Santorum wins Iowa

Despite initial results showing an 8-vote win for Mitt Romney in Iowa, the official results, which were certified this morning after a careful examination of results from the precincts, shows in fact that Rick Santorum won by 34 votes. So Mitt Romney goes from an unprecedented sweep of Iowa and New Hampshire to a loss to a homophobe and a win in his own backyard.

That being said, he can still just about put the primary to bed by putting up a clear win in South Carolina on Saturday. What will be fascinating to watch over the next 2+ days is how the Iowa result is portrayed in the media and how it affects the results in South Carolina. On the one hand, Romney might get some negative press about the loss and see his numbers take a hit. On the other hand, much of Newt Gingrich's improvements in the polls in the past few days has been the result of conservatives coalescing behind him as the only "non-Romney" with a chance to stop the freight train, but now Santorum can point to an Iowa win as evidence that he too can be the standard bearer.

Once again, it'll be an interesting few days leading up to the voting.

Hoping for a Ron Paul win in Iowa

The latest polling in Iowa suggests that Ron Paul is well-positioned to make some noise in the caucuses that are occurring next week. More importantly, the peculiarities of the process in Iowa, it seems likely that Paul will even outperform his improving poll numbers.

In Iowa, voters meet in 1,784 different locations across the state. They actually debate, in these small groups, why those in attendance should vote for their guy. The main advantage that Ron Paul possesses is a devoted following of Atlas Shrugged-wielding libertarians, as demonstrated by his frequently-successful "moneybomb" fundraisers and his legion of supporters on social media sites like Reddit. The ferocity of his support is extremely useful in any contest that is usually low-turnout, such as the caucuses in Iowa. More importantly, many Paul supporters have lived and breathed his ideas and philosophies since his 2008 campaign and are able to . In a setting where debate is allowed immediately prior to caucus-goers casting their votes, Paul-ites will disproportionately swing undecided and weakly-affiliated voters to their guy.


So I'm predicting a Ron Paul victory in Iowa. It will throw the Republican race WIDE open.

Looking at the primary calendar, a Ron Paul win in Iowa would be followed by New Hampshire, where a Mitt Romney victory is almost guaranteed. Next up are primaries in the South, in South Carolina and Florida, where Newt, from neighboring Georgia, has big leads. Then they move out west to Nevada, where Romney will likely win. After that comes Colorado and Arizona, where Newt's polled well. Then a likely Romney win in Michigan, where his father was a popular governor, takes us to Super Tuesday, where anything can happen as 11 states vote.

The only way the Republican race ends quickly is if Mitt Romney runs the table. Based on how the map looks now, it is unlikely that he will do so, ruining his inevitability/electability argument, which is his strongest pull with Republican voters. A Ron Paul win, coupled with early Gingrich wins in states he holds advantages, ensures a long contest.

Which would be great for the President. The longer the primaries go, the longer Obama's eventual opponent will have to cater to the Republican Party base. Unlike the 2008 Democratic contest, where Obama and Hillary Clinton got loads of free press taking not-over-the-top-liberal positions, the Republicans will be forced to take hard-right positions for months. Obama will have millions upon millions of dollars to run a general campaign from the beginning, claiming the center while Republicans fight with each other for the base.

Romney will be the nominee

At tonight's CNBC debate, Rick Perry likely torpedoed both his own campaign and Herman Cain's. As a result, I will predict that by December 1 Newt Gingrich will be at least 2nd in the polls, if not 1st. More importantly, I would now project Mitt Romney to be the near-certain nominee.

Perry committed a huge blunder in the debate. He was attempting to discuss his plans to eliminate three cabinet departments, then couldn't name which three. He got Commerce and Education, but forgot the Energy Department.

If Romney, Gingrich, Huntsman, Santorum or Paul would have committed this mistake, it might not have been so bad for their chances. For Perry, however, the gaffe played into an already-established narrative that he's, to be blunt, too dumb to be President. This reinforcing nature of the gaffe is what makes it so fatal, just like Howard Dean's "I have a scream" moment killed him because it reinforced that he was unstable/angry or why Dan Quayle's "potatoe" gaffe defined his legacy.

It is, frankly, unacceptable for a Presidential candidate to not be able to rattle off every cabinet department, or at least the ones he plans to eliminate. Perry should have been able to catch himself, start a list of each department and arrive at the right one.

This gaffe will undoubtedly be run again and again on the news, and I think we can all predict with a fair degree of certainty what Saturday Night Live will open with this week. I predict that this will lead to a discussion of the intellectual requirements to be President, and that this (along with the sexual harassment stuff) will end Cain's reign at/near the top.

So why Gingrich? Truly, it's largely a process of elimination. Perry, Cain and Bachmann have already had their shot (and fail the intelligence test), Paul's too out there, Santorum and Huntsman too unknown, and Romney's Romney, so it's Gingrich's turn. He certainly meets the intelligence requirement. He's a true conservative, with 1994 Contract with America credentials. Perry and Cain are going down, and voters won't settle on Romney yet, so it's Newt's turn.

Does Newt have a chance of being the nominee? I truly doubt it. With the intensified attention that will come with improving in the polls, people will remember about his "right-wing social engineering" remark, his serial affairs, his ethics issues that led to reprimand by the House, etc. But for now, when poll respondents only remember the 1994 revolution and his recent debate performances, he'll have a rise.

But after his inevitable fall, we'll be left with Romney. I think Santorum's social stances are too extreme even for the modern Republican Party, and he's just not that likeable. Huntsman is too moderate/reasonable. So they're left with Romney. As previously discussed, I'm OK with that.

Stunning poll numbers for Cain, Romney

Two new national polls released today. Both show Herman Cain in the lead over Mitt Romney, Cain taking the lead is interesting enough in itself, though his weaknesses as a candidate make me confident that he won't be the nominee. Of course, with the current state of the Republican Party, one can never be too sure.

The truly fascinating and important result come from comparing the new NBC poll with the previous one, conducted at the end of August. At that point, Rick Perry was in the lead with 38%, followed by Romney with 23%. Cain was tied for 5th at 5%. In the new poll, Perry's support has fallen to 16%, Romney is stuck at 23%, and Cain surged to 27%. His 22% rise perfectly mirrors Perry's 22% fall. Essentially, a fifth of the electorate decided to switch horses, and, statistically speaking, none of them decided to switch to Romney!

This is yet more support for the idea that most Republican voters just don't want to vote for the most electable (i.e., least conservative) of the major candidates. Romney's path to the nomination is to keep as many conservative candidates in the race to split the anti-Romney vote, allowing his 20-some percent to carry the day. Once he racks up wins in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, he'll ride the inevitability/electability wave to the nomination. If 2 or 3 out of Perry/Cain/Bachmann/Gingrich drop out of the race before Iowa, one of the survivors might be strong enough to overcome Romney. But if everyone stays in and stays relatively even, Romney will cruise to the nomination.

This dynamic helps explain Romney's approach in last night's debate to Michele Bachmann. A feature of the debate was that each candidate was allowed to ask one question to another candidate. Most used this as an opportunity to try to nail Romney. When it was Romney's turn, he chose to lob a softball to Bachmann, who launched into an excerpt from her standard stump speech. Romney needs Bachmann, the weakest of the 2nd tier candidates, to stay competitive to draw support from other conservatives, so he used his question to help her out.

It will be very interesting in the weeks before Iowa (less than 3 months away) to see if there's pressure on conservative candidates to get out of the race. We know Ron Paul's in it til the convention, but will any of the others bow out to keep the more-moderate Romney from being the nominee?

Quick reactions to GOP debate

-Herman Cain said in response to the very first question that he would, in his first year as President, pass a balanced budget. Given that military+medicare/medicaid+Social Security+interest on the debt = total tax receipts, I would be very interested how Cain would go about achieving a balanced budget so soon. Republicans always preface their plans to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security by saying current beneficiaries would not be affected. It's impossible to get a balanced budget next year without making cuts to these programs next year.

-Rep. Bachmann repeated the standard Republican claim that the federal government is responsible for all those bad loans. Banks were forced, so the line goes, by the government to give $500,000 loans to janitors. This is, of course, pure bullshit. Looking at how hard it was to pass Dodd-Frank, which is a very weak regulatory structure for banks, it is ridiculous to claim that the poor, oppressed banks were forced to give all those subprime loans.

-Bachmann also repeated the bullshit that increasing the debt limit gave Obama a "blank check". The President can't spend a nickel without Congress's specific say-so. It's not a blank check for Obama; it's a check that Congress had already written and signed.

-Much of the debate centered around Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan. Bachmann chose the line of attack that, by adding a whole new kind of federal tax (a 9% sales tax), Cain would open the door to the sales tax being increased in the future. Cain is prevented from using the best defense to this claim, which is that neither Democrats nor Republicans would ever increase a sales tax. Republicans wouldn't raise a tax, period, and Democrats would never raise a strongly regressive tax. Using this line of defense would highlight the regressive nature of sales taxes, so Cain can't use it.

-Cain continues to demonstrate a lack of understanding about how laws work, as previously discussed here. He wants to include in his 9-9-9 bill a requirement for a 2/3 vote by the Senate to raise taxes. Because one act of Congress cannot bind another, a future Congress could just come along and say "Fuck that 2/3 thing", and vote a tax increase with a simple majority.

-Cain continued the tactic of portraying the participants in the Occupy Wall Street movement as being distinct from "real Americans". He claimed his recent remarks that those who aren't rich only have themselves to blame were only directed at OWS, not at the 14 million who are unemployed through no fault of their own. It is a false distinction aimed at marginalizing the OWS protesters.

-Rep. Paul rightly laid the smackdown on Cain after Cain claimed Alan Greenspan was the best Fed chair of the past 40 years. Greenspan's Fed bear much of the blame for inflating the housing bubble.

-Gov. Perry ignored a question about why the income gap is growing so much, choosing instead to launch a non-specific attack on Obama. It's not surprising that he avoided the question, as there is no answer a supply-sider can give to the question. Ron Paul could have pointed to crony capitalism as a cause, but none of the other candidates has an answer.

-Perry needed to land some punches on Romney to revive his campaign, and he wasn't able to do it. But he also didn't "throw up on himself" as he did in the previous debate.

-Romney had a good night. The format of sitting around a table together made for a more cordial, less-attacking debate, which benefits the guy with the biggest target on his back. I think Romney would be fine with everyone spooning throughout the next debate.

The GOP candidates, Part 6: Herman Cain

First, some news: looks like Chris Christie is going to stay out; he's holding a press conference at 1pm today, if the rumors are to be believed. Mitt Romney's a very happy man.

The other big news this morning is an ABC/Washington Post national Republican poll which confirms the findings of the previous poll, by Fox. The relevant bits are:

-Rick Perry's taken a big hit, losing over a third of his support, dropping from 28% to 17-19%.
-Despite the wide fluctiations in the support of Perry and others, Romney continues to chug along in the low to mid twenties, lending further support to our recent discussion of his position. He has now passed Perry in the polls, according to the rolling average of polls compiled by realclearpolitics.com
-Herman Cain is the new flavor of the month, picking up just about all the voters Perry lost. He is tied with Perry in 2nd place in hte new poll.

Cain's strength means it's time to revisit his candidacy. His shortcomings in foreign policy were discussed previously. As a successful businessman and former chairman of the board of directors of the Kansas City Fed, he has significant and politically-attractive economics/business experience. He also has mastered stating his positions with an upbeat tone that stands out at debates.

His main policy proposal is his 9-9-9 plan, which would scrap all federal taxes and replace them with a 9% flat corporate tax, a 9% flat income tax, and a 9% national sales tax. Cain has not released, so far as I'm aware, a detailed analysis of his plan. Here's an analysis that shows, as one might expect with a flat tax structure, that the taxes for the poor would go way up and the taxes for the rich would go way down. By eliminating capital gains taxes, an estimated 23,000 millionaires would pay no taxes on their income at all. In total, the plan would bring in roughly $300 billion less than the current plan, which would require more debt.

But, Herman Cain is not, at least at this point, a serious or viable candidate for President. On a superficial level, he appears to be more interested in building his name and selling books than winning the nomination. His list of upcoming events includes nothing in Iowa and New Hampshire, instead holding events in later-voting states like Texas, Virginia, Ohio and Arizona. He's taking 2 weeks away from campaigning to sell his book. He also has very little campaign infrastructure in place (pollsters, Iowa caucus captains, etc.), though with the increased attention/donations, he might be able to build a real campaign.

More generally, his complete lack of experience in government will be a damning liability. This past weekend, he appeared on Fox News Sunday. He was asked whether, by adding a new kind of tax (federal sales tax), would he make it easier for the government to tax more. He said "In the legislation that I am going to ask Congress to send me, I want a two-thirds vote required by the Senate in order for them to change it. That will impede cavalierly raising it." The problem is that the legislation would be clearly unconstitutional. One piece of legislation cannot bind another. Cain and his advisors appear to be unaware of this fact.

Cain also has practiced the Republican pastime of lying about health care reform. In a recent debate, he claimed that he would not have survived cancer a few years back had Obamacare been in place. He stated that his care would have required a federal bureaucrat's approval. This claim was determined by Politifact to be "False".

Herman Cain, while not a serious candidate, is attracting significant conservative anti-Romney support. He will have to decide whether he wants to profit from this support by selling books (the Huckabee route) or actually try to be elected President. Given his significant weaknesses as a candidate and complete lack of government experience, he might be better off to try the former.

Mitt's "anti-Romney" problem

One of the main narratives assigned to the Republican primary season is the quest to be the "anti-Romney", the candidate who gains the most support among conservatives who think Romney is too moderate (and/or too Mormon, depending on your view of the Christian Right). With Romney running for the Republican nomination non-stop for the past 5 years, voters have already made their minds up on him, and his overall support is unlikely to change much, at least until actual primary and caucus results start shaking up the race.

The polling data pretty much supports this view. Despite big shake-ups to the race (Huckabee dropping out, the rise and fall of Trump and Bachmann (and Perry?), the rise of Herman Cain), Romney's support in polls has been pretty steady in the high-teens to mid-twenties.

His support is high enough to dominate a field of candidates who split the conservative votes among themselves. The goal of all the other candidates is to consolidate the anti-Romney vote behind him-/herself, climbing above Romney's steady but beatable support. Romney wins by keeping the field closely competitive with each other, allowing his more moderate voter base to carry him to victory. He is greatly helped by additional conservatives in the race; Sarah Palin entering the race would probably deliver Romney the nomination. She would pull enough conservatives from Bachmann and Perry in Iowa that Romney would likely win there. Following that up with a win in New Hampshire, where he absolutely dominates the polls, would pretty much end the race. In the past 9 election cycles, which more or less define the modern primary era, no Republican has won the nomination without winning either Iowa or New Hampshire, and wins there would coalesce support behind him as the most electable candidate. There would be immense pressure from anti-Romney conservatives on weaker conservative candidates to get out of the race before Iowa to keep that from happening.

However, the emergence of another moderate candidate, such as NJ Gov. Chris Christie, or the ascension to viability of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, would likely devastate Romney's campaign. If either is able to peel 5-10% from Romney's total, he sinks from frontrunner to also-ran.

Christie will reportedly announce his decision in the next few days. We'll know a lot more about the shape of the Republican race, and Mitt Romney's chances, when he does.

The GOP candidates, Part 5: Mitt Romney

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is most likely to be the nominee. The main reason is that Republican voters hate Barack Obama so much that at the end of the day they'll hold their noses and vote for the candidate they perceive to be best positioned to beat him. Especially given Perry's debate performances and his position in head-to-head polls recently, Romney's apparently the most likely winner in the general election, so they'll give him the nomination.

I think a Romney nomination would be a gift to Obama's re-election bid, as Romney fits right into Obama's previously-discussed strategy of showing the Republicans will attack the things they used to support, leaving the government gridlocked and incapable of doing anything. On issue after issue, Mitt Romney has lurched significantly to the right, as has the rest of his party.

Health Care
In 1994, when he ran for Senate against Ted Kennedy, Romney said he would support Sen. John Chafee's (R-RI) health care bill, which included a federal mandate to buy health insurance. He later, as Governor, put in place "RomneyCare", which includes a mandate to provide insurance.

This election, he attacks health care reform as strongly as any of his Republican colleagues. With Republican voters whipped into a frenzy over ObamaCare, to do anything else would end his chances of nomination.

Cap-and-Trade
In 2005, Romney was strongly involved with negotiations to set up the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade system among New England states. Initially, he supported the measure, saying "I think it is good business" and "we can effectively create incentives to help stimulate a sector of the economy and at the same time not kill jobs."

This time around, he says "Cap and trade effectively constitutes an enormous, hidden tax on the American people and American businesses. It will lead to higher joblessness and make a bad economic situation even worse."

Abortion
When running for the Senate in 1994, Romney stated "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country." When running for Governor in 2002, he said "I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose, and am devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard."

In 2008 and 2012, he has repeatedly said he is pro-life and would support overturning Roe v Wade.

Campaign Finance
In 1994, Romney advocated strict campaign spending limits and the abolition of PACs. In 2002, he suggested public financing of campaigns through a 10% tax on private contributions to privately-funded candidates.

In 2008, he said "Do we really want government telling us when we can engage in political speech, and what form it can take". He has since been strongly opposed to McCain-Feingold and other efforts to limit campaign contributions and spending. Recently, he has received rather shady large contributions from corporations which form, give him a check for lots of money, then close.

Gay Rights
In 1994, Romney wrote a letter (.pdf) to Log Cabin Republicans saying he supported gay and lesbian soldiers being allowed serve openly.

He recently said "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" should have been kept in place.

In the interest of brevity, I'll stop there, but he has a similar record of strong right-ward turns on issues such as gun control, immigration policy/amnesty, capital gains taxes and others.

Vast majorities of voters agree that Washington is broken. Parties that used to be able to compromise with each other are now unable to do so. A Mitt Romney nomination would be great news for Obama and Democrats because he personifies the truth that the separation between the parties is the result of the Republican Party tilting heavily to the right.

Next up, we'll get back to discussing why Obama's recent strategy of pushing for tax increases on the rich is not "playing to his base", as his critics claim.

The GOP Candidates, Part 4: Rick Perry

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has taken Michele Bachmann's position as the "anti-Romney". He was billed, prior to entering the race last month, as a conservative's conservative, the longest-serving governor in a state that had added 1/3 of all the jobs added nationwide since the recession. He is not shy about showing his Christian faith, holding a high-profile stadium prayer rally just before entering the race. He brags of carrying a laser-sighted pistol with him while he walks his dog, using it to shoot a coyote. He was, in short, a Tea Party wet dream.

Upon entering the race, he shot to the top of the polls. Unfortunately for him, his position invited lots of scrutiny and attacks, and multiple cracks have shown. His main strength, his jobs record, has been shown to be largely a mirage, with a study showing that 81% of the jobs created in Texas going to immigrants, which doesn't play well with Republican voters. Many of the jobs created were also government jobs. Others were poachedfrom other states, making his model difficiult to apply nationwide.

More generally, he's shown himself to be, well, kind of dumb. His debate performance have hurt his campaign rather significantly, particularly his debacle in last Thursday's debate. A video of an answer about abstinence-only education emerged that showed his complete inability to articulate a position or use facts to support his argument. He defended his policy of giving in-state tuition rates to children of illegal immigrants by saying those who don't support it "don't have a heart." Not exactly a good way to get votes in a GOP primary.

It's particularly unfortunate for him that he doesn't have great rhetorical skills, with the number of questionable positions he has to defend. In his book "Fed Up", he called Social Security unconstitutional and ""a crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal." He now says he wants to reform the program but hasn't really addressed the "unconstitutional" attack. Given how popular it is, particularly with older people (who tend to vote more), he needs to come up with a better answer.

He has also taken a lot of heat for issuing an executive order requiring girls to get the HPV vaccine, making Texas the first state to require it. While the HPV vaccine is a great thing that I personally think each and every girl should get, there was some appearence of "crony capitalism" in how the order came about. Perry's former chief of staff was a lobbying for the vaccine's maker, Merck. Perry also received about $29,500 from Merck since 2000. Merck has also donated $352,500 to the Republican Governors Association since Perry became active in that organization in 2006.

And he let his state murder a guy and has since been covering it up.

In sum, Perry is Bush circa 2000 but with a worse record as governor and more controversial positions to have to defend. Bush wasn't a great orator, but he didn't really have all that much as governor to answer for. Unless Perry starts showing more skill on the campaign trail, Romney's looking pretty good for the nomination. More on him next post.

The GOP candidates, Part 3: Michele Bachmann

Rep. Michele Bachmann is the leader of the Tea Party Caucus. She thinks that climate change is voodoo nonsense, hokum, AND a hoax. She said in 2008 that she was "very concerned that he [Obama] may have anti-American views." She wants to "wean everybody off" Social Security and Medicare. She has said terrible things in reference to homosexuality and same-sex marriage. But my main issue with her is that she's clearly just not that bright.

She apparently thinks HPV vaccines cause mental retardation, on the basis of one anectdotal report from the campaign trail. That she could be so easily convinced shows her lack of scientific insight and knowledge. That she would pass along the claim in a national interview shows her lack of political instincts. This episode, along with a long history of misstatements and/or fabrications, as well as having never in her 4+ years in Congress written a single bill that has become law, shows that she just doesn't have the intelligence or ability to be President.

But there is a path for her to win her party's nomination, which in this economic and political environment, gives her a path to the White House. Her campaign was doing very well, including a win in the Iowa Straw Poll, until Gov. Rick Perry entered the race. He has taken over much of her support as the Tea Party "anti-Romney". It is unlikely that Bachmann will win the nomination unless Perry is knocked out of the race.

Bachmann seems to recognize this, given the vigor with which she attacked him at the last debate. Her attacks regarding Perry's decision to mandate the HPV vaccine in Texas, along with pointing out possible corruption on Perry's part (more on that in my post about him) have managed to hurt Perry somewhat, particularly in the head-to-head with Obama.

Hopefully, even if Bachmann were nominated, the months of scrutiny of her record and her abilities would prevent her from being elected. But one can never be too sure.

Rick Perry's Texas executed/murdered a (likely) innocent man

I have done a fair amount of reading about the case of Cameron Todd Willingham. He was a man who was executed in Texas for, according to Texas, killing his three daughters. It appears rather clear that, at the very least, there was reasonable doubt that Willingham was innocent. But Gov. Rick Perry, and the execution system he oversees, executed him anyway, apparently not even bothering to read the strong critique of the evidence against him.

The case is best summarized in this New Yorker article. Being a New Yorker article, it's fairly lengthy, but I think it's worth it, particularly with Perry being the GOP frontrunner.

If not, the basic summary is that he was convicted of setting a fire in 1991 which killed his 1 year old twins and 2 year old daughter. The main evidence against him were patterns in the burned house which suggested "puddles" of accelerant (e.g., lighter fluid), as well as marks that indicated more than one source point for the fire. These analyses of the burn patterns is not based on any science, and instead were based on practices handed down from generation to generation of fire investigators. A psychiatri st who pretty much made his living "diagnosing" murder suspects as sociopaths, and who has since been expelled from the American Psychiatric Association, labelled Willingham as such based on an Iron Maiden poster in his house. He was convicted and sentenced to death, despite there being no motive given besides his supposed mental illness, and no evidence besides the non-scientific analysis of the burn patterns.

Just before Willingham was executed, his case was reviewed by Dr. Gerald Hurst, a fire investigator who actually (gasp!) uses scientific methods. He reported on the advances in fire investigation since the 1991 fire. It had since been discovered that accidental fires can form the same patterns (puddles, apparent multiple starting points) as those found in the Willingham house. He gave his report to Perry's office and the clemency board. Internal e-mails show no evidence that anyone in the Governor's office or on the board even read Hurst's report. He was executed (or, if you prefer, murdered) by Texas on February 17, 2004.

Since his death, there was a state panel set up to investigate the use of forensic investigation in Texas. The panel hired another fire investigator to look at how arson cases were investigated in Texas, and he came to similar conclusions as Hurst. Just days before the panel was set to publish its conclusions, Perry removed several of its members and appointed an ally to run the panel. Since then, the panel has assigned the Willingham case to a sub-committee, which allows its hearings to be closed to the public. They have also moved their full meetings to obscure, hard-to-reach areas of the state to discourage reporters from attending.

Rick Perry is the frontrunner in his party's race for the White House. His record, policies and personality have been the focus of the last couple Republican debates. He talks proudly on the campaign trail of the use of executions in his state; he has presided over 235 executions, including Willingham's, in his time in office. If it is true that his state executed an innocent man on his watch, that should disqualify him in the eyes of voters. Hopefully the moderator at an upcoming debate, or anywhere else during the campaign, will have the guts to ask him about it.

The GOP candidates, Part 2: Ron Paul

In last night's CNN/Tea Party Republican debate, there was a moment which was a perfect microcosm of the Ron Paul experience. The moderator, Wolf Blitzer, asked 7 of the 8 candidates about their thoughts on the Federal Reserve. The one candidate they didn't ask was Ron Paul, which is very peculiar when you consider that Paul wrote a book about the Fed. While I disagree with just about everything Ron Paul supports, his ideas are different from his competitors, and by marginalizing his candidacy, the media are depriving Americans of an opportunity to think and learn about economics and the role of government.

It is utterly indefensible of Blitzer to not include Paul in the Fed discussion. Mitt Romney had even set up Paul's response by saying "We need to have a Fed... because if we don't have a Fed, who's gonna run the currency? Congress?! I'm not in favor of that." Had Blitzer then gone to Paul, I'm sure that he would have quoted Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which says that Congress has the power "To coin Money, [and] regulate the Value thereof".

This is just one more example of the media's anti-Paul bias, which I think is due to his being the most anti-corporate candidate in the race. Despite having solid backing among Republican primary voters and his close second-place finish at the Iowa straw poll, he is marginalized as a non-contender. Doing so elevates the ideas and policies of dunces like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann to the center of these debates, instead of the more interesting (but ultimately wrong) ideas of Paul.

He favors a gold standard, which would fix the value of the dollar to the value of gold. The US was on the gold standard until 1971, when it was ended by Richard Nixon. Returning to the gold standard today, as well as going to a full-reserve banking system that Paul and other Austrians support, would cause massive deflation. By limiting the supply of dollars and requiring banks to hold more of them in reserve, the value of the dollar will increase significantly. For people (like me) with student loans, or a 30 year mortgage, or any other debt, which becomes harder to pay back when each dollar is more valuable, a Ron Paul presidency would be a disaster.

It wouldn't only be a disaster for debtors. As discussed in a previous post, much of the reason for the current poor state of the economy is due to less consumer spending, as people are saving more to make up for the lost value of their homes. Deflation, by making people's mortgages and other debts larger in real terms, would have a similar effect, further driving down consumer spending and worsening the economy.

I've previously discussed the refusal of some to accept that there are some spheres, such as limiting health care costs, where government programs might be better than the private market. Paul has never met a government program he wouldn't cut/eliminate. He has such a limited view of federal power that he opposes mandates in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that desegregated restaurants/hotels/etc.

While Ron Paul's ideas are frequently wrong and/or harmful, he has enough support that his ideas deserve more attention than they're getting. Hopefully in future debates and media coverage, he'll have more of a chance to share his ideas, rather than the media deciding which ideas merit consideration.

The GOP candidates, Part 1: The Field

Over the next few days, I'll try to as briefly as possible summarize my thoughts on the Republican Presidential candidates. I think there are four candidates with a realistic path to the nomination, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and to a lesser degree, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Texas Rep. Ron Paul. Each of them will get their own post later on. In tonight's Republican debate, there will be four other candidates, who I'll discuss here.

Also, apologies to Fred Karger (gay rights activist), Buddy Roemer (former Louisiana Gov. and Congressman who lost to former KKK leader David Duke in 1991 before disappearing for over a decade), and Gary Johnson (libertarian former New Mexico governor), who are so far behind that they can't get into the debates.

Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather's Pizza
Herman Cain is running the campaign Donald Trump wishes he could have run. Cain has never been elected to anything, but he's had a good run in this field, with his support reaching double digits after a well-received debate performance in South Carolina back in May. He has since faded, but still maintains enough support to stay in the debates.

My impression from watching him in debates is that he excels at telling Republican voters what they want to hear, even if he doesn't have much of an idea what it means. After making several statements about the Israel-Palestine conflict a few months back, it became clear that he had no idea what the Palestinian "Right of Return" is. Being a rather important issue in the conflict, that was the moment that I wrote off his chances of being a serious contender.

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House
Despite leading the Republican war against the Clintons in the 90's, Gingrich also demonstrated an ability to work with President Clinton on big initiatives such as welfare reform. In 2005, he had high-profile discussions with then-Sen. Hillary Clinton about health care reform. It is this willingness to work with Democrats that made Newt my preferred candidate (though in this field, that's not saying much).

Unfortunately for Newt, his campaign had one of the worst rollouts in recent history. He appeared on Meet the Press and denounced the Republican/Paul Ryan budget as "right-wing social engineering". He picked a bad year to fight the new Republican/Tea Party orthodoxy. He was forced to quickly walk back his statement, and his candidacy has never recovered.

Jon Huntsman, former Utah Governor
I am flabbergasted that Jon Huntsman is doing so much worse than Mitt Romney. Both are handsome, Mormon, rich, moderate former governors. Huntsman has a better record creating jobs in his state than Romney did in his, as Huntsman and Perry pointed out in last week's debate. Most importantly, Huntsman does not have the "RomneyCare" baggage that should be poisoning Romney's chances among Republican primary voters.

In the recent debate, he denounced those of his competitors (read, Perry and Bachmann) who have led to his Party being viewed as "anti-science". While accepting the role science should play in a modern society might help him in a general election, it will make it very difficult to emerge from a Republican primary.

Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania Senator
Santorum's appeal is pretty much limited to social conservatives who don't like the Tea Party, or at least those who don't like Bachmann and Perry. He's militantly anti-gay and anti-abortion. He was also defeated, as an incumbent, by 19% in his re-election bid in 2006.