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Republican primary debate tonight features eight candidates

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From Humans Events.

Excerpt:

Eight Republican presidential candidates will debate on September 7 at the famed Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is currently at the front in many national polls, will join Mitt Romney​, Newt Gingrich​, Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, and Ron Paul​ on stage.

NBC News and POLITICO will moderate the debate, and it will be co-hosted by NBC Nighlty News anchor Brian Williams​ and POLITICO’s editor-in-chief John Harris.

The debate will be significant because it is Perry’s debut on the national debating stage. Even more so, it is first debate in which someone other than Romney will most likely be the leader in the polls.

This dynamic can impact debate strategy in a number of ways.

Will Perry be above the fray and take a page out of Romney’s playbook or will the combative Texan go straight after Romney?

Will Romney act like an underdog and make it seem as if he is punching up in a weight class to Perry?

For Ron Paul, who has been at a stable 10-15 percent in the polls, how will he break out? Can he put together a crisp debating performance that highlights the areas where Republicans have moved toward his views and not come across as too professorial and absent-minded?

Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain will come into the debate sharing a similar set of debate experiences. Both splashed onto the national scene during a debate. For Cain, it was in South Carolina. For Bachmann, it was in New Hampshire. But both candidates have not been able to maintain the initial burts of momentum they received from their respective debates due to a mixture of gaffes and staffing questions though Bachmann did win the Ames Straw Poll, which, in the end, seems to not have given her a bounce in the polls.

Newt Gingrich, fresh off his last stellar debate performance, must kick his campaign into gear. He said his campaign would be like Walmart in terms of being innovative. September seems like the time when he should be rolling out his campaign innovations.

The debate is going from 8 PM to 10 PM Eastern. I am concerned about the moderators being mainstream media. I hope they don’t ask stupid questions like John King did last time.

UPDATE: Newsbusters warns about the liberal bias of the debate moderators.

Excerpt:

Tonight Brian Williams will moderate, along with Politico’s John F. Harris, the GOP presidential candidate debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. If recent performances by the NBC Nightly News anchor are an indication, candidates (particularly those favored by the Tea Party) should recognize his hostility to their agenda and be prepared for a number of topics and questions from the left.

Ever since its emergence, Williams has undercut the Tea Party, its champions within the GOP, and its cause of fiscal conservatism. At the same time, Williams has heralded its chief opponent Barack Obama.

In the summer of 2010 Williams began mocking the Tea Partiers as unsavvy paranoids. On the August 23 Late Show With David Letterman, Williams made fun of the signs he had seen at Tea Party rallies, as he told the late night talk show host: “It makes people feel better to say ‘Take our country back.’ If you ask them, they would say from, ‘from the Trilateral Commission, from the big bankers, from the Council on Foreign Relations.’…You see a lot of signs, ‘Federal Government Out of My Social Security,’ ‘Federal Government Out of My Medicare and Medicaid,’ but for the federal government, of course, those programs would not exist.”

[…]Williams has also attacked those in the GOP who have championed the Tea Party cause, namely – Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry, former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and current Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Williams introduced Perry to his viewers, on the August 16 Nightly News, as a name-caller who came out “swinging and talking” and alerted his audience that the White House had already warned him “to watch what he says.”

“On the broadcast tonight, fighting words. Rick Perry comes out swinging and talking, and the White House tells him to watch what he says….The rest of the country is learning what Texans already know about their Governor, what he says, what he does, how he does business….Today’s debate had to do with money, name-calling, and whether or not the President of the United States loves his country.”

Uh oh. I don’t think the Republicans should let radical leftists moderate their debates. It’s just stupid. Let Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio be the moderators.

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Video of Republican debate at the South Carolina Palmetto Freedom Forum

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Michele Bachmann: On the Issues
Michele Bachmann: On the Issues

Here’s the video of Republican debate at the South Carolina Palmetto Freedom Forum! In eight parts. Famous Princeton philosopher Robert George is the moderator.

All 8 parts:

Below is some news coverage for those who don’t have broadband.

Here’s a story from ABC News.

Excerpt:

On a day usually marked by end-of-summer barbecues, five presidential candidates came here on Labor Day for a grilling of a different kind.

Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain spent the afternoon in front of a panel of three conservative inquisitors, including Tea Party icon, Sen. Jim DeMint. They peppered each candidate with a detailed series of questions on everything from gay marriage to their view of the 14 Amendment to whether the United States was still the “shining city on a hill” that Ronald Reagan famously envisioned.

And when they weren’t explaining the depth of their commitment to conservative principles, each used Monday’s Palmetto Freedom Forum to take a few swipes at President Obama.

When asked what he would do differently in the area of foreign policy, Romney replied, “A lot. First, I’d have one.”

Gingrich dismissed the jobs speech President Obama plans to deliver this week, predicting that it would be a “collection of minor ideas surrounded by big rhetoric.”

Michele Bachmann said that Obama has failed in his responsibility “to act under the Constitution and not place oneself over the Constitution.”

The candidates did not engage with each other face-to-face as they will two days from now at a debate in California and notably, the current Republican front-runner, Texas Gov. Rick Perry was a no-show at the forum.  Though Perry took part in another campaign event across the state Monday morning he cancelled on event organizers at the last-minute in order to return to Texas to deal with the wildfires there.

Bloomberg reports on Bachmann’s performance.

Excerpt:

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said President Barack Obama has skirted the U.S. Constitution on several fronts, as she and rivals in the race to challenge him next year courted support from Tea Party activists at a forum yesterday in South Carolina.

Bachmann criticized Obama for the health-care overhaul he helped shepherd into law last year, saying it paves the way for “socialized medicine.” She also attacked his hiring of high- level advisers — sometimes called “czars” — who aren’t vetted by Congress, and his refusal to defend federal marriage and immigration laws, as she billed herself the “constitutional conservative” in the Republican race.

“The current United States government and its framework is acting outside of the bounds of the Constitution,” Bachmann, 55, a Minnesota congresswoman, said at the gathering in the state that holds one of the nomination contest’s earliest primaries.

[…]Bachmann, who helped start a charter school in Minnesota before winning her House seat in 2006, pinpointed education as an area where the federal government has overreached. “The Constitution does not specifically enumerate, nor does it give to the federal government, the role and duty to superintend over education,” she said. “That historically has been held by the parents and by local communities and by state government.”

And from USA Today.

Excerpt:

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann threw a jab at former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, saying state laws that require residents to obtain health care coverage are unconstitutional — such as the one Romney signed as governor of Massachusetts.Romney tried to turn political lemon into lemonade, saying the state health care plan differed in fundamental ways from the federal health care law that followed. The contrast would make the issue “one of my best assets if I’m able to debate President Obama,” Romney said, saying the Bay State version didn’t raise taxes or cut Medicare.

“It’s simply unconstitutional; it’s bad law; it’s bad medicine,” Romney said of the federal version. “It has got to be stopped, and I know it better than most.”

[…]In a speech Tuesday, Romney plans to unveil a 59-point plan, including 10 “concrete actions” he said he would take on his first day in the Oval Office. He endorses several conservative prescriptions: curbing taxes; requiring agencies to cut old regulations to “offset” any new ones; creating “Reagan Economic Zones” with foreign partners to encourage free trade; taking a tougher line against China; cutting spending and passing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution; encouraging more oil and gas drilling and nuclear power.

Here’s an article about Mitt Romney’s 10-point plan.

You might remember that I had recommended to Michele Bachmann that she adopt the Canadian prime minister’s strategy of creating 5-point plans and 6-point plans clearly listing her priorities in order to avoid being accused of having a hidden agenda. So far, she hasn’t taken my advice, and her campaign appears to be suffering some difficulties. But Romney seems to have adopted it. I think Mitt Romney is actually a Democrat in Republican clothing, but you have to admire his 10-point plan. I looked it over briefly and it is exactly what I wanted Michele Bachmann to do. Still backing Bachmann, because I don’t trust Romney at all.

UPI has more on Romney’s liberalism.

UPDATE: This Human Events article has more detail on what Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann, and Mitt Romney said.

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What could Stephen Harper teach Michele Bachmann about winning elections?

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Michele Bachmann should adopt Stephen Harper's plan
Michele Bachmann should adopt Stephen Harper's plan

Michele Bachmann is soliciting questions for her townhall meeting on her Facebook page. Please “like” her page and then like my question, so that it will be asked.

The post that she is asking for questions in has this text:

Excited to join Tim Scott for Congress for a town hall live on Facebook from Charleston, SC tomorrow at 7PM ET, where we’ll be taking questions from our community of constitutional conservatives. Have a question? Please ask in the comments below:

My question is reproduced below:

Mrs. Bachmann, in the 2011 Canadian federal election, Stephen Harper, a conservative, managed to win a majority in a country that is only one-third conservative. He did this by creating N-point plans that clearly laid out his plans for each term.

The reason I think this is important is because he was able to neutralize the attacks of the media and the three left-leaning political parties because they were not able to accuse him of having a “hidden agenda”. My question for you is, have you considered laying out a clean, specific N-point plan for what you would do as President of the United States? You could even have 3 plans, one for social issues, one for fiscal issues, and one for foreign policy.

If you like my question, please like the “TeamBachmann” Facebook page, and then go to her post asking for questions, and like my question.

Here are the Harper plans:

2006: (won minority)

  • Cleaning up government by passing the Federal Accountability Act
  • Cutting the GST (the national sales tax)
  • Cracking down on crime
  • Increasing financial assistance for parents
  • Working with the provinces to establish a wait-times guarantee for patients

2008: (won minority)

  • The minister of finance and the Bank of Canada will constantly monitor financial markets and the impact of developments in other countries.
  • The global financial crisis will be discussed at the Canada-European Union Summit, which Harper will attend on Friday.
  • Parliament will be summoned to meet this fall and the minister of finance will table an economic and fiscal update before the end of November.
  • Canada will be represented at the meeting of G-20 finance ministers scheduled for early November in Brazil. Canada has also called for a second meeting of G-7 finance ministers.
  • Government spending will be focused and kept under control as the strategic review of departmental spending — now in the second year of a four year review – continues.
  • Harper will hold a first ministers meeting on the economy to discuss with premiers and territorial leaders a joint approach to the global financial crisis.

2011: (won majority)

  • Creating jobs through training, trade and low taxes.
  • Supporting families through our Family Tax Cut and more support for seniors and caregivers.
  • Eliminating the deficit by 2014-2015 by controlling spending and cutting waste.
  • Making our streets safe through new laws to protect children and the elderly.
  • Standing on guard for Canada by investing in the development of Canada’s North, cracking down on human smuggling and strengthening the Canadian Armed Forces.

Actually, Canadian conservatives are much more liberal than we Republicans are – they are soft on social issues. Harper himself is an evangelical Christian, though, but his hands are tied when it comes to social issues. He tries to support stronger families as a way to reduce abortion and to ensure that children grow up with mothers and fathers. Even Stephen Harper is not able to do anything about same-sex marriage and abortion, which are both legal in Canada.

I think Michele would do well to pretend that she was running for office in Canada, and then create her plans that way. All the conservatives already know that she is a solid evangelical and a Tea party stalwart. What she needs to do is come up with a list of specific smart policies that will win over two-thirds of the independents.

Some things I would like to see: transparency in government, sensible spending cuts, tort reform, cut employer payroll tax to 0%, cut federal funding for abortion/Planned Parenthood, increased tax credits for MARRIED couples, matching grants for states that create voucher programs, etc, a federal right-to-work law, a tax credit, usable at any time in the future, for all salary income earned by young people under the age of 22. Etc.