Last Night's Debate in Sioux City--Before I Forget

The day started with Newt being pummelled by the Republican establishment and some conservatives as well. The local Washington Examiner endorsed Mitt Romney, even though their reporter the previous week eviscerated the former Governor on both healthcare and his lack of understanding of the European crisis. The National Review came out against Newt and next issue will be totally devoted to why Newt should not be elected. But they haven't endorsed anyone. The Rasmussen poll from Iowa showed Newt losing 15 points in the poll and Romney pulling ahead there, even though that conflicts with other polls like PPP which does show a Newt drop but no pick up for Romney.

So to the last debate before the Iowa Caucus.

Both newt and Mitt Romney decided not to go mano-a-mano but instead let the second tier candidates create the fuss. Both campaigns had been warned that Iowa likes nice and cringes at negative campaigning. The first part of the debate favored Romney since the moderators and Michelle Bachmann aimed their criticism at Newt Gingrich for his lobbying career. Newt fended the more serious charges off but was defensive. Romney acted in the first part as the chosen one and tried to don the mantle of Ronald Reagan. In fact I found Newt's answer on electability more convincing than Romney's. After Occupy Wall Street, I just can't think how claiming you are a businessman warms the hearts and minds of voters.

Washington Post bloggers felt that Romney won the debate. But other live bloggers throughout the political spectrum didn't think he actually improved his position. The Post bloggers kept saying that Romney was at the peak of his game. But in the second half of the debate Chris Wallace hammered Romney and made him squirm about his frequent changes in positions. Most viewers were aware of Joe Scarborough's comment that Chris Wallace "hates Mitt Romney". So alot of one's response was based on knowing the hostility of the moderator to Romney. But the same should have been true with his treatment of Ron Paul, whom he claimed the day before had no chance of winning the GOP nomination.

The winners of the debate were Mitt Romney by not being beaten, Michelle Bachmann, who took the fight to Newt, and --believe it or not--Rick Perry, who seems to be creeping up in the polls, and who got some solid points across in English and made some memorable jokes. The big losers were Jon Huntsman, who seems to shrink inside himself during the debate, and while the most sane of the group seemed dispirited; and Ron Paul. Ron Paul blew the debate when he went ballistic over all the Iran war talk by the other candidates, almost screaming "this is war propaganda".

On the day the Iraq War officially ended, you would expect some measure of reflection by the Republican candidates about what it means for this nation to go to war and for such a long time. There has been none. Not yesterday and not during the last three years. Instead, we were treated to attacks on President Obama as an appeaser to Iran and that Iran was now the biggest threat to the United States--not to the region or Israel--but the United States itself. The whole discussion seemed to be that now we are out of Iraq, let's use those troops to invade Iran.

Romney continued on his condescending tone to President Obama. He said "Pretty Please" about Obama requesting the downed drone back from Iran. President Obama yesterday brought multiple lawsuits against banks who laundered Hezbollah funds. It should be noted the Great Appeaser seems to be assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists,waging cyber warfare against the nuclear sites, and inciting mysterious explosions of long-range missile and nuclear facilities. President Obama has also solidified an international coalition to tighten economic, banking and oil sanctions against Iran. Today, Russia intervened and stop the shipment of nuclear materials to Iran. This, despite the resurgence of Putin at the Kremlin. Maybe not sufficient to deal with the problem but these are hardly the acts of an appeaser.

Republican war talk is disconcerting because it is never coached in lower case letters like "military options". Instead, the language used implies a full-scale invasion of Iran with all that implies--the proliferation of terrorism throughout the region,high casualties on both sides, regional warfare and enormous collateral damage. 77% of Americans support President Obama's withdrawal of troops from Iraq, 61% of Republicans also. So why do the Republicans believe, if they really do, that they are going to get tough on Iran. They didn't under George W and Dick Cheney. Despite their hawkish language, Iran barely got a mention in Cheney's autobiography and the Bush administration constantly negotiated with Tehran, even when that regime was shipping IEDs into Iraq to kill Americans. If anything, Obama is the real hawk here.

The other issue, which keeps returning, is immigration. Non-documented workers are down to 10.5 million and Jon Huntsman came up with the best line is that if the economy doesn't improve than the number of illegals will drop even more dramatically. Rick Perry did the whole border routine and how he alone is trying to stop illegals with the Texas Rangers and that the Obama administration is doing nothing. Newt tried to toughen his stance a little bit and was accused by Bachmann of pandering to Hispanics, which naturally no one should cultivate. Mitt Romney retained his draconian vision of deporting everyone, despite the total impossibility of such a thing.

By the way, most independent studies of illegal immigration show that the negatives to the economy and the plusses like conttributing to social security and paying taxes end up as a wash. Yet for the Republican base, this is still a hot button issue.

There has been alot of comment about Newt's vow to go against sitting judges with whom one disagrees. He cited Jefferson and FDR on this but admitted they had failed. To the outsider the argument sounded like gibberish, but remember Newt was addressing Iowa voters. Iowa voters actually voted to remove the judges on the Supreme Court, despite warnings of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who had approved same sex marriages. The campaign against these judges was funded in part by Newt Gingrich himself.

If you are disapointed with President Obama, I have two words for you--SUPREME COURT. The candidates were asked which judges on the Supreme Court they liked. All of them cited the extremely right trio of Clarence Thomas, Tony Scalia, and Alito. Rick Perry said his favorite judge was Clarence Thomas. Huntsman opined that he liked Roberts and Alito. These are the judges who brought us Citizens United.

Tweeters had a field day with all the historical references being thrown in. Rick Perry did note that yesterday was the anniversary of the Bill of Rights. No one else got that. Others tried to drop historical names. One Tweeter suggested that had mentioned almost everyone except Vasco Da Gama.

All the canidates were on their best behavior for their last joint appearance of the year. But there were some odd moments. For instance, in the last debate, Romney bragged that he would create 11.5 million jobs in his first term. This time he waffled--surprise!--claiming that the President really doesn't create jobs. Newt boasted about his private sector experience and even about private-public sector joint ventures saying they are good things. Newt even came out for credit unions.

But they all concluded saying that what the country really needed was leadership. This hammering on President Obama's so-called lack of leadership would be more convincing if they ever mentioned the plight of the middle class or the growing inequality of wealth in the country. All we get are crickets. Mitt Romney dared to say that he would end gridlock in D.C. because he had worked with Democrats in the past. Not to be outdone, Newt also talked about his work with Democrats and claimed it was his bipartisanship that led to the Clinton economic boom and the balanced budget. I guess he might get away with this if there weren't people who remember those days.

An interesting sidelight to the debate was Ron Paul's criticism that Newt avoided the Vietnam War, the son of a career officer. Newt's daughter countered that he had lectured for over twenty years to the military on strategy, apparently a true statement. But what was missing in this exchange was Mitt Romney's deferments as a Mormon minister and later as a student. Romney is now bragging that he knows what it is to live like a poorer person because of his days in Paris as a missionary. The Daily Telegraph and the Guardian ripped this apart by interviewing the head of the Mormon Institute in Paris saying that Romney lived in what is now the embassy of the United Arab Emirates, a virtual palace with a French cook for the missionaries there.

The debate also had its ritual moments where the candidates tried to demonstrate they were more pro-life than each other.

So the conclusion is that if you want to wage war against Iran,outlaw abortion,deport all aliens, increase the military budget, and hope for more jobs, then you should vote for one of these people. What was missing was any sense of the future. What should be done about energy self-sufficiency, the environment, the problems facing young people.

There were two new oddball issues--the Fast and Furious issue of the AFT agency selling weapons to Mexico and the XL Pipeline. On the first, the candidates demanded Eric Holder resign. By the way any time you hear calls for Eric Holder to resign by Republicans, it has less to do with some imagined scandal than it does with the possibility he might go after the voter suppression acts in various states. And on the second, if there is a scandal in the Obama administration, it was the conflict of interests surrounding the evaluation of the XL Pipeline. Obama did the right thing in postponing the decision until the State Department got it right.

The candidates returned to a more understated "Drill, Baby, Drill" stance in criticising President Obama's energy policy. I've written about this before. According to Baker-Hughes, there are more oil and gas rigs working in the United States today than at any time since they started counting, which was in 1984. The United States has become a major exporter of oil. But the real issue for the new Republicans is that there should be no alternative energy sources. This past week the House tried to get coal listed as an alternative energy source. Even with the Solyandra failure, our solar industry is booming and improvements are coming in this sector everyday.

So far I haven't heard anything new and interesting from the Republican candidates. The best that has emerged is Newt Gingrich talking about Alzheimer's treatments and the implications about curing the disease. However, he doesn't talk about that in the campaign.