Rick Perry shoots off mouth, foot

Perry said that if people in the Lafayette, LA movie theater had just been armed, everything would have been just fine.

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The worst of circumstances

Rick Perry mansplains to Wendy Davis (who he refers to only as “the woman who filibustered in the Senate the other day”. She’s got a name, you know, Rick: Future Governor Wendy Davis): “Who are we to say that children born into the worst of circumstances can’t grow to live successful lives?”

That’s a good state motto for Texas, but a little long to fit on a license plate.

(Update: In the same speech, Perry said of the pro-choice movement, “the louder they scream, the more we know that we are getting something done.” Which would also be a good state motto.)

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Republican Debate: I’m not going to describe all of my great exploits

Transcript.

WHAT, NEVER? NO, NEVER. WHAT, NEVER? WELL, HARDLY EVER. Perry brings up a SC steel mill Bain shut down. Romney blames the Chinese. The WSJ guy brings up a paper company Bain closed. Bain bought it with $5 million of their own money and a lot of debt, then defaulted when the debt crippled what had been a profitable company, and Bain took away $100 million in profits and fees. Romney: “Well, first of all you never want to seen an enterprise go bankrupt.” Never? Because Bain seems to have done very well indeed out of that enterprise going bankrupt.


Romney goes on to explain that Bain also bought another paper company and tried to consolidate the two plants. And by consolidate, he means fire all the unionized workers and offer them jobs in the non-unionized plant. It must take real self-restraint on Romney’s part not to grow a mustache just so that he can twirl it sinisterly when discussing his dastardly plans.

Romney clarified his position: “I don’t think people who have committed violent crimes should be allowed to vote again.”

WAR! Perry said, “The State of Texas is under assault by the federal government. I’m saying also that South Carolina is at war with the federal government and with this administration.” How did that work out for South Carolina last time?

NEWT GINGRICH EXPLAINS HOW TO BECOME EMPLOYABLE: Gingrich says people on unemployment should be forced into job training. At least that’s what will be reported, but what he actually said was “a business-run training program...” (In other words, free labor for corporations) “...to acquire the skills to be employable.” Which assumes that people are unemployed because they are unemployable losers and not because there aren’t any jobs. “Now, the fact is, 99 weeks is an associate degree.” Although under his plan, instead of a degree, you’d get to push a mop or file papers or whatever the “training program” consists of, and at the end get laid off and replaced by more government-provided “uemployables.” “It tells you everything you need to know about the difference between Barack Obama and the five of us, that we actually think work is good.” And he again called Obama “the best food stamp president in American history,” whose goal is “to maximize dependency”. Happy Martin Luther King Day, everybody!

Q: what is the highest federal income tax any American should have to pay? Perry: 7% flat tax. Santorum would have two rates, 10% & 28%. Romney: 25%. Gingrich: flat tax of 15%. Paul: 0.

HE’S HEARD ENOUGH: Will Romney release his tax returns? “time will tell.” “I think I’ve heard enough from folks saying, ‘Let’s see your tax records.’ I have nothing in them that suggests there’s any problem, and I’m happy to do so. I sort of feel like we’re showing a lot of exposure at this point, and if I become our nominee, what’s happened in history is, people have released them in about April of the coming year, and that’s probably what I’d do.” So he’s saying that primary voters don’t deserve that information. I’m also a little confused about whether that’s April of 2012 he’s talking about or 2013 – the “coming year,” he said, and after “I become our nominee,” which won’t happen by April of this year. It’s weird how ill-prepared he is to answer an inevitable question.

A SWEATER-VEST IS ALWAYS A GOOD CHOICE: Santorum attacks Obama for some program aimed at helping at-risk black girls which Sicky says has been banned from propagandizing for marriage. “This administration is deliberately telling organizations that are there to help young girls make good choices, not to tell them what the good choice is.”


Ron Paul says that Martin Luther King would be with him on the drug war thing and the war war thing, which is true, but probably not winning him that many votes among South Carolina Republicans.

Gingrich says it’s not insulting to say that black children should work as janitors in their own schools. Why, he made his daughter do janitorial work at a Baptist church when she was 13, and she learned that “if you worked, you got paid.” And schools can hire 30 black kids for the cost of one NYC school janitor, so they’ll learn that when black kids are forced to work, they get paid crap, and that when adults get paid reasonably well, they’ll be fired and replaced by school children. Happy Martin Luther King Day, everybody!

Paul says the US should have tried to get Pakistan to turn bin Laden over. Everyone jumps on him. Paul, that is, not bin Laden.

AND BY ENEMIES, HE MEANS INDIANS – LOTS AND LOTS OF INDIANS. Gingrich: “Andrew Jackson had a pretty clear-cut idea about America’s enemies: kill them.” He’s a historian, you know.

Paul: “My - my - my point is, if another country does to us what we do others, we’re not going to like it very much. So I would say that maybe we ought to consider a golden rule in - in foreign policy. Don’t do to other nations [BOOING] what we don’t want to have them do to us. So we - we endlessly bomb - we endlessly bomb these countries and then we wonder - wonder why they get upset with us?” I’m pretty sure that booing means the audience wanted other nations to bomb us too.


THE RIGHT THING: Romney: “The right thing for Osama bin Laden was the bullet in the - in the head that he received. That’s the right thing for people who kill American citizens.”

Romney: “The right course for America is to recognize we’re under attack and we’re going to have to take action around the world to protect ourselves, and hopefully we can do it as we did with Osama bin Laden, as opposed to going to war, as we had to do in the case of Iraq.” Had to do? “The right way...to keep us from having to go to those wars is to have a military so strong that no one would ever think of testing it.” How strong is that? We do have nuclear weapons and shit, right?

Romney says it’s wrong to negotiate with the Taliban as long as they’re killing American soldiers. He thinks we should negotiate with the Girl Scouts, because they’re not killing American soldiers. Added bonus: cookies!

Perry said Turkey should be kicked out of NATO because it is “ruled by what many would perceive to be Islamist terrorists.” Of course Rick Perry probably perceives the pope as an Islamist terrorist.

PERRY ALWAYS HEARS GONGS. ALL THE TIME. Perry says to the moderator about Paul, “I was just saying that I thought maybe that the noise that you were looking for was a gong.”


DISDAIN: Perry says that Panetta’s referring to the American soldiers’ urination on dead Afghans as despicable shows “this administration’s disdain all too often for our men and women in uniform.” You know what really shows disdain? Oh, you’re way ahead of me here.

Romney supports indefinite detention, although he admits it “could possibly be abused.” But he’d never abuse that power, so that’s okay then. He even says Obama wouldn’t abuse that power, but then he never says what would actually constitute an abuse of that power, so he may be setting that bar impossibly high, like when Bush said we don’t torture.

BECAUSE NOTHING SAYS “HOPE OF THE EARTH” LIKE A HONKING BIG MILITARY BUDGET: Romney: “We simply cannot continue to cut our Department of Defense budget if we are going to remain the hope of the Earth.”

Romney wants to raise the age of eligibility for Social Security “a year or two.” Gingrich wants to get “the government out of telling you when to retire.”

DELIGHTED: It being South Carolina, where there was suspicion four years ago that Romney didn’t enjoy shooting things as much as a real man does, he was asked whether he’s been keeping up his varmint-hunting. “I’m not going to describe all of my great exploits,” he said (or perhaps that was his explanation for not releasing his tax returns). But he killed a moose – no, wait, an elk! – and some pheasants. “I’m not a serious hunter, but I must admit, I guess I enjoy the sport and when I get invited I’m delighted to be able to go hunting.”


By the way, it’s probably just as well that during the I-love-guns-more-than-you-do portion of the debate, no one brought up the assassination of the guy whose birthday this is.

Gingrich says Mittens’ Super PAC ran ads saying Newt wants to abort adorable Chinese babies. Mittens counter-charges that Gingrich’s Super PAC’s anti-Romney film is “probably the biggest hoax since Bigfoot,” upsetting Ron Paul supporters who believe Bigfoot runs the Fed. He says he wants Super PACs ended. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could give what they would like to to campaigns?” asks the multi-millionaire.


OH RICK, IF YOU WERE PRESIDENT, YOUR HAND WOULD NEVER BE OFF THE BIBLE: Perry: “And when I’m the president of the United States that border will be locked down and it will be secure by one year from the time I take my hand off the Bible.”

Then they all urinated on Juan Williams, the end.

Fact-check of the day

“But neither [Patton nor Churchill] was known to have urinated on human corpses.”

It honestly hadn’t occurred to me that one of the candidates would actually step in to defend pissing on corpses, but if one of them would, yeah, it was always gonna be Rick Perry.

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.”)

Republican Debate: I’d rather be at the shooting range

Another debate, this time all rich white guys, like the Founding Fathers and Jesus intended.

Transcript. Pictures in this post illustrate the many arm positions of the Republican Party.

AND IF THERE’S ONE THING MITT ROMNEY KNOWS, IT’S TEPID: Romney says Obama deserves no credit for the 200,000 new jobs last month. “His policies have made the recession deeper, and his policies have made the recovery more tepid.”


OBAMA’S A COCK, IS WHAT MITT’S SAYING: “You know, it’s like the rooster taking responsibility for the sunrise.”

Sick Rantorum, as we shall be calling him today, says there’s no one who has more experience dealing with Iran than he does.

Gingrich keeps verbally hyperlinking to a NYT story about Bain Capital. Romney responds that the NYT is anti-free enterprise and then repeats that his claim that Bain created 100,000 jobs is net jobs, which it is not (and is a lie in other ways as well). Then he goes on some more about the importance of having presidents with business experience. Let’s see, the last president with business experience was George W. Bush, and the previous Republican with business experience was, if I’m not mistaken, Herbert Hoover. So how’d they work out?

Ron Paul says that Rantorum was corrupt as a congresscritter and then “became a high-powered lobbyist”. Sick tries to sound outraged by this, while being secretly pleased that someone called him “high-powered” for the first time in his life without it being immediately followed by “douche nozzle.”

Sick Rantorum: “I am a cause guy.”


Huntsman keeps talking about what a great job he did as governor, but interestingly never names the state of which he was the governor.

Gingrich is asked about Ron Paul calling him a chicken hawk. Gingrich says his father was in the Army for 27 years. I don’t think it works that way.

Ron Paul refuses to talk about the Ron Paul White Supremacist Newsletter and Jew-Hater Monthly, or whatever it was called. He says one of his heroes is Martin Luther King “because he practiced the libertarian principle of peaceful resistance and peaceful civil disobedience”. He says “true racism” (I guess as opposed to hotels putting up “No negroes” signs, which he thinks entirely their business) is in the enforcement of drug laws. Which it is, but so is opposition to the Civil Rights Acts, which his libertarian hero King supported.

Actually, now that I think about it, this is Ron Paul’s big move to get past the racist newsletter thing? I mean, on the one hand, he’s right about the drug war and its racist implementation, but on the other hand you can just hear him thinking, “What can I talk about that’ll get them off my back? I know! Those darkies really love their doobies!”


JUST LEAVE IT ALONE: Contraception comes up because Sick Rantorum has been making such a big deal about it lately. Asked whether states have the right to ban contraception, Twitt Romney acts like he’s never heard of such a thing, “can’t imagine” a state wanting to do so, has no idea if they have a right to do so, and it’s a silly question anyway. So basically he has no opinions on how the Constitution works or the right of privacy. Stephanopoulos points out that Romney went to Harvard Law School, whereupon Mittens pretends never to have heard of Griswold. But he adds that he wants to appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, which was decided on the same right of privacy as Griswold. But “Contraception, it’s working just fine, just leave it alone.”

Asked about gay marriage, Gingrich keeps referring to the “sacrament” of marriage and even to “a historic sacrament” (he’s a historian, you know). Sacrament is, of course, a religious term. “The sacrament of marriage was based on a man and woman, has been for 3,000 years.” (He’s a historian, you know.)


Sick Rantorum says this is a federal issue because “we can’t have different laws with respect to marriage.” Somebody should tell him that every state has its own divorce laws. He says the Constitutional amendment he wants would not only ban future gay marriage, but abrogate existing ones (like the 1,800 in New Hampshire).

Romney says we should discriminate against gay couples because “for a society to say we want to encourage, through the benefits that we associate with marriage, people to form partnerships between men and women and then raise children, which we think will -- that will be the ideal setting for them to be raised.” No one asks them why that view doesn’t entail a sexist, antediluvian view of gender roles.

Gingrich says the real question is anti-Christian (especially anti-Catholic) bigotry.

Romney says “John Adams, who wrote the Constitution, would be surprised” that gay marriage is said to be a right. He would be especially surprised because he was in France at the time, not writing the Constitution, and pining for Laura Linney.

WARP DRIVE, ENGAGE! Perry “would send troops back into Iraq,” which is being taken over by Iran. In fact, “We’re going to see Iran, in my opinion, move back in at literally the speed of light.”


Sick Rantorum: “The Iranian people love America because we stand up for the truth and say -- and call evil, which is what Ahmadinejad and the mullahs are, we call evil what it is.” Of course he also calls gay sex and abortion and birth control evil. Really, he calls a lot of things evil. Rather like Ahmadinejad and the mullahs, come to think of it. So what does he have against those guys?

BECAUSE YOU’RE MAKING UP NUMBERS AGAIN? Romney: “Our income per person in America is 50 percent higher than that of the average person in Europe. Why is that?” That’s probably just a metric thing.

AT WHICH POINT WE’LL BE FORCED TO MEASURE IN METRIC. AUTHORITARIAN, EUROPEAN SOCIALIST METRIC: Romney: “We’re only inches away from no longer being a free economy. ... But, really, this election is about the soul of America. ... We’re increasingly becoming like Europe. Europe isn’t working in Europe. It will never work here.” I think he’s saying that Europe doesn’t have a soul. Or at least that those damned Frogs didn’t convert to Mormonism when he gave them a chance.


Gingrich defends Obama from Romney: “A -- a little bit harsh on President Obama, who, I’m sure in his desperate efforts to create a radical European socialist model, is sincere.” See what he did there?

I DUB THEE A KNIGHT OF THE MIDDLE CLASS: Santorum attacks Romney for having used the term “middle class.” “There are no classes in America. We are a country that don’t [sic] allow for titles. We don’t put people in classes. ... That’s not the -- that’s not the language that I’ll use as president. I’ll use the language of bringing people together.”

SANTORUM WORKED IN THE METAPHORICAL COAL FIELDS OF K STREET: “I stood firm on those and worked, actually, in the coal fields, if you will, against this idea that we needed a cap and trade program.”

The killer question: if you weren’t here, what would you be doing on a Saturday night?

Perry would be at the shooting range, shooting off his guns at random and laughing maniacally.

Gingrich would be watching “watching the college championship basketball game.” (UNKNOWN): “Football game.” GINGRICH: “I mean, football game.”

Santorum would also be watching the basketball I mean football game, but he’d do it with his family, because he’s both manly and breeds like a rabbit. Mittens also loves him some football.

Ron Paul: “I’d be home with my family. But if they all went to bed, I’d probably read an economic textbook” (while masturbating furiously every time it mentioned the gold standard, I’m guessing).

Republican debate: Concerned about not appearing to be zany

Again, no transcript, and I only saw bits of it, so this won’t be in chronological order.

WE WILL GET IT ON: Everyone wants to debate Obama. Gingrich says Obama will lose in the “seven three-hour debates” that will take place in Gingrich’s mind. Perry says “I hope Obama and I debate a lot. I’ll get there early.” Get there early, why that’s so crazy, it might just work! “We will get it on”. Cue porn music.

HOW ABOUT APPEARING TO BE A LARGE, MISSHAPEN POTATO? Gingrich: “I’m very concerned about not appearing to be zany.”


UTTERLY IRRATIONAL: Gingrich called Obama “utterly irrational to say I’m now going to veto a middle class tax cut [i.e., the payroll tax cut congressional Republicans tied to the Keystone XL pipeline] to protect left-wing environmental extremists in San Francisco...” San Francisco, always with the San Francisco. “...so that we’re going to kill American jobs, weaken American energy, make us more vulnerable to the Iranians and do so in a way that makes no sense to any normal, rational American.” As Adlai Stevenson said, that’s not enough, we need a majority.


Bachmann accused Gingrich of making Baby Jesus cry by saying that life begins at the implantation of the embryo, not at conception: “The Republican party can’t get the issue of life wrong”. As speaker, she says, Gingrich failed to defund Planned Parenthood. And then she accused him of supporting infanticide (as Speaker he argued against pulling party support from Republican candidates who didn’t support banning “partial-birth abortion”).


Santorum accused The Ten Thousand Dollar Man of having, as governor of Massachusetts, “personally... issued gay marriage licenses,” just because gay marriage was legal.

BUT ARE THEY FACTS? Bachmann: “It’s outrageous to say over and over again during the debates to say that I don’t have my facts right. I am a serious candidate for president of the United States and my facts are accurate,” adding, probably, “They’re coming to steal your light bulbs!”


HE WAS PLAYING ANGRY BIRDS ON HIS PHONE UNDER THE PODIUM: “Good Hair” Perry says he’s “ready for the next level.”

THEN HE TACKLED RON PAUL: Perry: “I hope I am the Tim Tebow of the Iowa caucuses.”

GOOD MANNERS COST NOTHING, YOUNG MAN: Romney accused Obama of having “a foreign policy based on pretty please”.


Huntsman: “We have been kicked around as a people. We are getting screwed as Americans.”


MAYBE GOOGLE BOY SHOULDN’T BE USING THE PHRASE “BOTTOM UP”: Santorum: “Medical savings accounts are a bottom up, not top down solution.”

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF TATOOINE: The Ten Thousand Dollar Man: “In the real world that the president has not lived in... not every business succeeds. In the real world, some things don’t make it.” You may be reminded of that later, Mittens.


SO THEY ASPIRE TO EMULATE IRAN? Santorum says Iran is run by a “radical theocracy,” and Bachmann says Iran is led by an “avowed [sic] madman” and wants to “set up a worldwide caliphate” (and Romney keeps calling for an “American Century” – what’s your point?).

THAT’S A TRICK QUESTION, RIGHT? Ron Paul, though, asks, “Why do we have to bomb so many countries?” He says “We don’t need another war.” Hey, we don’t need a flat-screen tv, we don’t need another donut, but we’re Americans, dammit.


BUT THOSE ARE THE FUNNEST PARTS OF THE JOB: Ron Paul: “I don't want to police individual activities or lifestyle, and I don't want to run the economy.”

LET’S ALL GO TO THE LOBBY: Gingrich says he did “no lobbying of any kind” for Freddie Mac. Hell, he didn’t need to, because he was rich from giving speeches and writing all these “best-selling books”. Readers: have any of you actually bought one of these “best-selling” books? Has anyone you know ever bought one? Bachmann says “You don’t need to be within the technical definition of being a lobbyist to still be influence-peddling”. Wait, did Crazy Eyes just say something that made sense? Gingrich says that “There are a lot of government-sponsored enterprises that are awfully important and do an awfully good job.” I’m assuming his candidacy is now over.


Everyone hates the courts. Gingrich calls the 9th Circuit “anti-American” because of that 2002 Pledge of Allegiance decision and says courts have become “grotesquely dictatorial.” Envy much? He wants to fire judges that disagree with him, and order them to come to Congress to explain any decisions he dislikes. Bachmann denies that the courts are the final arbiters of law (fuck Marbury v. Madison!), praises Iowans for voting down the justices who supported gay marriage.

Republican Debate: Ten-thousand-dollar bet?

No transcript available, so this’ll be a bit jumbled.

Romney came out firmly against lunar colonies.

Bachmann talked about “Newt Romney,” which is either a reference to their both having supported a health insurance mandate in the past, or to some slash fic she’s been posting anonymously on the internet.


Tweaked again by Perry about removing from the paperback edition of his book a reference to extending Romneycare nationwide, Twitt responded, “I’ll tell you what: 10,000 bucks? Ten-thousand-dollar bet?” At which point, they might as well have turned off the cameras and gone home, since that’s all anyone will remember. What’s interesting about the rich guy mistakes – this, demolishing the mansion in San Diego to build an even bigger mansion, etc – is that he keeps making them over and over.


MA, MA, WHERE’S MY PA? I don’t know what it says about the state of politics that it won’t have occurred to most viewers that there’s something out of the ordinary about a candidate talking about another candidate’s sex life. I don’t think Blaine went after Cleveland’s alleged illegitimate child personally. Rick Perry, though: “If you cheat on your wife, you’ll cheat on your business partner, so I think that issue of fidelity is important.”

GONE TO THE WHITE HOUSE, HA HA HA: Gingrich responded, “I’ve said in my case, I’ve made mistakes at times -- I’m also a 68-year-old grandfather and I think people have to measure what I do now.” I think he’s saying that he can’t get it up anymore, so the White House interns are probably safe. I wonder how Callista feels about the affair that turned into her marriage being referred to as a “mistake.” And about those grandchildren – their grandmother was the woman with cancer you divorced. Gingrich says “I’ve had to go to God for forgiveness.” So that’s okay then.


In the talk about Israel, Gingrich and Romney both tried to position themselves as close as possible to their good friend “Bibi,” promising to subordinate their Middle East policies not just to Israel but to Likud. Romney literally said that before he’d make a statement like Gingrich’s about the Palestinians being an invented people, he’d call Bibi and ask permission. No one had a sympathetic word for the Palestinians and several strongly implied that they were all terrorists. Gingrich doubled down on the “invented people” thing – “I spoke as a historian” (and he usually gets $1.6 million for that) – why, he says, the term “Palestinian” was never even heard before 1977. Also, speaking the “truth” about Palestinians’ non-existence makes him exactly like Reagan calling the Soviet Union an evil empire. He complained that “we [are] in a situation where every day rockets are fired into Israel” – every day? I think not – “while the United States -- the current administration, tries to pressure the Israelis into a peace process.” You know when you need a peace process? When rockets are fired into your country “every day.” Mittens said Gingrich threw “incendiary words into a place which is a boiling pot.” If it’s already boiling, then... oh, never mind.


Romney accused Gingrich of being a, gasp, career politician, and G. shot back, “The only reason you didn’t become a career politician is that you lost to Teddy Kennedy in 1994.” Romney said, “Losing to Teddy Kennedy was probably the best thing I could have done.” Boy, he’s just lucky that way.

The candidates were asked to prove that they understood what it’s like to be poor even though none of them are poor. Perry said he didn’t have running water growing up; Gingrich said he once lived in an apartment over a gas station. Romney admits he’s never been poor, but his father was, so that’s close enough. Michele Bachmann says she still clips coupons, which brings up the frightening prospect of Michele Bachmann with a pair of scissors.


Bachmann praises Herman Cain for teaching her to “reduce things to a very simple level so people can understand it” and now “you can’t have a debate without saying 9-9-9,” but rather than “9-9-9,” her motto will be “win, win, win.”



(Update: Gingrich on Palestine: “These people are terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools. They have textbooks that say, ‘If there are 13 Jews and nine Jews are killed, how many Jews are left?’” ABC did not give a reaction shot of Rick Perry, but I’ll bet he was working it out on his fingers.)

Republican Foreign Policy Debate: All of us will be in danger for the rest of our lives

Tonight’s debate was brought to you by the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and Satan. Some of the questions came from Ed Meese, Paul Wolfowitz, and David Addington, a reminder that as bumbling, inept, proudly ignorant, and tongue-tied as this bunch of candidates might be, their party has behind them a talent pool of some of the most evil bastards in the world ready to staff their administration.

Transcript.

“I’m Wolf Blitzer and yes, that’s my real name.”

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CLUE?: Ron Paul’s opening statement: “I am convinced that needless and unnecessary wars are a great detriment.”

WHERE’S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE, WILLARD? Romney: “I’m Mitt Romney and yes, Wolf, that’s also my first name.”


AN HONEST UNDERSTANDING: Gingrich wants to extend the Patriot Act forever, and strengthen it, “building an honest understanding that all of us will be in danger for the rest of our lives.”

Ron Paul responds, “you never have to give up liberty for security,” and is immediately pepper-sprayed by Lt. Pike.

WHAT WE HAVE TO REALIZE: Bachmann: “We have to realize we’re in a very different war”. She repeats her line from two debates ago about Obama “hand[ing] over our interrogation of terrorists to the ACLU. He has outsourced it to them. Our CIA has no ability to have any form of interrogation for terrorists.” Because it doesn’t count as interrogation if there’s no waterboarding.

SOMEONE WE’LL LOOK AT: Perry wants to privatize the TSA and eliminate unions. Ditto Santorum, who also wants to profile Muslims, especially young male Muslims. “I think Muslims will be someone we’ll look at.” Cain wants “targeted identification.” “If you take a look at the people who are trying to kill us it would be easy to figure out.” Because they look all terroristy, if you know what I mean. About 30 seconds later he calls Blitzer “Blitz.” So much for targeted identification.

WITH THEIR PARTIES AND THEIR LOUD MUSIC, I’M GUESSING: Huntsman says Pakistan is “the country that ought to keep everybody up at night.” He calls Pakistan “a haven for bad behavior.”


Bachmann, who does not know what the word epicenter means, calls Pakistan “the epicenter of dealing with terrorism.” So which is it, a haven or an epicenter? She says the possibility of Al Qaida getting Pakistani nukes “is more than an existential threat. We have to take this very seriously.” She doesn’t know what the word existential means either. She says Pakistan is “kind of like too nuclear to fail.” Perry says he would cut off all aid and send Pakistan to its room until it proves it can be trusted, and then Bachmann calls him naive, so yeah, that happened.

Perry thinks the answer is to get Afghanistan, India and Pakistan into a free-trade zone, which would get “Pakistan to understand that they have to work with all of the countries in that region.”

HEY, MITT, DON’T LET THE PITH HELMET MESS UP YOUR HAIR: “We need to bring Pakistan into the 21st century, or the 20th century for that matter,” just like “what happened in Indonesia back in the 1960s, where -- where we helped Indonesia move toward modernity with new leadership.” And gave them names of people to be killed as part of the genocidal slaughter of a million people. You know, modernity.

Romney says “This is not time for America to cut and run” from Afghanistan. I’m sure he’ll tell us when it is time for America to cut and run.

Gingrich stopped in the middle of talking about killing bin Laden to ask whether he had 30 seconds or longer to give his answer, because “I’m happy to play by the rules, I just want to know what they are.” Which I thought was amusing because he meant play by the rules as far as answering within a given time-frame, not play by the rules against sending troops into a country secretly to kill people. He says Pakistan was furious with us about that, but we should have been furious at them, because Gingrich likes pretending to be furious about things.


Some Heritage Foundation douche asks if we should help Israel attack Iran.

MOUNTAINOUS: Herman Cain reminds us that “when you talk about attacking Iran, it is a very mountainous region.” But “in some instances, depending upon how strong the plan is, we would join with Israel for that, if it was clear what the mission was and it was clear what the definition of victory was.”

victory >noun (pl. victories) an act of defeating an opponent in a battle or competition.
-ORIGIN Latin victoria.

Hope that helps.

Ron Paul says he wouldn’t, because Israel has several hundred nuclear missiles and “they can take care of themselves,” if by take care of themselves you mean turn the Middle East into a radioactive hellscape.

Herman Cain again wants to remind us that Iran is very mountainous. He does not like heights. Hell, he won’t even sexually harass tall women.

It’s like he learns one new fact for each debate, and this one was that Iran is mountainous.

SERIOUS: Perry wants to sanction the Iranian Central Bank and put a no-fly zone over Syria. “And in that moment, they will understand that America is serious.” But then they’d realize it was “President Perry” ordering these things, and understand that America is not serious.

Blitz, as he will no doubt forever henceforth be known, asks if cutting off all Iranian oil wouldn’t wreck the European economy. Gingrich says that his energy program would actually produce an energy surplus in the United States, which would evidently be large enough to “literally replace the Iranian oil.” So the US would suddenly become a huge net exporter of energy with what, dilithium crystals?

The Newtster goes on: “But if we were serious, we could break the Iranian regime, I think, within a year, starting candidly with cutting off the gasoline supply to Iran, and then, frankly, sabotaging the only refinery they have.”


Bachmann says that Obama “met with [Iran] with no preconditions. It’s the doctrine of appeasement.” When did that happen?

Santorum says he supported AIDS assistance to Africa because “Africa was a country on the brink.” Santorum says that “America is that shining city on the hill.” No word from Cain on whether the “country” of Africa is mountainous, but the “city” of America definitely sounds mountainous.

Blitz keeps having to repeat the questions for Cain.

Ron Paul says “the [foreign] aid is all worthless.”

Romney thinks a trillion dollars is being taken out of the defense budget and put into Obamacare. Paul says nonsense, and is immediately pepper-sprayed by Lt. Pike.

Romney says “The right course in America is to stand up to Iran with crippling sanctions” – if I were a psychoanalyst, I’d have hours of fun analyzing Twitt’s notion of “standing up” to someone by “crippling” them. And we should indict Ahmadinejad for violating the Genocide Convention, because why not.

OR MAYBE A NICE CARD: And once he’s president, “my first trip -- my first foreign trip will be to Israel to show the world we care about that country and that region.”

Gingrich says “if we were a serious country,” “we would open up enough oil fields in the next year that the price of oil worldwide would collapse.” Collapse? If we had that as much oil under our feet as he seems to think, well, nobody better light a match. Also, “Lean Six Sigma,” which sounds like the name of one of his crappy novels.

Gingrich says he would bomb Iranian nuclear facilities “only as a last recourse and only as a step toward replacing the regime.” Bombing our way to a friendly regime in Iran, because what could go wrong.


Rick Perry says the supercommittee failed – “it was a super-failure” – because Rick Perry is hilarious. And if Leon Panetta is an honorable man, he will resign to protest the sequestrations. So obviously that will happen, because Little Leon wouldn’t want Rick Perry to think he wasn’t an honorable man.

WHAT HER VOICE(S) SAID: Bachmann: “Let me answer that in the context of the super committee, because I was involved in the middle of that fight as a member of Congress this summer. And my voice said this. I said it’s time for us to draw a line in the sand.”

I KNEW JIMMY MONROE; JIMMY MONROE WAS A FRIEND OF MINE; AND YOU, SIR... Rick Perry: “I think it’s time for a 21st century Monroe Doctrine.” Evidently “We know that Hamas and Hezbollah are working in Mexico, as well as Iran, with their ploy to come into the United States.”

Ron Paul calls for an end to the war on drugs, and is immediately pepper-sprayed by Lt. Pike. He says we should eliminate the entire welfare state, which is just an incentive for illegal immigrants to bring their families.

Gingrich calls for a “humane” immigration policy, with “something like a World War II Selective Service Board that, frankly, reviews the people who are here.” He’d consider letting people who’ve been here 25 years and have grandchildren and are in a local church (he mentioned that twice) stay. “[A]s somebody who believes strongly in family” – why, I’ve had several! – “you’ll have a hard time explaining why that particular subset is being broken up and forced to leave”.

Bachmann, selectively listening to Gingrich, or just not understanding, keeps saying he wants amnesty for 11 million people and a federal DREAM Act. “We need to move away from magnets, not offer more.” Magnets, as we know, scare our Michele, for some reason.


Next up is Romney, who doesn’t like magnets either, because they might get too close to his robotic CPU; he wants to “turn... off the magnets of amnesty”.

Perry is also anti-magnet (they mess his hair up somehow? I got nothin’.)

Romney says “The answer is we’re going to have a system that gives people who come legally a card that identifies them as coming here legally.” Hey, I know, we could make that card yellow, no wait, green, yeah green. “Employers are going to be expected to inspect that card, see if they’re here legally.”

The Blitz helpfully prefaces a question: “Herman Cain, you may not know this, but today Governor Perry called for a no-fly zone, for the U.S. to participate in a no-fly zone over Syria.” He actually did that in this very debate, but yeah, Herman Cain probably doesn’t know this.

You know, I could analyze what Cain and Perry said about Syria, but why?

Oh wait, somewhere in the middle of his answer, Perry started talking about how Syria and Iran are linked, so a no-fly zone over Syria is one of the ways we stop Iran developing nuclear weapons.

Asked about the Arab Spring, Huntsman is talking about the end of the Ottoman Empire.

Paul notes that a no-fly zone would be an act of war. “I would say why don’t we mind our own business?” He is immediately pepper-sprayed by Lt. Pike.

Romney, perhaps after exposure to a magnet, started gibbering: “President Obama’s foreign policy is one of saying, first of all, America’s just another nation with a flag. I believe America is an exceptional and unique nation. President Obama feels that we’re going to be a nation which has multipolar balancing militaries. I believe that American military superiority is the right course. President Obama says that we have people throughout the world with common interests. I just don’t agree with him. I think there are people in the world that want to oppress other people, that are evil. President Obama seems to think that we’re going to have a global century, an Asian century. I believe we have to have an American century, where America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world.” He does, however, point out that a no-fly zone in Syria is silly because there’s no bombing.

Someone asks what security issue they’re worried about that nobody has asked them about. Santorum says “militant socialists” in Central and South America “bonding together” with radical Islamists. Paul worries about overreaction and getting into more unnecessary wars, and is immediately pepper-sprayed by Lt. Pike. Perry worries about Communist China which “is destined for the ash heap of history because they are not a country of virtues,” with the forced abortions and cybersecurity. Romney says Hezbollah in Latin America. Cain says cyber attacks. Gingrich says WMD attacks on an American city, electromagnetic pulse attacks, and cyber attacks. Bachmann says Al-Shabaab in Minnesota. Huntsman says the American economy and the trust deficit.

Republican foreign policy debate: If we reelect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon

Another debate, which CBS calls the Commander in Chief Debate, which would be appropriate if the subject were confined to military issues but is not because it was also about foreign policy.

Transcript part 1, part 2.

Twitt Romney said Iran’s nuclear program (which he calls “their nuclear folly”) is “of course, President Obama’s greatest failing, from a foreign policy standpoint”. He should have encouraged Iranian dissidents with covert aid and threatened military action against Iran. “Look, one thing you can know-- and that is if we reelect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if we elect Mitt Romney... they will not have a nuclear weapon.”


Gingrich agrees that Obama “skipped all the ways to be smart” about Iran. Maybe Gingrich shouldn’t talk about skipping. In fact, I want everyone to close your eyes and picture Newt Gingrich skipping.

Anyway, Newton says that the smart thing to do is “maximum covert operations,” including murdering their scientists – Republicans just do not like science – “covertly, all of it deniable,” to team up with Israel, undermine Iran’s government and if it fails to collapse, go in militarily.

Ron Paul is against going to war with Iran.

They weren’t going to ask Perry about Iran, but he insisted on telling them anyway. He would “sanction the Iranian Central Bank right now and shut down that country’s economy.”

Santorum says we should work with Israel to let them bomb the nuclear program out of existence “before the next explosion we hear in Iran is a nuclear one and then the world changes.” Sounds familiar.

Huntsman wants to bring US troops home from Afghanistan, because we’ve won.


Romney says he would never negotiate with the Taliban.

Gingrich, playing the history professor, badly, says, “the Taliban survives for the... very same reason that historically we said guerillas always survive, which is they have a sanctuary. The sanctuary’s Pakistan. You’re never gonna stop the Taliban as long as they can sort of hide.” Which is why Nixon bombing Cambodia defeated the Viet Cong, right Newt?

Major Garrett, who is not a major, quotes Herman Cain that the US needs to be clear about who its friends and foes are. Are you clear about which one Pakistan is, Mr. Cain? No, Herman Cain is not. Because bin Laden and because Karzai said he would side with Pakistan in a US-Pakistan dispute (which actually raises questions about Karzai, not Pakistan, obviously). “Will they make commitments relative to the commitment of their military, if we have to make commitments?” I’m guessing Newt Gingrich squirmed each time Cain used the word commitment.

Asked about Afghanistan, Rick Perry talked about foreign aid instead. And “The foreign aid budget in my administration for every country is gonna start at zero dollars. Zero dollars. And then we’ll have a conversation. Then we’ll have a conversation in this country about whether or not a penny of our taxpayer dollar needs to go into those countries. And Pakistan is clearly sending us messages, Mitt.” Are you sure that’s not the voices in your head sending you messages? “It’s clearly sending us messages that they, they don’t deserve our foreign aid that we’re getting, because they’re not bein’ honest with us.”

Bachmann says Iran is plotting a “worldwide nuclear war” against Israel.


Gingrich agrees about starting foreign aid at zero “and say, ‘Explain to me why I should give you a penny.’” Clearly the problem with foreign aid is that foreign countries aren’t made to humiliatingly beg President Newt nearly enough. And Egypt should be cut off too, if “the Arab Spring become[s] an anti-Christian spring”.

Santorum says we have to give aid to Pakistan because they have nukes. Oddly, this statement is being treated as a sign of his relative sophistication. He is, admittedly, the only one willing to suggest that the US has to work at friendship with other nations, rather than seeing every other nation on earth as supplicants for our favor.

Gingrich says for the second time that he would “adopt the Reagan/John Paul II/Thatcher strategy towards Iran.” And towards North Korea.

Asked to demonstrate his famous outside-the-box thinking, Gingrich says he would repudiate Agenda 21 and apply Lean Six Sigma to the Pentagon. Okay then.

Asked when he would overrule his generals, Cain says he would surround himself with the right people. “You will know you’re makin’ the right decision when you consider all the facts and ask them for alternatives. It is up to the commander in chief to make that judgment call based upon all the facts. And because I’ll have mult-- a multiple group of people offering different recommendations, this gives me the best opportunity to select the one that makes the most amount of sense.” Isn’t a leader supposed to set the agenda, not tick a box?

Drink it in, ladies, drink it in.

Ah. Asked the same question, Santorum says he’d come with a clear agenda, just like I said, and, will only hire people who share his approach. Suddenly Cain listening to different recommendations and ticking a box sounds more appealing than the ideological bubble Santorum plans to live in. The American people, he says, would be “electing someone who’s gonna be very crystal clear.” Not just crystal clear. Very crystal clear.

Speaking of being very crystal clear, Santorum says about the murdered Iranian nuclear scientists: “I hope that the United States has been involved with that.”

Perry says being “commander in chief” of the Texas National Guard is just like being president. “I’ve dealt with generals.”


Cain: “I do not agree with torture, period.” Please no one tell Cain about his little tell until I get a chance to play poker with him. Cain: “Wow, look at these cards, I’ve got a really great hand here, period.” Me: “Raise.”

“However, I will trust the judgment of our military leaders to determine what is torture and what is not torture.” And waterboarding isn’t torture, it’s enhanced interrogation, and he’d bring it back.

Bachmann also loves her some waterboarding. She says “I think it was very effective.” And Obama “is allowing the ACLU to run the CIA,” adding “according to the voices in my head which are running my mouth.” Indeed, “when we interdict a terrorist on the battlefield, we have no jail for them.” Um, what? “It is as though we have decided we want to lose in the War on Terror under President Obama. That’s not my strategy. My strategy will be that the United States will be victorious in the War on Terror.” See, and you didn’t think she had a strategy.

Ron Paul says waterboarding is torture, illegal under international law, and immoral, and uncivilized, and doesn’t work. Huntsman agrees.

Can a president simply order the killing of an American citizen suspected of terrorism? Absolutely, says Romney. Then he says that “this century must be an American century where America has the strongest values, the strongest economy, and the strongest military.” Nice to invoke “strongest values” right after advocating lawless executions. And a couple of seconds after that he said, “And I will stand and use whatever means necessary within the law to make sure that we protect America’s citizens and Americans’ rights.” Law? Rights?


Gingrich denies that Awlaki was a “terrorist suspect. He’s a person who was found guilty under review of actively seeking the death of Americans. ... He was found guilty by a panel that looked at it and reported to the president.” He even says that that is the rule of law. “Waging war on the United States is outside criminal law.”

Perry says China needs “to change their virtues.”

Romney calls for a trade war against China, because there’s a trade war going on now.

Huntsman points out that Romney is wrong that we can take China to the WTO on currency manipulation charges.

A question for Perry from Twitter. Would Israel also start at zero? Yes, but they’d jew us up (as they say in Texas).

Cain says the Arab Spring has “gotten totally out of hand” because the protesters were really the Muslim Brotherhood in disguise. Obama “has been on the wrong side in nearly every situation in the Arab world”.

Gingrich complains that Mubarak “was dumped overnight by this administration”. He also says he would defeat Syria through covert means. You know, Newt, it’s not covert if you guys keep talking about it. He thinks getting rid of Bashar al-Assad is simply a matter of will: “if the United States and Europe communicated clearly that Assad was going to go, I think you would find Europe, there’s a very tiny faction. And I think you would find him likely to be replaced very rapidly.”


And then, the questioning is turned over to South Carolina’s senators Lindsay Graham and Jim DeMint, because the debate took place in South Carolina and they wanted to remind us why South Carolina is awful.

Graham (“Three-part question. I hope I can remember all three parts”) asks about torture and Guantanamo. Cain is in favor of both because “pampering terrorists isn’t something that we ought to do.” Ditto Santorum. Paul says “We’re pretending we’re at war. We haven’t declared the war, but we’re at war against a tactic. And therefore, there’s no limits to it.” Perry says “these techniques” help save American soldiers’ lives, and “that’s what happens in war” and “I will be for it until I die.”

DeMint asks what programs they’d cut. Bachmann says the entire Great Society: “If you look at China, they don’t have food stamps.” Well, sure, because an hour later you’d want food stamps again (sorry). “If you look at China, they’re in a very different situ-- they save for their own retirement security. They don’t have pay FDC. They don’t have the modern welfare state. And China’s growing. And so what I would do is look at the programs that LBJ gave us with The Great Society, and they’d be gone.” That’s why China built the Great Wall: to keep out Americans fleeing to China to escape from the Great Society.

Romney says we don’t need to invade Pakistan to clear the safe havens, because Pakistan is “comfortable” with our using drones. I’d make fun of that word choice if it weren’t sadly appropriate.

Republican Debate: Commerce, education and, uh.... Oops

Transcript.

Naturally, the questioning began with Herman Cain: how do we save Italy’s economy [insert stupid pizza joke here]. He tries not to say anything about Italy, but on a follow-up, says that Italy is too far gone to save. Sorry, Italy.

OH, I AM SO NOT TOUCHING THIS ONE: Cain: “This administration has done nothing but put stuff in the caboose, and it’s not moving this economy.”


Romney insists that Europe can take care of its own problems, in spite of the evidence of centuries of history to the contrary.

ROMNEY: “I’m a man of steadiness and constancy,” adding, “unless you don’t want me to be.” He offered as proof of this steadiness and constancy that he has been married to same woman for 42 years. Which is one year less than Herman Cain.


Perry: “The next president of the United States needs to send a powerful message not just to the people of this country, but around the world, that America is going to be America again”. He didn’t say what country America is now.

PERRY: “And it doesn’t make any difference whether it’s Wall Street or whether it’s some corporate entity or whether it’s some European country. If you are too big to fail, you are too big.” So should Italy be broken up and sold off? Oh wait, Berlusconi’s already pretty much done that.


Bachmann says we have to “legalize American energy.”

Cain: “The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion based on unfounded accusations.” Well, if you hadn’t made those settlements that kept the cases out of courts of law...

NONE OF THAT ACTIVITY: Cain: “And for every -- one person that comes forward with a false accusation, there are probably -- there are thousands who would say none of that sort of activity ever came from Herman Cain.”


Gingrich blames Occupy Wall Street on the media, which fails to explain how the economy works. For example, “I have yet to hear a single reporter ask a single Occupy Wall Street person a single rational question about the economy that would lead them to say, for example, ‘Who is going to pay for the park you are occupying if there are no businesses making a profit?’” Dude, you just blew my mind.

A minute before that, Romney had also laughed at how stoopid protesters are: “I remember asking someone, ‘Where do you think profits go? When you hear that a company is profitable, where do you think it goes?’ And they said, ‘Well, to pay the executives their big bonuses.’ I said, ‘No, actually, none of it goes to pay the executives. Profit is what is left over after they have all been paid.’” Well, I’m sure that made them feel very silly indeed.

Bachmann continues to insist that the problem with the tax code is that some people are considered too poor to pay taxes. “So even if it means paying the price of two Happy Meals a year, like $10, everyone can afford to pay at least that.” Maybe they could just mail two Happy Meals to the IRS. “And what it does is create a mentality in the United States that says that freedom is free. But freedom isn’t free. We all benefit. We all need to sacrifice. Everybody has to be a part of this tax code.”

Interestingly, the transcript CNBC provides leaves out the only part of the debate anyone will remember:



Dude remembers his own policies like Cain remembers the names of the women he groped.

Gingrich, asked what exactly Freddie Mac paid his firm $300,000 to do for them in 2006, says they asked for his advice as a historian. I assume they wanted him to explain the Peloponnesian War to them.

Cain complained that some health care bill (HR 3000) was killed by “Princess Nancy.” Oh he treats all women with respect, does Herman Cain.


Gingrich says it’s “absurd” to answer a question about health care in 30 seconds, since he’s been working on that since 1974 (and hasn’t accomplished anything), and that is why he wants seven Lincoln-Douglas debates with Obama, and also because he’s so very very lonely.

Finally, the moderator said, fine, the rules don’t apply to you, take aaall the time you want, Gingrich said: “One, you go back to a doctor-patient relationship and you involve the family in those periods where the patient by themselves can’t make key decisions. But you re-localize it.” Whatever the fuck that means. And he wants (as several others have already called for), Medicaid to be given to the states to “allow the states to really experiment” because what you really want to hear when people are talking about your health care is “Hey, let’s really experiment!”

BRAAAIIINNNNS! BRAAAAAAIIIIIINNNNSSSS!! “Three,” Gingrich went on, “you focus very intensely on a brand-new program on brain science because the fact is the largest single out-year set of costs we are faced with are Alzheimer’s, autism, Parkinson’s, mental health, and things which come directly from the brain.”


Bachmann explained that “The main problem with health care in the United States today is the issue of cost.” And Obama said Obamacare would cut our premiums and “we have Obamacare, but we didn’t have the savings.” Does she not know that it hasn’t come into effect? Sorry, of course she doesn’t.

Romney: “people have a responsibility to receive their own care, and the doctor-patient relationship is, of course, where that -- where that exists -- where that exists.”

Education. Ron Paul says college costs so much because governments inflate the currency.

IT MAKES SENSE BECAUSE THEY ALL START WITH “C”: But how, he is asked, should students pay for college? “The way you pay for cellphones and computers.”


Gingrich says every college should be like the College of the Ozarks (the Harvard of Missouri, as it is probably known). Because those students have to work 20 hours a week, because they’re poor.

Is it okay that California hired a Chinese company to build part of the replacement Bay Bridge? Cain says that the 999 plan would fix that. Romney says China is cheating on WTO rules and stealing intellectual property (that must have been what happened to Rick Perry). Gingrich says 2015 it’ll be cheaper to manufacture in South Carolina and Alabama than in China.

Cain says there are three things wrong with Dodd-Frank. First, insufficient oversight for Fannie & Freddie. Second and third, Dodd and Frank. (See what he did there?)

This was arguably the least coherent debate yet. While some candidates were obviously less informed than others, none gave the impression that they actually understand economics and finance or have actual plans to deal with banking, housing, health care, etc. And to a large extent, they don’t: let the states deal with it, let the market deal with it, let individuals deal with it, let the underpants gnomes deal with it.

Oh, by the way, Perry eventually remembered that it was the Department of Energy that he wants to destroy.

Remember when we were the goofballs in this bunch?