A Hughmorous - but bias - recap of the Iowa GOP Debate

[Duchess Jack]

What You Missed While Not Watching the Iowa GOP Debate

-1 minutes. As everyone awaits the third Republican presidential debate of the season, Bill O’Reilly is wrapping up his show on Fox News. When he threatens to call Professor Cornel West a “pinhead,” America knows. It’s go time.

 

0 minutes. “Thanks Bill,” says Bret Baier, the blockishly handsome anchorman with a hard-boiled name. He welcomes everybody, but it’s hard to hear him. Apparently thousands of people in the massive Iowa State University auditorium are screaming at the top of their lungs. Has something gone wrong? The camera pans back to show a swirling light show dancing over the crowd. Fox News knows how to get the party started. Hit them with the lights.

 

1 minute. Baier introduces all the candidates by laying out the horror: a stock market in turmoil, 14 million out of work, a credit downgrade and soldiers dropping in Afghanistan. It’s an emergency situation. “So tonight, we are respectfully asking the candidates to try to put aside the talking points,” he says. Then he asks Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann if she was serious when she recently claimed that she could turn the economy around in the first three months of her presidency?

 

3 minutes. Bachmann says she would start to turn things around in three months, and then retreats to talking points: “In the last two months I was leading on the issue of not increasing the debt ceiling. That turned out to be the right answer,” she says. This doesn’t make sense, since what she proposed never took place. But her argument is clear: The best way to turn the economy quickly around is to shrink government spending by about 40% and probably default on the national debt. That’s the argument.

 

4 minutes. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is asked a follow-up question. But it doesn’t matter what the question is. Baier could have asked Romney to name Santa’s reindeer, and Romney still would have answered, “If you spend your life in the private sector and understand how jobs come and go, you understand that what President Obama has done is the opposite of what the economy needed.” Romney goes on to announce a seven-point plan for recovery. Number six is “great institutions that build human capital.” Left unstated: Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s list is four things. So Romney is already winning by three.

 

5 minutes. Baier follows up by asking Romney why he hid behind slogans instead of engaging in the recent debt limit debate. Romney repeats his vague slogans. Then a game show bell rings: “ding ding.” Everyone is confused. Baier explains that candidates can only talk for one minute at a time or the bell rings. But this doesn’t stop him from asking Romney a third question, about the recent debt-limit compromise. “If you were President, you would have vetoed that bill?” Romney refuses to answer, says, “I’m not going to eat Barack Obama’s dog food.” On this point, Romney is unwavering.

 

7 minutes. A couple of questions for Texas Rep. Ron Paul, and a game show “ding ding.” Paul says the country is bankrupt and the wars are bad. The crowd, which has remained rowdy, applauds the line about cutting military spending.

 

9 minutes. Pizza magnate Herman Cain gets to talk about his four-point economic plan. “I represent growth,” he says, though it’s not clear what this means. He is growing? He has grown? He doesn’t seem to be. He says that it is imperative that the economy be fixed in less than 90 days, unlike slowpoke Bachmann.

 

10 minutes. Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, the newcomer to the stage, gets his first question: Why doesn’t he have an economic plan on his website? He looks handsome, but also surprisingly petite. His blow dry lacks the volume of the Romney ‘do, but he answers like Romney would, blowing by the question, saying the website is a work in progress. “I’m going to do what I did as governor. It is called leadership,” he says.

 

11 minutes. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is asked what makes him qualified to create jobs. Gingrich responds by listing lots of numbers. Of the 1981 Reagan tax cut, Gingrich says, “That tax cut lead to seven years of growth, which in our current economy would be the equivalent of adding 25 million jobs, $4 trillion to the economy and $800 billion this new federal revenue.” He continues to talk about his record in the 1990s. “First tax cut in 16 years. . . unemployment dropped to 4.2%.” The blur of figures recalls dialog from an Aaron Sorkin script, back when Sorkin still smoked stimulants.

 

13 minutes. Pawlenty is asked again about the unrealistic growth assumptions in his economic plan. He says, as he has said before, that he is guilty of thinking big. Then he makes Romney the punch line of a long joke. “Where is Barack Obama’s plan on Social Security reform? Medicare reform? Medicaid reform? I’ll offer a prize to anybody in this auditorium or watching on television, if you can find Barack Obama’s specific plan on any of those items, I will come to your house and cook you dinner. Or if you prefer I’ll come to your house and mow your lawn. In case Mitt wins, I’m limited to one acre. One acre.” The joke is that Romney is rich, and has a lot of lawn. As Pawlenty is telling it, the “ding ding” happens.

 

14 minutes. Romney is asked to respond. “That’s just fine,” he says of Pawlenty’s joke. Translation: Find someone to attack me who matters.

 

15 minutes. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum also has a four-point plan. Still three shy of Romney’s.

 

16 minutes. Fox News’s Chris Wallace takes over the questioning. He basically looks like Pawlenty, aged a few years with a few more pounds. Older Pawlenty asks younger Pawlenty to attack Bachmann, and younger Pawlenty does, saying her governing results are “nonexistent.” So begins a five-minute slap fest between the two candidates. Bachmann calls herself the “tip of the spear.” Pawlenty questions the usefulness of her “titanium spine.” Bachmann says Pawlenty supported cap-and-trade, individual mandates and big government, while she favored the freedom to choose energy wasting light bulbs. Pawlenty says Bachmann has a record of “making false statements.”

 

21 minutes. The Fox hosts finally regain control, and ask Romney a question about his work at Bain Capital. Once again, Romney looks more like a President than anyone else on the stage, though he is burdened with the vocabulary of an accountant. “In those 100 businesses we invested in,” he says, “tens of thousands of jobs net/net were created.” Or is it, net-net? Romney surely knows.

 

23 minutes. Baier cuts away to commercial break. We are, it seems, just getting started.

 

27 minutes. Wallace takes over the questioning again, asking Gingrich why anyone should take him seriously since most of his campaign staff resigned, calling him an undisciplined campaigner and fundraiser. Gingrich, a former Fox News employee, attacks his own. “I took seriously to put aside the talking points,” he says. “I wish you would put aside the gotcha questions.” Then he fixes Wallace with what can only be described as a death stare that lasts for an uncomfortably long time. “I would love to see the rest of tonight’s debate asking us what we would do to lead an America whose President has failed to lead instead of playing Mickey Mouse games,” Gingrich concludes. The crowd loves this. Or Fox turned the light show on again.

 

 

29 minutes. But Wallace is just getting started. He lists Huntsman’s less conservative positions

 

 

 

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2011/08/12/what-.../#ixzz1UoPW5SXN

[Azazello1313]

I watched a few minutes of that after the broncos game, and it made me think seriously that maybe the GOP is getting their 2012 strategy from the onion.

 

and you know, there's actually some serious merit to the idea that 4 more years of obummer is the best thing for the GOP. if they take the senate (and they will), then they will be driving the agenda, just like in the "contract with america" days. having a dem in the white house being forced to sign off on all of it severely stunts any demagogic traction the dems might otherwise get against them.

 

so maybe the GOP puppetmasters are smarter than we think putting forward this merry band of misfits? it's about the only silver lining I can come up with watching that train wreck.

[Pope Flick]

I watched a few minutes of that after the broncos game, and it made me think seriously that maybe the GOP is getting their 2012 strategy from the onion.

 

and you know, there's actually some serious merit to the idea that 4 more years of obummer is the best thing for the GOP. if they take the senate (and they will), then they will be driving the agenda, just like in the "contract with america" days. having a dem in the white house being forced to sign off on all of it severely stunts any demagogic traction the dems might otherwise get against them.

 

so maybe the GOP puppetmasters are smarter than we think putting forward this merry band of misfits? it's about the only silver lining I can come up with watching that train wreck.

 

 

I haven't seen either debate, but are they really all that bad? If that's the case, can't wait for Perry: "So, um Rick, you wanted to secede from the US a few years ago, can you tell us what's changed your mind that now you want to lead it?" That'll be a good one.

[bpwallace49]

I watched a few minutes of that after the broncos game, and it made me think seriously that maybe the GOP is getting their 2012 strategy from the onion.

 

and you know, there's actually some serious merit to the idea that 4 more years of obummer is the best thing for the GOP. if they take the senate (and they will), then they will be driving the agenda, just like in the "contract with america" days. having a dem in the white house being forced to sign off on all of it severely stunts any demagogic traction the dems might otherwise get against them.

 

so maybe the GOP puppetmasters are smarter than we think putting forward this merry band of misfits? it's about the only silver lining I can come up with watching that train wreck.

 

I completely agree.

 

With the economy in the tank, why would they want control of the WHite House? Obama has capitulated on almost everything the Republicans have wanted since taking office, and the one thing that Obama wanted in the health care bill (single payer) was gutted by the right.

 

If you can get most of what you want, and get less blame than the other guy, then why would want that to change?

 

I wouldnt be surprised if the Republicans roll out the LEAST electable candidate to throw the election, and donate more time/resources to House and Senate seats. Then stroll in in 2016.

[Azazello1313]

Obama has capitulated on almost everything the Republicans have wanted since taking office getting rolled in the midterms

 

fixed for accuracy.

[bpwallace49]

fixed for accuracy.

 

I disagree. He rolled over on the single payer portion of the health care bill that was prior to the midterm elections.

[Azazello1313]

I disagree. He rolled over on the single payer portion of the health care bill that was prior to the midterm elections.

 

if that was capitulating to anyone, it was to centrists in his own party.

[Azazello1313]

I wouldnt be surprised if the Republicans roll out the LEAST electable candidate to throw the election, and donate more time/resources to House and Senate seats. Then stroll in in 2016.

 

not to be outfoxed, obama seems to be doing his absolute best to make sure that strategy fails.