Sunday, January 08, 2012

Republican Debate: The failure to have any sense of cleverness


Meet the Press, and another Republican debate, just in case anyone’s changed their positions since last night’s Republican debate. They shoot horses, don’t they?

Transcript.

Gingrich again attacks Romney as a Massachusetts moderate (it’s alliterative, so you know it’s true), as “somebody who comes out of the Massachusetts culture”. You know, progressives only talk about the parts of the country they despise in private. It’s only polite.


Oh, I see what David Gregory’s doing now. He’s asking Gingrich whether Romney is unelectable (Gingrich says no) because Gingrich has a flyer that says “Romney is not electable.” This one:


Romney is very proud of enforcing English immersion in Mass. schools, it’s, ah, wicked awesome.

Santorum: Well, if his record was so great as governor of Massachusetts, why didn’t he run for re-election?

Romney says he didn’t run for reelection because not everyone wants to spend their entire life in politics. Dude, you’ve lost more elections than Santorum. [A minute later Gingrich points this out.]


He adds that he supports term limits in Washington, but if elected, he says he will definitely run for reelection.

He says his father “had good advice to me. He said, Mitt, never get involved in politics if you have to win an election to pay a mortgage.” Yes, only plutocrats and trust fund babies should be in politics.


Perry says the question is “Who is it that can invigorate the -- the Tea Party?” Yes, I’m sure Shooty McGoodhair can invigorate any party. “Who is it that can take the message of -- of smaller, outsider government that’s truly going to change that places [sic].” Outsider government? Is that like outsider art?


Huntsman & Romney got into a rather telling fight over whether H. is a traitor for having taken a job from Obama. Romney thinks that when the president is a Democrat, the highest form of patriotism is to work to make him fail (and to campaign for yourself to replace him, of course): “I think we serve our country first by standing for people who believe in conservative principles and doing everything in our power to promote an agenda that does not include President Obama’s agenda. I think the decision to go and work for President Obama is one which you took.” I guess he doesn’t plan on asking any Democrats for any help on anything if he becomes president.

Gingrich complains of “the failure of the political class to have any sense of cleverness.” For example, did you know that we could save $100 billion each year in Medicaid if we stopped “theft”?

Perry: “You know, the fact of the matter is that Americans want to have a job. That’s -- that’s the issue here. And the idea that -- that there are people clamoring for government to come and to give them assistance is just wrong-headed.”

LIKE THE ONE BETWEEN RICKY’S EARS: Santorum says Ron Paul would create “huge amounts of vacuums all over the place, and have folks like China and Iran and others.”

How are you going to make your own party uncomfortable? someone asks Rick Perry. By opening his pie hole? Perry says by supporting a balanced budget amendment and term limits.

Romney says he absolutely doesn’t discriminate against gay people and “if people are looking for someone who -- who will discriminate against gays or will in any way try and suggest that people -- that have different sexual orientation don’t have full rights in this country, they won’t find that in me” – he adds that he opposes same-sex marriage, because I guess that’s not discrimination and lack of full rights at all.


Santorum says “you can be respectful” towards gay people (although he’s never tried it himself) while denying them the right to marriage or adoption, because that’s just “promot[ing] things that you think are best for society.” And gay people are worst for society, I guess. He says if one of his sons told him he was gay, he would still love him, although obviously he would have to stone him to death. (Update: someone on Twitter – sorry about my failure of attribution here – said, but that gay son would totally hate him.)

Perry: “I’m a right-to-work guy.”

What good can labor unions do? Romney & Santorum both say they can do training. So that corporations get the benefit without having to pay for it, they don’t add.

Gingrich says the EPA is “out of touch with reality” and planned to regulate farm dust in Iowa and Arizona. This is a lie.


Perry: “I make a very proud statement and, in fact that we have a president that’s a socialist. I don’t think our founding fathers wanted America to be a socialist country.”

Paul: “I in a way don’t like to use those terms, gay rights, woman’s rights, minority rights, religious rights. There’s only one type of right. It’s the right to your liberty.”

HE WAS FOR THEOCRACY BEFORE HE WAS AGAINST IT: Why can’t we live with a nuclear Iran? Santorum: because “they’re a theocracy. They’re a theocracy that has deeply embedded beliefs that -- that the afterlife is better than this life. President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly said the principle virtue of the Islamic Republic of Iran is martyrdom.” See, they actually want to be nuked, so it’s not a deterrent.

Someday I’d like to hear Santorum explain the tenets of Buddhism.

Gingrich defends his attacks on Romney & Bain Capital: “Well, I think you have to look at the film, which I haven’t seen.”

Likewise, Romney claims not to have seen the ads put out by his SuperPAC (and then a minute later quotes “the ad that I saw.”)

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