Middle Ground

It’s official. Rick Santorum has earned the ire of Walker, Texas Ranger. Game over.

Really? You couldn’t come up with anything?

The Super Committee to Determine This Nation’s Future did nothing last week. Tasked with finding $1.2 trillion in reductions for our national debt (a number that is absolutely huge, unless you’re counting stars, atoms, or this country’s debt) and putting that proposal up for a vote in the Congress – the twelve esteemed members of the committee came up with a goose egg.

It didn’t matter that the Republicans control the House and the Democrats control the Senate, so either party could vote strictly along party lines to derail the proposal. It didn’t matter that the plan could actually have been THE WORST IDEA IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD – they couldn’t agree on anything. John Kerry could have walked out of the meeting, strolled up to the microphone, and said with absolute certainty that it would never happen, “Well, uh, we figured out that we can beat this deficit thing if we just get rid the Coast Guard. Well the Coast Guard and Medicare. And that ‘Death Race 2000′ movie where they run over the old people, yeah, that sounds good, too.” John Kyl could have tweeted from the meeting, “Got it… Let them eat cake.” Anything. They didn’t have to come up with something that would have actually been successful – we wouldn’t want to put that kind of pressure on any of our lawmakers. Instead of any proposal at all, half-baked or not, we got “Well, we have a better understanding of each others’ views now.”

Stepping back a bit from the hyperbole, the committee had every chance to “go big.” Instead of $1.2 trillion over 10 years, it could have been $5 trillion or so (our annual budget deficit, the amount we go further in the whole each year, is about $1.4 trillion). They could have taken the Simpson-Bowles plan, maybe made a few nips and tucks here and there, and put it before Congress. They wouldn’t even have to do any of the intellectual heavy lifting there, since the math was already done. They just had to have the spines to do it.

Online push for 3rd-party candidate – Tim Mak – POLITICO.com.

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.

AmericansElect.org is attempting to add a third major ticket to the 2012 Presidential ticket. The organization is well past the halfway mark of required signatures in its bid to put a presidential and vice-presidential candidate, elected in a primary in June 2012 by the public, into the general election in November of 2012. The idea is to put forward candidates that are not chosen along strictly partisan lines.

Please visit www.Americanselect.org for more information and to add your signature. It does not require to you to vote for any particular candidate or party and you can sign their petition if you are a Republican or a Democrat as well.

Herman Cain seems content to push his ideas as a businessman, and not go after his opponents. He gets a lot of applause for his emphasis on business, and his hardscrabble background. I don’t seem him gaining enough traction, however. His 9-9-9 plan sounds nice, and fits in with the “If 10% is good enough for God…” crowd, but I have yet to see anything that backs up his assertions that it would provide a way out of the hole that we’ve dug ourselves.

As for Rick Santorum, he took the swings he could, but it seemed like he was only able to pile on when another candidate had made a point. Most notably, he joined up with Michele Bachmann to attack Rick Perry’s HPV vaccine mandate. He also talked quite a bit about his willingness to speak the truth, but didn’t seem to really get the crowd behind his record of winning elections in Democratic-leaning areas.

Continue reading →