Posts Tagged ‘McCain’
The Reagan Library Debate
Sep8
By John Feehery
Rick Perry walked into an ambush at the Reagan Library last night, as he took hits on his record, on his rhetoric, and on his philosophy. John Huntsman revived his campaign with a sparkling performance. Newt Gingrich took on the role of Spiro Agnew by once again attacking the media for asking questions about the differences between the candidates (which I thought was the purpose of the debate). Michelle Bachmann joined Herman Cain in the irrelevance caucus. Rick Santorum scored a good hit against Perry, which eliminated his chance to be named to the ticket by the Big Texan. Ron Paul went where no Republican has gone before on the libertarian scale.
And Mitt Romney won the debate.
The line of the night was Perry’s Ponzi scheme claim, an utterance that will live in infamy in 30-second commercials from every anti-Perry organization on the planet for the next six months.
The second best line came from Romney: “I don’t want to eliminate Social Security. I want to save it.”
If this primary choice comes to that one debating point, Perry is finished. Old people vote in Republican primaries and they like Social Security. Even most Tea Party Republicans want Social Security to stick around for a while. In fact, most Tea Partiers believe that Social Security is not a government program at all, but a savings account that they have already paid into (with interest).
It reminds me of the sign seen at one of the big rallies: “Keep the government’s hands off of my Medicare.”
Romney looked pretty strong. He didn’t come off as smart as Huntsman, who must be kicking himself right now for hiring Jon Weaver. Weaver is not a big fan of the modern Republican Party as it currently stands, and he lets his disdain of the party faithfully shine through all too often. That means he has positioned Huntsman to be the moderate at the Tea Party, a truth-teller, a lecturer, a “leader”. Well, you can’t be a leader without followers.
Weaver helped fire-up John McCain through many years of the Arizona Senator’s many attacks on the Republican establishment. That is all well and good, as long as you attack from the right, but attacking from the center makes it awfully hard to eventually lead the flock.
Romney took some effective shots at Perry, defended his Massachusetts record ably, and mostly allowed the moderators and the other candidates to do his dirty work for him. It was an effective strategy and it delivered Romney the victory.
Romney was the winner, Hunstman a close second. Everybody else lost. Perry got kneecapped. Bachmann started her fade. The rest didn’t make much of an impact, except for Newt, who showed once again how much he hates the media.
A Grand Bargain?
Jul20
By John Feehery
I love when the Senate comes up with a grand bargain. It gets all the Washington insiders excited. The pundits love grand bargains. The media goes crazy over grand bargains.
I remember when the Senate came up with a grand bargain on immigration a couple of years ago. Ted Kennedy and John McCain came together to hammer out a comprehensive approach to fixing our borders and allowing illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship. Mel Martinez (a good guy and my wife’s former boss) went around town talking about how they were going to jam this agreement through the House.
The House balked on immigration and my guess is that they will balk on this latest grand bargain.
It is rare that the Senate can completely jam the House on issues as big as entitlement spending and taxes. As much as it might disdain the lower body, under our Constitution, the Senate cannot unilaterally impose laws without getting the House to pass them too.
Now, on the merits, I think a grand bargain sounds grand.
I agree with the President that we have a unique opportunity to do some common-sense things to cure our debt problems.
Here is what I think we should do:
We should repeal all of the spending from Obama’s stimulus plan and put the budget baseline back to 2008 levels. We should stop any new funding to pay for Obamacare.
We should let the Bush tax cuts expire.
We should make some tweaks to Social Security to slow the future increases in the cost of living adjustments. We should increase the contributions to Medicare to track those contributions with what people contribute to Social Security. We should block grant Medicaid back to the states. We should means test all entitlement programs.
We should legalize marijuana and internet poker and collect taxes from those activities.
We should get out of Afghanistan and Iraq and stop trying to rebuild those countries with our money.
We should commit a quarter of a trillion dollars to a new space program and other basic science programs over the next 20 years. We should commit another quarter of a trillion dollars to research into Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease over 20 years, so that we can help old people live more productive and better lives until the end.
We should spend less money on stupid things and more money on smart things. We should give less money to people who don’t need it and invest more money on things that help everybody.
We shouldn’t make politicians walk the plank on taxes when we have a law already in place that will cure our revenue problem.
This is my grand bargain. And like the Senate grand bargain, it has no chance of passing the House.
I love grand bargains. Doesn’t everybody?
