My power has been out since 6pm. How’s the debate going?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Perry is destroying himself and blowing up, imo. He’s exactly how I thought he would be, and it’s why until Bachmann’s staff left I didn’t think he’d go anywhere by the time January comes. Now I’m back to that point.
Romney and Huntsman are the clear winners here, but Huntsman is a pretty shitty debater overall.
What’s Perry doing wrong?
1.) He’s standing by calling SS a Ponzi Scheme.
2.) Romney is being completely condescending to him, and it’s working brilliantly, imo. Perry hasn’t had many applause lines either.
3.) His speaking ability is shit. Absolute shit. He reminds me so much of Bush that it’s scary. Not just in his policies, but how he speaks. He can’t think straight, he speaks slowly, and it’s clear he’s an idiot. Like, a serious idiot.
Romney keeps winning the debates, but he’s just not catching on. Perry might eventually go to the nomination — it’s really hard to predict right now — but he’s so, so bad. You’d have to watch highlights to really understand.
And wow, as I type this, people applauded that he has executed more people than anyone else in the Union.
Perry’s biggest applause line was when Brian Williams pointed out that he had signed off on 234 executions.
A sure sign that we are watching a Republican debate.
I read somewhere that the important difference between Bush and Perry is that while many Texas Democratic politicians saw Bush as an idiot, many Texas Republican politicians see Perry as an idiot. That’s cause for concern.
He’s dumb, and he’s slow even in a murderer’s row of morans. He has been shrinking as the debate goes on. He’s somehow managing to make the Mittster look vaguely plausible by comparison–now that’s not easy to do. Oh, and Ron Paul is kwazy!!
I SWEAR it was like a live performance of Josh Brolin portraying George W. Bush. It was creepy. I mean in looks and sound, meandering and stuttering. He got so flustered answering anquestion about “military adventurism” that he thanked President Obama for killing OBL.” As crazy as the Republican Party is they would have to be plum loco to nominate Perry. They surely realize tonight he couldn’t survive one debate with President Obama. All of them faltered trying to attack the President on foreign policy. Clear win for Romney.
you nailed it with the Brolin comparison
I have “W” in my DVR library (don’t ask). I just flipped it on, and the similarities are crazy!!!
You make a huge point: all of them faltered on attacking the President on foreign policy. This is gigantic.
The worse part of the debate was the crowd going wild with applause for Perry having the highest number of executions. They really are blood thirsty.
The Republican Party. Pure, Unadulterated, Fascists.
I’m just not sure how Perry can go forward holding to the Social Security=Ponzi Scheme narrative. While SS has its problems, it is wildly popular and this just seems like a totally radioactive position, with the exception of appealing to the most rabid of the Republican base. I just don’t see how he can continue to toe this line if he lurches into the nomination. Does he think that everyone will forget what he wrote in his book and what he said in these debates? How can you even begin to ameliorate such an iron-clad statement as this?
I think Perry walked away with it tonight. I agree with other commenters who are horrified by what Perry is saying.
Keep in mind though, my opinion is based on who the audience is: GOP crazies.
Now Perry will struggle in the general due to his contempt for Social Security but I think he walks away with the nomination.
Perry/Rubio
I had my mind on the audience when I wrote that, too, but I still think he performed terribly. I watched maybe 5 minutes of the after debate talk, and Lawrence O’Donnell articulated it quite well. He came in as the front-runner, and he failed to live up to the hype. He did terrible, absolutely rotten.
Audience liked Perry, pundits will like Romney, bachmann is out (at least that’s what twitter is saying) and no one remembers the rest. You didn’t miss anything. There was a lot of applause when Williams asked Perry about his record executions. Perry didn’t even answer the question yet and the crowd went wild.
Audience liked Perry, pundits will like Romney, bachmann is out (at least that’s what twitter is saying) and no one remembers the rest. You didn’t miss anything. There was a lot of applause when Williams asked Perry about his record executions. Perry didn’t even answer the question yet and the crowd went wild.
I missed it, but am hearing conflicting reports about Perry. Should we still be rooting for him to win the nom? Strong enough to sway the Republican base, weak enough to get crushed by the President?
We should root for the least crazy candidate. Having a lunatic as the leader of one of the two parties in a two party system is not a good thing. There is no right-leaning party to replace the GOP, so we’re stuck with it in our political culture for the foreseeable future.
I root for Huntsman, seriously.
We’re past that point now. It would be one thing if Romney were a strong guy who could stand up to the crazies once he was in office, but he can’t and he won’t. Romney is the most dangerous because he’s the least threatening.
If Huntsman catches on, he’d be better than Romney for two reasons. He’s a stronger personality and he’s willing to buck the crazy. He’s still very conservative. Huntsman would still be a complete disaster we’d probably never recover from. But it would be healthy for the country if he won the nomination and lost the election. Still, not worth the risk of him winning.
I’m for Perry or Bachmann. Let’s try out Crazy and see how it sells.
I have no illusions that Huntsman has a prayer.
Crazy won’t sell well in the general, but–and I imagine you have similar thoughts–as long as it dominates the GOP it will be between 30-40% of our politics, which is huge.
I don’t think Romney will get the nomination, failing as he does the religion test.
GOP crazy hasn’t really been tested yet. I don’t think 2010 counts, or at least not fully, because in 2010 they simply were the other candidate in an anti-incumbent election. Now, they need to stand for something and I don’t think it will sell at all.
I would rather run against Crazy than pandering-to-crazy. It’s that simple.
I don’t disagree for the Presidential race, but what about the composition of Congress? Do you think Obama might actually lose to Romney? Maybe I underestimate Romney’s chances, but I’ve been in rooms with Republicans discussing Mormonism, and it’s not pretty.
Romney is not a good politician. But he’s decent. He has by far the best chance to beat Obama AND to hold down Republican losses down ticket.
Whatever you do, if you are a Dem supporter you had better hope that Ron Paul doesn’t win. He’s the only one there who can not only match Obama in intellect but trump him in commitment.
The rest of them?
Obama has more to worry about from Ms. Clinton…and from his own lack of a certain kind of commitment… than he does from the other contenders.
Watch. It’s a long time until November, 2012.
A long, long time.
Watch.
Remember…whoever the corporate media supports wins the election, and whoever convinces the corporate-owned PermaGov that he or she will best for business will be the one most hyped by the media.
Or is it the other way around, the PermaGov-owned corporations? Sometimes I just get so confused!!! U.S. intelligence services have had billions of untraceable dollars…maybe triilions…available for 40+ years and they have also had insider knowledge about financial matters for the same period of time. They would have to have been total idiots not to have ascended to the catbird seat of corporate power by now.
Of course…on all the available evidence maybe they are total idiots.
We’ll probably never know.
So it goes.
Yup.
Later…
AG
AG-
Ron Paul maxes out at around 15-20% (depending on the state) in the Republican primaries. With the recent ascendancy of Tea Party, Paul could do a little better this time. But the truth is that the studies of the Tea Partiers shows their growth to be mainly in social conservatives aping libertarian economics rather than a growth in the GOP from new converts to libertarians.
So, Paul won’t get all the Tea Partiers because his message is 99% economic, which is not what really interests your average anti-abortion voter.
In other words, Paul’s got room to grow, but his potential new support is quite soft. He’s strong enough to conceivably come in second place if he sticks it out to the end and others give up after the first few contests. If he somehow won the nomination, it would split the GOP ten times worse than McGovern split the Dem coalition. On foreign policy and drug policy, the GOP would be like shattered glass.
Obama has nothing to fear from Ron Paul. That is for both good and bad reasons.
All true.
Ron Paul is a unique candidate in that I think everyone agrees with him at least 50% of the time — and sometimes 3/4ths or more of the time. The problem is, the issues on which most of us disagree with him are more often than not showstoppers.
Most people love his anti-corporate views. When he said “Obama is not a socialist, he’s a corporatist” I think he won praise from both the left and the right – because that’s exactly accurate.
Most people applaud his views against military adventurism. The so-called, euphemistically-named “defense” department (wink wink nudge nudge) should have it’s budget cut to 1/4 of the current outlay if it wants to focus on just “defense” of the country.
Anti-war on drugs? Most on the left sign up immediately. Cut government programs that help the poor? The reich wing gives him a quick Seig Heil.
When he starts venturing into his crazy territory around the economy and his flirtation with Christianist Domininonism he loses most people. His wacko views on abortion force him firmly into the Reich Wing camp. And when he starts getting specific about the government programs that he would cut (something most Republicans avoid doing at all cost) he loses all but his solid 20%.
Too bad. We really need a candidate who stands up against corporations and the military without being crazy.
I would much rather see someone like Glenn Greenwald run for office than Ron Paul. With Greenwald, I find a better mix of libertarianism and liberalism, without any noxious hateful bullcrap.
Of course, Greenwald would split the left, resulting in a reactionary government we would all hate. And, if elected, he’d be regurgitated by Washington a million times faster than Jimmy Carter. But I wouldn’t be embarrassed by him, and deep down I’d wish it were possible for his revolution to be successful.
The thing about Ron Paul is that he’s not a libertarian. He’s just a conservative in the mold of Scalia: strict, constitutional adherence in the most literal form.
If the states want to establish socialism, well, I don’t agree with it, but it’s perfectly constitutional and they should be allowed to do it. The federal government doing that? OMG TYRANNY!!!
And you’re right about us agreeing with him 50% of the time, but even where we agree I still falter. Like on the drug policy. He wants to end the war on drugs, but he also wants to end rehabilitation programs that help the poor and addicts. He wants to end our military adventures, but then he also wants us to be totally isolationist (no matter how much the Paulites try and say he’s not an isolationist, that’s total bunk; even in the US’ isolationist phases, we’ve still kept trade even with our enemies).
But the thing I like about him is that he always brings everything back to the military and the Empire. Sure he is opposed to Medicare (he wouldn’t care if Massachusetts established their own form of Medicare, though), but whenever he talks about runaway spending…he ALWAYS, ALWAYS brings it back to the military. So he’s an important voice here and in the House. I think he’s be dangerous in the Senate, but he’s not really a problem in the House, and he brings up good points that someone needs to bring up.
Also, about the war on drugs…his supporters are in lala land on this issue. Yes, Ron Paul would “end” the war on drugs like Obama is ending the war in Iraq. There’s not much Paul could do about it really, even if he’d want to. States do most of that policy anyway, and I guarantee the institutions would largely rebel against him. here’s where I give Obama some slack. Yes he said he would stop the raids, and I think he truly wants them to stop. But the institution itself has almost a mind of its own. It’s like the CIA in a way.
Paul and Scalia are diametrically opposed on civil liberties like the 4th amendment.
Paul also would, in theory and if he could make it happen, legalize marijuana and dramatically cut sentences for other drugs. That would take the steam out of much of the “War on Drugs”.
But like everything else, from slashing military to destroying social security, that’s just theory. In practice it’s hard to see most of his program actually getting anywhere even if we did wave a magical wand and make him President.
Paul has said there’s no Constitutional right to privacy. I do not believe they’re diametrically opposed; Scalia just gives more stock in the Executive that Paul believes should be reserved to the States. I guarantee if the states did a lot of the things that the Federal government does, while he wouldn’t agree, would not believe they’re unconstitutional.
The only thing he could do that would really put a dent in the War on Drugs is pardon every single drug case that came before a court. Good luck with that lol.
I also believe that EVEN IF the Feds end the War on Drugs, that the states will still largely carry it on. This is an issue where state by state they start to change their attitudes. I think we’re headed in the right direction, but we have a long way to go. This institutionalization is also why decriminalization simply isn’t enough.
The right-to-privacy thing is built around the abortion issue. Paul is force to walk the thin line whereby he has to deny privacy as a right in order to support his abortion stance, but he nevertheless has opposed many of the court decisions that have made the 4th amendment almost worthless, in that the government has so many loopholes.
On the last point, yes, a unilateral change from above would be difficult to implement universally. Some states would happily comply, others would resist, largely along blue/red lines.
Do you or does anyone have a sense of the relative change in GOP self-identification vis-a-vis independents and Democrats over the last 10 years? I imagine that the decline in Democratic fortunes since 2008 has not meant much if any of an increase in actual Republicans. Don’t know though.
Just copped an unscientific gander at a few polls and my hunch was more or less right, no shifts to GOP anywhere near the scale of their gains in Congress.
I find a Paul win extremely doubtful. Just based on your PermaGov analysis alone – what would motivate corporate America to support him to the extent required to win the Presidency? The big boys on Wall Street might like that he wants to abolish the income tax, but I doubt any of them are interested in returning to the gold standard.
That said, Paul may have a role to play as kingmaker in advance of the nomination. And he’s a more plausible nominee than Hunstman, who’s the purest media-puff candidate since Giuliani.
best part of the night was his tripling down on the SS as Ponzi scheme…oh yes, that ready made ad just got cut and kissed by the DNC tonight.
I like this analysis. Probably because I agree with it…lol
How Rick Perry Won the Debate
Chait should stick to this instead of bashing liberals with completely worthless, Versailles CW. Even here, he’s not 100% right about the reasons, but he’s right about the conclusion.
So liberal critics of the President are off limits? You can say whatever you want about President Obama but Chait can’t challenge your criticism? Is he violating some unspoken alliance or something? Or just some silly childish shit like, “You are supposed to be my liberal BFF, not his”?
Palin just saw her opening.
I agree, but I still don’t see her taking it. If there was ever a chance for her to make a shot, now would be it.
Yup. She’s like their Mario Cuomo, in a weird way.
Yes, in the way that a mountain is just like a valley, only in reverse.
I’m willing to take that bet. I was at Hot Air. They hate Romney, but now are really worried about Perry. I think she’s going to take this as a sign.
They’ve been wanting her to get in for a while, though. I saw that Erick the Red is starting to get pissed with her toying with his emotions. Interesting about Perry. What are they worried about? I was curious as to how the True Believers were reacting to him, but I was too afraid to venture. Have you been over to Freeper or NRO yet? Someone told me NRO comments were giddy over Perry, but I don’t know that for a fact.
Since Maxine Waters beseeched black voters to “unleash” the CBC on President Obama, there have been countless headlines about black unemployment. Maxine Waters and her wig even got an invite on Meet the Press. But black unemployment didn’t figure prominently in this debate. Am I being too cynical to ask if black unemployment is only an issue when it can be used to put a wedge between President Obama and the African American Community?
It’s not cynical at all, because to the white power structure the real lives of Black people have always been a means through which they haggle among themselves.
No I don’t think you’re being cynical, especially not wrt to the media, but why would it figure prominently in a Republican debate? When asked, Perry basically told blacks and hispanics to gtfo welfare and go find jobs….”that’s the best welfare reform.” He totally dodged the inequality rooted institutionally in our system, with blacks now suffering from downward mobility.
Why wouldn’t it be? They are vying to be president of all Americans, and if black unemployment is a national crisis and not just a crisis for President Obama’s re-election prospects, shouldn’t it be a major issue at any presidential debate? Most interestingly no one on the entire liberal panel on MSNBC noted it.
you might have been born at night, but you weren’t born last night. it’s so obvious
Ed Schultz defended Perry’s ponzi scheme comments because it shows he respects his base; just called Newt Gingrich vastly intelligent (BASED ON FUCKIN WHAT?!); and trashed President Obama after a Republican debate. When you have “respect” for someone saying insane shit because they are being true to their insanity, you are a fuckin nut. This is why I can’t stand “reformed” conservatives like Schultz. They dont have any ideaology; they just transfer their insanity. He deserves every bit of the clowning of him from Jon Stewart.