Republican Jobs Plan

I think I finally figured it out.  Our economic recovery will ride the wave created by our thriving Republican Primary Debate Industry, which must be employing thousands of Americans by now.

Seriously, I have a question.  I doubt our intrepid ABC moderators (George Stephanopoulus and Diane Sawyer) will ask the candidates this question tonight, which is really too bad.  If tax cuts equal more jobs, and if tax rates now are among the lowest rates in the last century (which they are), then where are all the jobs?  It's a simple question.

We're only 24 days from the Iowa caucuses, that should mean it's time to start pandering pretty hard.  Hey Rick Perry!  Isn't corn delicious!?!? 

9:03PM: No Huntsman tonight.  I think you're only allowed to have one mormon in Iowa at a time.  It would be cool if Huntsman's music hit halfway through and he ran in and hit Newt with a folding chair.  Probably not going to happen though.

9:05PM: Newt sets a new record for quickest mention of Saint Reagan, I think it was the 8th word in his first sentence.  Then he proposes 0% taxes for capital gains, because obviously people who do nothing for money should pay less taxes than people who work for it.  Everyone knows that.

9:07PM: Something to keep an eye on tonight.  With Huntsman gone, it's open season on total nonsense when it comes to China. 

9:08PM: Sawyer keeps asking them to give her a number of how many jobs they're going to create.  They aren't answering, but to be fair, that's kind of a dumb question.  Why hasn't Newt pointed that out?  Is he asleep?

9:10PM: Bachmann, once again, makes it clear that everyone will pay something in taxes when she's the President, including people with nothing.  She says, currently, 47% of people are paying no taxes.  So, just to recap, Michele Bachmann is proposing a tax increase for 47% of Americans.

9:12PM:  Are you sure Rick Santorum didn't used to be bald?  I still have this very strong memory of a very balding Rick Santorum.  Am I thinking of someone else?

9:14PM: Bachmann is against extending the payroll tax cut.  I thought we were against raising taxes.  It's literally the only thing these people stand for.  I'm so confused.

9:16PM: Romney nails his new strategy of taking both sides of an issue at the same time by saying that he doesn't want to raise taxes on anyone and then derisively calling the payroll tax cut a temporary band-aid.  So, it's a terrible idea, but let's keep doing it.

9:17PM: Santorum uses the Romney strategy by talking for 30 seconds about why the payroll cut tax is bad but finishing by saying that he's all for tax cuts.

9:19PM: Ron Paul suggests extending the payroll tax cut, but paying for it by not spending quite so much on blowing things up overseas.  Newt gave him a dirty look the whole time he was talking.  They haven't mentioned yet that Newt's a genius.  Hasn't ABC heard that Newt's a genius?  Why aren't they telling me that?

9:21PM: Mitt says Newt is in favor of mining minerals from the moon.  Wait, what?  I swear I didn't make that up.  Mitt said it.  I hope they let Newt respond.  I need to hear more about this.

9:22PM: Newt says the only reason Mitt isn't a career politician is he lost a Senate race in 1994. See?  Newt is capable of saying true things sometimes. He actually seemed to get more boos than cheers from the audience on that one.  I was surprised, I think Newt was too.  Then he addressed the moon thing, apparently he really is for mining the moon. 

So, in another excellent demonstration of everything that's wrong with the Republican party right now, the Republican front-runner is in favor of reinvigorating our space program.  Not in the name of science or exploration, but because he thinks we can find gold on the moon.

9:23PM: Newt re-proposes his fantastic plan to let poor kids be janitors at their schools and gets a huge ovation from the crowd. 

9:26PM: Ron Paul slams Newt on being a spokesperson for Freddie Mac and taking the taxpayers' money from Freddie Mac.  Newt responds by pointing out that he was a paid consultant in the private sector and than having a good laugh.  See, it's funny because he's a whore.

9:29PM: Bachmann just used the term "Newt Romney" six times, pointing out that they're actually more similar than they seem to be, and setting herself up as the real alternative.  I've said this before, I think she's smarter than she lets on.

9:30PM: Newt mentioned that he's written 24 books.  He neglected to mention that 13 of them were coloring books and another six were about how delicious he thinks ham is.

9:33PM: On health care, Mitt says his Massachusetts plan only addresses the 8% of people who didn't have health care.  That's literally the exact same argument Barack Obama made about the national health care reform bill he was trying to pass.  Mitt's not even using different words.

9:35PM: When Mitt's President, he promises that he'll return to the American people their right to not have access to health care.

9:36PM: Newt points out that he only supported the individual mandate in 1993 as a rhetorical trick to fight Hillary Clinton.  It's not often you get a politician to admit that he honestly doesn't give a crap about what's right or what's the truth, he just wants to say whatever he has to so he can win the argument and destroy his opponent.  Would have been nice to get some follow-up from the moderators on that one.

9:39PM: I think Santorum just called Bachmann a loser.  That was a very frothy tactic from Rick.

9:48PM: Perry says making a vow to god is "even stronger than a handshake in Texas".  Umm, OK.  His point, Newt's been married three times, so you can't trust him.  I can think of many better reasons why you can't trust Newt. 

9:50PM: Santorum follows up by also suggesting you can't really trust Newt.  Even Ron Paul is kind of saying Newt's three marriages call his character into question, making an analogy to the oath of office.

9:52PM: This is getting weird, they seem to all be talking about Newt and his rampant infidelity, but they're not asking Newt about it.  They know he's there, right?

9:53PM: Romney turned the character question into a jobs and economy answer because, as you know, Mitt doesn't actually have any character.

9:54PM: Marcus Bachmann just got some camera time...he looks FABULOUS!

9:55PM: Newt's counterargument (given while his current wife was on camera) appears to be "sure, I've abandoned a couple of wives, but I still talk to my grandkids".

9:56PM: Sawyer says we're going to stipulate, before we start talking about immigration, that everyone here wants to secure the borders.  Nice attempt to by her to avoid some talking points, I'm not 100% convinced it'll work.

9:57PM: Newt, once again, suggests that we probably don't want to deport immigrants who belong to churches.  Everyone else needs to go though.

9:59PM: Sawyer seems surprised and confused by the fact that Romney has made conflicting statements in the past about immigration.  Has she met Mitt?  Or heard of him?  Mitt also became the first candidate to ignore Sawyer's starting stipulation and talk about securing the boarders anyway.  Mitt is a talking points machine, possibly literally.

10:01PM: Perry sprinted away from Sawyer's question about what we should do with undocumented immigrants who are currently serving in the military.  He couldn't have been less interested in answering that question.  At no point in the minute of rambling that followed did he even approach an answer.

10:03PM: Apparently Newt recently called Palestinians an "invented people".  Man can that guy pander.  Luckily Ron Paul's here to set him straight, even heading Newt's bullshit explanation off at the pass by saying that Newt's statement may be technically correct because Palestinians didn't have a state under the Ottoman Empire, but then again, neither did Israel.

10:04PM: Having been stripped of his bullshit by my man Ron, Newt fell back on the argument that all Palestinians are inherently terrorists.  Seriously, Newt is a dangerous guy, he should not be allowed to be President.  I can't stress that enough.

10:06PM: In true Romney fashion, he says that he agrees with everything Newt said, except for the actual thing we're talking about.

10:07PM: Newt just referred to himself as a historian.  It's hard to type when I'm laughing so hard.  I need a minute.

10:08PM: I think Newt just winked at someone, that was weird.

10:09PM: Mitt and Newt appear to be arguing over which one of them is best friends with the Israeli Prime Minister.

10:09PM: George Triplewordscore just asked Bachmann to tell us who's right, Mitt or Newt.  It's like the most boring installment of the twilight series ever.  Seriously though, that's kind of an insulting question.  Instead of asking Bachmann what she thinks, he just asked her which one of those two guys is right.  Santorum just got the same question from Sawyer.  Why not just ask everyone else to leave so the real candidates can talk?

10:11PM: I never thought I'd type this sentence, but Santorum just kind of danced around a good point, possibly by mistake.  He was basically saying, when we're talking about Israel and Palestine during these debates, maybe we should watch what we say and not make things worse for Israel, instead of just saying whatever the fuck we want to try and pander for some extra votes.  Even Santorum is smarter than Newt.  Santorum!

10:12PM: Perry blames the media for this whole Newt/Palestine thing, right on time.  I need to hire some media to follow me around so I can blame them for anything stupid I say. 

10:20PM: An audience question asks the candidates when was the last time they had to not just give up a luxury, but cut back on a necessity because of financial strain.  This should be good.

10:21PM: Perry's answer seemed to be 1978, let's see if anyone can beat that.  Also, Perry just referred to himself as a grown man.  That was almost as funny as when Newt called himself a historian.

10:22PM: The best Romney could do was tell us about how his dad was poor when he (his dad) was a kid.  Perry's still in the lead.  Romney also mentioned that he was a pastor in his mormon church.  I didn't know that.  I think that means he knows magic.

10:23PM: Ron says his family was so poor he didn't even know it.  Then Ron says "when a country destroys it's currency, it transfers wealth from the middle class to the wealthy".  You could seriously talk me into President Paul.  Unfortunately, you can't talk more than 5% of Republicans into it.

10:25PM: Santorum took this question about poverty as an opportunity to remind everyone that the real problem in America is gay marriage.  Classic Santorum, what a douche.

10:26PM: By the time we got to Bachmann, we somehow moved from talking about being poor to talking about the Wall St. bailout.  Anyway, I think Perry's still the winner on who was poor last.  How many points does that win him?

10:28PM: I thought this was interesting.  One of the common themes in all of the answers we got on that poverty question was that being poor in America didn't always suck quite as much as it does now.  I think the important point here is, none of these people were still poor back when Reagan (and Newt, by the way) started the Republican war on the poor and the middle class.

10:32PM: Ron says government shouldn't be in the business of protecting people from themselves.  He got a lot of happy nods from the other candidates while he was saying that, even though Ron is the only one, possibly in the whole Congress, who actually legislates like he believes it.

10:34PM: Perry says people are sick of Washington D.C.  Personally, I'm sick of Rick Perry, but maybe that's just me.

10:40PM: Twice now I've seen this insanely misleading add attacking Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, who I can't wait to vote for.  I won't get into a whole thing about it, but suffice to say that Karl Rove may in fact be the worst human being currently alive and not already in prison.

Ohh!  Closing statements!  I think Little George asked them something about things that they find interesting.  I kinda missed it.  Whatever, they're just gonna talk about whatever they want to talk about anyway.

Santorum: Remember back when I won elections?  Ya know, before I got my ass handed to me in 2004.  Rick would be the perfect Republican candidate in 2002.  Is it 2002?

Perry: Perry gave Ron Paul credit for getting him interested in the Federal Reserve.  Also, Iowa's village idiot, Congressman Steve King, is in the audience.

Romney: Mitt's noticed all the Ron Paul signs outside.  I think he wishes there were some Mitt Romney signs.  Someone should tell him that all those people he sees who are standing around outside looking kind of sad and resigned to their fates are probably Romney voters.

Newt: Apparently Newt's two favorite people on the stage are Perry and Santorum.  Imagine those three people running a country together.  Yikes.

Ron: Ron talked about freedom.  Ron likes freedom.

Bachmann: Bachmann talked about Herman Cain.  I can't tell if she was seriously praising him or making fun of him.

Well, there you have it, yet another debate.  Too bad Huntsman wasn't around tonight, I really missed barely noticing him.