« Republicans Look to Be Next Jack Bauer | Main | FEMA is no Longer About Aiding Disaster Victims »

May 16, 2007

Odds and Ends from Last Night's Debate

Last night's debate between the Republican presidential candidates offered numerous ironies, some comedy, and some moments that simply made you say, "Huh?" Here's a recap of the portions I didn't specifically highlight elsewhere today:

Mitt Romney, a member of the spend, spend, spend Republican Party, tried to pretend his party hasn't become the party of big government and fell back on the "limited government" blather that the faithful lap up like the thirsty dogs they are:

MR. ROMNEY: We need to have fundamental change in the way business in Washington is carried out. What that means is we're going to have to have leadership that can reorganize the government. We're going to have about 40 percent of the government employees turn over in the next couple of terms. And if we can -- we can reduce the employment there, but more importantly, is to go through all the agencies, all the departments, all the programs and cut out the unnecessary and the wasteful.

John McCain, who understands the big government problem, had perhaps the funniest answer of the evening:

SEN. MCCAIN: We didn't lose the 2006 election because of the war in Iraq; we lost it because we in the Republican Party came to Washington to change government and government changed us. We let spending go out of control. We spent money like a drunken sailor, although I never knew a sailor drunk or sober with the imagination of my colleagues.

Mike Huckabee, who quipped that Congress has "spent money like Edwards at a beauty shop," said he wanted to eliminate the IRS, thereby eliminating the $10 billion per year expenditure for operating the IRS, and change the entire tax structure.

MR. HUCKABEE: … If we had a fair tax, it would eliminate not just the alternative minimum tax, personal income tax, corporate tax, it would eliminate all the various taxes that are hidden in our system, and Americans don't realize what they're paying.

Rudy Giuliani boasted about the report that the infamous (at least around here) Club for Growth put out on his fiscal behavior while mayor of New York City and said if he could reduce taxes there, he could certainly do it in Washington, DC because "Washington is easier than New York City to deal with!" His plan:

I'd do Reagan-like across- the-board budget cuts 5 to 20 percent. And there's a great opportunity that we have coming up. About 50 percent, just about 50 percent of the federal employees are going to retire in the next 10 years, during the term of, maybe, one of us. And we have the opportunity of not refilling all those positions. And I would pledge not to refill 50 percent of them.

When asked how he would prevent rising gasoline costs, Sam Brownback, whose daughter apparently has a lead foot, attempted to straddle the fence on energy and the environment while also trashing the latest bogeymen:

SEN. BROWNBACK: How I'd prevent that is us getting more supply in the system through biofuels for one thing, like ethanol from Kansas or maybe Iowa would be a nice state, too, for it to come from -- (laughter) -- biodiesel. Us being able to drill more at home here in the United States, and we can do this in places like ANWR safely, environmentally sound, but get the supply up here. And, we have to in the future work on more conservation here. My family, we have a hybrid car. In that car you can get up to 42, 43 miles to the gallon. Now my 17-year-old daughter does about 25 on it, so it does matter how you drive it. But the point of it is, is you can do better, and we can do better. And we can do this through technology, and we can do this through increasing supply here. And by that mixture we can become energy-secure in North America in 15 years, which I think should be one of our key objectives, so that we're not held hostage to a guy like Chavez in Venezuela or Ahmadinejad in Iran. We can do better, and we need to do better than $4-a-gallon gasoline.

Tommy Thompson bragged about his "over 1,900 vetoes." Ron Paul said he would eliminate the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Homeland Security. Tom Tancredo expressed what can only be summed up as embarrassment at the fiscal irresponsibility of the Republican-led Congress.

And Jim Gilmore positively baffled me with this statement:

MR. GILMORE: … I looked back at the California debates, and I think that some of the people on this stage were very liberal in characterizing themselves as conservatives …

He promised to talk about who he meant by that today on his website today, but I'll be damned if I can find it. Perhaps he changed his mind in light of the fact that later he was asked to "name names," and pointed to Rudy Giuliani for his abortion views, Mike Huckabee for his "dramatic" tax increases while governor, and Mitt Romney for his health care stance. John McCain felt "left out," particularly in light of Gilmore's earlier "Rudy McRomney" comment.

Gilmore wasn't the only one making baffling statements. Giuliani said of Hillary Clinton:

… there's something I think really big at stake here. We're looking at a race here in which the leading Democratic candidate for president of the United States has said that the unfettered free market is the most disastrous thing in modern America. That's a quote -- or that's a quote she agreed with. She's also said, with regard to taxes, that we have to take money from you in order to give it to the common good.

What's baffling is how a credible candidate could say something like that. That is a message targeted squarely at the far, far right. Since when did the mainstream Republican Party ever stand for an "unfettered free market"? And if taxes aren't meant to support the common good, then what are they for?

Mike Huckabee showed some balls, in my opinion, on the tax issue:

MR. WALLACE: Governor Huckabee, you got slammed for raising taxes. How do you respond, sir?

MR. HUCKABEE: Well, it's a form of flattery to be attacked, but … the truth is I cut taxes 94 times when I was governor. Yes, we raised gasoline taxes in my state to build a road program that we desperately needed, but 80 percent of the people of my state voted for it. Do I apologize for going along with what 80 percent of the people of my state supported? No. Nor do I anyway apologize for building roads. Do I apologize for complying with a Supreme Court order to improve education in a state that desperately needed it? Of course I don't, because our education system did improve. But I don't also apologize for being a Republican governor in a very Democrat state and getting 94 different tax decreases, the first ever in my state's history, done. And I think that's a pretty doggone good record.

Mitt Romney also has run into trouble with right-wing Republicans over his governance record in a "blue" state:

MR. WALLACE: Governor Romney, in 1994 you said you were a stronger advocate of gay rights than Ted Kennedy. As recently as five years ago you still supported a woman's right to choose. And as governor you signed into law one of the toughest restrictions on assault weapons in the country. Are you a clear and consistent conservative?

MR. ROMNEY: Well, let's get the record straight. First of all, there's no question that I support Second Amendment rights, but I also support an assault weapon ban. An in the -- with regards to gay rights, I have always been somebody who opposes discrimination. But I also consistently feel that it's critical to have marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman. Look, I've been governor in a pretty tough state. You've heard of blue states. If you ever bought a suit and you look at it and you can't tell if it's blue or black, that's how blue Massachusetts is. And in that state I've had to stand up for life, and I have. I've had to stand up for traditional marriage, and I have. In that very difficult state, I stood to make sure that we could have English immersion in our schools, because I think kids should be taught in English. I fought for the death penalty. I fought for abstinence education. In the toughest of states, I made the toughest decisions and did what was right for America. I have conservative values.

Giluiani was the only candidate to say anything I found interesting regarding immigration:

MR. GIULIANI: Well, first of all, I'd like to thank Congressman Tancredo for saying that I'm soft on anything. (Laughter.) That's the first time in about 20 years, since I was U.S. attorney, that anybody accused me of being soft. So it may help my reputation. The reality is, the focus on immigration should be to know everyone who's in the United States. We should have a tamper-proof ID card; we should have a database in which we can identify the people who are in this country. I know something about security. I think I've had more experience at having to secure a city, having to deal with security in the Justice Department, than, I would say, anyone on this stage. And the reality is, we've got to be sensible about immigration. If we do the kinds of things that some of the people here are talking about, this country's going to be in greater danger; it is going to be more insecure; we're going to face a situation in which terrorists like the Fort Dix people, three of whom were illegal, can find a big underground to hide in. So we need a fence. We need a technological fence; we need a tamper-proof ID card. And we need a way that people who are working in this country can come forward, sign up for the tamper-proof ID card, get in the database and start paying their way.

And Ron Paul had some very interesting comments about our actions in the Middle East:

REP. PAUL: …We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us.

MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?

REP. PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.

Of course, Giluiani couldn't let that one slide, and had to take it to lengths that were ridiculous on their face:

MR. GIULIANI: … That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that.

Fortunately, Paul has a brain:

REP. PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?

Next, McCain had to deal with the Confederate flag issue. First of all, can you believe this is an issue in this country? It's like those kids who only just this year had their first integrated prom. Anyway, McCain said that South Carolina's continued flying of the Confederate flag is OK because it's in front of the Statehouse as opposed to flying on top of the capitol and said we should all just "move on" on this issue.

And move on they did – to global warming, where Tancredo wandered into (and back out of) a coherent thought amidst all of his craziness. Well, sort of.

REP. TANCREDO: Okay. First of all, the whole issue of global warming, for every single scientist that tells you it's happening and that it's our fault -- and they'll stack up to here in this reports -- I can stack up another group of reports that say just the opposite. I don't believe that -- well, I'll tell you this, I don't know whether or not we are responsible, we the human race, are responsible for global warming. It certainly could be happening, it certainly could be a natural phenomenon. If it's the latter, of course there isn't much we can do about that. If it's the former, there is something that we can do about it, and I'm all for it, and that is of course to reduce our dependence on petroleum products. If we do that, we automatically reduce the carbon emissions that people claim are causing global warming. And I'm all for doing that, because -- I'll tell you why. It's a national security issue. It just isn't an issue of fight over the science of global warming; it's a national security issue for us to move away from the use of petroleum products when they're coming from countries that want to kill us. And although my dear friend Ron here -- I dearly love and really respect, but I'll tell you, I just have to disagree with you, Ron, about the issue of whether or not that -- whether Israel existed or didn't, whether or not we were in the Iraq war or not, they would be trying to kill us because it's a dictate of their religion, at least a part of it, and we have to defend ourselves.

Romney was asked to talk about something where he changed his mind on an issue in opposition to the "base" and pointed to his support of No Child Left Behind.

Mr. ROMNEY: I have issues that take me in the same direction. One is No Child Left Behind. I've taken a position where, once upon a time, I said I wanted to eliminate the Department of Education. That was my position when I ran for Senate in 1994. That's very popular with the base. As I've been a governor and seen the impact that the federal government can have holding down the interest of the teachers' unions and instead putting the interests of the kids and the parents and the teachers first, I see that the Department of Education can actually make a difference. So I supported No Child Left Behind. I still do. I know there are a lot in my party that don't like it, but I like testing in our schools. I think it allows us to get better schools, better teachers; allows us to let our kids have the kind of hope that they ought to have.

Somebody might want to tell Romney that No Child Left Behind isn't popular with the left, either.

What a night.

Posted by Becky at May 16, 2007 04:57 PM