Obama lays out where the fiscal sacrifices will be needed.
Month: August 2011
Mishaps In Live-Blogging
Made me chortle:
9:53 p.m. ET: More TV time for Mitt. Notice that Santorum doesn’t get these kind of question-and-follow-up deals.
CRAP: THE POWER UNIT ON MY COMPUTER HAS GONE BAD!
10:44 p.m. ET: I’m back from Wal-Mart, where I bought a new power unit for $74. Good Lord, what a nightmare.
10:50 p.m. ET: Rick Santorum is very good.
Herman Cain And Donna Summer
They just can't quit each other.
Iowa Debate Reax: From The Left
The most telling moment of Thursday’s GOP debate wasn’t when Michele Bachmann cooly stuck a knife between Tim Pawlenty’s ribs, or when Rick Santorum plaintively begged for more airtime, or when Mitt Romney easily slipped past questions about his record on health-care reform. It was when every single GOP candidate on the stage agreed that they would reject a budget deal that was $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases. Even Fox News’s Bret Baier couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. He asked again just to make sure the assembled candidates had understood the question.
The main takeaway from tonight’s debate in Ames, Iowa is that Tim Pawlenty doesn’t have what it takes to perform on the presidential campaign trail. Michele Bachmann chose for some reason to orient her campaign around slamming him, and he looked intimidated and scared, while drawing no blood against anyone else. On the surface, the winner would seem to me to be Mitt Romney. He “looks presidential” compared to the others. He also clearly has some ability to discuss public policy.
Romney got away without a glove being laid on him and so everyone will say he "won" the debate on that basis, that he looked "presidential". I gave up counting how many debates Hillary Clinton "won" on that basis.
Most political reporters came away from last night's Republican debate impressed with Mitt Romney. I came away wondering what possible advantage Romney could have over Rick Perry from the perspective of a Republican voter.
Michelle Bachmann, even when given a second chance, seemed genuinely to believe that the federal debt ceiling applied to future spending, not bills and tax cuts the Congress had already voted to enact. Not sure which is worse: that she knows better and decided this was an applause line to push, or she really doesn't know the first thing about the Congressional budgeting process. I bet most Americans also think that holding down the debt ceiling is a forward-looking budgetary step — ie, that it's like resolving to spend less next month. But they're still wrong. The real comparison is resolving not to pay a credit card bill when it shows up. For a national candidate not to understand this??? Seriously, this is like discovering that your doctor thinks that your trachea is attached to your spleen.
Last night wasn’t about coherence or sanity; it was about impressing unhinged activists whose connection to reality is tenuous at best.
What really struck me was that I couldn’t recognize the United States that any of the eight candidates was describing. “The country is bankrupt,” thundered Ron Paul. “We are inches away from no longer having a free economy,” claimed Mitt Romney. Gentlemen, the economy is going through a really tough patch. But come on.
I thought tonight's debate was much closer than the last one. I didn't really see any clear winners or losers.
Obviously too, when he proposed and eventually signed his bill extending near-universal healthcare coverage, Romney did not think the individual mandate morally wrong — in fact, he defended it in moral terms, as a means of preventing free riders from getting expensive healthcare at taxpayers' expense. But of course now, for the United States as a whole, it's an abomination. That's moral clarity for you.
Rep. Michele Bachmann was the outstanding performer in last June’s Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire. In tonight’s debate in Ames, Iowa, she certainly sent sparks flying, but could not repeat her star turn. And by getting embroiled in a nasty set of exchanges with former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, she made her fight with him the most important story about her this evening.
It’s still possible that Pawlenty will do well enough on Saturday to survive — for a while. But even if he does, so what? He's just not a good candidate.
It’s still true that Mitt Romney looks and sounds “presidential.” More than any other candidate, he appears comfortable in discussing policy, even if his ideas—support for the Cut, Cap, Balance bill, and a federal amendment banning same-sex marriage—are nearly indistinguishable from those of everyone else on stage. Regardless, he has yet to shake his moderate instincts and image, with the legacy of being the competent former governor of a liberal state.
In general the debate featured unanimity despite the loud, petty arguments about who supported raising cigarette taxes in Minnesota (Tim Pawlenty versus Michelle Bachmann), and who said what about who (Pawlenty versus Mitt Romney). There was plenty of sniping, but no meaningful disagreement, except for Ron Paul versus Rick Santorum on Iran.
The debate-point winner was probably Newt Gingrich, who bashed his media tormenters effectively and was generally smooth and fluid, and the strategic winner was probably Mitt Romney, who had some good moments and again escaped any serious damage from his rivals. But in terms of the immediate impact on Saturday’s Iowa Straw Poll, it’s a bit harder to tell, since neither of the debate “winners” are competing in Ames.
Look, as far as effects, debates mostly don't matter.
From The Annals Of Timely Releases, Ctd
Margin Lines spots another example:
In one of the strange but incredible coincidences that happen with media and real life in our era, Levi’s Jeans pulled their first ever global campaign ad (titled “Legacy”) from the UK due the way it mirrored images from the streets of London over the past five days.
What The Heck Has Obama Done So Far?
A helpful reminder.
Mankiw: The Stimulus Worked
I guess we're all Keynesians in a fox-hole.
“Corporations Are People, My Friends” Ctd
Chait defends Romney:
There is a controversy over whether corporations are people from the standpoint of law, with implications for free speech and other policy areas. That is not the point Romney was making. Romney was saying that taxes on corporations are in fact borne by people. Romney probably wouldn't admit that these are people who partially or completely own corporations, and thus far richer in the aggregate than the general public. But the fact is that they are people. Raising taxes on corporations is simply raising taxes on a certain category of people.
I don't disagree. It's just a gaffe/gift for the Obamaites. A reader pushes back against my take on Mitt's performance on the soap box:
I agree that Romney held his own against a crowd that clearly would have torn lesser candidates apart. This should probably be expected from someone who has apparently had no occupation other than running for president, over these last four years. In fact, the performance – and even the alleged "gaffe" may even strengthen his standings in the primaries. However, you can bet that the Obama campaign has added that video to their favorites list. It is giftwrapped reinforcement of the general election narrative they are already preparing to roll out. "Apart from that gaffe," Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
Another notes:
Why are people calling Romney's comment a gaffe or a flub? It's a statement of fact, or at least his interpretation. His campaign even confirms that he meant what he said.
Iowa Debate Reax: From The Right
My live-blogging insta-reax here. J-Pod:
Charting [Bachmann’s] performance in the debate would be like charting the Dow over the last week. Volatile would be the word for it, and volatility is not what Republicans are looking for in a candidate. As for Pawlenty, rarely has a fluent and well-prepared candidate with a solid record of accomplishment and an ability to think and argue on his feet proved so . . . meh. His candidacy is a wet match, and last night probably marked its end…
Romney is a weak frontrunner for all kinds of reasons, but standing on a stage next to seven other people who have no chance of being president, he looks like a Colossus. So he won. Again. But his performance was sufficiently unmemorable that he is clearly vulnerable to a strong showing by the incoming Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Or just about anybody else serious who might want to get in.
Biggest winner tonight: Rick Perry.
“Perry is the real winner,” is sure to be a line. Perry’s great, but he’ll be a winner only after he’s gone through the sort of grilling we saw tonight. Perry could solve a lot of problems for the GOP, and I hope he does. But his biggest weakness is that he’s never been tested in a national campaign. Let’s see if he’s still a winner after going through some debates like this.
Last night in Iowa, the Republicans debated. It was like the Island of Misfit Toys. Mitt Romney won the debate if only because Ames is apparently not big enough for two Minnesotans. The barbs between Bachmann and Pawlenty did them no favors.
The bottom line. Romney stays on top. Bachmann still in a strong position. Pawlenty looks to be finished.
Mitt looks really handsome, doesn’t he?
It’s one of the most predictable and tiresome of the many presidential debate clichés: The candidate who didn’t participate won because the others were so weak. And yet that was the case in the Republican presidential debate here Thursday night. A Republican presidential field often described as weak seemed to confirm that conventional wisdom in a debate that featured many tough questions and many more weak answers. Rick Perry, who will announce his bid for the presidency on Saturday, did well because he didn’t do poorly.
Not only has Fox News — the supposed mouthpiece of the GOP — put on a far, far, far better debate than CNN did (or MSNBC could), it has subjected the GOP contenders to tougher, rougher, questions than any debate I can remember. In fact, I don’t think Obama ever received this kind of grilling as a candidate or as president.
If political junkies were rooting for a fireworks display tonight, they certainly got one. Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty attacked each other repeatedly and ferociously. Newt Gingrich twice ripped into moderators for perceived “gotcha” questions. Ron Paul was (inexplicably) given the opportunity to animatedly spar with his competitors on virtually every foreign policy question of the evening. Voices were raised. The audience groaned, booed, and cheered. It was, by far, the scrappiest debate of the bunch. But was it productive? I’m not sure.
Newt represents the tea-party best. Anti-media. Anti-patience. The new fierce urgency of now.
The inter-candidate squabbling (so accurately predicted by Ed), the candidate-moderator bickering, the Ron-Paul-centric foreign policy segment and the absence of any meaningful discussion of entitlement reform all combined, unfortunately, to reinforce the idea that Republicans haven’t yet found their candidate.
Republican voters are going to have to decide whether they want someone as unwilling to compromise as Ms. Bachmann portrays herself, or if they’d rather have a compromiser who might be able to work more effectively with Democrats and independents, or at least win their votes. Ms. Bachmann began by saying she would appeal to independents, disaffected Democrats, and libertarians, and maybe she will, but that seemed design as a preemptive shield against the attacks that came on those lines from the other candidates.
It’s a very interesting back and forth between them. I haven’t said much about Gov. Romney…and I don’t think that is going to change. He started off with good fire, but now he is settling in to simple answers and getting done with this debate and away from the Straw Poll (which he is not participating in.) And is Ambassador Huntsman still on the stage?
Huntsman: His voice was shaky. Had even less gravity than Pawlenty. This was the candidate the mainstream press told us would be so formidable?
Bill Kristol posts a reader’s song:
No golden rings,
No soaring birds,
No fresh lens,
No rising above,
And no candidate who inspired me.
The most noteworthy and damning moment of the GOP debate in Iowa Thursday was when the moderators asked the candidates to raise their hands if they would walk away from a deal that cut ten dollars from the deficit for every one dollar in tax increases. Every last person on stage said they’d reject that deal.
What Palin Once “Believed”
She basically did the same thing as Romney while governor – increased taxes to obtain a AAA rating:
Specifically, the state oil tax. Her central achievement as governor was signing a law, Alaska's Clear and Equitable Share (ACES), that dramatically increased the state's share of oil profits just as oil prices began to take off. There's a direct line between increased revenue and improved fiscal health.
Ben Smith adds:
The gap between the anti-tax purity of the national GOP and the more complicated position of governors is the consequence of governors having to actually balance budgets.
The Dish 