The second GOP primary debate took place last night and there weren’t a whole lot of surprises. Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney are still the front runners, with Perry taking the most shots from his rivals. The audience seemed to cheer for just about anything (except Huntsman’s really bad jokes), including letting people without health insurance die, which didn’t sit well with a lot of the commentators afterward. I was a little taken aback by how much this production reminded me of American Idol. The whole production seemed a little too slick, a little too beauty pageant.
Surprisingly (to me anyway), I think it’s good that Newt Gingrich is still in the race. I’m not exactly a Newt fan, but he provides (along with a couple of others) an intellectual depth that these debates need to prevent them to becoming a series of talking points and applause lines. He brings up issues that would otherwise be left by the wayside, but should be considered by GOP voters.
I like Ron Paul, but I’m no libertarian. He hit some good notes on the cost of the war. (Today on her show, Rachel Maddow tried to debunk his statement that the embassy in Baghdad cost a billion dollars and is bigger than the Vatican. As it turns out, the cost was $736 million and, at 106 acres, doesn’t quite match up the Vatican’s 110. I think he made his point.) His ideological libertarian purity was tested a bit, though, when Wolf Blitzer pressed him on the issue of health care. Blitzer asked who should take care of a person who decided not to get health care and then was hurt badly and needed long-term medical care. Paul started off by saying that each person should be responsible for themselves. (Applause.) Blitzer then asked if that person should be allowed to die. (Applause, strangely and disturbingly enough.) Paul backed down and bit and said no, then mumbled something about churches taking care of people. It seems the whole “take your rationale to its logical end” bit is hard to pull off in front of (most) live audiences.
Then there’s Jon Huntsman. Oh, Jon, I so wanted to like you. You spell your name right, you were a governor and an ambassador to a major economic rival, you were moderate enough to be appointed to that ambassadorship by a President from the other party, you seem like a really swell guy, but… holy crap. You are awful at this. Huntsman can’t deliver a line. He made a Kurt Cobain joke (Kurt Cobain!) in a room full of people who have no idea who that is, and wouldn’t like him if they did. You copycatted a “treasonous” jab at the wrong time about a silly point. A couple of months ago, I might have voted for you just because you looked good on paper, but now you have to make me believe that you can actually win an argument with, well, anyone. Also, Harley – fine. Motocross bike? You’re running for President. Don’t act like a teenager.
Michele Bachman was trying to avoid being an afterthought. I’ve never liked her as a candidate, and this performance didn’t raise her standing in my eyes. When asked about the Bush tax cuts, she managed to say with a straight face that the only problem with revenue was Obama spending. She hit Perry hard on his executive order regarding mandatory HPV immunizations and the crowd ate it up. My understanding, though, is that the shots were opt-out, so that any parent or guardian could see to it that their child could not have the shot if that’s what they wanted to do. Not to mention that fact that we immunize, and have in the past, against a great many things (polio, for example). We put fluoride in the drinking water. But she went after “forcing little girls” to have “government injections” with reckless abandon, as if Perry were out in west Texas performing abortions himself. I wonder where she thinks flu shots come from?
More later.