Month: June 2011

9.59 pm. Romney is the clear leader here – head and shoulders above the rest. Bachmann wins the expectations game. Cain wasn't outstanding or novel enough to stand out. Pawlenty was just dreadful – failing on almost every level. Gingrich was incoherent and nasty. Santorum was his usual doctrinaire self, and utterly unappealing. Ron Paul had his moments, but the novelty is wearing thin.

This was a very very very premature event. But it will cement Romney's solidifying position as the leader of the pack – and reveal how few of the people on this stage will be much of a danger to him. But he does still come across as pandery. The Bruins line? Seriously? Oh well.

9.54 pm. T-Paw: "Iraq is one of the shiniest examples of success in the Middle East." That's as credible as his assessment of Sarah Palin. Romney repeats his weird notion that Obama has "no foreign policy." And he denies that there has been any recovery in growth.

9.52 pm. A reader notes I was a little sweeping in describing the candidates' positions on DADT:

Only Gingrich, Bachmann and Santorum specifically said they would repeal the repeal.  Romney said he wouldn't have ended DADT during wartime.  Cain and Paul specifically said they would not repeal.  The rest of the candidates left the issue of reversing Obama's policy to the side, saying only that they wouldn't have ended DADT.

I appreciate the nuance. I note how weaselly Romney sounds. We are in an unending war now.

9.51 pm. It's so great to hear actual conservatism in this crowd – especially on nation-building and troops in Europe and around the world. But Santorum wants bases everywhere. Santorum has now stated that Obama has "embraced our enemies". That's a stark charge of treason. It's the second most outrageous thing said tonight, after the "Obama Depression."

9.45 pm. Romney seems to have exactly the same position on Afghanistan as Obama. Except he defers to the generals for policy decisions. Ron Paul has no such qualms. T-Paw is still at 9/12. Bachmann is against the Libya war – for good reasons, but why do I suspect she'd be for it if a Republican were the president? Gingrich wants a "fundamental" change in US policy toward the Middle East. But, of course, he proposes nothing.

9.43 pm. Santorum wants to end ethanol subsidies and tariffs! Good for him. There has definitely been a shift toward fiscal sanity in this debate compared with 2000, 2004 or 2008. But one fears it's merely because they can now blame a Democrat for it. And their tax proposals would, of course, vastly worsen the deficit and the debt.

9.40 pm. Gingrich seems to want to take National Guard units out of foreign countries and onto the Mexican border. But again, I've heard no practical proposal to resolve this question, although it was interesting to hear Gingrich of all people inveigh against Manichean politics. Sometimes, the lack of self-awareness creeps up on you by surprise. But they're politicians, I guess.

9.35 pm. Again, I'm reminded of why Ron Paul has his moments. His defense of the Catholic church's defense of illegal immigrants is close to moving. And he got a round of applause for talking of the open-ended interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. So far, there's been no discussion of foreign policy at all. Strange when we are at war in three countries at a time of massive doubt.

9.30 pm. Bachmann dodges the question on banning abortion for rape and incest victims.

9.20 pm. Gay rights. Bachmann takes a state-rights position. Romney, Santorum, Bachmann, and Gingrich support reviving the Federal Marriage Amendment. That is the most extreme anti-gay position imaginable: writing into the federal Constitution discrimination against gays. If the GOP has mellowed, I see no evidence on it. They all also seem to favor reinstating Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Again, that's the position of a small minority of Americans – and deeply disrupting to the military. It's unanimous on the stage tonight. Again: not a single kind, thoughtful or empathetic remark about the plight of gay servicemembers, even as they risk their lives for us.

9.15 pm. Some rough impressions. Ron Paul? The schtick is wearing thin. Pawlenty? Somewhat lost. Gingrich? Petulent and extremist. Cain? Charming but not serious. Romney? Very polished and authoritative. Santorum? Tight-assed. Bachmann? Compelling, more intelligent than Palin, but still too far to the extreme to appeal to the middle.

9.12 pm. T-Paw offers a view that there should be no restraint on religion in policy-making and argument in public life. Santorum sets up a straw man in saying that secular ideas rooted in faith should be excluded from public debate. Paul has a solid answer. Cain doubles down on saying that he cannot tell if any American Muslim would try to kill us – and is getting tied up in knots by King. 

Romney sounds remarkably sane and, yes, American: especially on the idiotic notion of Sharia law in US courts. On that question alone, of demagoguing American Muslims, Romney again stands apart. Gingrich, in contrast, explicitly wants a new era of McCarthyism on Islam, citing one naturalized Jihadist as possibly typical of many American Muslims. He even cites the anti-Communist crusade. It seems as if Newt is trying to re-establish his bona fides as a Republican firebrand. Ugh.

9.10 pm. Romney just gave the strongest response of the night on spending and the debt ceiling: on Obama's profound weakness on spending cuts. I think he's emerging tonight as easily the most plausible candidate. Bachmann seems much less responsible and a little scary.

9.04 pm. Cain is onto the Chile experiment as a solution to social security, which was based on investing in the stock market. Britain back-tracked on this policy. I cannot imagine that after the market crash of 2007 and the previous bubbles that many people will be prepared to give up social security for stocks.

9.01 pm. Santorum had a strong response on Medicare – rhetorically, at least. The IPAB demonization is, in my view, based on the truth. The trouble is: no one has offered a market-based way to control costs as effectively as a potentially powerful IPAB (right now, of course, it's toothless).

9.00 pm. Ron Paul talks healthcare costs and the insolvency of Medicare. To his extraordinary credit, he argues that massive defense cuts will be needed if Medicare is going to be saved. T-Paw says Obama is missing on the question of healthcare costs. But doesn't Obamacare include exactly the cost-control measures T-Paw just mentioned? There is a kind of fact-free description of the Obama administration here. Romney alone sounds slightly more reasonable than the rest.

8.55 pm. While I'm at it, check out the Beast live-chat here with John Avlon and Howie Kurtz.

8.52 pm. Romney promotes drastic cuts in spending. Along with tax cuts. But what would he cut? Again, I've heard nothing tonight about specifics of spending cuts. But Newt scores with American Idol. Memories of Tom DeLay or Bristol Palin?

8.50 pm. On the housing slump, T-Paw only sees government as the problem. He doesn't cite credit default swaps or irresponsible banks. Sure, Freddie and Fannie deserve their share of blame. But seriously – too much regulation was the problem? Againa, I hear no concrete policy proposals.

8.49 pm. Gingrich rises to the occasion in attacking NASA. He was given an easy patriotic pander and refused. I give him points for that.

8.48 pm. Santorum wanted the biggest banks to fail and the big auto companies to fail. I see the moral hazard issue here – but really? Letting the entire financial system go belly-up along with the auto industry? Bachmann doubles down.

8.43 pm. TARP! Cain now thinks GM should have been allowed to fail. Romney actually attacks Bush for agreeing with Obama. I'm not sure what that $17 billion wasted means. Romney then refuses to acknowledge he was wrong in predicting the bailout would destroy the car companies.

8.42 pm. Bachmann has Christmas with Elvis on her iPod. I just threw up a little in my mouth.

8.40 pm. Leno or Conan? Can you imagine anyone up there favoring Conan?

8.30 pm. How to get manufacturing jobs. Ron Paul blames the Fed again! Pawlenty wants some version of protectionism – and repeal of Obamacare. Bachmann wants tax cuts and abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency. Santorum wants to cut capital gains to zero for manufacturing. Why not zero for every tax? I have heard so much about tax cuts tonight; I haven't heard any proposal to have more tax cuts and cut the deficit. None of this adds up – unless entitlements are shredded and defense cut massively.

It feels to me as if these Republicans keep replaying Reagan, even though Reagan's core legacy is still in place and taxes are at historic lows. The emptiness of the GOP policy arsenal is pretty striking.

8.25 pm. Cain plays the classic businessman-Perot style gambit. Just get some experts together, come up with a plan and implement it. It's as if he has no idea how the American political system works.

8.23 pm. A questioner seeks balance. Santorum gets the pitch! Then he backs welfare reform – a live issue in the mid-1990s. Bachmann blames the media for the notion that the Tea Party is unbalanced in its approach to governing. And she goes for it: "President Obama is a one-term president." Yay! She's a good performer, seems whip-smart, even though her policy content right now is zero.

8.21 pm. Gingrich is now against all mandates. Is that new? I have a hard time keeping track.

8.18 pm. Pawlenty is going wobbly on Romneycare. Doesn't look strong. Romney glides right past T-Paw and pitches himself as the nominee already. Advantage Romney.

8.15 pm. We're on healthcare. Bachmann is on a roll. She's blaming Obama for cutting Medicare! No one has yet proposed a single measure to restrain costs or insure the uninsured. Not a single measure.

8.13 pm. Ron Paul cannot even credit the big tax cuts in the Obama stimulus?

8.05 pm. Good question: how do you help job creation?

Cain: cut taxes. Santorum: repeal Obamacare; drill for oil. Pawlenty: cut taxes – and then an attack on Obama's view of American exceptionalism. No answer on why jobs did not grow after Bush cut taxes. Romney claims that Obama made the recession worse. No explanation of how. Then Romney says that Obama backed card check and cap and trade. That's untrue. Gingrich is reminiscing about Reagan. And he wants to abolish re-regulation of Wall Street! Bachmann backs new de-regulation of Wall Street. This is getting surreal.

After a deep recession precipitated by Wall Street speculation, the GOP wants to return to the status quo ante.

8.05 pm. Pawlenty's a husband and a "neighbor". Impressive stuff.

8.03 pm. Gingrich calls the recession that ended over a year ago the "Obama Depression."

7.57 pm. No one is better at pure, grade-A conventional wisdom than David Gergen. When was the last time he surprised you with anything he said?

(Photo: Michelle Bachmann supporters hold a sign outside the venue for the Republican presidential primary debate June 13, 2011 at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. This is the first debate for the GOP contenders in the 'First in the Nation' primary state of New Hampshire. By Darren McCollester/Getty Images.)

Michael Scherer explains it:

What Romney must fear is doing anything that weakens his case that he is the strongest person to take on Obama. If he gets ruffled, if he misspeaks, if he snaps at one of his opponents, then he will have reestablished himself at the center of his campaign, and thereby stepped on his own strategy. Romney’s job tonight is to deliver his message, challenge Obama and get out of his own way. He is already running as if he’s in the general election, and unless his rivals can knock him off his game, the Romney strategy has a good chance of getting him there.

Kevin Drum uses a new Chicago study to advocate for universal preschool:

[O]ut of 4 million kids [ages 3 and 4], 2 million are boys and about 250,000 are children of mothers who didn't complete high school. Within this group, about 30,000 more would complete high school and 30,000 fewer would commit serious crimes and become drug abusers. That's per year. Fast forward 20 years from preschool and that adds up to about 300,000 kids between the ages of 16-25, the prime problem years. Just on the grounds of reduced crime and substance abuse within that group alone, this is money well spent. Add in all the other benefits, and doing something like this on a nationwide scale is a no-brainer.

McArdle admits "we could replicate the results of Chicago's Child-Parent Center … then yes, it would be a no-brainer" but warns that " it's a huge mistake to assume that a pilot program can be rolled out on a large scale." Yglesias is somewhere between Drum and McArdle:

I’m all for more investments in preschool, but it continues to be the case that I see no particular reason to believe that talking about four-year-olds rather than ten-year-olds or sixteen-year-olds gets us out of the quality quandry. What we know from the research into preschool is that good preschool programs make a huge difference to kids’ outcomes. But what we know from the research into K-12 schooling is that good K-12 schools also make a huge difference to kids’ outcomes. The challenge in both cases is to actually provide quality at scale.

Classic Mitt:

With Mitt Romney pounding Obama for referring to ongoing economic woes as "bumps in the road," an amused Democrat sends over a 2006 article in which Romney employed the phrase, headlined, "Romney warns of potential 'bumps in the road' for health care law."

Watch Romney's whiff here.

Ron Mueck's 'Big Baby' sculpture appears to look round at a visitor to the Masterpieces Exhibition at Christie's on June 13, 2011 in London, England. The sculpture features in the exhibition, open to the public from 13th – 15th June 2011, that showcases some of the £250 million worth of art for sale over the next four weeks. Artists including Michelangelo, Gainsborough, Goya, Stubbs, Monet, Picasso and Renoir are represented. By Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images.

Marc Lynch checks in on Egypt's progress. He says the "question currently consuming the protest movement is a demand to postpone elections in favor of first drafting a constitution":

[T]here is something off-putting about self-declared liberals and democrats arguing in favor of continued military rule and against elections. Egypt just held a referendum on precisely this question, in which 77% of voters in a high turnout voted in favor of constitutional amendments and moving to parliamentary and presidential elections before redrafting the constitution. The legal arguments offered by the coalition issuing the call for “Constitution First” are unpersuasive, given the outcome of the referendum.

Ezra Klein asks a good question:

What alignment of political forces and events would be needed for America to seriously rethink its drug laws? Would it have to begin in the states? Is it something a law-and-order Republican needs to do?

One of the better answers from Klein's comments:

The policies are already beginning to shift at the state level and in my opinion will only accelerate in the next several years as states continue to struggle with their finances. Sentencing reform and diverting prisoners to house arrest has become quite popular since the recession as a way to save money on new prison construction. In South Carolina, Governor Sanford signed a bill last year that saved the state 400 million over 5 years. Other conservative states like Kentucky and Oklahoma have followed suit this year. In addition Connecticut just last week decriminalized possession of marijuana.

"[T]o be a follower of both Rand and Christ is not possible. The original Objectivist was a type of self-professed anti-Christ who hated Christianity and the self-sacrificial love of its founder. She recognized that those Christians who claimed to share her views didn’t seem to understand what she was saying.

Many conservatives admire Rand because she was anti-collectivist. But that is like admiring Stalin because he opposed Nazism. Stalin was against the Nazis because he wanted to make the world safe for Communism. Likewise, Rand stands against collectivism because she wants the freedom to abolish Judeo-Christian morality. Conservative Christians who embrace her as the “enemy-of-my-enemy” seem to forget that she considered us the enemy," – Joe Carter.

A reader continues the thread:

At what point did our political system become decadent? The moment when the United States collectively abdicated its responsibilities in self-government was when the American people accepted the notion that John McCain believed that Sarah Palin was qualified to serve as President of the United States. The fact that the media continues to legitimize the political viability of an individual who never gave a press conference and demonstrates zero ability to recognize what she does not know, is appalling. The fact that 45.7% of the American people in 2008 gave an affirmative answer to the very simple question: "Is Sarah Palin qualified to be President of the United States?" is telling in and of itself.

I will go further: the introduction of Sarah Palin and her perverse relationship with the American media has been the singularly most toxic element in American politics in the post-Cold War period.

I continue to be astonished that someone can post a blatant lie on a Facebook page, have the media report on it as factual news and a real policy prescription, and permanently poison the political well. We need not go past the healthcare debate to see ample evidence of this phenomenon.

We should not be deluded that even if Sarah Palin does not run for the Presidency that she will not have a profound impact on the Republican nomination process. She and her Christianist tendencies will enjoy a de facto veto over any candidate that fails to tap into her revanchist version of history – resentments against virtually all portions of American society. She is a constituency of one and the most important constituency in the Republican Party, which will result in a candidate who has no viable policy programs, but just might get elected due to economic circumstances.

The media, the American people, and most importantly the Republican Party, should forcefully tell Palin that she either needs to declare her candidacy or be shunned to a life of political insignificance. We know this is not going to happen. She is the mainstream media's favorite politician. She is the spiritual and political leader of the Republican Party. For Democrats, she is a politician who should be cajoled into running to optimize Obama's chances of reelection, under the false and dangerous conventional wisdom that she is unelectable.

American politics has always enjoyed a good sex scandal, yet in the end has been able to more or less function as a governable nation. Palin's style of politics and our ability to ignore it has resulted in our inability to extricate ourselves from three foreign wars; have an honest discussion about the impact of debt, revenue, and entitlements on the sustainability of a decent quality of life for most Americans; and permit a natural generational shift of values to occur on equal rights for all Americans.

(Photo: U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin attend a campaign rally at Pima County Fairgrounds on March 26, 2010 in Tucson, Arizona. By Darren Hauck/Getty Images)

A reader writes:

Andrew, it’s a rare woman who understands the male sex drive accurately. You sense this gulf even in your first adolescent approaches to girls, if that’s who you want to approach. And because testosterone is so terrible in its commandments and threatens all the time to make you look shitty, and because women obviously just don’t get it – well, what’s the point in even trying to explain? My best guy friend and I have talked about how we can’t even be completely honest about our sex drives to our experienced, sensitive, female psychotherapists, because at the first step in that direction we feel like we’re being regarded as monsters.

So “texting while male” is really the perfect diagnosis of Weiner’s behavior. But don’t expect it to carry very far with those who don’t already know what you’re talking about.