Having given you very fragmented impressions, I owe you some synthesis, some analysis. I generally endorse the thrust of this assessment by Politico:
Mitt, Perry bet big on GOP direction
By: Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith
September 8, 2011 04:43 AM EDTSIMI VALLEY, Calif. – The two leading Republican presidential candidates made very different bets Wednesday night about the GOP primary electorate – dueling wagers that will set the contours of the race going forward.
Rick Perry’s debate debut here was hot and uncompromising. He threw elbows at Republicans from Ron Paul and Karl Rove on up. Offered an opportunity to retreat from his attacks on Social Security, he promised more “provocative” language about the program. Mitt Romney, by contrast, was measured and sober. He presented himself as a competent manager who can fix the economy and beat President Obama.
Perry’s bet is on a conservative, confrontational and mad-as-hell Republican Party. Romney’s is that GOP activists want, above all, to win and will come to recognize that nominating the Texas governor would be an act of political suicide.
The divide between the two men reflects an ongoing debate that’s splitting the Republican Party both on the campaign trail and beyond it. Some of its leaders, looking back at the 2010 midterm elections, believe that the party – and the nation – are ready to gorge on red meat as never before. The American people, goes this line of thinking, recognize that entitlements must be addressed and that old-style demagoguery over the issue has become less effective…
Every election — every partisan election, that is (municipal elections in SC, for instance, offer blessed exceptions to the dismal rule) — we face this problem. The primaries are all about appealing to extremes, and the general is about appealing to swing voters like me. Each time that happens, I can hardly wait for the primaries to be over. Unfortunately, too often the result is that we independents are left with two extremist yahoos yelling at each other in the general election, and no viable options. (The 2008 presidential election was a blessed exception from that, with both parties choosing to nominate their least partisan candidates.)
But this time, the contrast seems more stark in the GOP. You have a couple of candidates — Romney and Huntsman — with their eyes somewhat on what happens after the primary. But the rest of the field acts as though that day will never come — as indeed it won’t, for them, if the majority of Republicans agree with the Romney/Huntsman assessment. All of the others are about where they think the GOP electorate is, and nothing more.
(Ron Paul, of course, is in his own category. But strangely, he is acting like a guy who believes that he actually has a chance of winning. Why else would he be attacking Perry so relentlessly — unless, perhaps, he just thinks Perry would be worse for the country than the others. Normally, you’d expect a guy in Ron Paul’s position, outlier with a mission, to simply use the exposure to advance his ideas, hoping to influence the debate — which he has had success at doing. This “take down the other guy” behavior, coming from him, is interesting.)
It will be awhile before we know who is right. The first indication will occur here in South Carolina. I have little faith in Iowa or even New Hampshire as bellwethers.
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Interesting that someone as extreme as Mitt Romney is now regarded as a moderate. He goes on and on and on about the necessity of cutting taxes and reigning in spending. He also rarely says anything about cutting back on overseas operations. And he even shoots down his own healthcare plan. That’s an odd sort of a strategy but the GOP is about as crazy as it comes. Nothing really moderate here, just crazy and crazier. Even Huntsman raised his hand in the last debate on the 10-1 question.
As for Perry, he’s just about as radical as any serious politician I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. He falls somewhere in the same range as Hugo Chavez or Mohmar Ghadafy. He’s just completely out there. Calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Remember now Mr. Ponzi was a convicted criminal so he’s suggesting our government has been operating a criminal enterprise for 75 years. Then there’s the science denial thing. And the response from the audience when the number of executions in Texas was mentioned. Wow. Is this really for real? A party with membership so completely crazy it’s beyond belief.
And many in the media still don’t get it. They continue to treat the two parties as equally extremist. It’s remarkable really. Maybe the media is just scared. Heck, I can’t blame them for that. This group is frightening to say the least. I never in my life could have envisioned a major political party that is basically modeled after the John Birch society. But that’s what we have.
There’s nothing extreme about cutting taxes and spending. But the 10-1 ratio thing really IS out there. I missed when Huntsman agreed to it. That disappoints me, if that happened.
As for the capital punishment thing… the chilling part wasn’t Perry’s response, but the audience’s. But again, don’t go assuming that this makes Republican so much worse. I can easily imagine hearing a Democratic crowd cheer at a speaker telling them how he’d turned back efforts to limit partial-birth abortions — which would give me a similar chill.
At least the Republican urge to punish the wrongdoer is natural and understandable, even though it is wrong once you move past gut reaction. The Democratic position on abortion is something that requires repressing the natural human response, rationalizing to a remarkable extent a position they would not have held without indoctrination. You have to go very far down an ideological road before you wouldn’t ban ANY abortion, which is where a lot of Dems are.
But yeah, the audience’s response last night was nauseating, the kind of thing that makes one ashamed of one’s species.
So how do the candidates rank?Right now I still rate Romney the favorite. I thought his performance in the debate was paced properly. He came across as conservative without going to the fringe. His argument that he’s more electable should play well with those who value winning above all else. Perry with his red-meat-to-the-base approach may play well in Iowa and SC but can only get him so far elsewhere. I sense he probably lost Florida last night with his Ponzi scheme comments. Unless of course Romney totally bombs in the 3 early states, a possibility especially given the conservative nature of SC. Once Romney wins Florida Perry fades quickly. The others are just along for the ride at this point:
Romney Even
Perry 2-1
Bachman 6-1
Huntsman 10-1
Paul 12-1
Cain 20-1
Gingrich 50-1
Santorum 50-1
Palin 100-1
Well, if all depends on whether you think Romney or Perry is right about what the GOP electorate goes for next year.
I would be shocked and stunned if a Democratic audience cheered at a candidate suggesting he’d support keeping partial birth abortion legal. They may agree but cheer? Absolutely, positively, 100% not. That claim is completely ridiculous.
This is what I keep talking about with the media. Brad is just an example of how warped our journalistic world has become. The Republicans are just completely crazy. The Democrats are mostly reasonable. And yet here we find a (false) example of someone trying to show how they’re alike.
Brad, I expected you to make the abortion comparison in relation to the Perry comments re capital punishment. While you have a point, there is an important distinction to be made. Most pro-choice candidates make it clear that they are not “pro-abortion,” that in fact their goal is the overall reduction of abortions, etc., etc.: in other words, almost no pro-choice candidate articulates that position without acknowledging the moral complexity of the issue. I can’t think of a candidate ever saying, “We’re proud that we have the highest abortion rate in the country.”
By contrast, Gov. Perry went out of his way last night to make it clear that he doesn’t even think of any thing like moral complexity; and that the possibility (really, probability) that he has authorized the killing of at least one innocent person in the face of exculpatory evidence has been something he “has never struggled with at all,” to use his own words.
Romney is likeable, intelligent, well-spoken, and needs no teleprompter. He is the Republican establishment’s heavyweight (Huntsman being a lightweight).
Any of the above could whup Obama in debates, and this time the gloves would come off unlike during poor ol’ John McCaint’s pitiful attempts.
Obama would make a huge mistake to keep Biden on his ailing ticket. The big question naturally becomes who will Obama select that can help his ticket more than hurt it.
One of those listed above might accept Obama’s veep offer, and two more wish they could get the invitation, but they certainly won’t.
None of the above are extremist republicans in any historical sense. PC has moved rhetoric so far to the left that all (except Bachman) throw bones to the Tea Party, while retaining moderate stances.
Obama cannot beat the former Democrat without widespread polling irregularities. Forget that this time. With the right ticket, he could beat all of the others handily, however.
How badly does Hillary wish to be appointed to SUPCO?
Bud, it’s not a “false” example. I said I could easily imagine it, based on how often Dems have appalled me on that issue in the past. I’ve always been able to understand that people might RELUCTANTLY go along with the idea of abortion under some circumstances, I have often been shocked by the enthusiastic, positive embrace of that cause by many Democrats. And by their adamant excoriation of those who disagree.
And Phillip, you’re saying what I’m saying, only in a different way. As I said, the response to the Texas executions last night was a visceral, primitive, atavistic, simplistic response (and a particularly chilling moment, not least because we couldn’t SEE the people applauding).
The embrace of all forms of abortion — and in its extreme form, which I’ve seen exhibited far too many times, it IS an embrace — isn’t such a simple thing. It’s something you have to talk yourself into, step by step. But it is no less chilling than that.
You have to buy into several different propositions to arrive at that one, and you have to be deeply enough into the ideology that it overrides your natural human revulsion.
It reminds me of the memorable passage in 1984, when Winston thinks he has finally made contact with the resistance, and is so eager to be a part of it that he readily answers one question after another — “Would you be willing to do THIS if it was necessary to advance the revolution and bring down Big Brother?” — in the affirmative.
And he builds up such a rhythm, wanting to get all the answers right, that he even says yes when he is asked whether he would personally throw acid directly into a child’s face if that was necessary to combat Ingsoc. And that’s the moment when he crosses the line, and betrays all the fine, moral sentiments that brought him thus far.
I wish the questioner had been more direct to Perry and asked him specifically about the Willingham case. The general tone of the question gave Perry an easy out. Perhaps something like this:
Governor Perry, evidence has come to light that the conviction and later execution of Mr. Willingham was done on the basis of false evidence. In fact, modern forensics evidence strongly suggests the fire he allegedly set was in fact an accident. Many have suggested that you failed to adequately review this case prior to the execution and thwarted attempts to investigate the evidence after the execution. How do you respond to those critics who suggest you are unwilling to learn the truth about this incident?
Brad, just out of curiousity, why did you bring up abortion? No one’s mind will ever be changed.
Brad strikes me as kind-of a Huntsman guy. I want to like Huntsman too – and his so-called moderate tone isn’t what bothers me. It’s the fact that based on his rhetoric (and I assume positions), he is arguably just to the right of Ron Paul on the “dove/hawk” scale when it comes to foreign policy. I would expect a so-called establishment GOP candidate to adhere more to what we understand to be the traditional Reagan Republican view of foreign policy – the one that Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty before him tended to articulate.
If the caucuses and early primaries were being held now, I’d lay odds on Perry winning Iowa and South Carolina, Romney taking New Hampshire and Florida. After that, I have no idea how the race might play out.
I admire Paul for his sincerity, but he’s become the conservative equivalent of Ralph Nader, and someone who cares about him needs to convince him to give up on the Presidency. Gingrich attacked the media last debate and last night without much in the way of policy put forth. Santorum at least recognizes you have to work with the other party. I can’t take Bachmann seriously. Perry’s obviously good at campaigning, but that “science isn’t settled” comment probably killed any chance he might have had at winning the general election (I hope). Huntsman is the only one I would consider voting for in the primary.
“Any of the above could whup Obama in debates, and this time the gloves would come off unlike during poor ol’ John McCaint’s pitiful attempts.” (Juan)
Are you kidding me? Huntsman and Romney might hold their own, but the rest will look like friggin’ idiots next to Obama. I’d pay to see Obama debate Perry. And bring my own popcorn.
“Are you kidding me?” – Norm Ivey
Norm, can you please point us to a single, unequivocal win in any one-on-one Obama debate other than with our ‘war hero’?
Or, could you be basing your confidence in Obama’s skill on the inherent debating superiority of lawyers over other politicians?
I’m pro the availability of abortions. I don’t find it a contorted position to have arived at. To me it is both logical and humanistic.
At least nobody cheers abortions as some do with capital punishment. That is truly twisted.
In any event, both topics ought to be off limits in any debates.
I’m basing my confidence on Obama’s intelligence and reasoned approach. I didn’t think McCain’s performances were that bad in content. He didn’t engage in the extremes the way most of the current candidates are doing. McCain’s undoing was his selection of Palin as a running mate, the suspension of his campaign to address the economy, and to some extent, the visual differences between him and the younger, enthusiastic Obama.