Jon Huntsman

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GOP debate of January 16

Posted by noonante on January 18, 2012
Posted in: Political/Social commentary, Politics. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I missed the last two debates because I was travelling.  While I tried to watch tapes on an iPad, that turned out to be a frustrating and time-consuming effort. After finally seeing the entire first debate, I do not think I missed much.  I never watched the second one.

The event last night, however, was quite revealing.  For once, Mitt Romney did not stand out from the crowd, and again demonstrated some of his weaknesses as a candidate.  Newt Gingrich finally connected with an audience, feeding them all the red meat they could eat.  At one point he actually got a standing ovation  —  for bashing the poor (and, at least inferentially, blacks) and going with his theme of Barack Obama being a “Food Stamp President.”

The debate, sponsored by Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, was the first since Jon Huntsman dropped from the race.  While Huntsman at times demonstrated some sophistication and common-sense on the issues, his weak showing in New Hampshire  —  a state on which he staked his candidacy  —  doomed his effort.  He was also a weird candidate (not a unique characteristic in this group) with his odd sense of humor and speaking Chinese during a debate.

The next to go should be Rick Perry.  Although his debate performances have improved markedly from his earlier efforts, he remains a slogan-filled lightweight who thinks tough talk and simplistic solutions will hide his rather apparent lack of knowledge or insight on any topic within the public realm.

Ron Paul, in spite of having the most ardent base and consistently polling in the top three, is generally ignored by the cognoscenti and punditocracy.  Nonetheless, he has articulated views on foreign policy, government spending and individual liberty that one would think would deserve an airing in a party that prides itself on being conservative and a bulwark of freedom.  But in last night’s testosterone fest on the South Carolina shore, the loudest applause was reserved for those who most enthusiastically and quickly asserted their desire to kill our enemies.  Paul’s weakest points in all of these debates have been his disagreement with the killing of Osama bin Laden.  He was getting nowhere with that tack in last night’s crowd.

If there is a poster child for how far the contemporary Republican Party has strayed from adherence to personal freedom and liberty, it would have to be Rick Santorum.  In the January 7 debate, he came out against contraception.  In last night’s event, he made a statement that I have not seen in any other commentary, but it should send a shiver up the spine of anyone who thinks the government should stay out of our personal lives.  When asked what special steps he would take to alleviate the high level of poverty among African-Americans (it was, after all, Martin Luther King Day), Santorum cited a study showing that working, a high school education, and marrying before having children were the key to avoiding poverty.  He then proceeded to blast the Obama Administration because it does not allow non-profit organizations assisting young women to tell their clients what “the good choice is”  —  i.e., marriage.  This comment was perhaps overlooked because it was just the prelude for Newt Gingrich’s working the crowd into a fevered pitch with his denunciation of the poor and the “Food Stamp President.”

Gingrich was in his glory working this crowd.  If this debate were the defining moment in the South Carolina primary, then the winner will be Gingrich.  We do not know, however, whether this crowd was representative of the South Carolina electorate or how many voters watched it.  There is another one Thursday night [sic], and it will be interesting to see if the Newtster has picked up significant momentum.

Going back to the January 7 debate, there was one exchange with Gingrich I found to be particularly revealing.  In the lead-up to that debate in New Hampshire, the expectation that Gingrich would confront Romney about the latter’s super-PAC ads targeting Gingrich that are viewed widely as causing Newt’s precipitous drop in the polls and a poor finish in the Iowa caucuses.  Between Iowa and New Hampshire, Gingrich was described as being on the war path, and he made some rather unflattering remarks about the former Massachusetts governor.  The debate moderators, not willing to miss a blow-up between the two, gave Gingrich his chance early on to directly take on Romney for the ads.  Gingrich folded like a cheap suitcase.  Instead of repeating his own criticisms, the guy who has made a career of blasting the elite media hid behind the sheets of The New York Times, and, in one instance, attributed his own comments to the Times.  This was not the first time that the smartest person in the Western world  —  and someone who purportedly salivates at the idea of debating Barack Obama  —  meekly walked away without a fight.  He did it in last night’s debate when Romney questioned him directly about the illegality of coordinating with a super-PAC.  You had no trouble hearing him when he was blasting the poor, but his concurrence with Romney’s challenge was barely audible.

Speaking of super-PAC’s, two of the more memorable exchanges involving Romney last night centered on ads being run by the super-PAC’s.  (For those not familiar with this latest blight on the political landscape, a super-PAC is an entity that is separate from a campaign, and cannot legally coordinate with the campaign.  It is funded without regard to the campaign finance limitations applicable to candidate’s campaigns.  While the presumed rationale for this distinction is that the super-PAC’s are issue-oriented, not candidate-oriented, the reality is that the super-PAC running “issue” ads against Gingrich in Iowa is composed of Romney fundraisers and former close associates.  Gingrich has his own super-PAC of “related parties.”)

In New Hampshire, it was Romney’s super-PAC attacking Gingrich that was the buzz.  In South Carolina, it is Gingrich’s super-PAC going after Romney and his record at Bain Capital.  Romney has made his Bain experience the centerpiece of his campaign, asserting that it shows that he knows how to create jobs in contrast to the bumbler in the White House who is in over his head.  In his earliest iteration of this claim, Romney claimed that he had created over 100,000 new jobs, “net” of any job losses that may have resulted from companies that did not succeed.  Of course, as with so many of Romney’s claims, this one did not withstand much scrutiny.  It is quite difficult to come up with a reliable number on net jobs created by Bain Capital.  Part of this is because Romney may not have access to their records.  Part of it is because how do you account for job increases at Staples without accounting for job losses at competitors?  And part of it is because Bain Capital did not care about job creation.  They cared about maximizing profits for Bain’s partners and investors.  While there may be nothing wrong with that, job creation  —  if it occurred  —  was of no concern.

It was no surprise, then, that in last night’s debate the opening question was to Romney about Bain.  He said nothing of interest, but did not raise the “net job increase” issue.  Perry then received a question, allowing him to use his “vulture capitalism” line (perhaps the only real contribution of his campaign).  In response to a follow-up, Perry  —  who may have been put on this earth to irritate Romney  —  called for Romney to release his tax returns.  Romney did not respond, but was not so lucky when one of the panelists addressed it later on.  While Romney is best known as an entrepreneur and governor, he is also a lawyer, and his response reflected that training.  He said he was not opposed to the release, but used the curious phrase “time will tell,” but then said he would “probably” release them in mid-April.

The other super-PAC ad that was featured prominently was one of Romney’s, this time attacking Santorum for favoring voting rights for felons.  Santorum’s view is that felons who have served their time, completed probation or parole, can then reapply to have their voting rights reinstated.  The ad, however, created the impression that those who had not completed their full sentence could vote.  Santorum called Romney on this.  Romney  professed not to know about the ad since, of course, his campaign cannot have connections to the super-PAC.  Romney is trying to be too-cute-by-a-half about this.  I knew about the ad, because it was discussed on Politico.com that morning.  Are you trying to tell me that Romney, who is incredibly well-briefed about everything did not know about an ad being run by his super-PAC and that I did?  There are many things that I think are going to come back and bite him, and this studied ignorance is one of them.  In any event, Santorum asked him if he favored such a policy, and when Romney demurred, Santorum told him that Massachusetts had a law more liberal than Santorum’s policy.  Romney then said that he favored a policy that violent felons could not vote again, but his state disagreed.  I’m going to take a wild guess that he pulled that one out of thin air, and there will be no record of his ever advocating such a policy in Massachusetts.  Again, certain attributes (once again, lying) will come back to bite you.

One final point about Romney.  He has acquired a reputation for being tone deaf and saying impolitic things, some of which, admittedly, have been taken out of context.  So after a week in which you have been battered for bankrupting companies and forcing families into losing their homes, why would you say the following in a debate:  “Bankruptcy can be good.”  This is their electable candidate?

Upcoming GOP debates

Posted by noonante on December 9, 2011
Posted in: Political/Social commentary. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

It’s crunch time.  Over the next six days there will be three Republican debates, although one will only have two participants.  After that, the next serious event will not occur until January 7.

The first one is scheduled for Saturday night at 9:00 pm on ABC and will feature six of the seven top candidates.  Jon Huntsman was not invited because of his polling numbers.  The early buzz is that this will be  —  as one site phrased it  —  the “alpha dog” showdown between long-presumed nominee Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, the current leader in most early state polls.  According to the pundits, this will be the first time for Romney to demonstrate that he can recover from Gingrich’s surge, and for Gingrich to show that he has what it takes to stay on top.  Everyone who follows this stuff is waiting for what most believe will be the inevitable Gingrich implosion, which, in turn, will lead to the once-inevitable Romney actually being inevitable.

The next event is one that I think will be very interesting.  It is a “Lincoln-Douglas” debate between Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman.  Gingrich is a big fan of this style which, as I understand it, involves actual debating between two opponents without time limits or even a moderator, although I am not clear on that last point.  He favors such an approach because as the smartest person on the planet and a skilled debater, he will win every time.  He has proposed seven such encounters with President Obama after he becomes the nominee, and has already had such a debate with Herman Cain.  Jon Huntsman is not Herman Cain.  He is smart, articulate and, as a former ambassador to China and popular governor, one must assume he is quite savvy.  For those looking for the Gingrich implosion, I think this event has considerable potential to produce it.  He will not be able to use his bullying style or pompous platitudes against Huntsman.  Just go back to the way he backed down from Mitt Romney when challenged on his support for an individual mandate in health care.  At this point (Friday afternoon) I am not aware of a time or carrier for a debate scheduled for Monday.

Then there is the debate scheduled for December 15 at 9:00 pm on Fox News.  After that it is a hiatus of more than three weeks for the next serious event on January 7.  In between, however, is the Donald Trump debate scheduled for December 27.  Five of the seven leading candidates have declined to participate, with only Gingrich and Rick Santorum agreeing to show up.  The latter can use all the publicity he can get.  I think this is another opportunity for Gingrich to implode.  He will be seeing himself as half-way to the nomination and I anticipate he will be in all his pompous glory.  That could spell trouble for advisers hoping he avoids intemperate remarks.  That’s all I need, though, to be watching this spectacle.

GOP foreign policy debates

Posted by noonante on December 8, 2011
Posted in: Political/Social commentary. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I did not do a post immediately after the first GOP debate on foreign policy on November 12 (I was in Montreal for that Saturday night debate) nor for the most recent one on November 22.  Both events were interesting, in part because of the differences among the candidates, but also because of the surprisingly (to me) nuanced positions of candidates such as Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann, neither of whom has displayed that trait on domestic issues.  It would have been truly surprising, if not jaw-dropping, if I could say the same about Rick Perry or Herman Cain.

Perry and Cain are simply out of their league in discussing international matters, not that they are evoking memories of William F. Buckley when the topics are closer to home.  CBS and The National Journal, sponsors of the earlier event, labeled it “The Commander-in-Chief Debate,” an appellation that gives one considerable pause when viewing this entire group of candidates.

Cain, for his part, seems to have the same answer to every question.  He would assemble the best possible people, listen to their advice, and make a decision based on common sense.  There is nothing wrong with that answer, of course, other than that he is using it to mask a total lack of knowledge on any subject.  The first debate preceded his embarrassing response to the question on Libya.  By the time of the second debate he demonstrated that he did know a fact, in this case that Iran is a mountainous country.  The purpose of sharing that knowledge with us is that it would make an Israeli strike on Iran highly unlikely.  He did not go on to explain, however, the implications of his insight for the American military action in Afghanistan.  Presumably, he would not even have embarked on George Bush’s lukewarm attempt to track down Osama Bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountains.

Perry is simply hopeless in a debate format, although it is becoming increasingly clear that debates are doing a very good job of demonstrating his level of knowledge and capabilities.  What does he think is the preeminent security threat to the United States?  It is the 35,000 “forced abortions” that occure in China every day (according to him).  Commander-in-Chief qualifications?  He is the only one on stage with such experience since he commands the Texas National Guard.  This Palinesque answer did not explain how the other two former Governors did not also have the experience.  Finally, he revealed the startling information that Hamas and Hezbollah are both active in Mexico.

Rick Santorum surprised me in his ability to address the complexity of certain issues with a level of sophistication.  Although he opposed President Obama’s elimination of torture and supports profiling of Muslims, he spoke in favor of the necessity of foreign aid for strategic reasons, and opposed  a “cowboy” response to a nuclear weapon ending up in the wrong hands in Pakistan.  Unfortunately, his idea of the most serious threat to the United States is socialism in Central America.  (Even Herman Cain referred to cyber-attacks.)

Michele Bachmann continues to mix occasional bouts of lucidity with downright zaniness.  She also recognizes the strategic importance of foreign aid and the complexities of dealing with a Pakistan that has dozens of nuclear weapons.  She rightly criticized Rick Perry for naivete in saying he would zero out foreign aid until the Pakistani government came around to his way of thinking (a scary thought if ever there were one).  But in both debates she talked about the President allowing the ACLU to run the CIA on interrogating suspects, even though the Army’s Field Intelligence Manual is the source for such matters.

Newt Gingrich was Newt Gingrich, although perhaps because of his significant rise in the polls replacing Herman Cain as Romney’s main challenger, he may be tempering his Newtness.  There are still, however, moments.  In the first debate, he referenced the “mess” we got into with the Church Committee in the 1970’s as a reason why we have some many international problems.  Senator Frank Church was a liberal Democratic foreign policy leader.  Newt does not mention that since the Church Committee, there have been 20 years of Republican Presidents, 11 of Democratic ones and a period when Newt himself was Speaker of the House.  When asked in that debate for examples of “thinking out of the box,” he cited the views of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II.  I do not know what box he is in, but clearly it is not one of conservative orthodoxy.  Notwithstanding his typical rhetorical excesses, he did have at least two memorable statements.  He said that because of the threat of terror, “all of us will be in danger for the rest of our lives.”  While I think that is, regrettably, true, it was nice to hear Newt not blame this reality on Barack Obama or the socialists in the Democratic Party.  The other one, of course, is his comment that there may be a “subset” of undocumented immigrants  —  defined by Gingrich as in the country for 25 years, taxpayers, church-goers  —  that the “family-friendly” GOP will not want arrested and deported but allowed to remain in the country.  If this limited humane approach results in his disavowal by GOP voters, I am not sure we would need to know much more about the people controlling the Republican Party.

Mitt Romney was also Mitt Romney with, unfortunately, none of the surprises we got from Gingrich.  While engaging in his ritualistic assertions of the President’s inadequacy, he ended up stating positions remarkably similar to Obama’s.  Use of drones was acceptable, killing the American al Qaeda member was OK, and he was concerned about the low approval of the United States in Afghanistan.  This concern about America’s image abroad seems to run counter to what he calls Obama’s “apologizing” for the United States.  I think Romney may have been either off his game in the second debate or he is, not surprisingly, starting to wear thin.  He said little of note, relying on his standard (and factually inaccurate) shots at the Administration.  He continues to zing at Rick Perry as if he is the primary threat to his nomination, even though Perry has been consistently polling in the low single digits after his meteoric rise  evaporated.  What does Romney think is the biggest threat to American security?  Hezbollah in Latin America.

There were two beacons of hope in these debates.  Ron Paul continues to strike his theme of the importance of personal liberty, usually in the context of the abuses from the Patriot Act and the torturing of prisoners.  Jon Huntsman also shares these views and has the additional appeal of having actually thought about foreign policy issues (although I do not often agree with him).  Paul’s appeal appears to be limited to a hard core percentage of the Republican base, and does not seem to have much upside.  Huntsman, while not polling well, is the lone candidate who goes after the sophistry of the front-running Romney.  Because each of these candidates fails to adhere to the strict ideology of the Republican base, it is unlikely that either of them will move forward.

Finally, a brief word about the broadcasts.  The first debate, sponsored by CBS and The National Journal featured several questions I thought werer emarkably inane.  Santorum was asked not once, but twice, what he would do if a terrorist acquired a nuclear weapon in Pakistan.  While that may be a useful question for a hopeful screenwriter for “24,”  —  and is an unquestioned threat of considerable importance  —  it is a matter of tactics on a one-time matter.  I do not recall a single question on Israeli-Palestinian relations which has the potential for much more considerable influence on international policy.  CBS also televised only the first 60 minutes of the 90-minute debate because of the importance of cutting to a re-run of one of their regular programs.  The second debate, televised on CNN and sponsored by the conservative think tanks Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, was notable for its audience.  It was a polite reserved group, most of whom were dressed in  —  yes  —  conservative suits.  When Wolf Blitzer went to the audience for a question, in at least half the instances I recognized the questioner.  While I am not exactly a Washington insider, if I know something about members of the audience asking questions, it is not exactly a Tea Party gathering.  But the debate format was interesting.  No defined speaking limits and a chance for some real back and forth.