What this debate did was put on display how brilliant the round table concept was last week. As I said at the time, it's a lot harder to lob bombs when you're looking someone in the eye. But when everyone's facing directly forward and looking at the moderator, then it's just a matter of repeating your scripted and practiced line correctly. Light fuse, toss.
Snap prediction: I don't know how they decide who gets on these things, but if it's some kind of minimum polling percentage, I wouldn't look for ol' Santorum to be attending too many more of these gala events. Twice tonight he was again an asshole, and the audience let him know. He simply wouldn't stop talking, even after Anderson had handed the mic to Romney. He really came off as a jackass.
Then, surprise, Perry did the exact same thing to Romney. Just wouldn't frigging shut up. More on this later.
Pop Quiz Question #1:
What year is it?
"Uh, two thousand, eleven?"
Are you sure it isn't twenty-eleven?
Cooper Anderson said in the opening spiel something about this being "the election of twenty-twelve". Does anybody say that?
By the way, being born and raised in California, I'm something most of you aren't:
A Westerner.
Hah!
And I was mighty proud of that tonight, I can tell you. We note how no one's talked about how the election is going to affect Easterners in any of the debates, but they used the term 'Western' and 'Westerners' a couple of times in the intro, and the name of the event, itself, was the Western Republican Presidential Debate.
From what I saw, the only Western-oriented question was when they were asked about Yucca Mountain, the storage facility for nuclear waste. Doesn't sound like much of a subject, does it?
Well!
Newt was asked if it was safe, and he replied that our best scientists had decreed that Yucca Mountain, off in the middle of the serious boonies, was the best place to store the nation's nuclear waste. And, more to the point, that it was much safer to monitor one site than have the stuff spread all over hell and gone.
Pop Quiz Question #2:
Why do we have a federal government?
With my mouth hanging agape, I watched Paul, Romney and Perry all pander to the crowd by slamming their metaphorical fists on the podium and shouting, "What right does the federal government have to dump its waste in OUR state?!"
(lots of applause)
That's why we have a federal government.
Gingrich got the first big laugh of the evening. During the intros, the first six candidates glowingly praised themselves. When the camera fell on Newt, he grinned and said something like, "I'm Newt Gingrich, and I'm NOT President Obama!"
(lots of laughter and applause)
Like I've said before, a Big Picture guy.
Pop Quiz Question #3:
What's wrong with this quotation?
"What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."
I think every article I read about the debate used it, and I think Anderson used it during the intro.
When I was 22, I went to Vegas and met up with a friend and his uncle. We went to a casino and were doing pretty well at the blackjack table. Deciding they'd had enough of these out-of-towners raking in the cash, they brought in a middle-aged dealer to get it back. We held about even for a while, then, deciding they really had to do something about these pesky out-of-towners, they brought in the ace from the bull pen:
Little Joe.
And a more Sicilian, Mafioso-looking character — right down to the fedora — you couldn't ask for. He was a Hollywood casting agent's dream.
Little Joe cleaned us out. In no time.
I later asked my friend's uncle how he did it. Was he "cheating"?
His uncle would only say, "He was dealing light."
I said we ought to report it to the Gaming Commission or somebody!
He turned to me, looked me carefully in the eye, and said:
Son, what plays in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
See how nicely that rhymes? And catch the snappy 'play', like 'playing' a casino game? That's the original quote. Google pulls up a paltry 1,440 sites that refer to it. How many for "happens in Vegas"? Over two million.
When it comes to liberal bias in the broadcast, two things stuck out:
— How many times they used two candidates' names in the question. "Governor Romney, Governor Perry has called you a scum-sucking piece of dog shit. How do you respond to these charges? And, by the way, have you stopped beating your wife yet?"
— CNN's use of a split screen might almost be labeled a 'dirty trick', in that the candidates appeared to think the television feed would be solely on the person talking, so their unconscious sneers and grimaces were on display. I note CNN also did this in the first debate they hosted. It was particularly rude when it caught Bachmann picking her nose, or Perry spitting a wad of tobaccy juice into his coat pocket. Also known as, "a liberal TV producer's dream come true."
And, here in the eighth debate, Gingrich finally made a tactical error. He was arguing health care with Romney and pulled out one isolated incident where some poor, innocent businessman was being hounded by the jackbooted thugs of Romney's corrupt regime for not having enough money in his government-mandated health care fund.
Using one, single, isolated event for your argument is generally regarded as the last act of a desperate man. You can always find one, lone incident that bolsters your cause, the same way statistics can be bent to your liking.
They say that 1 out of 4 people is mentally insane. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.
Paul also made a strategic blunder. Speaking of ObamaCare, he got a big round of applause when he called for an opt-out clause. He said it would allow people to "get back the doctor-patient relationship." Well, Ron, that all sounds mighty nice, but you know what? If/when ObamaCare comes into full force, there won't be any doctors around for that special old-timey relationship. And those who are just might be a tad expensive. It isn't doctors, specifically, who will have to jump aboard the ObamaCare bandwagon, it's the organization and hospitals they belong to. The doctors, themselves, won't have a say in the issue.
As an amateur linguist, I'm fascinated by Cain's speech pattern. It isn't an 'accent', it's a
dialect. "My staff has done the calc'latin' and my 9-9-9 plan will get rid of the unnecessary reg'latin' by the government, in partic'lar the IRS."
The audience loved him, of course. With Anderson's coaching, I think every candidate took a swing at Cain's plan at some point. What I noticed was that no one received a big amount of applause for their counterargument. My feeling was that the audience was thinking along the same lines I was; that if this dude was the friggin' CEO of a huge national corporation, and if he says "This is a good deal", then it probably is. Virtually every other candidate took the "It'll raise the middle class' taxes!" approach, but he just kept shaking his head and claiming they were talking about apples and oranges.
Pop Quiz Question #4:
Spot the spellink error:
The fish fought and fought for it's life!
Damn, I hate that thing. Everybody does. I've seen it on the front page of the online Washington Post site, as well as CNN and Fox. Michelle Malkin, probably regarded as the best writer in the right-wing blogosphere, has done it at least twice. I keep waiting for Taranto to do it. It's only a matter of time.
Do you remember that "electrified border fence" that Cain was asked about in the second debate (the first one I covered), and how he got the biggest laugh-applause of the night when he responded, "America needs to learn how to take a joke"? As you might have noticed, there have been a few "Does Cain Want An Electric Fence on the Border?" articles around recently as some people are taking it seriously. He was asked about it again in the debate, as a serious question from Anderson. This time he just ignored the "electrified" part and laid out his border plan. Pretty pathetic, though. Is CNN saying they didn't watch the second debate? Or are they just assuming we're too stupid to remember that far back?
Perry's big attack on Romney (and when Perry lost his cool) was over some gardening company that Romney was using that had hired (gasp!) an illegal alien. Perry's screaming what a hypocrite Romney was to lecture them on immigration when he's hiring illegals, and took a YEAR to get rid of the company after he found out. At some point, Romney finally, eventually, got to have his say and noted that the company had immediately gotten rid of the first wetback, and it was a year later that another one came along and that's when Romney dumped the company.
But I thought at the time, wow, how desperate is that on Perry's part? Dredging up things from the distant past? That's like someone attacking Perry for once backing Al Gore!
And what happens?
Perry again launches into Mitt, this time over how Texas had created umpteen billion jobs over the past year and Massachusetts had only created some paltry handful.
Well, duh! Anybody looked at a map lately? It was a moronic comparison, to say the least.
And what did ol' Mitt do?
He said something like, "Big words, coming from someone who was the chairman of Al Gore's Reelection Committee." Zing! Turnabout's fair play, Rick.
Pop Quiz Question #5:
This one's a little tougher. It's an 'observation' test. In the following three feeds, two of them share a remarkably similar trait, and your job is to find it.
I figured you should have at least one easy one.
As much as I've bashed Rick Santorum in these things, he made one exceptionally good point. He said that, according to some poll, barely one person in fifty could name a single candidate. Sounds right to me. He basically said the debates are meaningless. He said what really counts is what happens out there.
Then he noted that not one other candidate had won their position by winning in a swing state, and he had done it twice. In Pennsylvania. Given that the reason they call them swing states is because they tend to swing elections, and thus the votership is split more or less down the middle, thus making it hard for any candidate to win decisively — much less a Republican in a traditionally blue state — this point has some merit.
I pondered in the pre-debate post whether Paul would be asked about his recent proposal to eliminate the presidential cabinet, and when he was and replied in the affirmative, he got a pretty good round of applause. It was one of the few surprises of the night. I was wondering if the audience had really thought this one through. I mean, isn't getting rid of your immediate subordinates one of the first things a dictator does?
For the record, Paul did finally get to shout his patented BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!, but the response from the fawning acolytes and drooling sycophants didn't have near its usual gusto. On the other hand, this is the West, where they tend to hang rustlers and the like from the nearest tree.
Another obvious trap was Anderson asking a few of the candidates, "Should foreign aid be eliminated?" Phrased that way, it implies all foreign aid, and whoever suggested such a thing? But as soon as a candidate responds, "Yes, but...", the next day's headlines will be screaming "REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES ADMIT THEY HATE FOREIGNERS!"
When asked if she'd cut aid to Israel, Bachmann flat-out stated 'No way', garnering her biggest round of applause of the night. My Applause-O-Meter said it was about the eighth loudest of the evening.
Since Bloggers Rule #536,378 states that I must pick a 'winner', I guess I'd hand it to Romney again, but it's a close call. Both he and Cain were attacked over and over again, including being the brunt of Santorum and Perry's momentary insanity, but Romney was more under the gun in the sense that the attacks on him dealt with delicate issues (hiring illegals, cramming RomneyCare down an innocent public's throat), whereas Cain was just defending an economics plan, and wasn't even doing that, really. The others appeared so far off base with their attacks that he basically just kept repeating "apples and oranges, apples and oranges" over and over again.
As far as the audience goes, my feeling is that they continue to just adore Cain, but think Romney's the one who should be running. Like a lot of people, I thought Perry was going to waltz in and walk away with the thing, but he's made horribly controversial statements to the media, made them at the debates, hasn't been particularly impressive when he's had the mic, and it appears he's simply fallen out of the public's favor.
Then tonight, he looked about as unpresidential as anyone has looked so far when he was blathering on and on about what a hypocrite Romney was for (gasp!) hiring an illegal (gasp!) alien, and here's Romney looking his usual presidential self as he's saying, "Now, Rick, you've had your turn..."
I think Anderson said at the end that the next debate isn't for a month, so if they use minimum poll results to gauge who gets to participate, I suppose it's possible both Santorum and Perry will be missing in action. Honestly, taking a cue from the audience, I'm not sure anybody would miss them.
I haven't mentioned Bachmann much, but she did a 'credible' job. She got +10 for mentioning fixing Dodd-Frank (and associated ailments) again, but she fell prey to a sucker pitch in the dirt from Anderson when he asked her if she'd wall off the "entire" border and she responded with a resounding "Yes!" When it was Perry's turn, he noted immediately that the entire border didn't need a goddamn wall, just certain key areas. Michele should have known better.
At the end, Mr. Big Picture, as he has in previous debates, again noted the bias in the questions, and how they were designed to get the candidates to "bicker" with one another. As I noted, the big tip-off was hearing two names in the question. "Congresswoman Bachmann, Governor Perry has claimed you're a cheap, wanton slut. How do you respond to these allegations? And, by the way, have you stopped beating your husband yet?"
Fiery!
