Final GOP Debate Before Super Tuesday and 3 Other Primaries - Updated

The CNN Arizona Debate is over and so are the GOP debates until after Super Tuesday, after about 14-additional primaries are over.

As with all of the debates, there were winners and losers. Who won, who lost and what’s next?

Debate Video: Republican Presidential Debate (CNN/Arizona Republican Party) - February 22 2012

Video:  Highlights From CNN  GOP Debate in Arizona

Debate Transcript

First the winners.

Whether Mitt or Newt won depends on who you listen to.

Gingrich  was in top form tonight and was able to hold the position he loves to operate from. He was able to swoop in on certain questions and do really well, answering in a sly superior fashion. If Newt had nights like this in every debate, he would be much closer to being the nominee.  Newt probably built up his vote share last night with his quips and insight, but every vote he gets back comes from Santorum not from Romney.

Mitt Romney also fell into the winner circle. Romney is not as good a debater as Newt but was prepared. Preparation can overcome a multitude of sins and what ever else you want to say about Romney, he does prepare well for debates, plus he is getting better at it.  One of Romney’s advantages is that he comes across as presidential.

Former Clinton political advisor (now a Republican) and author Dick Morris wrote:

In last night's debate, Romney showed how he has grown through this contest and has developed into a presidential figure.  By contrast, Santorum's performance was distinctly congressional.  I found myself agreeing with Santorum on much of what he said, but willing to follow Romney.  In sync with Rick, but trusting

Mitt.Santorum's replies were pedantic, tactical, and detailed. No inspiration there.  He was like a lawyer advocating his case or a congressman battling for a bill.  But Romney came across as a real leader - charismatic, bold, strong, and, ultimately, inspiring.  See his full post HERE.

Ron Paul could have been a winner if he could have stayed away from foreign policy issues. Foreign policy, specifically Iran, is his Achilles heel. Iran is a threat to America. Radical Islam is a threat to America. We are not threatening Iran. Iran is threatening America and Israel; the big and little Satans as they call us. Ron did have some humorous moments last night. And what I do agree with Ron Paul on is that we need to formally declare wars before entering into them!

CNN is a winner too. CNN did not hit any of the Republicans with any really bad gotcha questions and the really stupid questions, like describe yourself with one word, were kept to a minimum.

The Republican Party, with twenty some debates has also scored big with the Debates. They have been a big draw for the networks that have carried them so have been a good showcase for all of the Republican candidates. A year ago, who would have believed we would have had this many debates?

The losers:

Rick Santorum. Santorum needed a knock out punch today to beat Romney. He did not get it. He stumbled. Not only did he not get his knock out punch, he was back on his heels most of the debate. He stumbled and fumbled in dealing with all of the candidates. Santorum did not have the worst debate performance ever. He did not forget which departments he would abolish. But his performance was not one of his best nights.

If Santorum had delivered with some of the strong points he had in previous debates he might have continued doing better going into Michigan and Arizona. This debate could have the same consequences as did the bad debates for Gingrich in Florida.

The Republican Establishment is also a loser of sorts. For years they have allowed the liberal media to call the shots on their debates. The Republican mainstream voters are tired of it. Blogs ranging from the Tea Party Nation to Red State and on have called the GOP establishment on this; even the National Review addressed this today.

Santorum started with momentum tonight, but he needed to have a debate strategy. Romney had  his debate strategy down. He was going to get in someone’s face and push them back on their heels. Gingrich was in his preferred position and he had the strategy of being the Republican wise man, which he pulled off well and relished in.  And Ron Paul was his independent self and really went after Santorum.

Santorum seemed to have no strategy other than to just showing up, and neither he nor Newt came across as presidential

We will know in the next few days how badly this debate hurt Santorum, since the voters have been so fickle this primary season. One thing is certain. Romney can probably breathe a little easier tonight and the polls in Michigan should keep tightening.  Donald Trump appeared with Greta on the Record after the debate and Trump said he just saw that Romney have pulled into the lead in Michigan where Santorum had been leading.  If Romney wins Michigan and Arizona he has a decided advantage on Super Tuesday. 

The outcome of the upcoming primaries may shift the entire ebb and flow of the GOP race again and could end the talk of a brokered convention, one of the ongoing side stories in this roller coaster of a race.  Some feel it could be the best thing that ever happened to the GOP, but most feel it would be a nightmare.  And some still think there could be surprises ahead on both sides.

But if the American people don’t wake up as to the importance of this election… America and everyone in it is the loser.  Only 4.5 million people watched last night’s debate, in probably the most important election of all our life times.  That is a travesty!  And truly if you are not paying attention you are not equipped to vote!

Another side story is the question of whether Ron Paul has been keeping his Mitts off Mitt in order to get his son, Rand, on the ticket?  Ron or Rand Paul will at least get a speaking position and input at the convention if Ron keeps picking up delegates.

Like Father Like Son?  Maybe but smoother around the edges?

Many feel it’s all coming down to this: Ron Paul is staying in this race, no matter what, in order to assist Romney, because he wants his son to be on the Presidential ticket with Mitt Romney.

As he travels around stumping on the basis of his limited government position, he is also fishing to get his son on the ticket with another candidate in this race.  In tonight’s debate on CNN, the elder Paul had every chance to criticize Romney, but he didn’t, and instead spent his time hammering Santorum. Coincidence???

I like many of the things Ron Paul stands for in the domestic arena, but can the younger Paul effect policy changes as part of the Romney team, or will virtually none of Ron Paul’s positions be adopted in the end?  It could be interesting if they can pull it off!  As they say, politics make strange bedfellows and Romney’s presidency would be the antithesis of much of what Ron Paul has advocated.

At the conclusion of the debate on CNN, Anderson Cooper came on as the stage emptied of the candidates, and I watched with interest as Mitt Romney got up and directly went to shake Ron Paul’s hand and exchange a few words with him.

This is definitely season full of surprises!

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Audio:  Santorum’s Right on Religion - Religious Liberty… ObamaCare’s First Casualty

Rubio’s Mormon Past Revealed  -  There is a definite question as to Rubio’s eligibility to be president/VP but on this issue… Obama’s father and step-father were Muslims and his mother and grandparents were progressive atheists… Obama himself, questionable and we are worried about Mormons?  Really??

Mt. Debtmore USA

Debt Ceiling Analogy...

I’ve heard quite a few descriptions of the current debt ceiling debate lately, using the old teenage dependent’s credit card analogy. That analogy is not a bad one, I reckon, but it needs a little tweaking … in my opinion.

The analogy goes like this:

The Dhimmicrat Congress, having reached the legal limit of it’s spending capabilities and demanding a raise of the debt ceiling is like your teenage son maxxing out the credit card you gave him and now is asking for an increase in his credit limit. Since you’ve raised the limit so many times and he’s maxxed it each and every time, you’re getting a little peeved that he can’t grasp the concept of limiting his purchases.

That’s purdy close, but there’s more to it…

Your son didn’t just charge up the card, he also managed to talk several of your neighbors into loaning him even more money to blow – more money than you will earn in a lifetime. And he fully expects to pay back those loans with his credit card.

Those neighbors that he owes money to; hey hate your guts.

Your son has been boarding outlaws and hoodlums in your basement. He’s feeding them, clothing them and providing them entertainment, drugs and hookers. He’s using your money to support these people, in your own home, and they also hate your guts.

Your son has been buying expensive, custom-built guns and giving them to another set of your neighbors. These particular neighbors hate your guts also, and have actually assaulted you personally in the past on multiple occasions. Now they have some really cool weaponry to use on you – that you paid for.

Your son has hired someone to control what you can and cannot eat.

Your son has hired someone to control what you drive.

Your son has hired someone to control what you listen to on the radio.

Your son has hired someone to steal all your personal guns.

Your son has hired someone to control all those other controllers.

And each and every one of those controllers hate your guts.

Your son is now demanding that if you can’t afford extra credit card payments that you get another job. Although your son has never had a job of his own and can’t even spell the word, he’s convinced that by spending more of your money he can create some jobs for you. You will be able to work for him. He’ll pay you with your own money so you can afford to raise his credit card limit. And just to make sure that plan works smoothly he’s also subsidizing a union for you to join as his employee. The union will make sure your son treats you right because you’re paying them too. And of course, they’re giving some of that money to your son for landing them the contract.

You are getting ready to kick the living crap out of your son.

There. That’s a fine tuned analogy for ya…

Update:  Your job description as your son’s employee is to think up new innovative ways your son can swindle you.

Rather than going from the sublime to the ridiculous… we are now going the other way to here what Thomas Sowell has to say":

Thomas Sowell

Ideals Versus Realities

Many of us never thought that the Republicans would hold tough long enough to get President Obama and the Democrats to agree to a budget deal that does not include raising income tax rates. But they did -- and Speaker of the House John Boehner no doubt desires much of the credit for that.

Despite the widespread notion that raising tax rates automatically means collecting more revenue for the government, history says otherwise. As far back as the 1920s, Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon pointed out that the government received a very similar amount of revenue from high-income earners at low tax rates as it did at tax rates several times as high.

How was that possible? Because high tax rates drive investors into tax shelters, such as tax-exempt bonds. Today, as a result of globalization and electronic transfers of money, "the rich" are even less likely to stand still and be sheared like sheep, when they can easily send their money overseas, to places where tax rates are lower.

Money sent overseas creates jobs overseas -- and American workers cannot transfer themselves overseas to get those jobs as readily as investors can send their money there.

All the overheated political rhetoric about needing to tax "millionaires and billionaires" is not about bringing in more revenue to the government. It is about bringing in more votes for politicians who stir up class warfare with rhetoric.

Now that the Republicans seem to have gotten the Democrats off their higher taxes kick, the question is whether a minority of the House Republicans will refuse to pass the Boehner legislation that could lead to a deal that will spare the country a major economic disruption and spare the Republicans from losing the 2012 elections by being blamed -- rightly or wrongly -- for the disruptions.

Is the Boehner legislation the best legislation possible? Of course not! You don't get your heart's desire when you control only one house of Congress and face a presidential veto.

The most basic fact of life is that we can make our choices only among the alternatives actually available. It is not idealism to ignore the limits of one's power. Nor is it selling out one's principles to recognize those limits at a given time and place, and get the best deal possible under those conditions.

That still leaves the option of working toward getting a better deal later, when the odds are more in your favor.

There would not be a United States of America today if George Washington's army had not retreated and retreated and retreated, in the face of an overwhelmingly more powerful British military force bent on annihilating Washington's troops.

Later, when the conditions were right for attack, General Washington attacked. But he would have had nothing to attack with if he had wasted his troops in battles that would have wiped them out.

Similar principles apply in politics. As Edmund Burke said, more than two centuries ago: "Preserving my principles unshaken, I reserve my activity for rational endeavors."

What does "rational" mean? At its most basic, it means an ability to make a ratio, as with "rational numbers" in mathematics. More broadly, it means an ability to weigh one thing against another.

There are a lot of things to weigh against each other, not only as regards the economy, but also what the consequences to this nation would be to have Barack Obama get re-elected and go further down the dangerous path he has put us on, at home and abroad. Is it worth that risk to make a futile symbolic vote in Congress?

One of the good things about the Tea Party movement is that it resisted the temptation to actually form a third political party, which has been an exercise in futility, time and time again, under the American electoral system.

But, if the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party becomes just a rule-or-ruin minority, then they might just as well have formed a separate third party and gone on to oblivion.

Writers can advocate things that have no chance at the moment, for their very writing about those things persuasively can make them possible at some future date. But to adopt the same approach as an elected member of Congress risks losing both the present and the future.

Correction - Senator Kyl: GOP Agrees to Up to $200B in New Revenues - NOT

Yesterday evening, Newsmax, who is usually accurate an on top of things, reported that Senator Kyl said the GOP had caved before even getting to the so-called bi-partisan meeting this morning.  Seems that is not the case~  M~

The Debt Ceiling Fiction

When asked why someone said something idiotic or some group is advocating something moronic, I am apt to wearily reply that there is no defense against stupidity.  There is a defense and it works over the long run. It is called the truth.

It is interesting to watch how “the truth will out” as they say in detective novels. In our society, so in thrall to the mainstream press and media, the truth circulates swiftly through that portion of the population that first suspects something is amiss and then outward to the general population that can no longer ignore it.

That long, slow process occurred with the Watergate scandal that ultimately forced President, Richard Nixon to resign in 1974. It began with a 1972 break-in at the Democrat headquarters in Washington, D.C. and then just unraveled a little bit each day. It enshrined two young reporters from The Washington Post in journalism’s pantheon of heroes and probably caused a goodly number of college kids to change their major to journalism.

The Founding Fathers who fashioned a federal government after the Articles of Confederacy proved a failure for the new nation not only knew history, they were an unusually brilliant collection of scholars; even if self-taught as was common at the time. What they knew well was human nature and they knew that men were inclined to criminality and stupidity. Thus, the Constitution deliberately divides the powers vested in the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive. It also deliberately slows down the legislative process.

The system largely worked until eleven southern slave states became so incensed over trade laws passed by northern states and the growing abolition movement that they decided to secede from the Union in 1860. Abraham Lincoln said no. Then he sent a huge army to back it up.

If they had had a crystal ball, all would have known that technology would replace slave labor in a remarkably short time. If they had any sense, they would have worked out a compromise, but the stupidity factor interfered. Even the Founding Fathers “four score and seven years” earlier knew that the issue of slavery would threaten the new republic.

Big problems and big issues cannot be ignored forever.

To give you an idea how big the problem is, a CNSnews story reported that “Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner oversaw the largest increase in the national debt of any Treasury secretary in American history, presiding over a $3.7 trillion increase in debt… In fact, the debt accrued under Geithner is greater than all federal debt accrued in the first 204 years of the nation’s history.”

The United States now finds itself less than a month away from defaulting on its loans because, in just two and a half years, the current President has allowed the debt to increase to $14.2 trillion, an amount that equals the entire annual Gross Domestic Product. That’s not break even. That’s broke.

The Republicans have put forward a plan to solve the debt problem. The Democrats have not even produced a budget in more than 800 days.

That’s why this goes way beyond mere partisan politics. This is a nation that has managed, mostly due to government “entitlement” programs to bankrupt itself. The Democrats refuse to discuss modifying them in any way. Instead, they want to raise taxes on people (40% do not even pay taxes) who need that money to pay mortgages, auto loans, and all the other demands of life. Raising taxes during a Recession or a Depression is well known to be a very dumb idea.

Democrats keep insisting on it, claiming that squeezing more out of “millionaires and billionaires” will solve the nation’s problems. No, it won’t. And everyone knows this, but Democrats will not admit it. Their base is made up of union members and the usual disaffected people waiting for a handout.

Largely unmentioned is the way neither the current, nor former chairmen of the Federal Reserve had the slightest idea why all the things the government tried to do, nor their own ability to raise or lower interest rates, was having any affect on high unemployment and a stagnating economy. And that was their job!

In the July 4 edition of Business Week, Zachary Karabell, an author, historian, money manager, and economist asked a very important question, Does Government Matter? “Today, the ability of any state to govern and control its own domestic economy is severely constrained,” said Karabell.

“A global market of buyers and sellers sets interest rates, and short-term rates (which are all the Fed can directly control) are only one factor”, adding that “the ecosystem of global capital, in which trillions of dollars, goods, and services are traded daily, transcends the reach of any one government.”

The argument, an old one, is which is better, big government or small? Fiddling with the economy has usually done more harm than good. Government has an obligation to govern prudently and to encourage the free market to perform. Ponzi schemes like Social Security and Medicare invariably suffer the fate of Bernie Madoff, they collapse.

While the rest of us watch from the sidelines, the two major political parties posture and bluster over a “debt ceiling.” The nation has hit that ceiling and raised it many times.

There is no ceiling left. There’s just a trap door that leads to a failed economy. We’re tapped out. No one is going to want to purchase our treasury notes if we don’t change course. The debt ceiling financial fiction will be raised.

There are men and women in Congress who want to resolve the current crisis and there is a man in the White House who was never eligible to be president and would much rather blame everyone else, play golf, increase taxes, and raise money to run again.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

*The GOP… the Republicans seem to be willing to compromise again, way beyond what they would like to.  The Democrats, who have produced no budget in more than 800 days and no plans to attack the entitlement program issues or reducing the debt are headed to the big bipartisan meeting at the White House tomorrow empty handed.  Yet, because independents are so enamored with compromise and like to forget the facts when the immediate problem is settled. If the GOP does compromise, even if it is the right thing to do, their hard work will end up helping Obama and the Democrats because they will be able to say they engineered a compromise and averted a major crisis while the Republicans who made it possible will lose a major issue to campaign on.  Wake up independents… anything that happens between now and the 2012 Election is all manipulation and smoke and mirrors to win you over.  Then if Obama is re-elected, the day after, the hammer and sickle will fall.  For those too young to remember… the hammer and sickle were the emblems of the USSR…  Please pay attention this time and remember, the stakes are too high not to!!*