Pictures---Of The Way We Were

++The 11th GOP debate sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and AEI brought back some re-treads from the W era. The architect of the Iraq invasion, Paul Wolfowitz, the man who said the war wouldn't cost much, asked questions on AIDS in Africa. The former Attorney General under Reagan, Ed Meese asked about the Patriot Act. Torture memo star, Cheney's Dick Cheney, David Addington asked what the candidates would do about Syria. Marc Thiessen, former W speechwriter and primary torture apologist at the Washington Post, was there as well as AEI's Danielle Pletka, who wanted to know when the candidates would invade Iran. What people haven't talked about is that personnel is policy and the W foreign policy team and economic team are now all in Romney's camp. What does that mean for policy?

++The Republican foreign policy debate neglected to talk about the implications of Europe's economic crisis on the United States, the slowdown on the Chinese economy, anything remotely related to real issues in Latin America and the implications of the degradation of Al Qaeda by the Obama Administration. Instead, the general sense of the debate is that all the candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, want to invade Iran or allow Israel to bomb the nuclear sites. Poor Jon Huntsman wanted to sound sensible and probably turned in his best performance. The canidates wanted to toughen the Patriotic Act, which has perpetually suspended key legal guarantees for Americans, and endorsed racial/religious profiling for terrorists, even though the latest Al Qaeda bomber was a Dominican. For reasons no one could understand Romney was worried about Hamas and Hezbollah in Latin America.

++But the only thing that got the press attention was Newt Gingrich claiming that as the party of the family, the GOP could not summarily deport people who have been in the United States illegally for 25 years and separate them from their family. This caused a flap among the conservatives, who now want to embrace the disgraced Speaker of the House as their non-Mitt. Immediately after the debate, Newt counted with a twitter that linked to candidate Romney in 2008 saying the same thing. Romney had claimed on stage he was against amnesty and that immigrants needed to wait in line. Later Romney was asked what would he do with illegals and he didn't have an answer except that he would not grant amnesty. By week's end, Newt said he was against amnesty and that he would have local communities decide on illegals with a structure resembling the World War II draft boards.

++One great moment was Mitt Romney saying,"My first name is Mitt." It isn't. It is Willard.

++The man who organized Mike Huckabee's 2008 campaign in 2008, Bob Vander Plaat's called for an emergency, private meeting of the religious right to agree to support one candidate to prevent Mitt Romney from becoming the nominee. They have narrowed it down to Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Vander Plaat's has forgiven Newt his serial adulteries and made him available for support. The idea is that the religious right has to be pragmatic and accept that some candidates' are flawed both personally and ideologically. The meeting was supposed to bet on the canidate who can last through the primaries against Romney.

++Sarah Palin seems inclined to back Newt Gingrich for the nomination. Rumors have it that Todd Palin favors the Newt and he has sway over his wife. But almost as if on cue, Sarah Palin fans are running ads for her in Iowa.

++An FYI--I've calculated the debt from all the Republican candidates and Paul Ryan and they run from $6 trillion to $11 more trillion over a ten year span. Now think about the House Republicans voting for the Balanced Budget Amendment, which didn't get the 60% vote. None of the Republican budget plans could meet the requirements of the Amendment. Yet all the House Republicans voted for the Ryan Plan. Paul Ryan had the good sense not to vote for the Balanced Budget Amendment. He said he didn't think it went far enough. But he knew his own plan violated it.

++It's that time of year when the punditocracy advocates a Third Party candidate. Gary Johnson , the libertarian Republican who was trying to run as the GOP candidate, says he is open to running on the libertarian ticket. Ed Koch wants Mayor Bloomberg to run but the mayor says the city has him tied up at the moment. In a replay of 2000, one should expect the Republicans to fund another Ralph Nader run. Despite arguments that a Third Party would appeal to Americans frustrated with our political system, the difficulties of a Third Party actually getting on ballots in 50 states is insurmontable.

++So what's a pundit to do? Well, if you are Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen, ersatz Democratic pollsters, you urge President Obama to step aside and let Hillary run. The profound reasoning of this is that Obama would win with slightly over 50% of the vote and therefore would not be effective in a second term. Now as I remember Bill Clinton never received 50% of the popular vote and no one suggested he step aside. Also, George W may or may not have won in 2000 but he still invaded Iraq and passed by one vote the tax cuts for the wealthy. The fake Hillary crowd are getting a bit old but Fox News, where Dough Schoen is resident pollster, loves it.

++Another tale being circulated is that President Obama failed in his leadershp because the Super Committee failed. What Beltway commentators don't tell you is that the Republicans told him to stay away and that Obama has offered on four different occasions grand bargains, which would have reduced the debt by $4+ trillion. As it is, he will have cut the debt this year $2.5 trillion. For an examination of how Obama did behave on debt issues and why the failure of leadership is nonsense, read Jon Chait's piece on New York magazine.

++The Rasmussen polls, which are good for gauging Republican sentiment, shows that Obama has a six point national lead over Mitt Romney. Truth in packaging this is the largest poll gap between the two men I've seen. But a deeper point is that Mitt still can't get above 23% among Republican pollsters. Even Nate the Great Silver says that this gap between Republican primary voters and the establishment will set political scientists back to the drawingboards to figure out how presidential candidates are chosen.

++Chris Cillia writing in the Washington Post attacks the notion that Obama is losing support among his base. He writes that Democratic pollsters are noting that Obama starts the election with 44% of the electorate solid for him, saying that solid a base is unheard of.

++Talking Points Memo has an excellent article on the Obama campaign's different strategies to reach 270 votes in the electoral college. Remember it is 270 that is the magic number, not 50%.