The GOP Presidential candidates were back at it on Tuesday night for the fourth televised Republican debate. The field has solidified now, with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie officially not running, and Sarah Palin having opted out of the race as well. Mitt Romney again had the most solid showing, with none of the candidates doing much, in my opinion, to change their status.
Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, are not doing enough to get themselves into the race. It looks like Bachmann’s star has fallen for good, and I don’t see Santorum gaining any ground on the leaders. He just doesn’t seem to be able to separate himself, or offer anything new enough, to garner much attention. Ron Paul is also unlikely to gain voters as time goes on. He continued his career-long rant against the Federal Reserve, but such slightly more wonkish issues are unlikely to stir the passions of the electorate. He will always have his followers, but won’t win many more throughout the course of the debates.
Rick Perry came to the economics-only debate and promptly promised to put out an economics plan in the coming days. Perhaps he wanted to wait until after the debate, so he wouldn’t have to defend a plan he had only recently put together. So, instead of wowing the viewers with a competently laid-out path to financial and economic prosperity, he continually directed questions back to his plan to create more energy sector jobs. As if every state is Texas.
Jon Huntsman, still badly trailing in the polls, mercifully made fewer jokes and finally got a laugh with one of them – a reference to Herman Cain’s “9-9-9″ plan as the price of a pizza. He did manage, on occasion, to play the serious governor-cum-ambassador card, sounding like he actually understands foreign and trade policies. I’d like to hear more of this type of talk from him at these outings, instead of his inexplicable insistence to prove to the nation that he has a sense of humor.
The debate was punctuated by Newt Gingrich outbursts. Silent for lengthy periods, it seemed he would wake up and deliver something important, like reminding the crowd that the “trigger cuts” threatened by the debt ceiling compromise are an act of Congress and can be repealed like any other, even if the super committee appointed to trim federal spending fails in its task. Unfortunately, his biggest swat of the night was his worst, suggesting that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd should go to jail as a result of their efforts to re-regulate Wall Street.
Herman Cain is currently the surprise of the campaign, and it showed in the relish that the other candidates took in attacking his “9-9-9″ plan. He defended it to the best of his ability, but I can’t help but think that there’s not much substance to the plan. My concerns were echoed in a (much better stated, well thought-out, and actually researched) Washington Post article today. With all the attention heaped on the plan, Cain is either getting much needed publicity, or subjecting a bad plan to a lot of close scrutiny.
That just leaves Mitt Romney, still the front runner despite a few recent polls showing Cain at the top, having the best debate of the group. He’s not exciting, but he defended his Massachusetts healthcare plan well when attacked by Perry, and he also answered adeptly when accused of cutting jobs and breaking apart businesses in his private sector days.