Mormon Tossing In Las Vegas--The GOP Debate

The fifth debate in six weeks was like a bad reality show. Who was going to be voted off the island? I guess the strategy of the GOP is to make the debates so bad that you start to sympathize with the participants.

The crowd at the Adelson casino was composed of Romney supporters bussed in from surrounding states. The heavily Mormon crowd were white senior citizens rooting for their Boston Bishop. But Willard got his hair mussed last night. The pundits this morning gave Romney a win and suggested he looked presidential. But I disagree. I think Romney's slick facade was exposed and his temper tantrum with Rick Perry revealed a vain man, who believes he's entitled to the Presidency. Once a layer of the facade is torn off, the slickness on economic issues frays also. It's fascinating to see that once the balloon is punctured on one issue his whole persona melts away. In a general election, I hope the Obama campaign has the good sense to realize this about Romney.

About Herman Cain. It doesn't really matter that Cain's 9-9-9 plan is nuts or that he changes his position on negotiating for terrorists. Cain makes his living as a motivational speaker. His speaking fees will climb after this campaign. As Ed Rollins pointed out yesterday, Cain has no organization and no fund-raising capability and has not appeared in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina on an actual campaign stop. These places can only be won by retail politics. As Rollins pointed out, it is the benefit to the Romney campaign to keep Cain in the race as long as possible to siphon off votes from Rick Perry. So Herman can say whatever he thinks and it doesn't matter if he contradicts himself.

Last night Newt Gingrich let the cat out of the bag about healtcare reform. He started to attack Romneycare and then Romney responded that he got the idea of the individual mandate from Newt. Rather than dodge the issue, Newt accurately explained that the individual mandate ,which conservatives call socialist in the Obama legislation, really was a conservative idea proposed by the Heritage Foundation.

Rick, ole Frothy Mix, Santorum went after Romney all night, especially on the issue of Mitt being a fake conservative. Rick outlined his own campaigns over the years and compared his conservatism to Romney as a liberal, Romney as a moderate. It was obnoxious but effective.

Rick Perry actually showed up last night mean and nasty and somewhat articulate. His mean and nastiness actually goes over well in Republican circles. With expectations very low, Perry actually surpassed even those and has launched himself back into second. Perry scored repeatedly on Mitt, even when he has his facts wrong.

Rick Perry tried to go after Romney for hiring illegal immigrants to do his lawn. This was tried by Rudy Guilani in the last election and flopped. This time Perry forced Romney to hang himself in one pithy quote. "I told my lawn service not to use illegal immigrants because I was running for office, for Pete's sakes." Now how many average voters have a lawn service and Romney was only against it because of appearances. The soundbite is devastating.

Romney got petulent and tried to pull rank on the other candidates, even scolding them for interrupting his answer. It was a perfect set piece of noblesse oblige. The day's story about Romney's authoritarian rule as Mormon bishop in Boston was reinforced by Romney trying to play Alpha Male. He even got in the Space with Rick Perry touching him on the shoulder. At moments he got red-faced and his hair even got mussed up.

When Romney says he has spent his whole adult life in business, you automatically think that it's because he lost so many elections and has been running forever. It's not for a lack of trying. It's like when he goes after Rick Perry for being the campaign manager in the 1980s for Al Gore, your response is not how horrible for Rick Perry; it's you are reminded that what you didn't like about Al Gore is the same thing you don't like about Mitt Romney--rich, white guy who feels entitled.

People like David Gergen believe Mitt Romney won the debate and was a smooth customer. The Democratic National Committee believe Romney had his worst week campaigning. This statement was largely based on Romney's interview with a nevada paper where he says that the foreclosure process should be speeded up so that private investors can buy up the homes. This was said in the state with the largest number of foreclosures. A retail politician, he's not.

But I think you can replay last night's debate and see the optics of Romney's possible destruction. It's like watching fight films to spot vulnerabilities. He actually does get flustered when asked repeatedly to defend himself. He can not hide his privileged life no matter how hard he tries. At the Microsoft speech the other day, he made a lame joke about trying to recruit the CEO the other year and saying that it would have met that person would have a few million in his pocket. The joke was that the CEO had many millions more than if he joined Bain Capital. But the audience just stared at Romney as some space alien.

Romney would have a tough time in a debate where facts matter. I don't have the energy and desire to list all his factual blunders and his misrepresentation of his own so-called economic plan.

One thing struck me was that Romney thinks that the United States should cut its foreign aid, which is a miniscule part of the federal budget, and keeps our country having some influence abroad. At the same time, he thinks China should vastly increase its foreign aid. This is the man who last week wanted to have a trade war and previously in the year a real war with China. So Romney now believes the United States should have less influence in the world than China. From other candidates, you can expect this type of nonsense but from some one actually running forever to be President.

The next debate is going to be about foreign policy. I shudder.

One thing became clear was that Rick Perry can bang Romney around for months. he has the financial capacity and has the style of debating. He may not win but he can create alot of damage.

It's clear that Rick Perry has a fatigue issue in debates. His back operation clearly took more out of him. He was on for most of the debate but started to fade near the end. But he did keep himself hydrated throughout, which he had not done before.

Whether any independent or moderate got anything out of these debates is doubtful. The actual economy went by the boards and no one suggested that the United States had to do anything different for the 21st Century. And there were no new ideas about anything. It was as entertaining as mud-wrestling and as informative.