The Invisible Debate

Much has changed since we last saw the Republican candidates.  Rick Perry's campaign seems to have completely fallen apart.  Media people will have you believe Perry is losing ground because he looked kinda silly toward the end of the last couple of debates, but it's actually because the tea people found out that, as Governor, he sometimes had to do things that made sense.  That's just not how the tea people roll. 

Replacing Rick as this week's flavor of the week is The Pizza Man himself, Herman Cain.  I hope he enjoys his brief time at the top, before Republicans decide he's a little too..um.."urban" to be President. 

Tonight's debate is only being televised on Bloomberg TV, which means I'm the only one watching.  I expect to be pandered to pretty heavily.  The Bloomberg people start by telling me that tonight's debate will be different and special, and boy were they right.  The candidates are sitting down.  Consider my mind blown.

8:03PM: Herman Cain jumps right in by mentioning his awesome 999 plan.  That's three 9-inch personal pan pizzas for just nine dollars each, all day on the 9th day of every month.

8:05PM: Perry already looks like he's getting sleepy.  Not a good sign.

8:06PM: Romney - "you have to stand by your principles".  Excuse me?  Mitt Romney wouldn't know principles if you wrote them in permanent marker on his face.

8:10PM: Bachmann blames the financial meltdown entirely on the Federal government...Gingrich doubles down by suggesting Barney Frank and Chris Dodd should go to jail.  Newt's one of those people who I'd be willing to pay to shut up.

8:13PM: It's funny to watch the other candidates' eyes glaze over whenever Ron Paul starts using big words.  Ron correctly points to the bubble and burst economic cycle as a huge part of the problem.  Of course, he fails to point out that FDR was able to moderate the boom and bust cycle that had plagued the country before his Presidency, and things were pretty good for about 50 years until Ronald Reagan came along and ruined everything.

8:16PM: Huntsman - "Washington DC is the gas capital of the country".  Zing!

8:18PM: Newt Gingrich is very anti prostate cancer.  Still pro cervical cancer though, as far as I know.  He's a puzzle.

8:23PM: Huntsman stole my joke about Cain's 999 plan being related to pizza prices.  Then he proposed what is, at this table, a modest 10% corporate tax cut.  That basically makes him the socialist of this crowd.

8:25PM: Cain claims to have a number of economists who have worked with him on his 999 plan.  When pressed, he names one...Rich Lowry out of Cleveland, TX or Cleveland, OH.  OK then.

8:27PM: Romney objects to being asked a hypothetical question.  Isn't the whole Presidential campaign about what these people would hypothetically do as President?  Then Romney defends the 2008 Wall Street bailout and ducks.

8:29PM:  Two minutes later, Romney says "you don't wanna bail out anybody...that's a terrible idea".  Mitt appears to have a new strategy.  Instead of saying something now and flip-flopping later, he's just going to say both things at the same time from now on. 

8:31PM:  The moderator just asked Ron Paul if he would get the federal government out of housing.  Has he ever met or heard of Ron Paul?  Is there anything Ron wouldn't get the federal government out of?  That's like asking Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry if they think Jesus is swell.

8:37PM: There's a picture of Teddy Roosevelt on the wall of the debate arena.  Some of the candidates were actively booing at it during the commercial break (that may have only happened in my head). 

8:38PM: Video clip of Saint Reagan making the exact same "fair share" argument that the President's been making for two months.  They threw the question at Perry and he parlayed it into a talking point about a balanced budget amendment. 

8:40PM: Romney - "get Americans back to work so they can pay taxes."  So, just to be clear, Republicans want to stop making corporations pay taxes so the American people can get back to work and start paying taxes again. 

8:41PM: These candidates are climbing all over each other to jump in and say they'll never ever ever agree to any tax increase ever.  Still no comment from anyone on the Reagan clip.

8:44PM: Can we just get a show of hands from anyone who thinks we need to cut spending and move on? 

8:45PM: Cain says Bloomberg's analysis of his 999 plan is incorrect because it assumes that the plan would happen in reality.  If they would just look at his plan in Herman Cain's imagination, they'd see that it's an awesome idea.

8:48PM: Bachmann points out that 999 upside-down is 666.  She's not saying Herman Cain is the anti-christ, she's just saying...ya know...666.

8:49PM: Huntsman, the former ambassador to China, is talking about how we have to find a way to work with China.  Romney, who may or may not be able to find China on a map, makes faces at him.  Romney promises to pick a fight with China over currency on day one. 

8:52PM: Perry - "we don't need any plan."  You might think I'm unfairly quoting him out of context, but not really.  He was basically saying that we don't need plans and policies, just leadership and talking points. 

8:54PM: Santorum doubles down on Mitt's plan.  He doesn't want to have a trade war with China, he wants to win a trade war with China. 

8:57PM: We're having a hard time agreeing on what kind of war we want to have with China, but we can all agree that Obamacare (passed in 2010) is what killed the economy (which happened in 2008).

9:06PM:  This should be fun, the candidates get to question each other.  First up, Bachmann slams Perry for supporting Al Gore in 1988, overspending as a Governor and running up debt in Texas.  Perry responds by saying that Texas has the 2nd lowest debt per capita in the U.S.  He failed to mention that, since nobody in Texas knows how to count, we really don't know if that's true.

9:08PM: Cain asks Romney if he can name all 59 points in his economic plan.  Cain's basic point is that Romney's plan isn't simple enough.  Romney points out that simple answers aren't always good ones.  Good for him.  That's really the problem with the whole Cain campaign, if you can't fit it on a t-shirt, Cain doesn't want to know about it.

9:10PM: Romney - "I'm not worried about rich people, they're doing just fine".  Who is this guy and what has he done with Mitt Romney?

9:11PM: Good joke from Hunstman, promising Romney his question "won't be about religion".  Clever. Obviously, it flew over the other candidates' heads, and most of the audience too.  Huntsman is like 10 IQ points too smart for the current Republican party.

9:14PM: Ron Paul asked Herman Cain if he supports auditing the Fed.  Cain says if someone wants to do that, they can go ahead, it doesn't bother him.  There you go..."Cain 2012 - Do Whatever The Fuck You Want!"

9:17PM: Romney says the problem with Obamacare is that it raises taxes.  He really emphasized that.  He's right.  What kind of monster would propose a modest tax increase just to get health care to millions of people?

9:18PM:  Santorum knows that R comes before S in the alphabet.  Frankly, that's more than I thought he knew.

9:19PM: Romney asks Bachmann how she'd get people back to work.  Doesn't he know no one cares what she thinks anymore?  Michele Bachmann is sooo two months ago.  Anyway, Bachmann took it as an opportunity to plug her website...twice.

9:22PM: Santorum attacks four of his opponents for supporting TARP in 2008.  Santorum, of course, was off googling his name somewhere in 2008 because he was unemployed at the time.  Weren't we all happier with Rick Santorum just being gone?  Why is he back?  Have we done something wrong?

9:27PM: Perry just tried and failed to pronounce the names of a few different people, including fellow Republican Governor Bobby Jindal.  He definitely reminds me of someone.  Perry keeps ending his statements by hitting applause lines and then waiting for the applause that never come as it slowly dawns on him that his campaign is about 99% over.

9:31PM: Herman Cain apparently has two candidates already picked as Fed chairman.  Since there's no chance he wins, and since he's refusing to name them, I'm going to assume they're fictional characters.  Batman would make a good Fed chair, I think.

9:32PM: Ron Paul (after Herman Cain praised Alan Greenspan as the best Fed chairman in the last 40 years) - "Alan Greenspan was a disaster!"  Ron's the best.  He went on to hammer away at Greenspan for about 90 seconds.  I think, when this campaign is over and Ron finishes 5th, someone needs to give him his own TV show.

9:37PM: Ron Paul points out how it's so misleading to suggest that all these problems have happened in the last two years.  I think I heard a collective "shhhhhh" from the rest of the candidates.

9:39PM: Bloomberg shows the Republican candidates a clip of George W. Bush.  That's a low blow.  These people have all agreed to pretend they've never met George W. Bush, OK?  Just leave it alone.  It never happened.  There was Clinton, and then we all passed out, and when we woke up, Obama was getting socialism all over everything and ruining the country. 

9:44PM: Perry is asked about the income gap that's been widening in America for the last 30 years.  His answer, it's Obama's fault. 

9:45PM: Santorum takes the discussion of poverty as an opportunity to suggest women should just cook and raise the kids and let the men work.  You can always count on Rick to say the stupidest thing of the night, and that's really saying something.

Closing Statements (on how they can connect with people's pain right now)
Bachmann: "I used to be poor"
Cain: "Me too!"
Newtster: "I'm related to some poor people"
Ron Paul: "Liberty will fix poverty"
Santorum: Rick theorizes that our economic struggles might have something to do with all the manufacturing jobs we've lost.  Wow...what a theory!  Someone should really look into that.
Huntsman: "Life is sad"...and something about the dignity of a job.
Perry: "make America America again"
Mittster: Give Mitt some credit, he didn't even try to pretend he understands what it's like to be poor.