Yesterday, Rand Paul gave an old-style filibuster where he talked on the Senate floor for 12 hours and 54 minutes about drones and executive power. At first, Paul wanted the Obama administration to come out and say that it is unconstitutional for the government to kill American citizens on American soil without due process. Obama's response: "No comment."
Later, Paul was willing to compromise and end the filibuster for a vote on a non-binding "sense of the Senate" resolution that "the use of drones to execute or target American citizens on American
soil who pose no imminent threat clearly violates Constitutional rights." Democrats (in particular, Majority Whip Dick Durbin) refused.
Ultimately, Paul ended the filibuster without accomplishing his explicit goals, though he has clearly energized his supporters and apparently turned a libertarian talking point into GOP policy. The Minority Leader Mitch McConnell showed up to explicitly support Paul and encourage other Republicans to do the same.
Not all Republicans agreed, however. Senator Lindsey Graham called the whole thing "ridiculous," and he's right -- it should be. The proper response from the Obama administration would have been, "Of course, it's unconstitutional to kill citizens on our soil without due process." This should not even be a question. Indeed, if they had responded quickly enough, they could have devastated Rand Paul's credibility and painted him and libertarians in general as paranoid freaks. But they didn't, and that really has me puzzled.
Obama had the opportunity to give the Tea Party and libertarians a roundhouse kick to the face on prime time TV, and he didn't. He did nothing, and doing nothing gave Paul an incredible victory. Durbin went even further, and objected to just a vote on a non-binding resolution on the issue. Why are Obama and Durbin (and the rest of the Democrats) willing to hand Republicans such a PR coup just to hold on to a power they claim they don't want to use anyway?
At this point, it would be easy to fall into conspiracy theories, but I suspect the Democrats are being honest when they say they don't want to kill Americans in the streets. However, being in power, they thought they had an opportunity to expand that power, and they took it. Everyone likes to have options. They just didn't think anyone would notice. Once libertarians did notice, the Democrats thought no one would pay attention to the libertarians anyway. Now that Paul has forced the issue and gotten people to pay attention, the Democrats don't want to turn around and admit that he's right, because they think they'll look bad if they do. They don't seem to recognize that digging their heels in and insisting on the right to kill American citizens without due process makes them look even worse.
Now that Paul has everyone talking, it will be interesting to see what he does with it. Can he inspire actual change?
Showing posts with label national security. Show all posts
Showing posts with label national security. Show all posts
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Monday, May 21, 2012
Gary Johnson on the Issues
Last Sunday, I wrapped up my series of posts on Mitt Romney's positions in the debates. Now it's time to look at Gary Johnson, who initially ran as a Republican but has now secured the nomination for the Libertarian Party. Since Johnson was only in two debates, the first and the sixth, there's simply not as much material as there was for Romney, who was in 19 debates. While Romney got five entries, Johnson only gets this one.
National Security
In the first debate, he said he would withdraw from Afghanistan "tomorrow," was against the war in Iraq from the beginning, and was also opposed to intervention in Libya (Syria was not yet an issue at the time). He is solidly against war, saying in the 6th debate, "The biggest threat to our national security is the fact that we're bankrupt." As part of his promise to balance the budget, he supports a 43% cut to military spending.
Immigration and Trade
He said in the first debate that there was "very little, if any benefit" to securing the border, and that freer immigration would create "tens of millions of jobs." On trade, he said, "I'm a free market guy... I don't favor tariffs of any kind, whatsoever." In the two debates, he was only able to address trade with one country, Cuba, which he supports, because he believes that trade encourages friendship.
Taxes and Spending
He supports the Fair Tax, a national sales tax that would replace the corporate and personal income taxes. On spending, he would balance the budget in his first year in office. Since he says current spending outpaces revenue by 43%, that's how much he wants to cut from all federal spending, including 43% each from the military, Medicare and Medicaid. To get it done, he would turn Medicare and Medicaid into block grants, veto any bill where expenditures exceeded revenue, completely eliminate the Department of Education and subject federal programs to cost-benefit analyses, then get rid of the ones that don't measure up.
The Economy
To get the economy growing again, he would restructure the tax code and greatly reduce federal spending as described above. He also sees freer immigration as a way to encourage "tens of millions" of new jobs. He would eliminate the federal minimum wage, and stop extending unemployment benefits.
Social Issues
He declined to describe himself as "pro-life," and said in the first debate that he supports abortion "up until viability." (While viability lacks a precise definition, that would allow abortions at least into the fifth month of pregnancy, and possibly later.) However, he opposes public funds for abortion, and favors parental notification and counseling. On drugs, he admits to having smoked marijuana, and supports legalization along with regulation and taxation of marijuana. While gay marriage didn't come up in the debates, on Twitter he often sells himself as the only candidate supporting "marriage equality" (at least, prior to Obama's recent conversion).
Ron Paul
When directly asked in the sixth debate what made him a better choice for libertarian Republicans than Ron Paul, Johnson said, "I'm not going to presume to make that assumption." When asked who his running mate would be if it had to be someone at the sixth debate, he said Ron Paul. On Twitter, many of his public tweets are also directed towards Ron Paul. While I haven't seen anything explicitly laying this out, I suspect he looks at Paul's age and wants to be the next Ron Paul once Paul himself leaves public life. It will be very interesting to see how much support Johnson gets from Paulites once Paul eventually quits the race.
National Security
In the first debate, he said he would withdraw from Afghanistan "tomorrow," was against the war in Iraq from the beginning, and was also opposed to intervention in Libya (Syria was not yet an issue at the time). He is solidly against war, saying in the 6th debate, "The biggest threat to our national security is the fact that we're bankrupt." As part of his promise to balance the budget, he supports a 43% cut to military spending.
Immigration and Trade
He said in the first debate that there was "very little, if any benefit" to securing the border, and that freer immigration would create "tens of millions of jobs." On trade, he said, "I'm a free market guy... I don't favor tariffs of any kind, whatsoever." In the two debates, he was only able to address trade with one country, Cuba, which he supports, because he believes that trade encourages friendship.
Taxes and Spending
He supports the Fair Tax, a national sales tax that would replace the corporate and personal income taxes. On spending, he would balance the budget in his first year in office. Since he says current spending outpaces revenue by 43%, that's how much he wants to cut from all federal spending, including 43% each from the military, Medicare and Medicaid. To get it done, he would turn Medicare and Medicaid into block grants, veto any bill where expenditures exceeded revenue, completely eliminate the Department of Education and subject federal programs to cost-benefit analyses, then get rid of the ones that don't measure up.
The Economy
To get the economy growing again, he would restructure the tax code and greatly reduce federal spending as described above. He also sees freer immigration as a way to encourage "tens of millions" of new jobs. He would eliminate the federal minimum wage, and stop extending unemployment benefits.
Social Issues
He declined to describe himself as "pro-life," and said in the first debate that he supports abortion "up until viability." (While viability lacks a precise definition, that would allow abortions at least into the fifth month of pregnancy, and possibly later.) However, he opposes public funds for abortion, and favors parental notification and counseling. On drugs, he admits to having smoked marijuana, and supports legalization along with regulation and taxation of marijuana. While gay marriage didn't come up in the debates, on Twitter he often sells himself as the only candidate supporting "marriage equality" (at least, prior to Obama's recent conversion).
Ron Paul
When directly asked in the sixth debate what made him a better choice for libertarian Republicans than Ron Paul, Johnson said, "I'm not going to presume to make that assumption." When asked who his running mate would be if it had to be someone at the sixth debate, he said Ron Paul. On Twitter, many of his public tweets are also directed towards Ron Paul. While I haven't seen anything explicitly laying this out, I suspect he looks at Paul's age and wants to be the next Ron Paul once Paul himself leaves public life. It will be very interesting to see how much support Johnson gets from Paulites once Paul eventually quits the race.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Mitt Romney on Foreign Policy
Now that Newt Gingrich has officially dropped out of the race, only
Mitt Romney and Ron Paul remain. Paul up to this point has only gotten
about 80-90 delegates depending on who's counting, while Romney has some
840. For all that I dislike Mitt Romney, the Republican nomination is
now pretty much settled.
Now that we're entering the general election phase of the campaign, with Romney as the Republican standard-bearer, I think it would be useful to revisit the positions he took during the primary debates. My vote, at this point, is far from certain, and just as I used this blog to decide my vote in the primary, I will also be using it to decide my vote in the general election. While it's possible some or all of Romney's positions in the primary will be Etch-a-Sketched away soon, I think this is a good enough place to start.
My original coverage of the debates can be found under the debate tag and the 2012 primaries tag. Romney attended most of the debates, with the exception of the first, the Thanksgiving Family Forum and of course the one-on-one Gingrich debates with Cain and Huntsman. All my coverage of Mitt Romney himself, which is mostly just the debates so far, can be found under the Mitt Romney tag.
Over the 19 debates, Romney took lots of positions on lots of different issues, so I'm splitting this up into multiple entries. This one covers foreign policy, including immigration, trade, defense and policies toward some specific countries and regions.
Immigration
In the 3rd debate, he said, "We are a nation of immigrants. We love legal immigration." In the 8th debate, he said, "I think every single person here loves legal immigration." But only twice in 19 debates did he talk about encouraging legal immigration, once in the 3rd debate and later in the 11th, both in the context of high-skilled immigrants. For the most part, when Romney talks about immigration, he talks about discouraging illegal immigration. Unfortunately, discouraging illegal immigration by making legal immigration easier doesn't seem to have occurred to him. He focuses entirely on securing the border with a fence and lots of federal agents, and making it harder to hire illegal immigrants.
As for illegal immigrants who are already here, he says in the 19th debate, "Our problem is 11 million people getting jobs that many Americans, legal immigrants, would like to have." In early debates he held that any kind of path to legality, never mind citizenship, amounts to amnesty; later, in the 18th debate, he supported allowing illegal immigrant children to gain citizenship through military service. He would encourage self-deportation by requiring immigrants to present legal-status cards to be hired (and, since the absence of such a card would imply you're an illegal immigrant, the requirement for such a card would also necessarily extend to citizens). He mentions this card multiple times, in the 13th, 17th, 18th and 19th debates.
Trade
Mitt's trade policy leaves a lot to be desired. In the 3rd debate, he called our trade partners our "opponents," and I wasn't the only one to notice. In the 5th and later debates, he substituted "the other guys" for "opponents," but the sentiment still clearly remained. His primary trade policy is to "crack down on cheaters like China," which he mentioned, often with those exact words, in the 6th, 7th, 9th, 10th, 14th, 16th, 17th and 19th debates.
He did talk about expanding trade, but far less often than cracking down on China, and always in the context of "open[ing] up markets for our goods," as he said in the 14th debate. He seems to hold a typical mercantilist philosophy, where exports are good but imports are bad. Anything China or other countries do to encourage American imports should be punished, and the only goal of free trade agreements is to encourage American exports.
Defense
He opposes all cuts to defense spending, preferring cuts to entitlements and Obamacare. In fact, he wants to increase military spending, in particular by building more ships for the Navy (which he mentioned in the 13th, 18th and 20th debates) and recruiting an extra 100,000 troops (which he mentioned only once, in the 13th debate).
Specific Countries/Regions
China: Most of Romney's policy towards China focuses on trade, particularly "cracking down" on them for cheating. He promised in the 7th debate to issue an executive order on "day one" labelling China a currency manipulator, and to initiate action against China at the WTO.
Afghanistan: His Afghanistan policy is most charitably described as continually evolving. In the 2nd and 3rd debates, he preferred a timetable for withdrawal established by the generals in Afghanistan. In the 10th, he was fine with Obama's 2014 timetable for the general withdrawal, but not the September 2012 withdrawal of the surge troops. In the 11th, he said he wanted to keep the surge troops in Afghanistan until December 2012, and keep "ten thousand or so" troops in Afghanistan after 2014. In the 14th debate, he said he didn't yet have enough information to say when he would withdraw the troops from Afghanistan.
Iran: He is absolutely opposed to Iran getting nuclear weapons, going so far as to say in the 20th debate that re-electing Obama would lead to Iranian nukes being used against Americans, and that a Romney Presidency was the only way to prevent that. He said he would "of course" go to war "if all else fails" (in the 10th debate) and that Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz would "of course" be an act of war (in the 18th debate). He also wanted "crippling sanctions" against Iran in the 10th and 11th debates, and in the 14th criticized Obama for not supporting the Iranian protestors in 2009.
Iraq: Before going back into Iraq, he would want to "require significant, dramatic American interests" to be at stake, and said he would outline a specific endgame in terms of what would qualify as success.
Syria: In the 10th debate, he said, "Of course, it's time for the Assad dictatorship to end," but in the 11th said, "This is not the time for a no-fly zone over Syria."
Israel and Palestine: In the 19th debate, responding to a question from a self-identified Palestinian-American Republican, Romney said, "The best way to have peace in the Middle East is not for us to vacillate and to appease, but is to say, we stand with our friend Israel. We are committed to a Jewish state in Israel. We will not have an inch of difference between ourselves and our ally, Israel."
Europe: In the 7th, 9th and 16th debates, he opposed a direct bailout to Europe, saying they are big enough to solve their own problems. He would, however, be willing to provide assistance through the IMF and World Bank, and hinted he would bail out American companies affected by Europe's problems.
Canada: In 19 debates, Romney mentioned our largest trading partner and the country with which we share the world's largest land border once, and even that was indirectly through his support for the Keystone XL pipeline in the 17th debate.
Now that we're entering the general election phase of the campaign, with Romney as the Republican standard-bearer, I think it would be useful to revisit the positions he took during the primary debates. My vote, at this point, is far from certain, and just as I used this blog to decide my vote in the primary, I will also be using it to decide my vote in the general election. While it's possible some or all of Romney's positions in the primary will be Etch-a-Sketched away soon, I think this is a good enough place to start.
My original coverage of the debates can be found under the debate tag and the 2012 primaries tag. Romney attended most of the debates, with the exception of the first, the Thanksgiving Family Forum and of course the one-on-one Gingrich debates with Cain and Huntsman. All my coverage of Mitt Romney himself, which is mostly just the debates so far, can be found under the Mitt Romney tag.
Over the 19 debates, Romney took lots of positions on lots of different issues, so I'm splitting this up into multiple entries. This one covers foreign policy, including immigration, trade, defense and policies toward some specific countries and regions.
Immigration
In the 3rd debate, he said, "We are a nation of immigrants. We love legal immigration." In the 8th debate, he said, "I think every single person here loves legal immigration." But only twice in 19 debates did he talk about encouraging legal immigration, once in the 3rd debate and later in the 11th, both in the context of high-skilled immigrants. For the most part, when Romney talks about immigration, he talks about discouraging illegal immigration. Unfortunately, discouraging illegal immigration by making legal immigration easier doesn't seem to have occurred to him. He focuses entirely on securing the border with a fence and lots of federal agents, and making it harder to hire illegal immigrants.
As for illegal immigrants who are already here, he says in the 19th debate, "Our problem is 11 million people getting jobs that many Americans, legal immigrants, would like to have." In early debates he held that any kind of path to legality, never mind citizenship, amounts to amnesty; later, in the 18th debate, he supported allowing illegal immigrant children to gain citizenship through military service. He would encourage self-deportation by requiring immigrants to present legal-status cards to be hired (and, since the absence of such a card would imply you're an illegal immigrant, the requirement for such a card would also necessarily extend to citizens). He mentions this card multiple times, in the 13th, 17th, 18th and 19th debates.
Trade
Mitt's trade policy leaves a lot to be desired. In the 3rd debate, he called our trade partners our "opponents," and I wasn't the only one to notice. In the 5th and later debates, he substituted "the other guys" for "opponents," but the sentiment still clearly remained. His primary trade policy is to "crack down on cheaters like China," which he mentioned, often with those exact words, in the 6th, 7th, 9th, 10th, 14th, 16th, 17th and 19th debates.
He did talk about expanding trade, but far less often than cracking down on China, and always in the context of "open[ing] up markets for our goods," as he said in the 14th debate. He seems to hold a typical mercantilist philosophy, where exports are good but imports are bad. Anything China or other countries do to encourage American imports should be punished, and the only goal of free trade agreements is to encourage American exports.
Defense
He opposes all cuts to defense spending, preferring cuts to entitlements and Obamacare. In fact, he wants to increase military spending, in particular by building more ships for the Navy (which he mentioned in the 13th, 18th and 20th debates) and recruiting an extra 100,000 troops (which he mentioned only once, in the 13th debate).
Specific Countries/Regions
China: Most of Romney's policy towards China focuses on trade, particularly "cracking down" on them for cheating. He promised in the 7th debate to issue an executive order on "day one" labelling China a currency manipulator, and to initiate action against China at the WTO.
Afghanistan: His Afghanistan policy is most charitably described as continually evolving. In the 2nd and 3rd debates, he preferred a timetable for withdrawal established by the generals in Afghanistan. In the 10th, he was fine with Obama's 2014 timetable for the general withdrawal, but not the September 2012 withdrawal of the surge troops. In the 11th, he said he wanted to keep the surge troops in Afghanistan until December 2012, and keep "ten thousand or so" troops in Afghanistan after 2014. In the 14th debate, he said he didn't yet have enough information to say when he would withdraw the troops from Afghanistan.
Iran: He is absolutely opposed to Iran getting nuclear weapons, going so far as to say in the 20th debate that re-electing Obama would lead to Iranian nukes being used against Americans, and that a Romney Presidency was the only way to prevent that. He said he would "of course" go to war "if all else fails" (in the 10th debate) and that Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz would "of course" be an act of war (in the 18th debate). He also wanted "crippling sanctions" against Iran in the 10th and 11th debates, and in the 14th criticized Obama for not supporting the Iranian protestors in 2009.
Iraq: Before going back into Iraq, he would want to "require significant, dramatic American interests" to be at stake, and said he would outline a specific endgame in terms of what would qualify as success.
Syria: In the 10th debate, he said, "Of course, it's time for the Assad dictatorship to end," but in the 11th said, "This is not the time for a no-fly zone over Syria."
Israel and Palestine: In the 19th debate, responding to a question from a self-identified Palestinian-American Republican, Romney said, "The best way to have peace in the Middle East is not for us to vacillate and to appease, but is to say, we stand with our friend Israel. We are committed to a Jewish state in Israel. We will not have an inch of difference between ourselves and our ally, Israel."
Europe: In the 7th, 9th and 16th debates, he opposed a direct bailout to Europe, saying they are big enough to solve their own problems. He would, however, be willing to provide assistance through the IMF and World Bank, and hinted he would bail out American companies affected by Europe's problems.
Canada: In 19 debates, Romney mentioned our largest trading partner and the country with which we share the world's largest land border once, and even that was indirectly through his support for the Keystone XL pipeline in the 17th debate.
Monday, April 23, 2012
The Myth of Border Security
There is no such thing as border security, not in the United States. Most people who talk about border security focus on the southern border, but the northern one counts too. We could spend hundreds of billions of dollars securing the Mexican border, and the terrorists would just cross the much longer, much more open Canadian border.
Last week, Saeton Kevin Grant showed just how easy it would be. Admittedly, Grant was travelling into Canada, out of the United States. But crossing the border in either direction is easy, so long as you avoid the legal crossings, as Grant did. From The Province:
Ultimately, this guy actually was caught, but what would he have had to do differently in order to succeed? Not much:
The fact is, border patrol only stops two kinds of people-- the law-abiding and the unlucky idiots. Every single person who crosses legally is stopped by the border patrol, no matter who they are or their reason for crossing. Criminals are only stopped when they make stupid mistakes like Grant did. The border patrol is going to catch the rookies and the ill-prepared, but a well-funded, trained terrorist isn't going to have any problem crossing the border if they really want to.
People who say we can solve this by simply securing the border a) don't have any idea just how costly that would be and b) usually ignore the Canadian border anyway. We could spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars building the highest double fence ever conceived across the 1,969 miles of the Mexican border, and it would do jack squat to secure the 5,525-mile Canadian border. If your goal is merely to restrict trade and immigration with Mexico but not Canada, that's fine. If your goal is to stop terrorists, you're kidding yourself and wasting the taxpayer's money.
Those who want more border security need to admit that it's not going to do a thing to stop terrorists. If they want to justify a fence, they need to do so on the grounds of restricting trade and immigration with Mexico, without resorting to the specter of terrorism.
*His daughter is about a year-and-a-half old. I could write a whole separate post on the ethics of breaking up this family again, but I won't. At least not right now.
Last week, Saeton Kevin Grant showed just how easy it would be. Admittedly, Grant was travelling into Canada, out of the United States. But crossing the border in either direction is easy, so long as you avoid the legal crossings, as Grant did. From The Province:
Grant, who rode a bicycle across the Manitoba-North Dakota border near Boissevain, Man., just after dark on Saturday, had been deported from Canada twice before — the last time in the summer of 2010.Grant was found in Boissevain, but ran away from the mounties and ended up in Winnipeg, where local police found him several days later. No word yet on where he'll be deported to (it's not clear from the news reports whether Grant, a Jamaican, was legally in the US in the first place). But the real story here is the complete lack of border security. Border patrol only realized this man had illegally crossed the border when an eagle-eyed (get it?) citizen told them he had. Even then, he still got away, and was only found days later at his girlfriend's house in Winnipeg-- the same girlfriend who had impersonated an immigration officer in order to prevent his previous deportation. (In other words, any good movie character would dismiss her house as "the first place they'd look.")
A Canadian resident heading home spotted Grant on the North Dakota side of the border around 8 p.m., Saturday, [RCMP] Sgt. Line Karpish said. She said the resident saw the man again on the Manitoba side of the border, still riding his bike.
"It didn't seem right and they contacted us," Karpish said, adding a check with the Canada Border Services Agency at the Boissevain crossing revealed they hadn't cleared anyone through riding a bike.
Ultimately, this guy actually was caught, but what would he have had to do differently in order to succeed? Not much:
- Travel in an inconspicuous car instead of on a bike so Eagle Eyes didn't notice.
- Make the crossing in the middle of the night after Eagle Eyes had gone to bed.
- Not cross at a highway where he could be seen. Carry the bike through a field if necessary.
- Not leave his ID behind when he ran from the mounties.
- Once across, figure out the first place they'd look for him, and go somewhere else. Anywhere else.
The fact is, border patrol only stops two kinds of people-- the law-abiding and the unlucky idiots. Every single person who crosses legally is stopped by the border patrol, no matter who they are or their reason for crossing. Criminals are only stopped when they make stupid mistakes like Grant did. The border patrol is going to catch the rookies and the ill-prepared, but a well-funded, trained terrorist isn't going to have any problem crossing the border if they really want to.
People who say we can solve this by simply securing the border a) don't have any idea just how costly that would be and b) usually ignore the Canadian border anyway. We could spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars building the highest double fence ever conceived across the 1,969 miles of the Mexican border, and it would do jack squat to secure the 5,525-mile Canadian border. If your goal is merely to restrict trade and immigration with Mexico but not Canada, that's fine. If your goal is to stop terrorists, you're kidding yourself and wasting the taxpayer's money.
Those who want more border security need to admit that it's not going to do a thing to stop terrorists. If they want to justify a fence, they need to do so on the grounds of restricting trade and immigration with Mexico, without resorting to the specter of terrorism.
*His daughter is about a year-and-a-half old. I could write a whole separate post on the ethics of breaking up this family again, but I won't. At least not right now.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Romney and the Military, Revisited
On Monday, I wrote about Christopher Preble's graph of the Pentagon's budget. On Tuesday, as Republican voters gave Mitt Romney victories in six of ten states, Preble published a post with an updated version of the graph including Romney's planned military spending. I've reproduced the graph below:
Romney's plan is in cyan; Obama's plan is in pink, while the Congressionally-mandated sequester cuts, required due to the failure of the deficit Supercommittee, are in red. I noted on Monday that even the sequester cuts would merely restore us to the level of spending we saw under George W. Bush from 2003-2007. It's also worth noting that Obama's plan, criticized by Republicans and especially Romney for gutting the military, keeps the Pentagon's budget permanently higher than it ever was under Bush.
But Romney's plan really takes the cake. He wants to spend at least 4% of GDP on the Pentagon. Since the current level is closer to 3.4%, that's about a $100 billion jump in Romney's first year, even though we're out of Iraq and winding down the fight in Afghanistan. As you can see in the graph above, that would immediately push the Pentagon's budget higher than it was even when Reagan was defending us from the Soviets.
Even worse, by indexing the Pentagon's budget to economic growth, the amount we spend will continue to grow with literally no end in sight. That will make it even more difficult for Romney to meet his pledge of capping government spending at 20% of GDP. More to the point, we need a president who will take the endlessly-growing, out-of-control spending programs in the federal budget and restore them to sensible, stable levels. Since Romney is promising to take a large-but-stable spending program and send it growing out of control, why should we trust him to reign in spending in the rest of the budget?
Romney's plan is in cyan; Obama's plan is in pink, while the Congressionally-mandated sequester cuts, required due to the failure of the deficit Supercommittee, are in red. I noted on Monday that even the sequester cuts would merely restore us to the level of spending we saw under George W. Bush from 2003-2007. It's also worth noting that Obama's plan, criticized by Republicans and especially Romney for gutting the military, keeps the Pentagon's budget permanently higher than it ever was under Bush.
But Romney's plan really takes the cake. He wants to spend at least 4% of GDP on the Pentagon. Since the current level is closer to 3.4%, that's about a $100 billion jump in Romney's first year, even though we're out of Iraq and winding down the fight in Afghanistan. As you can see in the graph above, that would immediately push the Pentagon's budget higher than it was even when Reagan was defending us from the Soviets.
Even worse, by indexing the Pentagon's budget to economic growth, the amount we spend will continue to grow with literally no end in sight. That will make it even more difficult for Romney to meet his pledge of capping government spending at 20% of GDP. More to the point, we need a president who will take the endlessly-growing, out-of-control spending programs in the federal budget and restore them to sensible, stable levels. Since Romney is promising to take a large-but-stable spending program and send it growing out of control, why should we trust him to reign in spending in the rest of the budget?
Monday, March 5, 2012
Defense Cuts and Hippie-Loving Peaceniks
Mitt Romney in the debates has railed against Obama's supposed plan to cut the military by a trillion dollars over ten years, although he usually leaves off the time frame. Romney's website also highlights the cuts, saying "over the next ten years nearly $1 trillion will be cut from the core defense budget." He warns (or at least his staffers do) that this will lead to disaster-- "A weak America, an America in decline, an America that retreats from its
responsibilities, would usher in an era of uncertainty and danger,
first for the United States but also for all those everywhere who
believe in the cause of freedom." The truth, of course, isn't nearly so bad.
Christopher Preble has an excellent post at CATO@Liberty that gets into some of the real numbers at issue, as well as some of the problems in defining what actually counts as "defense" spending. But most relevant to Romney's position, as well as to everyone who argues against defense cuts, is Preble's fourth and final graph, reproduced below.
Particularly interesting is the dark green line for "sequester cuts." These are the Congressionally-mandated cuts required due to the failure of the deficit Supercommittee. The most drastic cuts even on the table right now, these are the only projections close to cutting $1 trillion over a decade from the core defense budget. Despite Romney's rhetoric, Obama's FY 2013 budget (the pink line) doesn't cut as much as the sequester cuts do--indeed, the pink line projection is barely lower than actual spending has been in the last few years, and could only be considered a "slash" (as Romney's website says) when compared to Obama's own previous projections.
What's really noteworthy, however, is the level of that dark green line. As you may have already noticed in the above graph, there was a period in our nation's history where military spending was at essentially the same level as the dark green line for several years in a row. I speak, of course, of those years of "a weak America, an America in decline, an America that retreats from its responsibilities" under the leadership of that hippie-loving peacenik George W. Bush, from 2003 to 2007. I wonder if Romney realizes that the Pentagon's budget has been higher every year under Barack Obama than it ever was under Bush, or that the "slash" in spending would merely restore the Pentagon's budget to the same level it was at for most of Bush's presidency?
Christopher Preble has an excellent post at CATO@Liberty that gets into some of the real numbers at issue, as well as some of the problems in defining what actually counts as "defense" spending. But most relevant to Romney's position, as well as to everyone who argues against defense cuts, is Preble's fourth and final graph, reproduced below.
Particularly interesting is the dark green line for "sequester cuts." These are the Congressionally-mandated cuts required due to the failure of the deficit Supercommittee. The most drastic cuts even on the table right now, these are the only projections close to cutting $1 trillion over a decade from the core defense budget. Despite Romney's rhetoric, Obama's FY 2013 budget (the pink line) doesn't cut as much as the sequester cuts do--indeed, the pink line projection is barely lower than actual spending has been in the last few years, and could only be considered a "slash" (as Romney's website says) when compared to Obama's own previous projections.
What's really noteworthy, however, is the level of that dark green line. As you may have already noticed in the above graph, there was a period in our nation's history where military spending was at essentially the same level as the dark green line for several years in a row. I speak, of course, of those years of "a weak America, an America in decline, an America that retreats from its responsibilities" under the leadership of that hippie-loving peacenik George W. Bush, from 2003 to 2007. I wonder if Romney realizes that the Pentagon's budget has been higher every year under Barack Obama than it ever was under Bush, or that the "slash" in spending would merely restore the Pentagon's budget to the same level it was at for most of Bush's presidency?
Friday, February 24, 2012
Rational Military Spending
And by rational, I mean "of or relating to ratios." I raised this point in comments over at Tree of Mamre a few months ago, related to a Heritage Foundation graph. The topic came up again in the debate Wednesday, when Rick Santorum said this:
This is where rationality comes into play, again referring to ratios. These percents are ratios, equal to defense spending divided by total spending. If you have a ratio q = a / b, there are two ways that q can get smaller. If either a gets smaller or b gets larger, while the other stays the same, q will shrink. What happens to q when both a and b move in the same direction? If both a and b increase, q will fall if b increases more than a, and q will rise if a increases more than b. (This may be elementary, but Santorum did suggest a remedial math class...)
In this case, a is defense spending and b is total spending, and Santorum's clear implication is that since q is falling, a cannot be too large. Both Santorum and the Heritage Foundation before him disregard the possibility that q is smaller only because b is larger. Santorum does so even though he had just finished saying he wanted to shrink b because it had grown too large!
According to the PDFs linked above, in 1958 total federal spending was a hair below $72 billion, while in 2011 it was about $3,819 billion. That's a 53-fold increase, although these numbers don't adjust for inflation. Military spending, on the other hand, increased from $44 billion in 1958 to $768 billion in 2011, a 17-and-a-half-fold increase, once again not adjusting for inflation. Military spending has increased, but total spending has increased far more.
Returning to the discussion of ratios, in the case of military spending since 1958, it is clear that b has increased more than a. It is true, as the Heritage Foundation and Santorum both said, that q is smaller now than it was when Santorum was born. That is emphatically not because a has fallen, by any means! The ratio of military spending to total spending has fallen solely because total spending has risen so dramatically!
What does the fall in the ratio of military spending to the total budget mean for actual military spending? Since the total budget has increased by such a vast amount, absolutely nothing! The ratio has zero mathematical significance, and is even misleading since military spending has actually increased since Santorum was born.
Is there some policy reason to prefer this measure of military spending to others, flawed and misleading as it may be? Not that I can think of, not unless your goal is to misrepresent the numbers to reach a predetermined outcome. Controlling for inflation with the GDP deflator, absolute military spending is about 3.17 times higher today than in 1958 in the middle of the Cold War. On a per capita (inflation-adjusted) basis, it's about 1.76 times higher today. As a percentage of GDP, military spending has fallen from about 9.4% in 1958 to 5.1% today, although once again, this is because the denominator, in this case GDP, has risen so much, not because military spending has fallen.
Could current military spending levels be appropriate, or even too low? Hey, anything is possible. But those who want to argue from that position at the very least need to get their numbers straight, and argue why more military spending is needed despite spending three times more than we were in the middle of the Cold War. Getting the numbers and fundamental math concepts wrong, then suggesting that the people who understand the math need a remedial math class, is not the way to make your case-- only Paul Krugman can get away with something like that. Rick Santorum should've known better.
*The ratio was 20.0% in 2010, 18.8% in 2009 and 20.7% in 2008. In fact, the ratio has been 18.8% or higher since 2003; it was 17.3% in 2002, but surely that wasn't what Santorum meant.
Some people have suggested that defense spending is the problem. When I was born, defense spending was 60 percent of the budget. It's now 17 percent. If you think defense spending is the problem, then you need a remedial math class to go back to. Defense spending will not be cut under my administration...Rick Santorum was born in 1958, when "Major National Security" spending (PDF, page 69) was 61.4% of the federal budget, according to the Census Bureau's Statistical Abstract of the United States. So you can give Santorum credit for underestimating, at least. The 2012 edition (PDF) lists total federal spending in 2011 as $3,818.8 billion (page 4), and "National Defense" as $768.2 billion (page 5). Astute observers will note that 768.2/3818.8 = 20.1%, not 17%.* Nevertheless, 20.1% is less than a third of 1958's 61.4%. Is Santorum right?
This is where rationality comes into play, again referring to ratios. These percents are ratios, equal to defense spending divided by total spending. If you have a ratio q = a / b, there are two ways that q can get smaller. If either a gets smaller or b gets larger, while the other stays the same, q will shrink. What happens to q when both a and b move in the same direction? If both a and b increase, q will fall if b increases more than a, and q will rise if a increases more than b. (This may be elementary, but Santorum did suggest a remedial math class...)
In this case, a is defense spending and b is total spending, and Santorum's clear implication is that since q is falling, a cannot be too large. Both Santorum and the Heritage Foundation before him disregard the possibility that q is smaller only because b is larger. Santorum does so even though he had just finished saying he wanted to shrink b because it had grown too large!
According to the PDFs linked above, in 1958 total federal spending was a hair below $72 billion, while in 2011 it was about $3,819 billion. That's a 53-fold increase, although these numbers don't adjust for inflation. Military spending, on the other hand, increased from $44 billion in 1958 to $768 billion in 2011, a 17-and-a-half-fold increase, once again not adjusting for inflation. Military spending has increased, but total spending has increased far more.
Returning to the discussion of ratios, in the case of military spending since 1958, it is clear that b has increased more than a. It is true, as the Heritage Foundation and Santorum both said, that q is smaller now than it was when Santorum was born. That is emphatically not because a has fallen, by any means! The ratio of military spending to total spending has fallen solely because total spending has risen so dramatically!
What does the fall in the ratio of military spending to the total budget mean for actual military spending? Since the total budget has increased by such a vast amount, absolutely nothing! The ratio has zero mathematical significance, and is even misleading since military spending has actually increased since Santorum was born.
Is there some policy reason to prefer this measure of military spending to others, flawed and misleading as it may be? Not that I can think of, not unless your goal is to misrepresent the numbers to reach a predetermined outcome. Controlling for inflation with the GDP deflator, absolute military spending is about 3.17 times higher today than in 1958 in the middle of the Cold War. On a per capita (inflation-adjusted) basis, it's about 1.76 times higher today. As a percentage of GDP, military spending has fallen from about 9.4% in 1958 to 5.1% today, although once again, this is because the denominator, in this case GDP, has risen so much, not because military spending has fallen.
Could current military spending levels be appropriate, or even too low? Hey, anything is possible. But those who want to argue from that position at the very least need to get their numbers straight, and argue why more military spending is needed despite spending three times more than we were in the middle of the Cold War. Getting the numbers and fundamental math concepts wrong, then suggesting that the people who understand the math need a remedial math class, is not the way to make your case-- only Paul Krugman can get away with something like that. Rick Santorum should've known better.
*The ratio was 20.0% in 2010, 18.8% in 2009 and 20.7% in 2008. In fact, the ratio has been 18.8% or higher since 2003; it was 17.3% in 2002, but surely that wasn't what Santorum meant.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
The Gingrich-Huntsman Debate
Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman held their own two-person debate on Monday. Although Huntsman is in dead-last place in the RCP poll of polls, there has been plenty of speculation that he will be the next flavor of the week if-and-when Gingrich implodes like the others. Unlike the others, Huntsman is focusing totally on New Hampshire and counting on a win there to propel him to national victory. He's skipped two national debates in order to campaign in New Hampshire. Even this debate was held in New Hampshire. Only time will tell if this strategy will work, but his current polling average at 3.2% is higher than it's ever been before, not that that's saying very much.
Like the Cain-Gingrich debate, this was only broadcast on C-SPAN, and even then only after a several-hour delay and several scheduling changes. I don't think this has quite the same potential for Huntsman as the Cain-Gingrich debate had for Newt, but I still think it will be interesting enough to cover here. The official C-SPAN video is here, and an alternate version is here. The C-SPAN page includes a "transcript" with different quotes linked to the video, but it doesn't seem to be an actual full transcript. I haven't been able to find one of those.
In their opening statements, Gingrich mostly talks about how he likes this debate format, while Huntsman outlines four points on foreign policy. He says we need to recognize that we're fighting against terrorism, but that we also need to structure our foreign policy with regard to economics and strengthening "our core." He also wants to remind the world what it means to be an ally of the United States.
Afghanistan & Pakistan
Huntsman starts off, saying we've accomplished our goals in Afghanistan, and "it's time for us to come home." He says we've done the best we can and it's time to move on. He repeats what he's said in previous debates that we've knocked out the Taliban and al Qaeda, enabled Afghanistan to hold free elections and killed Osama bin Laden. He says that going forward, our mission should not be nation-building or fighting a counter-insurgency, but rather leading a counter-terrorist effort, which he sees as involving far fewer troops and having more of a special-ops focus.
Huntsman says despite our history with Pakistan when the Soviet Union was still around, and despite the aid we send them, there's a rising anti-Americanism in the country. Our relationship with them is "transactional," that is, we give them money and they give us cooperation in fighting terrorists, even if neither of us necessarily likes the other side. He thinks they could potentially become a "failed nation-state," and we have to be very careful in choosing our national interest objectives in that region, especially given Pakistan's nuclear weapons and terrorist training grounds in Pakistan. He also thinks we need to develop closer ties with India, a country that "shares our values" and is the largest democracy in the world.
Gingrich talks about differential development, and how in the world we now live in, it's possible to have modern, developed institutions right down the street from people living in third-world conditions, and that this is the kind of thing that the leaders in Afghanistan have to deal with. He believes that eventually the forces of "modernity" will eliminate the tribal aspect of Afghan culture, and that this will be an economic process, not a military process, so we need to decide what our position will be in the meantime. On Pakistan, he says that bin Laden could only have successfully hidden in Abbotabad for so long "if a substantial part of the Pakistani intelligence service was protecting him." He also notes that the Pakistani government's first response when we found bin Laden was to get angry at the Pakistanis in Abbotabad who had helped us.
Gingrich also says that the number of Christians in Iraq has fallen from 1.2 million to 500 thousand since we took out Saddam, and he's worried about how things will turn out in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria. He says in opposing communism, we had a uniting "theory" that motivated all of our actions, but that now under Obama, we don't have such a theory. We're using force "randomly" without a clear mission in the world, and that's what he wants to restore.
Newt says we have four immediate needs. First is to develop an energy policy that not only increases our own energy independence, but also helps us become an energy reserve for the rest of the world if Iran destabilizes energy sources in the Middle East. Second is to restore our manufacturing capabilities that we never lost in the first place. Third is develop more independent intelligence so we're not relying on foreign intelligence as much. Fourth is to develop a national strategy to deal with "radical Islamism" itself, not just dealing with individual countries like Pakistan or Afghanistan where problems crop up.
Iran
Gingrich believes that if you are not willing to let Iran have a nuclear weapon, you must ultimately be for regime change. He is absolutely against letting Iran have a nuclear weapon because he believes they would use it if they had it. He also thinks that it's not practical to simply destroy their nuclear research every few years, partly because they've built their facilities underground, under cities and mosques. He would prefer to see regime change come about non-militarily, the way the Soviet Union collapsed, but he's willing to force regime change militarily if he thinks he needs to.
Gingrich says that while China doesn't have an existential concern with Iranian nuclear weapons, Israel does. He says that if Iran gets nukes, an Israeli prime minister would be in the position of trying to prevent a second holocaust, and that they would understandably do whatever was necessary to prevent that, even if it meant using their own nukes against Iran. Newt believes the only way to prevent an all-out nuclear war in the region is through close cooperation with and support of Israel.
Huntsman calls Iran "the transcendent threat" of the coming decade. We should've supported the "Persian Spring" in 2009, and since we didn't, Iran has continued to refine their nuclear material. He says China is fine with Iran having a nuke, but Russia is more concerned about proliferation. If Iran gets a nuke, then we'll also have to deal with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt possibly wanting their own nukes to balance Iran. This is why he doesn't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and since he wants to prevent that from happening, "all options need to be on the table." He doesn't think that further sanctions against Iran will work, because the mullahs have already decided that they want nukes and they're willing to pay the price. He also says China isn't willing to go any further on sanctions than we already have, and those haven't worked, so it will be left to America to prevent Iran from getting nukes.
The Arab Spring
Hunstman says the real cause of the Arab Spring has been long-term dictatorships and the resultant economic stagnation. In the long-run, we need to "put the pieces back together," and he favors establishing free trade agreements in the region. He doesn't say exactly which countries he would want to include, but he does imply that it would be a regional agreement, based off our current agreement with Israel, rather than a serious of bilateral agreements.
He goes on to say that the more immediate issue is trying to figure out which groups in the Arab Spring will be aligned with our values not just in the short term, but in the long term as well, and that we have to be careful that we're not picking sides that will end up fighting against our values. Several times he compares the Arab Spring to the instability after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, which is an interesting historical idea that I hadn't heard before. On Libya, Huntsman thinks we should not have gone in because the events would've played out the same anyway and we didn't have a discernible national interest there. On Syria, he thinks we should go in, because we do have a national interest via Israel, as Syria is a "conduit" for Iran.
Gingrich doesn't like how Obama "dumped" Mubarak, because Mubarak had been our ally. Gingrich is fine with corrupt, brutal dictators as long as they're our corrupt, brutal dictators. He also repeats his earlier complaint about our intelligence network, and goes into more detail about the uniting theory that he wants to promote. He says we need to have a US-led cultural shift in the Arab world, where we encourage young Arabs to come to the United States or other Western countries to study and learn our values, and to take "modernity" back to their home countries. He also wants to translate Western books into Arabic as part of this cultural push.
Defense Spending
Gingrich is "deeply opposed" to the sequester on defense spending that results from the failure of the Supercommittee. He says we shouldn't allow government waste just because it's part of the defense budget, but he's opposed to any cuts to defense aside from the politician's favorite thing to cut-- waste, fraud and abuse. He says we should cut entitlements instead of cutting defense in order to balance the budget.
Huntsman, on the other hand, says the level of debt we face is a national security issue, and if we don't cut back our debt, we'll end up like Japan, Greece and Italy. Given the threat posed by our mounting debt, he says every spending area needs to be on the table, and we can't have any "sacred cows." Defense gets almost $700 billion, which is more than at the height of the Cold War, more than the rest of the world spends on their militaries combined, and we should be able to find some cuts. He says even though we're spending so much more, we're getting much less than we were, for example, after WWII, and we could save a lot of money if we reform our military's procurement process.
Gingrich's response is that we should realign our military now that the Cold War is over. He brings up the troops we have in Stuttgart, who were put there to defend against a possible Soviet invasion from East Germany, but are no longer necessary. He says he agrees with Huntsman's point about the military's procurement process, and says they spend too much time thinking and writing reports for each other. He wants to "thoroughly modernize" the military to get rid of the waste.
Along the realignment lines, Huntsman says that we still have 50,000 troops in Germany, who don't need to be there. He says the 21st century military and economic challenges will be in the Pacific region, and that's where we need to focus our military capabilities.
China and the Pacific Rim
Huntsman says US-China will be "the relationship of the 21st century." He thinks a lot of the old guard in the Chinese leadership will soon be retiring and the "fifth generation" will take over. He says the new generation are "hubristic nationalists" who have gotten used to the idea of 10+% economic growth and believe "they can do no wrong." As that generation takes over and they're confronted with economic problems and a growing class of former farmers, investing in China will become riskier. Huntsman predicts that a lot of the capital that has been investing in China will return to the US and other safer countries. He goes on to say that the Chinese are the greatest long-term strategic thinkers in the world, and that Americans are the greatest short-term tactical thinkers in the world, and that our challenge is to figure out how to get these two cultures to work together.
Gingrich says he largely agrees with Huntsman on China, but differentiates between the relationship between the American people and the Chinese people versus the relationship between the American and Chinese governments. He says we're always going to have certain tensions with an authoritarian government, but that we should be careful to not build an antagonistic relationship between our two peoples. Gingrich also spends some time talking about our domestic policies, saying, "If we're determined to be domestically stupid, it is impractical to ask the Chinese to match us in stupidity." He wants to make sure we're educating students in math and science so that they can compete with China and other countries.
Huntsman agrees with Gingrich's point about the American and Chinese peoples versus the governments, and says we need to take the American-Chinese relationship out of Washington and Beijing and develop more direct relationships at subnational and private levels. He says the conversation within the Chinese Communist Party is now being driven by the internet and their people's increasing awareness of the outside world.
Conclusion
I like this debate format a lot, and I'd love to see other candidates have debates like this as well, even not including Gingrich. A Perry-Santorum-Bachmann debate could be very interesting, and I think a Romney-Gingrich debate could easily reshape the current state of the race. I think I'd also like to see the proposed Gingrich-Obama debates even if Newt doesn't win the nomination, as that could be very entertaining.
Both men in this debate came across as very knowledgeable in every area they covered. There weren't any you-go-first moments like in the Cain-Gingrich debate, although Newt did say that Huntsman knew more about China than he did. Their different backgrounds were evident in their answers. Newt's responses tended to be more big-picture and broader in nature, building long-run historical narratives with anecdotes to justify the narratives. Huntsman's responses tended to be more specific, with more concrete plans, and the detailed facts that support his plans.
In general, I liked Huntsman's answers better. I mostly agree with him on Afghanistan, and absolutely agree about India. It was good to hear him bring up India because they're a very important country that is often ignored in these foreign policy discussions. By contrast, Gingrich's position on Afghanistan seemed to be rather patronizing. Several times he talks about bringing "modernity" and Western culture to the Muslim world, even as he opposes democracy in places like Egypt.
Neither man supports the Arab Spring as much as I would like, and although Gingrich doesn't actually oppose it, he seems a lot closer to opposing it than to supporting it. He seems just fine with the old-school idea that we should support brutal dictators who oppress and kill their own people. He doesn't at all address the idea that maybe the reason Egyptians don't like us is because we supported Mubarak for so long. Huntsman, on the other hand, talks about the United States being a "shining beacon" for hope and democracy in the world, and generally supports the Arab Spring. He would not have gone into Libya, but he justifies that by saying Gaddafi would have fallen anyway (which is dubious, but shows his support for democracy even if he disagrees about the methods used). Huntsman also proposed a regional free trade area in the long-term, which I think was the only mention of trade in this foreign policy debate.
I also agree with Huntsman more on defense spending. Gingrich wants to cut entitlements rather than defense. Although we should cut entitlements, the best reforms to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will take years if not decades to implement. Some, like personal retirement accounts, will be great in the long-term but will increase the deficit in the short-term. We can't balance the budget by only cutting entitlements, but Gingrich seems to disagree. Huntsman is more practical, saying that military spending is far higher than it needs to be, and pointing to a specific area, the procurements process, where we're spending more and getting less than we used to.
Overall, this debate reaffirmed some of the policy reasons why I don't like Newt Gingrich. It also reaffirmed that Jon Huntsman is possibly the best option on foreign policy at the moment. In terms of the underlying philosophy that informs their positions, I agree with Huntsman's far more than with Gingrich's. On the other hand, I don't really like Huntsman as a person. He's more of a downer than any of the other candidates, and that matters when you have to inspire your supporters to actually get out and vote for you. Of course, Gingrich isn't exactly inspiring either. Between the two men, I think I'd rather vote for Huntsman.
Like the Cain-Gingrich debate, this was only broadcast on C-SPAN, and even then only after a several-hour delay and several scheduling changes. I don't think this has quite the same potential for Huntsman as the Cain-Gingrich debate had for Newt, but I still think it will be interesting enough to cover here. The official C-SPAN video is here, and an alternate version is here. The C-SPAN page includes a "transcript" with different quotes linked to the video, but it doesn't seem to be an actual full transcript. I haven't been able to find one of those.
In their opening statements, Gingrich mostly talks about how he likes this debate format, while Huntsman outlines four points on foreign policy. He says we need to recognize that we're fighting against terrorism, but that we also need to structure our foreign policy with regard to economics and strengthening "our core." He also wants to remind the world what it means to be an ally of the United States.
Afghanistan & Pakistan
Huntsman starts off, saying we've accomplished our goals in Afghanistan, and "it's time for us to come home." He says we've done the best we can and it's time to move on. He repeats what he's said in previous debates that we've knocked out the Taliban and al Qaeda, enabled Afghanistan to hold free elections and killed Osama bin Laden. He says that going forward, our mission should not be nation-building or fighting a counter-insurgency, but rather leading a counter-terrorist effort, which he sees as involving far fewer troops and having more of a special-ops focus.
Huntsman says despite our history with Pakistan when the Soviet Union was still around, and despite the aid we send them, there's a rising anti-Americanism in the country. Our relationship with them is "transactional," that is, we give them money and they give us cooperation in fighting terrorists, even if neither of us necessarily likes the other side. He thinks they could potentially become a "failed nation-state," and we have to be very careful in choosing our national interest objectives in that region, especially given Pakistan's nuclear weapons and terrorist training grounds in Pakistan. He also thinks we need to develop closer ties with India, a country that "shares our values" and is the largest democracy in the world.
Gingrich talks about differential development, and how in the world we now live in, it's possible to have modern, developed institutions right down the street from people living in third-world conditions, and that this is the kind of thing that the leaders in Afghanistan have to deal with. He believes that eventually the forces of "modernity" will eliminate the tribal aspect of Afghan culture, and that this will be an economic process, not a military process, so we need to decide what our position will be in the meantime. On Pakistan, he says that bin Laden could only have successfully hidden in Abbotabad for so long "if a substantial part of the Pakistani intelligence service was protecting him." He also notes that the Pakistani government's first response when we found bin Laden was to get angry at the Pakistanis in Abbotabad who had helped us.
Gingrich also says that the number of Christians in Iraq has fallen from 1.2 million to 500 thousand since we took out Saddam, and he's worried about how things will turn out in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria. He says in opposing communism, we had a uniting "theory" that motivated all of our actions, but that now under Obama, we don't have such a theory. We're using force "randomly" without a clear mission in the world, and that's what he wants to restore.
Newt says we have four immediate needs. First is to develop an energy policy that not only increases our own energy independence, but also helps us become an energy reserve for the rest of the world if Iran destabilizes energy sources in the Middle East. Second is to restore our manufacturing capabilities that we never lost in the first place. Third is develop more independent intelligence so we're not relying on foreign intelligence as much. Fourth is to develop a national strategy to deal with "radical Islamism" itself, not just dealing with individual countries like Pakistan or Afghanistan where problems crop up.
Iran
Gingrich believes that if you are not willing to let Iran have a nuclear weapon, you must ultimately be for regime change. He is absolutely against letting Iran have a nuclear weapon because he believes they would use it if they had it. He also thinks that it's not practical to simply destroy their nuclear research every few years, partly because they've built their facilities underground, under cities and mosques. He would prefer to see regime change come about non-militarily, the way the Soviet Union collapsed, but he's willing to force regime change militarily if he thinks he needs to.
Gingrich says that while China doesn't have an existential concern with Iranian nuclear weapons, Israel does. He says that if Iran gets nukes, an Israeli prime minister would be in the position of trying to prevent a second holocaust, and that they would understandably do whatever was necessary to prevent that, even if it meant using their own nukes against Iran. Newt believes the only way to prevent an all-out nuclear war in the region is through close cooperation with and support of Israel.
Huntsman calls Iran "the transcendent threat" of the coming decade. We should've supported the "Persian Spring" in 2009, and since we didn't, Iran has continued to refine their nuclear material. He says China is fine with Iran having a nuke, but Russia is more concerned about proliferation. If Iran gets a nuke, then we'll also have to deal with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt possibly wanting their own nukes to balance Iran. This is why he doesn't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and since he wants to prevent that from happening, "all options need to be on the table." He doesn't think that further sanctions against Iran will work, because the mullahs have already decided that they want nukes and they're willing to pay the price. He also says China isn't willing to go any further on sanctions than we already have, and those haven't worked, so it will be left to America to prevent Iran from getting nukes.
The Arab Spring
Hunstman says the real cause of the Arab Spring has been long-term dictatorships and the resultant economic stagnation. In the long-run, we need to "put the pieces back together," and he favors establishing free trade agreements in the region. He doesn't say exactly which countries he would want to include, but he does imply that it would be a regional agreement, based off our current agreement with Israel, rather than a serious of bilateral agreements.
He goes on to say that the more immediate issue is trying to figure out which groups in the Arab Spring will be aligned with our values not just in the short term, but in the long term as well, and that we have to be careful that we're not picking sides that will end up fighting against our values. Several times he compares the Arab Spring to the instability after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, which is an interesting historical idea that I hadn't heard before. On Libya, Huntsman thinks we should not have gone in because the events would've played out the same anyway and we didn't have a discernible national interest there. On Syria, he thinks we should go in, because we do have a national interest via Israel, as Syria is a "conduit" for Iran.
Gingrich doesn't like how Obama "dumped" Mubarak, because Mubarak had been our ally. Gingrich is fine with corrupt, brutal dictators as long as they're our corrupt, brutal dictators. He also repeats his earlier complaint about our intelligence network, and goes into more detail about the uniting theory that he wants to promote. He says we need to have a US-led cultural shift in the Arab world, where we encourage young Arabs to come to the United States or other Western countries to study and learn our values, and to take "modernity" back to their home countries. He also wants to translate Western books into Arabic as part of this cultural push.
Defense Spending
Gingrich is "deeply opposed" to the sequester on defense spending that results from the failure of the Supercommittee. He says we shouldn't allow government waste just because it's part of the defense budget, but he's opposed to any cuts to defense aside from the politician's favorite thing to cut-- waste, fraud and abuse. He says we should cut entitlements instead of cutting defense in order to balance the budget.
Huntsman, on the other hand, says the level of debt we face is a national security issue, and if we don't cut back our debt, we'll end up like Japan, Greece and Italy. Given the threat posed by our mounting debt, he says every spending area needs to be on the table, and we can't have any "sacred cows." Defense gets almost $700 billion, which is more than at the height of the Cold War, more than the rest of the world spends on their militaries combined, and we should be able to find some cuts. He says even though we're spending so much more, we're getting much less than we were, for example, after WWII, and we could save a lot of money if we reform our military's procurement process.
Gingrich's response is that we should realign our military now that the Cold War is over. He brings up the troops we have in Stuttgart, who were put there to defend against a possible Soviet invasion from East Germany, but are no longer necessary. He says he agrees with Huntsman's point about the military's procurement process, and says they spend too much time thinking and writing reports for each other. He wants to "thoroughly modernize" the military to get rid of the waste.
Along the realignment lines, Huntsman says that we still have 50,000 troops in Germany, who don't need to be there. He says the 21st century military and economic challenges will be in the Pacific region, and that's where we need to focus our military capabilities.
China and the Pacific Rim
Huntsman says US-China will be "the relationship of the 21st century." He thinks a lot of the old guard in the Chinese leadership will soon be retiring and the "fifth generation" will take over. He says the new generation are "hubristic nationalists" who have gotten used to the idea of 10+% economic growth and believe "they can do no wrong." As that generation takes over and they're confronted with economic problems and a growing class of former farmers, investing in China will become riskier. Huntsman predicts that a lot of the capital that has been investing in China will return to the US and other safer countries. He goes on to say that the Chinese are the greatest long-term strategic thinkers in the world, and that Americans are the greatest short-term tactical thinkers in the world, and that our challenge is to figure out how to get these two cultures to work together.
Gingrich says he largely agrees with Huntsman on China, but differentiates between the relationship between the American people and the Chinese people versus the relationship between the American and Chinese governments. He says we're always going to have certain tensions with an authoritarian government, but that we should be careful to not build an antagonistic relationship between our two peoples. Gingrich also spends some time talking about our domestic policies, saying, "If we're determined to be domestically stupid, it is impractical to ask the Chinese to match us in stupidity." He wants to make sure we're educating students in math and science so that they can compete with China and other countries.
Huntsman agrees with Gingrich's point about the American and Chinese peoples versus the governments, and says we need to take the American-Chinese relationship out of Washington and Beijing and develop more direct relationships at subnational and private levels. He says the conversation within the Chinese Communist Party is now being driven by the internet and their people's increasing awareness of the outside world.
Conclusion
I like this debate format a lot, and I'd love to see other candidates have debates like this as well, even not including Gingrich. A Perry-Santorum-Bachmann debate could be very interesting, and I think a Romney-Gingrich debate could easily reshape the current state of the race. I think I'd also like to see the proposed Gingrich-Obama debates even if Newt doesn't win the nomination, as that could be very entertaining.
Both men in this debate came across as very knowledgeable in every area they covered. There weren't any you-go-first moments like in the Cain-Gingrich debate, although Newt did say that Huntsman knew more about China than he did. Their different backgrounds were evident in their answers. Newt's responses tended to be more big-picture and broader in nature, building long-run historical narratives with anecdotes to justify the narratives. Huntsman's responses tended to be more specific, with more concrete plans, and the detailed facts that support his plans.
In general, I liked Huntsman's answers better. I mostly agree with him on Afghanistan, and absolutely agree about India. It was good to hear him bring up India because they're a very important country that is often ignored in these foreign policy discussions. By contrast, Gingrich's position on Afghanistan seemed to be rather patronizing. Several times he talks about bringing "modernity" and Western culture to the Muslim world, even as he opposes democracy in places like Egypt.
Neither man supports the Arab Spring as much as I would like, and although Gingrich doesn't actually oppose it, he seems a lot closer to opposing it than to supporting it. He seems just fine with the old-school idea that we should support brutal dictators who oppress and kill their own people. He doesn't at all address the idea that maybe the reason Egyptians don't like us is because we supported Mubarak for so long. Huntsman, on the other hand, talks about the United States being a "shining beacon" for hope and democracy in the world, and generally supports the Arab Spring. He would not have gone into Libya, but he justifies that by saying Gaddafi would have fallen anyway (which is dubious, but shows his support for democracy even if he disagrees about the methods used). Huntsman also proposed a regional free trade area in the long-term, which I think was the only mention of trade in this foreign policy debate.
I also agree with Huntsman more on defense spending. Gingrich wants to cut entitlements rather than defense. Although we should cut entitlements, the best reforms to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will take years if not decades to implement. Some, like personal retirement accounts, will be great in the long-term but will increase the deficit in the short-term. We can't balance the budget by only cutting entitlements, but Gingrich seems to disagree. Huntsman is more practical, saying that military spending is far higher than it needs to be, and pointing to a specific area, the procurements process, where we're spending more and getting less than we used to.
Overall, this debate reaffirmed some of the policy reasons why I don't like Newt Gingrich. It also reaffirmed that Jon Huntsman is possibly the best option on foreign policy at the moment. In terms of the underlying philosophy that informs their positions, I agree with Huntsman's far more than with Gingrich's. On the other hand, I don't really like Huntsman as a person. He's more of a downer than any of the other candidates, and that matters when you have to inspire your supporters to actually get out and vote for you. Of course, Gingrich isn't exactly inspiring either. Between the two men, I think I'd rather vote for Huntsman.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Eleventh Republican Primary Debate (DC)
CNN held the eleventh Republican primary debate on November 22nd in Washington, DC, cosponsored by the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. This debate had the regular cast of eight candidates, and was billed as a national security debate. A full video is here; a version with higher video quality and skipping the introductions is here.
Before this debate, I had a somewhat negative view of most of the candidates, including Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman. I had a more negative view of Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul, and a somewhat positive view of Herman Cain. As always, I've summarized the candidates' answers below, although I didn't score them as thoroughly as I have in the past. Usually I try to give a positive or negative score to almost every answer, but this time there were more answers that simply scored zero because they didn't move me one way or the other.
Rick Santorum
Ron Paul
Rick Perry
Mitt Romney
Herman Cain
Newt Gingrich
Michele Bachmann
Jon Huntsman
Conclusion
Summing the candidates' scores, Huntsman again scored the highest with +1. Everyone else was negative; Cain was at -1, Perry at -2, Santorum at -3, Gingrich at -4 and Bachmann at -5. Paul and Romney pull up the rear at -7 each.
Since this debate, but before I was able to publish this post, Herman Cain has dropped out of the race. With the mounting sex scandals... wait, that's a bad word choice. Erm... anyway, Cain this time didn't talk about 999, but clearly demonstrated his lack of foreign policy knowledge. Most of his answers amounted to relying on his advisers or deflecting from the question to talk about the economy instead. The fact that he had the second-highest score despite this doesn't say very much for the rest of the candidates.
The current frontrunner Newt Gingrich had a few good moments, especially his willingness to cut military spending if necessary. I also like that he's willing to put in place a path to legality for at least some of the illegal immigrants currently in the country. But many of his answers betray a top-down, government-run ideology. The way to choose who to deport, he thinks, is with panels of experts who carefully examine each illegal's personal life, including where they go to church and who they associate with, to decide whether they deserve to stay. On civil liberties, he heavily implies that even American citizens are guilty until proven innocent on national security matters. Newt Gingrich seems to be just fine with "elites" running the show and making decisions about the minutiae of our lives, just as long as he's one of those elites.
Rick Perry loves shutting things down, whether it's the US-Mexico border or the entire country of Iran. After this debate, I'm not sure there's anything he wouldn't shut down. (Except maybe the Department of Energy?) The other Rick's best moment of the night, in my opinion, was at the very end, when all the candidates were asked what they're worried about that no one else is really talking about. Santorum was one of the few who actually answered the question, and was persuasive about it.
Ron Paul, on the other hand, was in rare form in this debate. No matter what the question was, whether it was the border, foreign aid or Somalia, he was able to turn his answer around until he got to talking about the "endless wars" in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I'm not sure either Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann said anything I agree with in this debate, other than throwaway lines like how we "could do a lot better" than the TSA. Not only did Romney contradict himself on illegal immigrants in a single sentence, but he also got his own name wrong. Bachmann spent half of the debate saying how much she agrees with the current frontrunner and the rest of the time mostly talking nonsense.
The highest scorer of the night, at least in my estimation, was Jon Huntsman, despite pushing some concept he calls the "trust deficit" and even going back to talking about "our core." The only reason he scores so highly is that half of his answers didn't rise to the point of being scored at all, either positive or negative. Of the five answers that I did score, four contradicted each other (in two pairs). He says we've accomplished our goals in Afghanistan... but he wants to keep upwards of ten thousand troops there just in case we haven't. He criticizes Obama for not supporting democracy in Iran, and then turns around and says we shouldn't yet support democracy in the Arab Spring. His best answer of the night that he didn't later retract was when he said, "If we can't find some savings in the $650 billion budget, we're not looking closely enough."
Before this debate, I had a somewhat negative view of most of the candidates, including Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman. I had a more negative view of Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul, and a somewhat positive view of Herman Cain. As always, I've summarized the candidates' answers below, although I didn't score them as thoroughly as I have in the past. Usually I try to give a positive or negative score to almost every answer, but this time there were more answers that simply scored zero because they didn't move me one way or the other.
Rick Santorum
- There was some kind of technical failure that seems to have cut off the recording during part of Santorum's introduction (the same error is in all versions I found and shows up in the official transcript). It sounds like he's saying national security is the "one constitutional responsibility of the federal government," but that sounds more like something Ron Paul would say, not Rick Santorum, and as it cuts back in halfway through his sentence, I'm not sure if that's what he means or not.
- He supports "profiling," saying, "We should be trying to find the bomber, not the bomb." Who would fit the profile? "Muslims" and "younger males." There's a right way to do profiling, based on psychology, criminal history, that kind of thing. Santorum's got the wrong way to do it. (-1)
- He says the last time we faced a similar threat on American soil was the Civil War. He says of that time, "of course, Abraham Lincoln ran right over civil rights," and apparently thinks that's what we need to do today. Santorum really out-does Ron Paul in the quest to see who can make Gingrich look sane by comparison. (-2)
- "I agree with Ron Paul. We are not fighting a war on terrorism." Rather, he says, we're fighting a war against radical Islam, and the Islamists are saying that they're just going to wait us out. Eventually, we'll get tired of fighting and go home, and then they'll be in charge again. He doesn't address it, but this raises the question of whether there will ever be a point where we can bring our troops home. (-1)
- He supports Bush's program against AIDS in Africa because "Africa was a country on the brink." He sees our humanitarian aid to Africa as a national security issue because it helps prevent radical Islam from getting a foothold there.
- He would be willing to compromise with Democrats, but raising taxes would push the economy back into recession and make the deficit situation worse. He's willing to compromise by cutting things that he doesn't really want to cut. (+1)
- He wants to make sure that products made by companies started by legal immigrants are made in America. Santorum is obviously not a believer in free trade. (-1)
- He says he has a four-point economic plan, including eliminating the corporate tax only for manufacturing and repatriation of profits. He's less specific on the other two points, which are general regulatory reform and energy policy.
- What issue is he worried about that no one else is talking about? The "militant socialists" of Central and South America. He criticizes Obama for delaying the Colombia FTA and for taking the wrong side in Honduras. (+1)
Ron Paul
- His introduction focuses on "needless and unnecessary wars" and how he's against them. I think everyone's against needless and unnecessary wars, they just don't agree on which ones count as needless and unnecessary.
- "The Patriot Act is unpatriotic." He says Timothy McVeigh was a terrorist and we dealt with him without the Patriot Act, so we don't really need it. I don't exactly like the Patriot Act, but Paul seems to miss the point that we only caught McVeigh after he successfully bombed the Murrah building. (-1)
- "You can prevent crime by becoming a police state." He warns about having a policeman in every house and rants for awhile. Ron Paul is a master at making Gingrich look sensible by comparison. (-1)
- We say too often that we're at war, he says, and points out that we're not in a Congressionally-declared war. He says terrorism isn't a person, it's a tactic, so we can't say that we're in a war on terrorism. Then he goes off and talks about how we're all at risk of assassination now because we can all be loosely associated with terrorist organizations. (-1)
- He doesn't believe Israel would attack Iranian nuclear facilities, but he says even if they did, it's none of our business. (-1)
- He does not support Bush's program against AIDS in Africa because it's foreign aid and he doesn't like the "endless wars" or what we did in Libya. (-1)
- "They're not cutting anything out of anything." He says thanks to baseline budgeting, the cuts to the military really just mean the budget won't go up as fast as it would have gone up before. (+1)
- He doesn't like the drug war, and he wants the money spent in Afghanistan and Pakistan to be spent instead on securing the US-Mexico border. He says if you have "an easy road to citizenship," that somehow amounts to a subsidy and it's going to encourage more illegal immigration. (-1)
- Asked a follow-up about the drug war, he says it's a "total failure." We should at least let sick people use marijuana, and alcohol and prescription drugs kill more people than illegal drugs.
- Someone from AEI asks about "an al Qaida affiliate, al Shabab" in Somalia, and Paul generalizes to al Qaida and overall Middle East policy. In fact, he doesn't address Somalia at all. (-1)
- What issue is he worried about that no one else is talking about? "Overreaction" and getting into another war. He says the Taliban doesn't want to kill us here, they only want to kill us over there. Even if that's strictly true, he misses the fact that we only care about the Taliban because they supported al Qaida who most certainly does want to kill us here in America. (-1)
Rick Perry
- His introduction is entirely about his wife for some reason.
- He wants to privatize the TSA (which would be really good) and strengthen the Patriot Act (not so good).
- Pakistan has shown us that "they cannot be trusted," and it sends the wrong message to the rest of the world to be giving them money. (+1)
- He still wants to "engage" with Pakistan, just "quit writing blank checks to these countries." He suggests starting some kind of trade zone between Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, which is one of the few good long-term ideas expressed in this debate, but I can't see any of those countries agreeing to it any time soon.
- Given that decades of sanctions against Iran have failed so far, does he think that more sanctions will work? "Absolutely." He wants to "sanction" their central bank in order to "shut down that economy." (-1)
- He says he "signed six balanced budgets" in Texas. He doesn't mention that the Texas state legislature is required by the state constitution to pass balanced budgets, probably because that would be admitting he didn't actually have anything to do with balancing those budgets. That might be why he says he "signed" six balanced budgets, rather than saying that he actually balanced six budgets. (-1)
- He says he's had to work with Democrats as governor of Texas. That doesn't have quite the same impact as when Romney says it about Massachusetts. Republicans have held majorities in both houses of the state legislature since 2003, and they've held the majority in the state Senate since 1997.
- He says he wants a 20% flat personal tax, a 20% corporate tax and a part-time Congress.
- He wants "a 21st century Monroe Doctrine," and promises "that within 12 months of the inaugural, that [Mexican] border will be shut down, and it will be secure." I guess shutting it down would technically make it secure, but that's absolutely the wrong direction for this country to go in. (-2)
- He first wants to secure the border with Mexico, and any discussion about what to do with immigrants afterwards is "just an intellectual exercise" until the border is secure. At the same time, he does side with Gingrich's view that an illegal who has been here for some length of time should not be deported.
- We need to use several different tactics to pressure Syria's government, including a no-fly zone, economic sanctions and covert activity. He says we should take Syria seriously. Later in a response to Romney he seems to step back a bit and says the no-fly zone is "one of the options," not necessarily the option that we should take. (+1)
- What issue is he worried about that no one else is talking about? Communist China, even though he thinks they're "destined for the ash heap of history."
Mitt Romney
- He introduces himself by saying, "I'm Mitt Romney and yes, Wolf, that's also my first name." But as others have pointed out, it's not.
- "We could do a lot better" than TSA pat-downs, but he'd rather talk about how he agrees with Newt's criminal law/national security distinction. He says there's "a different form of law" for those who "attack the United States" vs those who merely commit crimes against its citizens. However, he stops short of implying that "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't apply on national security issues, as Newt does.
- He says America's current approval rating in Pakistan is 12%, and we need "to bring Pakistan into the 21st century, or the 20th century for that matter." I wonder if he thinks quotes like that will help raise Pakistani's opinions of Americans. (-1)
- He wants to pull out the surge troops from Afghanistan by December 2012 and all but "ten thousand or so" of the rest of the troops by the end of 2014. He says that's the timetable the generals on the ground prefer and that's what he'll do. When Huntsman criticizes him for this, Romney says he's been to Afghanistan and we need to keep our troops there until the generals say it's time to withdraw.
- He says, "They're cutting a trillion dollars out of the defense budget" and putting it into Obamacare instead, and this amounts to spending us into bankruptcy. But somehow spending the same amount of money on the military instead wouldn't be spending us into bankruptcy? How does that work? (-1)
- He rattles off a list of military programs that he says are being cut and insists that all of them are necessary for national security. He wants "crippling sanctions" on Iran and says he doesn't care if it makes gasoline more expensive. (-1)
- Mitt agrees with Bachmann that any kind of path to legality for illegal immigrants amounts to amnesty and is a magnet, but he doesn't say a thing about what we should do with illegals already here. He also agrees with Gingrich that we should give visas to people who get degrees in certain preferred fields. (-1)
- He says, "I'm not going to start drawing lines here about who gets to stay and who gets to go," then immediately says that illegal immigrants should not "get to stay." That sounds a lot like drawing a line about who gets to stay to me, it's just a different line from Newt's and Perry's. (-1)
- When asked about Somalia, he doesn't talk at all about Somalia, but rather generalizes to foreign policy in general and bashes Obama for a range of things that have nothing to do with Somalia. (-1)
- "This is not the time for a no-fly zone over Syria," although he does support sanctions and covert actions against the government.
- What issue is he worried about that no one else is talking about? What Perry and Santorum said, but also Iran, because that sure wasn't addressed yet. (-1)
Herman Cain
- The only introduction he gives is that he is a "businessman," and then he says "our national security has indeed been downgraded."
- He supports what he calls "targeted identification," which sounds like it's just Santorum-style profiling, although he says straight religious profiling is "oversimplifying it." He would be willing to "refine" the Patriot Act, but he thinks for the most part that it's a good law.
- He would support an Israeli attack against Iranian nuclear facilities if he was satisfied that their plan had a reasonable chance of success. (+1)
- In a response to Ron Paul, he says he doesn't believe it's very likely that Israel would be able to come up with a plan that had a reasonable chance of success. He's giving Israel a condition that he doesn't think they can meet, but then says it's in America's interest to prevent Iran from influencing Afghanistan. He doesn't clarify how he plans to do that. (-1)
- He's not sure whether he would support Bush's program against AIDS in Africa because he doesn't know whether it's been successful or not. This is possibly the most common criticism of Cain's campaign, but shouldn't he know that already? (-1)
- An insecure border is a national security threat. He says terrorists have come into the country through Mexico and says more people were killed by violence in Mexico last year than in Iraq and Afghanistan. He repeats his four-point plan from the earliest debates: secure the border, enforce existing laws, clean up the immigration bureaucracy to make legal immigration easier and allow the states to deal with illegals already in the country.
- He would not support a no-fly zone over Syria, but would rather work to enact sanctions on Syria's oil exports. He doesn't seem to know what else to say, so he spends the rest of his time talking about growing the domestic economy. (-1)
- What issue is he worried about that no one else is talking about? Cyber attacks. (+1)
Newt Gingrich
- His says his father was in the infantry, and then he compliments Heritage and AEI.
- He wants to make a distinction between "national security requirements and criminal law requirements." He says that "it's desperately important that we preserve your right to be innocent until proven guilty, if it's a matter of criminal law," but not if it's a matter of national security. Hmm... that's not very reassuring. (-1)
- Asked to clarify, he says, "Again, very sharp division. Criminal law, the government should be frankly on defense and you're innocent until proven guilty. National security, the government should have many more tools in order to save our lives." He apparently really believes that "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't apply, even to American citizens, on matters of national security. (-1)
- His response to Ron Paul is, "Timothy McVeigh succeeded." He wants a law that prevents attacks, not a law that punishes people after attacks.
- He asks Wolf for a chance to respond to Romney and Huntsman, then says their debate over how quickly to withdraw from Afghanistan confuses him and he'd rather talk about Pakistan. He wants to get tough with the Pakistanis and tell them, "help us or get out of the way, but don't complain if we kill people you're not willing to go after." That takes on a somewhat different connotation after the recent attack on the Pakistan military outpost...
- He's fine with cutting off Iran's supply of oil to Europe "now" because in the long term we'll be able to develop a "massive all-sources energy program in the United States" to replace that oil. He also wants to cut off their supply of gasoline, then sabotage what he says is "the only refinery they have." That reminds of something else. (-1)
- He is not willing to say that cuts to the military are "unacceptable" because he believes there are things that the military can do less expensively. (+1)
- He goes on to say that we're just not "serious" as a country, and that if we were, we could drill into enough oil fields to make the price of oil "collapse" within a year. (-1)
- He would only bomb Iranian nuclear facilities as a "last recourse" and only as part of a larger war to get rid of Ahmadinejad. He wants to "seriously talk about" that larger war. (-1)
- On Social Security reform, he supports the Chilean model, and yes, this is Gingrich, not Cain. He says Chile has guaranteed their citizens that if they did not earn returns in the private market as high as their previous government benefits, that the government would make up the difference, and that in thirty years, they've never had to make up that difference, even during the global recession. (+1)
- He wants special visas for foreigners who earn graduate degrees in certain preferred fields. He wants "something like a World War II Selective Service Board" to individually examine every illegal immigrant and determine on a case-by-case basis who's allowed to stay and who isn't. The decision would primarily be based on how long they've already been here, but would also include factors like whether or not they go to church. Yeah, there's no room for corruption in a setup like that. (-2)
- He says if someone has been here for 25 years and has family and is part of the community here, we shouldn't take them away from that family, but that if someone has just recently arrived, we should send them back.
- What issue is he worried about that no one else is talking about? He cites the Hart-Rudman Commission under Clinton, which he says concluded their were three major threats: a WMD in an American city, an EMP attack and cyber attacks. (+1)
Michele Bachmann
- She uses her introduction to talk about her family in the military and to send a Happy Thanksgiving to American troops both home and abroad.
- We need a national security law that's updated to deal with wireless communications. She complains that the underwear bomber was read his Miranda rights "within 45 minutes," saying that terrorists shouldn't be read their rights because "they don't have any." (-1)
- Pakistan is "one of the most violent, unstable nations" in the world, and that's why we need to give them money. They're "too nuclear to fail," she says. Now that's a phrase her Tea Party base will love... (-1)
- She calls Perry "naïve" because she's afraid that Pakistan's nukes will fall into al Qaida's hands, and end up in American cities. "We have to maintain an American presence," apparently indefinitely since she never says we should try to get Pakistan to give up their nukes. (-1)
- She says we're not writing blank checks to Pakistan, and we are exchanging intelligence with them. That may very soon no longer be the case, although of course she didn't know that at the time.
- She agrees with Newt on Iran. She criticizes Obama for giving the Iranians extra time to get a nuke by meeting with them without preconditions. Because not meeting with them at all would've ended their nuclear program somehow. (-1)
- She repeats for a third time her idea that a $2.4 trillion check is a "blank check." She says we need to talk about balancing the budget, not just cutting the deficit.
- She agrees with Gingrich about letting in more highly-skilled immigrants, but disagrees with him on giving any illegals already here any kind of path to legality. She sees that as another kind of magnet bringing more illegals into the country. (-1)
- What issue is she worried about that no one else is talking about? She starts talking about Iraq, but then mentions al Shabab and broadens it to the issue of homegrown terror and people in America supporting and joining terrorist organizations.
Jon Huntsman
- He has the most introduction-y introduction, talking not just about his family but also his experience as governor of Utah and ambassador.
- Asked about the Patriot Act, he says we need to be "very careful" with our liberties, but also supports DHS and doesn't raise any specific complaints about the Patriot Act.
- When someone from AEI asks about drone campaigns in Pakistan, he stalls for a bit but eventually gets around to saying he does support an expanded drone campaign.
- He says we've run the Taliban out of Kabul and had free elections since 2004, we've killed bin Laden and "upended, dismantled" al Qaida. He thinks we don't need as many troops in Afghanistan anymore, and we could accomplish our goals there with small numbers of special forces, drones and training units to help the Afghanis. (+1)
- Pressed by Romney, he thinks we could get by with 10-15,000 troops in Afghanistan. That sounds like the kind of compromise where everyone loses. Either he was right in his previous answer, that we've accomplished our primary goals and can now shift to more of a covert/special ops/drone attack kind of campaign, or we haven't, and we need to keep our troops there until we do. (-1)
- In response to Romney's comment about doing what the generals in Afghanistan tell him to do, Huntsman says the President is Commander-in-Chief, and that although he would listen to the advice of his generals and other staff, there have been times such as Vietnam where the generals have been wrong.
- Asked about defense cuts, he talks about the national deficit and something he calls "the trust deficit." He wants defense spending to be on the table when we're talking about cuts. "If we can't find some savings in the $650 billion budget, we're not looking closely enough." (+1)
- "We missed the Persian Spring," because Obama declined to support the Iranian protesters. Sanctions against Iran won't work because China and Russia won't abide by the sanctions. (+1)
- What about the Arab Spring? He advocates caution and doesn't want to take sides just yet. I'm not sure why, but he thinks that's different than Obama's reaction to the Iranian protests. (-1)
- What issue is he worried about that no one else is talking about? He mentions China, but alludes to the possibly imminent Chinese collapse and says what he's really worried about is our national debt. He also mentions the "trust deficit" again.
Conclusion
Summing the candidates' scores, Huntsman again scored the highest with +1. Everyone else was negative; Cain was at -1, Perry at -2, Santorum at -3, Gingrich at -4 and Bachmann at -5. Paul and Romney pull up the rear at -7 each.
Since this debate, but before I was able to publish this post, Herman Cain has dropped out of the race. With the mounting sex scandals... wait, that's a bad word choice. Erm... anyway, Cain this time didn't talk about 999, but clearly demonstrated his lack of foreign policy knowledge. Most of his answers amounted to relying on his advisers or deflecting from the question to talk about the economy instead. The fact that he had the second-highest score despite this doesn't say very much for the rest of the candidates.
The current frontrunner Newt Gingrich had a few good moments, especially his willingness to cut military spending if necessary. I also like that he's willing to put in place a path to legality for at least some of the illegal immigrants currently in the country. But many of his answers betray a top-down, government-run ideology. The way to choose who to deport, he thinks, is with panels of experts who carefully examine each illegal's personal life, including where they go to church and who they associate with, to decide whether they deserve to stay. On civil liberties, he heavily implies that even American citizens are guilty until proven innocent on national security matters. Newt Gingrich seems to be just fine with "elites" running the show and making decisions about the minutiae of our lives, just as long as he's one of those elites.
Rick Perry loves shutting things down, whether it's the US-Mexico border or the entire country of Iran. After this debate, I'm not sure there's anything he wouldn't shut down. (Except maybe the Department of Energy?) The other Rick's best moment of the night, in my opinion, was at the very end, when all the candidates were asked what they're worried about that no one else is really talking about. Santorum was one of the few who actually answered the question, and was persuasive about it.
Ron Paul, on the other hand, was in rare form in this debate. No matter what the question was, whether it was the border, foreign aid or Somalia, he was able to turn his answer around until he got to talking about the "endless wars" in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I'm not sure either Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann said anything I agree with in this debate, other than throwaway lines like how we "could do a lot better" than the TSA. Not only did Romney contradict himself on illegal immigrants in a single sentence, but he also got his own name wrong. Bachmann spent half of the debate saying how much she agrees with the current frontrunner and the rest of the time mostly talking nonsense.
The highest scorer of the night, at least in my estimation, was Jon Huntsman, despite pushing some concept he calls the "trust deficit" and even going back to talking about "our core." The only reason he scores so highly is that half of his answers didn't rise to the point of being scored at all, either positive or negative. Of the five answers that I did score, four contradicted each other (in two pairs). He says we've accomplished our goals in Afghanistan... but he wants to keep upwards of ten thousand troops there just in case we haven't. He criticizes Obama for not supporting democracy in Iran, and then turns around and says we shouldn't yet support democracy in the Arab Spring. His best answer of the night that he didn't later retract was when he said, "If we can't find some savings in the $650 billion budget, we're not looking closely enough."
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Tenth Republican Primary Debate (SC)
Both the ninth and tenth Republican debates were held last week. This entry covers the tenth debate, hosted by CBS in South Carolina. Like the ninth, this debate featured the eight members of the regular cast. The full video is available here, and a transcript is available here.
Before watching this debate, I had a somewhat positive view of Herman Cain, somewhat negative views of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry, and fairly negative views of Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman.
As always, I've summarized all the answers for each candidate below, along with my gut reactions. Since the "summaries" can be quite long, you may want to skip to the conclusion at the bottom.
Jon Huntsman
Michele Bachmann
Ron Paul
Herman Cain
Mitt Romney
Newt Gingrich
Rick Perry
Rick Santorum
Conclusion
The focus of this debate was foreign policy and national security, and except for a few references to government spending, they pretty much stuck to that topic. Most questions were explicitly about national security; other features of foreign policy, like trade and the European crisis, were given short shrift.
I always watch these debates online, but I was surprised when the moderator announced in the beginning that only the first hour of the 90-minute debate would actually be broadcast on live television. Are the networks sponsoring these debates getting tired of how many there are?
Rick Perry got a question from Twitter that was a follow-up to one of his answers from a previous question. Although other debates have featured questions from Twitter, this is the first time I can remember a random citizen being able to respond to a candidate's debate answer and get a response from that candidate in the same debate. What Great Stagnation?
Summing my reactions for each candidate, Santorum got an astounding -8 (out of nine questions), which I think is the lowest I've scored any candidate in any debate. Tied for second-worst were Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich at -4. Herman Cain was slightly better at -3, while Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney were slightly better still at -2. Ron Paul got +1 and Jon Huntsman scored higher than ever before with +5.
Jon Huntsman's strongest point is clearly foreign policy. A two-time ambassador, he has clearly put a lot more thought into these issues than some of the other candidates. Ron Paul had a great speech against waterboarding, but wasn't very strong in the rest of his answers. Michele Bachmann, on the other hand, things waterboarding is "very effective." She was, however, the only candidate to mention the Pentagon's cost-plus system of financing.
If Ron Paul is an isolationist, Mitt Romney is an interventionist. There's no country he doesn't want to step up the rhetoric on, it seems, whether it's Iran, Pakistan, Syria or China. He wants a trade war in China and a real war in Iran. The new anti-Romney, Newt Gingrich, is a clear fan of covert action, but apparently doesn't get the irony of announcing this on television. He also had a true Pawlenty moment, where he decline to repeat to Romney's face a criticism he had already said on the radio.
For all that Herman Cain has been criticized for not knowing about foreign policy, he held his own in this debate. Which isn't to say I agreed with him-- I scored Cain lower in this debate than in any previous debate, most because of his support for waterboarding and opposition to the Arab Spring. Where he lost points wasn't because he hemmed-and-hawed or gave any indication that he didn't know what the question was about. Rather, he knows what his positions are; they're just the wrong ones in my opinion.
As far as I can recall, this marks the first time in any of the ten debates where a candidate didn't even get a single positive mark from me, and this time it happened with both Rick Perry and Rick Santorum. Santorum seemed particularly clueless, but maybe that means I'm just more libertarian than I thought I was.
Before watching this debate, I had a somewhat positive view of Herman Cain, somewhat negative views of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry, and fairly negative views of Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman.
As always, I've summarized all the answers for each candidate below, along with my gut reactions. Since the "summaries" can be quite long, you may want to skip to the conclusion at the bottom.
Jon Huntsman
- On Afghanistan, "It's time to come home... This nation has achieved its key objectives in Afghanistan. We've had free elections in 2004. We've uprooted the Taliban. We've dismantled Al Qaeda. We have killed Osama bin Laden." (+1)
- He clarifies that he doesn't want to completely withdraw from Afghanistan, and would keep certain kinds of troops there like "enhanced special forces," but far fewer than 100,000. So, is it time to come home or not? (-1)
- The use of waterboarding has diminished our credibility on the world stage to support "liberty, democracy, human rights and open markets." (+1)
- How do we deal with China? Don't get into a trade war, because that will just hurt us. We need to reach out to the younger generation in China who want change. (+2)
- How would he tackle debt and spending? "The Ryan Plan." He would send Medicaid, education and economic development to the states, and if Romney wants spending to be 20% of GDP, Huntsman wants it to be 19%. (+1)
- "When you have a loose nuke, you have no choice." He would send in the special forces to take care of it. (+1)
- Europe is our second-largest export partner (second to Canada) and if they go down, they're taking us with them. But he doesn't have time to say what he wants to do about it. (0)
Michele Bachmann
- She says the 30,000-troop surge in Afghanistan should've been 40,000 troops, then criticizes Obama for announcing a timetable for withdrawal. (0)
- She would reduce foreign aid to "many, many countries," but not to Pakistan, because Pakistan has The Bomb. Because giving money to every country that has nukes will absolutely convince Iran and North Korea to give up their nuclear ambitions! (-1)
- She would use waterboarding again, because it was "very effective." Really? Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. Most of the "confessions" he made were just made up stories to get the waterboarding to stop. What little actionable intelligence we did gain from Mohammed took years to get out of him and more years to lead anywhere. That doesn't sound like a "very effective" technique to me. (-2)
- She wants to get rid of the military's cost-plus system of paying for things and move to a fixed-cost system. This is simple common sense, and I wish more Republicans were willing to talk about it. (+1)
- Asked about the military's health care, she says she wants to "modernize" the system but doesn't go into any further details before getting sidetracked by Obamacare. (0)
- Killing bin Laden was a good thing. Killing al-Awlaki was also good, because he was a major recruiter, and had recruited the Ft Hood shooter, the underwear bomber and the Times Square bomber. (+1)
- The last time Republicans controlled the budget, the annual deficit was $160 billion. This October, the monthly deficit was $203 billion. You know things are bad when a deficit of $160 billion is cited as the good ol' days. So her solution? Get rid of food stamps. (-1)
Ron Paul
- Going to war in Iran is "not worthwhile." He also points out that Constitutionally, the Commander-in-Chief does not make the decision to go to war; that authority rests with Congress. (+1)
- Waterboarding is torture, it's illegal under US and international law, it's impractical, and he even calls it un-American. (+1)
- He's against doing anything in Syria, and says "the Syrians oughta deal with their country." I think that's what they're trying to do. (-1)
- He says, "We're pretending we're at war" because Congress hasn't declared it. Then he flirts with some paranoia that we're all going to be targeted and killed. (-1)
- Killing bin Laden was a good thing and should've happened sooner, but killing an American citizen (al-Awlaki) is different. He says over 300 individuals have been tried for terrorism in civilian courts and it's worked out just fine. (+1)
Herman Cain
- "Our enemies are not the people of Iran, it's the regime." He would assist the opposition movement, something Obama dramatically failed to do. He also says they can only afford nukes because of their oil wealth, and that increasing our energy independence would bring down the global price of oil. Talk about long-term thinking! (+1)
- He would not help the Iranian opposition "militarily," but rather "help the opposition within the country." I don't know what that means. (0)
- Is Pakistan a friend or foe? "We don't know." He wants to see some commitments made by Pakistan to advance some kind of regional agreement. (+1)
- He has said he would rely on the advice of his generals, but how would he know when to overrule them? By relying on the advice of his other advisors. Hmm. (0)
- He "does agree with torture," but would trust the military to decide what is or is not torture. Because that's gone oh-so-well in the past. (-1)
- Waterboarding is an enhanced interrogation technique, not torture, and he would return to using waterboarding. (-2)
- The Arab Spring has "gotten totally out of hand." Obama was wrong to support the protesters in Egypt, and he's wrong to support democracy in Yemen. Cain is 100% wrong here. As a free society, we have a duty to support democracy in any country that wants it. (-2)
- He would keep Gitmo open, would not send captured terrorists to civilian court, and would reauthorize enhanced interrogation techniques besides waterboarding. (0)
- It's "unclear" where we stand with Pakistan or Afghanistan, and he would want to talk to Pakistan before going after terrorists within Pakistan who are crossing the border to attack our troops in Afghanistan. (0)
- Victory in Afghanistan is not yet clearly defined, and he would make sure that definition is clear, although he doesn't say what the definition would be. (0)
Mitt Romney
- Asked if going to war with Iran would be worth it, he bashes Obama for awhile, then gets into a tiff with the moderator about timing (at 50 seconds the moderator says 60 have gone by and Romney says 30). He then says we have to make clear that we are willing to go to war in Iran if necessary. (-1)
- He would work with the Iranian "insurgents" and "if all else fails," he would "of course" go to war. He also says we need "crippling sanctions" on Iran, either rejecting Cain's statement that our enemies are not the people of Iran but the leaders, or showing that he hasn't thought about who is crippled by "crippling sanctions." (-1)
- He's fine with Obama's 2014 timetable for withdrawing from Afghanistan, but he doesn't like the September 2012 timetable for drawing down the surge because that's right before the election. (-1)
- Anyone who is "bearing arms" for an "entity" we are at war with is "fair game," and can be targeted and killed even if they are American. Then he spends most of his time to talk about how great America is. I'd like that answer to be a bit more nuanced, but overall I think he's right. (+1)
- The way to handle China is through trade, specifically through punishing American consumers with tariffs if they don't "play by the rules." (-1)
- "Of course it's time for the Assad dictatorship to end," and he would use covert means to do it. I'm glad to hear someone supporting democracy, but Mitt has the same problem with the word "covert" that Newt does. (0)
- He wants to cap federal spending at 20% of GDP. He would eliminate Obamacare and the National Endowment for the Arts, including public broadcasting. He also wants to return Medicaid to the states and limit it's growth to inflation-plus-one-percent. Then he repeats his plan to cut federal employment by 10% and tie public sector compensation to private sector compensation. (+1)
- Pakistan is close to being a failed state, and in dealing with Pakistan, we have to work within that context. We have to make clear to them that either they go after the terrorists within Pakistan or allow us to do so. (0)
Newt Gingrich
- He gets on international television to say we need "covert," "deniable" operations in Iran like "taking out their scientists." Um, Mr. Speaker, your mic is on... Even though I agree, and I think this is probably the second-best way to deal with Iran, that doesn't strike me as something you want to say on TV. He also says, "I agree entirely with Governor Romney" about Iran. (-1)
- How do we achieve peace without negotiating with the Taliban? "I don't think you do." He wants to broaden the "strategic" discussion to include Pakistan, and says between Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, Afghanistan is the "least important" strategically. What would he do about Pakistan, and how would he achieve peace? He doesn't say. (0)
- He agrees with Perry that the foreign aid budget should start at zero for every country each year, and should stay at zero for Pakistan, but he's a lot more articulate about why he believes that than Perry is. (+1)
- He's worried that the Arab Spring will turn into the Anti-Christian Spring, and wants the State Department (ie, the diplomats) "intervening" on behalf of Egypt's Coptic Christians. (+1)
- He's criticized Romney on the campaign trail, so would he like to do it to his face? "No, no." Hmm, I remember another candidate who did the same thing. What was his name... Paw... Pawlen... no, can't remember it. I'm sorry. Oops. (-2)
- How would he "think outside the box"? He'd do what Reagan did; he'd oppose a UN program that conservatives have opposed for nearly twenty years; and he'd increase military spending. On the good side, he repeats his support for adopting Lean Six Sigma at the Pentagon, but overall I think Newt just doesn't know what "outside the box" means. (-1)
- The correct thing to do in a war is "to kill people who are trying to kill you." Newt apparently follows the Malcolm Reynolds philosophy on foreign policy. He says al-Awlaki's killing was not "extra-judicial" but that it was and should be "outside criminal law." I wonder what he thinks "extra-judicial" means. (0)
- Newt's angry that Obama didn't support Mubarak in Egypt, because dictators are great when they're our dictators. (-2)
- On Syria, he would take covert operations against Assad, but would not take direct military action like imposing a no-fly zone. Once again with the misunderstanding of the word "covert." (-1)
- There are "four interlocking national security problems"-- the debt & deficit, energy, manufacting and science & technology. He wants to have a training requirement to unemployment compensation. He also wants to open up offshore drilling. (+1)
- We can't trust our current intelligence network because we rely too much on our allies' intelligence. (0)
Rick Perry
- We can sanction the Iranian Central Bank and "shut down that country's economy." Because economic devastation always brings down dictators and never gives rise to new ones. (-1)
- In Afghanistan, "the mission must be completed," and withdrawing on a set timetable is "irresponsible." With bin Laden dead and al Qaida crippled, this raises the question of when he would consider the mission to have been completed. (0)
- He says the foreign aid budget should start at zero for every country, then "have a conversation" about which countries should get aid. He doesn't think Pakistan should get any at all because the military and "secret service" is running Pakistan, not the politicians. (0)
- The "most important thing from a strategic standpoint" is either his experience in Texas or securing the southern border. (-1)
- China will end up "on the ash heap of history" not because of historical, economic or political forces but because they don't have "virtue." Hmm. And then somehow he turns that into saying that "fighting a cyber-war" with China is one of the most important issues the next President will face. (-1)
- Someone from Twitter asks if his "foreign aid should start at zero" idea also applies to Israel. He says, "absolutely," but also expects that after starting at zero, they will still get "substantial" aid from us. (0)
- He was in the Air Force, and he wants to use whatever techniques are necessary to save lives (referring to waterboarding). "This is war. That's what happens in war." (-1)
- France and Germany should deal with the crisis in Europe. They set up the euro to compete with the dollar, so now it's up to them to keep it going. (0)
Rick Santorum
- Victory in Afghanistan would come when the Taliban is "no longer a security threat" to Afghanis or Americans. (0)
- On Iran, he says he agrees with Cain and Romney and disagrees with Newt, which is odd because Newt said he agreed "entirely" with Romney. (-1)
- He agrees with Bachmann on Pakistan, saying we have to be their friend because they have The Bomb. (-1)
- Our military aid to Pakistan is spent in the US on US military hardware that creates jobs in the US. So not only does Keynesian stimulus work just fine when it's military spending, but it's somehow a good idea to give actual US military hardware to a country that Santorum himself says has factions that want to turn it into another Iran. (-2)
- He would have a "very clear agenda" and would only hire people who agreed with that agenda. Because the President should never have to listen to opposing viewpoints. (-1)
- What would that "very clear agenda" be? Making sure Iran doesn't get nukes, and he hopes that we're involved with Stuxnet and other covert operations against Iran. Again, even though I agree, this is not the kind of thing you want to say on TV. (-1)
- He stands by the Geneva Convention, but says when terrorists don't follow the rules, they don't get the benefits. Of course, the terrorists say the same thing about us, but he doesn't address that. (-1)
- What if one of Pakistan's nukes got into terrorist hands? He would work with the Pakistani military to recover it, but can't answer more precisely without knowing the details of the hypothetical situation. (0)
- Given that special forces are being trained to deal with this, would he use those special forces? He says, "You don't cowboy this one," and would not go into Pakistan to "interdict a nuclear weapon," but would rather work with the Pakistani government to secure it. Since we're currently training special forces to do something Santorum doesn't want to do, does that make him more of a dove than Obama? (-1)
Conclusion
The focus of this debate was foreign policy and national security, and except for a few references to government spending, they pretty much stuck to that topic. Most questions were explicitly about national security; other features of foreign policy, like trade and the European crisis, were given short shrift.
I always watch these debates online, but I was surprised when the moderator announced in the beginning that only the first hour of the 90-minute debate would actually be broadcast on live television. Are the networks sponsoring these debates getting tired of how many there are?
Rick Perry got a question from Twitter that was a follow-up to one of his answers from a previous question. Although other debates have featured questions from Twitter, this is the first time I can remember a random citizen being able to respond to a candidate's debate answer and get a response from that candidate in the same debate. What Great Stagnation?
Summing my reactions for each candidate, Santorum got an astounding -8 (out of nine questions), which I think is the lowest I've scored any candidate in any debate. Tied for second-worst were Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich at -4. Herman Cain was slightly better at -3, while Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney were slightly better still at -2. Ron Paul got +1 and Jon Huntsman scored higher than ever before with +5.
Jon Huntsman's strongest point is clearly foreign policy. A two-time ambassador, he has clearly put a lot more thought into these issues than some of the other candidates. Ron Paul had a great speech against waterboarding, but wasn't very strong in the rest of his answers. Michele Bachmann, on the other hand, things waterboarding is "very effective." She was, however, the only candidate to mention the Pentagon's cost-plus system of financing.
If Ron Paul is an isolationist, Mitt Romney is an interventionist. There's no country he doesn't want to step up the rhetoric on, it seems, whether it's Iran, Pakistan, Syria or China. He wants a trade war in China and a real war in Iran. The new anti-Romney, Newt Gingrich, is a clear fan of covert action, but apparently doesn't get the irony of announcing this on television. He also had a true Pawlenty moment, where he decline to repeat to Romney's face a criticism he had already said on the radio.
For all that Herman Cain has been criticized for not knowing about foreign policy, he held his own in this debate. Which isn't to say I agreed with him-- I scored Cain lower in this debate than in any previous debate, most because of his support for waterboarding and opposition to the Arab Spring. Where he lost points wasn't because he hemmed-and-hawed or gave any indication that he didn't know what the question was about. Rather, he knows what his positions are; they're just the wrong ones in my opinion.
As far as I can recall, this marks the first time in any of the ten debates where a candidate didn't even get a single positive mark from me, and this time it happened with both Rick Perry and Rick Santorum. Santorum seemed particularly clueless, but maybe that means I'm just more libertarian than I thought I was.
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