I met someone for coffee yesterday afternoon and was reminded during the course of our conversation that there’s a whole lot of stuff I don’t know, things aren’t always black or white or what they seem, and maybe I’m a tad narrow-minded.
So it was with a solid commitment to open-mindedness that I watched the GOP debate last night, televised live on CNBC from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. (I spent my 16th summer in Rochester because I was a handful back in 1978 so my mother sent me to live with my natural father, a Rochester resident. I therefore felt obligated to catch this particular debate.)
It didn’t take long before my anti-GOP proclivities returned.
I was depressed before the candidates were even introduced. An opening montage featured blighted industrial properties and abandoned factory sites as a sad baritone described my beloved state:
“We’re in Michigan. A state bruised and battered by the great recession. A snapshot of America’s pain. Massive unemployment. Foreclosures in every neighborhood. Empty factories littering the landscape. Michigan. A state rescued from the brink by a controversial bailout, costing U.S. taxpayers billions. But today, the Motor City is on the long road to recovery, the Big Three back in the black. The state beginning to restore the roar.”
Herman Cain responded that we must focus on the domestic economy because Italy “is beyond the point of return” – clearly pandering to the Italian-American voter – and the Mittster intoned in that presidential way of his that “Europe is able to take care of their own problems.”
One of the questioners, Jim Cramer, who hosts “Mad Money with Jim Cramer” on CNBC, was clearly off his medication; he was so fired up that I feared for the candidates’ safety each time he was given the floor. It was at this point that he insisted, “Italy is too big to fail!,” marking the first of several times we’d hear that expression last night.
Governor Huntsman opined, “We’ve got a problem called ‘Too big to fail’ in this country where we have six banks in this country that, combined, have assets worth 66 percent of our nation’s GDP, $9.4 trillion dollars. If these institutions get hit (U.S. banks), they have an implied bailout by the taxpayers in this country. As long as we have banks that are too big to fail in this country, we’re going to catch the contagion and it’s going to hurt us. We’ve got to get bank to a day and age where we have properly-sized banks and financial institutions.”
Huntsman again struck me as the most palatable of the GOP candidates.
At this point my notes stray from chronological order.
The Mittster claimed that “it’s a moral imperative – we can’t continue to pass on massive debts to our children,” but then when asked if he supports extending payroll tax cuts, said, “I’m not looking to raise taxes on anybody in the midst of a recession so yes, payroll tax cuts should be extended.” He also trotted out the old GOP talking point about public sector workers getting paid more than their private sector counterparts – which has been refuted – and promised to cut the government workforce by ten percent which will surely help with our country’s burgeoning unemployment rate.
And he took a swipe at CAFE standards that allowed foreign automotive competitors to gain market share here. Soon after, Harwood pointed out the Mittster’s tendency to claim both sides of an issue, which spurred this response:
“John, I think people understand that I’m a man of steadiness and constancy. I don’t think you’re going to find somebody who has more of those attributes than I do. I’ve been married to the same woman for 25...excuse me, I’ll get in trouble...for 42 years. I’ve been in the same church my entire life. I worked at one company, Bain, for 25 years, and I left that to go off and help save the Olympic Games. I think it’s outrageous that the Obama campaign continues to push this idea when you have in the Obama administration the most political presidency we’ve seen in modern history. They’re actually deciding when to pull out of Afghanistan based on politics. Let me tell you this: if I’m president of the United States, I will be true to my family, to my faith and to our country and I will never apologize for the United States of America.”
This odd answer, which was rather convoluted in my opinion, was met with thunderous applause.
There were many odd moments, in fact.
Rick Perry emerged from his haze to insist, “If you are too big to fail, you are too big.” Perry struck me several times during the debate as being as lost as South Carolina’s Lauren Caitlin Upton was back in 2007 when the 18-year-old gave Miss Teen USA pageant host Mario Lopez an incoherent, much-ridiculed response to a question about locating the United States on a world map. I thought Dubya was the dumbest guy in Texas until I watched Rick Perry last night.
I felt sorry for the guy even before he made the gigantic gaffe that everyone’s talking about around the water cooler today, when he couldn’t remember the third of three government agencies besides the Departments of Education and Commerce that he would shut down as president, causing his competitors, obviously feeling as uncomfortable as the audience, to try and help him out. (The Mittster suggested the EPA and Dr. Paul insisted there were actually five, which was no help at all to Governor Perry, who provided the answer – the Department of Energy – a good 15 minutes later.)
Professor Gingrich – who belongs on a college campus, not in the Oval Office, because he speaks in paragraphs, not sentences, and is as ripe for parody on Saturday Night Live as “Crazy Eyes” Bachmann – still blames Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke for all of our problems and still hates the Lefties. At one point he pompously sputtered, “There have been two cycles in my lifetime, Ronald Reagan and the Contract with America, where we had policies of lower taxes, less regulation, more American energy, and have faith in the American job creator as distinct from a Saul Alinsky radicalism of higher taxes, bigger bureaucracy with more regulations, no American energy as the president announced today in his decision on offshore and finally, class warfare.”
I had to press “rewind” on my remote control several times to get this down correctly and I still don’t understand what he said, although I think he took a swipe at the damn, dirty hippies. (Soon after, he ridiculed the Occupy Wall Street movement by name, saying he has “yet to hear a reporter ask an Occupy Wall Street person who’s going to pay for the park you’re occupying if there’s no business making a profit.”)
“Crazy Eyes” Bachmann said at one point, “One thing we know is that taxes lead to jobs leaving the country.” (One thing I know about Michele Bachmann is that if she’s ever anywhere near the Oval Office, it better be because she’s on a White House tour.) She also said, “Our biggest problem right now is our regulatory burden, we need to repeal Obamacare, and we need to build a fence on America’s southern border and get a grip on dealing with our immigration problem.”
I almost felt sorry for ol’ Crazy Eyes. I said almost.
When Bartiromo asked Herman Cain about character and referenced the sexual harassment allegations that have engulfed his campaign, the audience booed. He was applauded when he said, “The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion based on unfounded accusations. There are thousands that would say none of that activity ever came from Herman Cain.”
There are thousands who would say they’ve never been to Niagara Falls either. That doesn’t mean 202,000 cubic feet of water don’t approach the falls each second during the peak flow season.
Harwood asked Huntsman about Occupy Wall Street, referencing an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll this week that found 76 percent believe there’s something wrong with our economy that tilts toward the wealthy at the expense of others. Huntsman replied that he wants to be president of the 99 percent and the one percent. He doesn’t like the “anti-capitalist messages” but thinks we’ve blown trillions of dollars on corporate welfare and tax cuts with nothing to show on our balance sheet but debt.
Again, the GOP could do worse than John Huntsman. (He did express his opposition to the $68 billion auto sector bailout, though, which most agree saved a key Michigan industry.)
Then Jim Cramer was an ass again.
Rick Santorum mentioned non-college educated folks needing more skills in order to take care of themselves and their families and explained he’s laser-focused on it because Republicans aren’t talking about it. I really can’t remember what else Santorum said because he was about as compelling as a Popsicle stick.
Herman Cain mentioned Herman Cain’s “9-9-9” economic plan so many times that people began to chuckle as soon as Herman Cain opened Herman Cain’s mouth. Herman Cain insisted that Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan “treats everybody the same and will boost this economy.” He added, to laughter and applause, that “Tax codes don’t raise taxes, politicians do.”
Governor Huntsman said at one point, “We have a failure of leadership here. President Obama had two years to get this economy going and he failed miserably.” Yeah, Barack. Gee whiz, what have you been doing all this time? Dubya only took eight years to screw things up – why is it taking you so damn long to clean up his mess?
The Mittster proclaimed at one point, “The Obama economy has crushed middle income Americans. I want to lower the tax rates on middle income Americans.” Funny. I thought the middle class has been crushed by the fact that Dubya gave billions in tax cuts to the richest two percent of Americans. I thought the fact that Congress is reaffirming the national motto while 14 million people are unemployed is what’s crushing the middle class. I thought the trillion we’ve spent on two unnecessary wars is what’s crushing us. But I may be wrong. I’m glad the Mittster decided to pander to the middle class, anyway.
“Crazy Eyes” referred to Obama “going to a General Axelrod in Chicago for marching orders on tax policy,” which I still don’t understand, and reminded us that “freedom isn’t free.”
It was interesting to see that this GOP presidential debate – which was supposed to be addressing the fact that 4.1 million Americans have been out of work for a year or more – was being sponsored by Infiniti luxury cars. In addition to learning that 6.8 million people are receiving unemployment benefits and four million are behind on their mortgages or in foreclosure, I learned that an Infinity G Sedan lease is available for a mere $299/month!
Professor Gingrich was joined by Herman Cain and “Crazy Eyes” in trashing Dodd Frank, the Obama Administration’s much-heralded financial regulatory reform law ending taxpayer bailouts, improving transparency and protecting consumers. Why anybody supports protecting consumers and improving transparency is a mystery to me, for Pete's sake.
The Mittster insisted, "Markets work! When you let government play its heavy hand, markets blow up and people get hurt. The reason that we have the housing crisis that we have is because the federal government played too big a role in our markets.”
Governor Perry agreed. “It’s the regulatory world that’s killing America,” he opined.
“Crazy Eyes” pointed out that “Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae are failing but they just gave bonuses to 10 top executives of $12 million and then asked for $13 billion in another taxpayer bailout.” This was news to me and, judging from their reactions, to everyone in the room.
Herman Cain said we need to “get the regulators off the backs of the banks” because then “they might develop a desire to help homeowners. Uncertainty is what’s killing this economy.” When pressed, he revealed that he would “unwind” Fannie and Freddie, whatever that means. He also referred to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “Princess Nancy” in response to a question on health care policy, which didn’t go over well.
After the debate, Larry Kudlow, host of CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report,” reported that Herman Cain “did unbelievably well tonight,” meaning that the media have a vested interest in keeping Herman Cain in the race so they can continue to talk about groping women.
Perry’s communications guy said afterwards, “It’s good he had his boots on ‘cause he stepped in it. We had a stumble of style, but not of substance. He still named two more agencies that should be eliminated than the current president.” I wasn’t aware this was a responsibility that the president chose to shirk.
I’m not even going to review my notes to see what Ron Paul said that should be included here. He has about as much a chance of connecting with Republican primary voters and securing the GOP nomination as I do. (“Crazy Eyes” is referenced because she’s so damn funny and it’s my blog.)
In short, all the candidates on stage last night at Oakland University love the free market, hate regulation, want to repeal Obamacare, think President Obama is Beelzebub, and represent the sorriest group of presidential candidates in my memory – and I’ve been paying attention to this stuff for decades. I tried to be more open-minded but some things really are crystal clear.
"When Bartiromo asked Herman Cain about character and referenced the sexual harassment allegations that have engulfed his campaign, the audience booed. He was applauded when he said, 'The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion based on unfounded accusations. There are thousands that would say none of that activity ever came from Herman Cain'.”
ReplyDeleteApparently he very conveniently forgot the Bill Clinton debacle, when the GOP tried HIM in the court of public opinion. Or was it just that he thought WE were stupid enough to have forgotten it?
There is so much more I could say about the quotes you've supplied here, but I'd never get any work done tiday, because it would take at least 3/4 of the day to say it all. Just suffice it to say that you have done another great job of giving us the insights you handle most capably.