was so bad that Romney even said to him at one point “There is no need to get angry about this”.
Santorum was turning the crazy up about our sphere of influence. He claimed that the President was siding with Castro and Chavez on policy, that Iran and Hezbollah were being allowed to set up training camps and terrorist bases in Central and South America.
He even went so far as to claim that when Labor Unions and Environmentalists lobby the President about concerns on the Columbia free trade treaty that they were siding with Narco-Terrorists (a new fear term from the Right!). He was passionate but it was the crazy kind of passion that sunk Michele Bachmann’s campaign and I don’t really think it is going to help Lil Ricky.
Mitt Romney continues to tell lies that almost no one calls him on. He lies about the president’s job record, he lies about all his investments being in a blind trust, and he lies about what Romney-Care does. I am actually okay with him building this tower of lies as he move the nomination, it means we get to knock it down to great effect in the general.
He did get caught out on one thing though. There is commercial that quotes Newt saying that Spanish is the language of the Ghetto. Romney said he didn’t see all the commercials, yet when CNN looked it up during the debate it ends with “I am Mitt Romney and I approved this commercial”. It really shows how little it means when we put that tag on it, and shows how little Mitt actually approves or knows about in his campaign.
Of course there was the Space pander question and this is where Newt got his ass handed to him. Every other candidate basically said there would be no Moon base if he were president and hammered Newt for what it would cost.
Newt tried to dodge our saying that he would do it through prizes and private enterprise, not NASA. But Romney hammered him on a true point, there is no commercial reason to spend 100 billion or so to go to the Moon and another 100 billion to establish a base, there is just no direct return on investment and no company would want to do it.
Which brings me to the Mad Elf. Ron Paul does not want to spend any money on space, because it is not, according to him, in the national interest. He thinks it is cool and all but he doesn’t see any benefit in exploring our Solar System.
This shows a real anti-science bias for the septuagenarian Texas Representative, as well as a lack of history. Depending on who you talk to the space program and manned space flight in particular has returned between $25 and $100 dollars to the economy for every dollar spent. That kind of return for a society is important even if it is not the direct kind of return that Romney is talking about.
Basically it was a boring night at the Goat Rodeo, complete with a question about why the candidates wives would be the best First Lady. I can’t believe that Wolf wasted everyone’s time with that BS but when the candidates are going to say the same thing over and over I guess you have to fill time.
When Obama and Clinton were debating a lot, there was refinement of positions, and strong arguments offered for their differing views. There is not enough difference between the Republican candidates positions for that to happen and we are left with the “He lies!” “He lies!” back and forth.
Now that the freak show of the early debates is basically over, the Rodeo is losing it’s luster.
The floor is yours.