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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (210949)	6/14/2011 9:45:34 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 361138

Ezra Klein's Wonkbook Romney won. Bachmann surged. Cain disappointed. Pawlenty whiffed. Gingrich slept. Santorum fretted. Paul scolded. That was my post-debate tweet, and I'm standing by it. But the debate wasn't just interesting for the performances of the candidates. It was interesting for the focus of the questions. There wasn't a serious foreign policy question for the first hour-and-a-half of the debate. Social issues didn't get much traction, either. When John King asked if the candidates would reinstate Don't Ask/Don't Tell, Romney complained that he'd prefer to be talking about the economy. it was clear what everyone expected this debate -- and, by extension, this election -- to be about. Romney covered economic and domestic policy with far more ease than the other candidates on his stage. The tone was set early, when King asked Pawlenty to reprise his attack on "Obamneycare." Pawlenty, who looked almost physically ill at the thought of challenging Romney face-to-face, stammered his way through the answer and leaving Romney to uncork a pretty good line on the subject: "The President is going to eat his words," Romney warned, saying that if Obama really wanted to copy his reforms, the president should've given him a call and Romney could've explained in detail why Obama's law wouldn't work. Politically, it's a smart pivot by Romney: He's arguing that his experience in Massachusetts makes him the Republican field's most credible messenger against Obama's health-care reforms. The problem? Democrats did spend a lot of time talking to the people who designed and implemented the Massachusetts reforms -- people like MIT's Jon Gruber, and Connector-chief Jon Kingsdale -- and they liked the new plan. What's baffled them has been Romney's pretense that it's somehow radically different from his plan. But that didn't come up on-stage last night. Pawlenty turned in a more mixed performance during the economic portion of the debate. His promise to achieve 5% annual growth for 10 years set the terms of the discussion, but his justification was peculiar: after blasting Obama for denying American exceptionalism and routinely comparing us to other nations, Pawlenty argued for his plan by...comparing us to other nations. Notably, China and Brazil, both of which have seen their economies grow at five percent for extended periods of time, but both of which are much, much poorer than we are. Poor countries simply have the capacity to grow much faster than rich countries, as they have much more unused capacity. A country like China can make huge gains from moving farmworkers to cities and talented young people to schools. But we've already picked that sort of low-hanging fruit. Our growth path is much harder, and for Pawlenty to pretend otherwise, is either a reflection of economic ignorance or epic pandering. Either way, it makes a mockery of his self-presentation as the candidate of hard truths. Romney's only real competition was Michele Bachmann, who semi-officially announced she was running for president during the debate. Yesterday, I wrote that Bachmann is the candidate that Sarah Palin was supposed to be. Last night, I think she proved it. If you wanted a Mama Grizzly, Bachmann repeatedly reminded you that she'd fostered more than 20 children. If you wanted someone who wasn't a career politician, Bachmann didn't run for office until 2006. But she also delivered an easy, fluent discussion of the policy. She even got the coveted Dan Drezner nod in the foreign policy section. Her candidacy has mostly been greeted as a longshot bid, but on the stage last night, she came across as one of the primary's clear heavyweights.